SWATCH SATURDAY: Dandy Nails - Chilled Down

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Hello lovelies! Two posts in one day, totally off the hook over here!

Just a simple swatch this time, because I was in the mood for it. Accent nail is inspired by a photo Vanity Projects posted of a Lexi Martone mani that I LOOOOOVE.

Base is three coats of Chilled Down (could have gotten away with two, but taking photos in a lightbox is very demanding in terms of visible nail line). I love this polish. I love polishes that look speckled, and this one reminds me of a bird's egg. A really awesome bird's egg.

Accent nail was done with Shirin, then acrylic paint in blue and white, plus some 1.5mm rhinestones from Born Pretty.

Polishes used:

Dandy Nails - Chilled Down

Mentality Nail Polish - Shirin (I have been ADDICTED to this polish, lately!)

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

acrylic paint

liner brush

1.5mm rhinestones from Born Pretty Store

Any seasonally-appropriate designs you'd like to see me do? I don't much celebrate Christmas so it can be hard for me to come up with nail art for the season. If you have any ideas, send them my way!!

xo,

J.

Copper Pattern

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Hello lovelies!

Welcome to Saturday! At least, Saturday where I am. 

Today I have a very simple look for you, because I'll have to take these off sooner rather than later to do my ABC Challenge prompt (Q for quilting). But I kind of like them anyway!

This started with two coats of Lights Will Guide You, an almost black green with flake emerald shimmer and copper hexes in three sizes. It's a beautiful polish (I'm all over anything copper or rose gold, lately) but it stained my touch-up brush something fierce, so I'm somewhat wary of what'll happen to my nails. I will update this post tomorrow after removal to tell you how it went!

The designs were all done with a liner brush, a dotter, and a medium detail brush and Penny Talk. I don't know where I was going with this pattern, it just popped into my head randomly! I would have liked for Penny Talk to be more yellow-toned to go with the hexes better, but from a distance you can't really tell.

Here is a thumb macro to show you the depth and the flake shimmer!:

Polishes used:

Cadillacquer - Lights Will Guide You

Essie - Penny Talk

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

liner brush

dotting tool

medium detail brush

You know what I like about Saturdays? PANCAKES. My current partner makes pancakes for his kids and I. I love pancakes almost as much as I love waffles, and I actually own a waffle maker, so that should tell you something.

xo,

J.

DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK: Red/Green/Gold: Christmas Skittlette

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Hello lovelies! Day 2 of Nubbinses, and the final day of Digit-al Dozen Week, is upon us!

I decided to keep it simple today, with a red/green/gold Christmas skittlette.

Thumb and index are two coats of Chyna, pinkie is two coats of Filthy Rich. Middle and ring fingers are two coats of Shawn, followed by designs in Filthy Rich and some Just Nail nail art fluid that I didn't like enough to keep using (haha).

I regret now not incorporating red into my middle two fingers, but I guess that's kind of the point of skittlettes? And I wish I'd used Filthy Rich for the design from the beginning, I think I would have gotten better lines using it instead of the nail art fluid.

Polishes used:

Zoya - Chyna, Shawn

Quo by Orly - Filthy Rich

Just Nail nail art fluid in gold

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

OPI - Matte top coat (on middle two fingers)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat; on pinkie only)

medium detail brush

GUESS WHAT! We found a house to rent! I won't be homeless come January! It's a really nice house, too, all updated and stuff. I'm really excited about it. It'll be me, my friend Andrew, a couple named Josh and Alyssa, their two young boys, and my cat. A rambunctious house. :) Thank you all for your kind thoughts and words over the past little bit. Now if we could all refocus our positive energy on finding me a job, I'd be all set... ;)

xo,

J.

CHECK OUT WHAT THE OTHER TALENTED LADIES OF THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN ARE UP TO:

DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK: Red/Green/Gold: Little Bells

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Hello lovelies! Today is Day 1 of Utter Nubbily Nubbiness.

Augh!! Try not to avert your gaze. They don't bite, even if they're sort of gnarly looking. (And not the good gnarly, like Gnarly Gnails; the bad gnarly.)

I went outside the directive a bit with the base colour I chose for this; two coats of Colline du Charf. I thought I'd need three, and I probably would if my nails were longer, but for this two medium coats were perfect. I love this colour, it's so dainty and stuff. I'm not 100% sold on it as the base to this manicure, though. The bells don't stand out against it as much as I thought they would.

The bells were painted with Shirin and Filthy Rich (the little lines). The string and bell details were done with Camelot. The leaves were done with Shawn and Tracie, and the berries are Nightmaren.

Polishes used:

Elevation Polish - Colline du Charf

Mentality Nail Polish - Shirin

Quo by Orly - Filthy Rich

Zoya - Shawn, Tracie

Pretty Serious - Nightmaren

A England - Camelot

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

tiny detail brush

liner brush (which didn't save my lines, unfortunately; what a sorry state of affairs...)

How do you like these? What base colour would you have used?

xo,

J.

CHECK OUT WHAT THE OTHER TALENTED LADIES OF THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN ARE UP TO:

DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK: Red/Green/Gold Poinsettias

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It wouldn't be a holiday season without some poinsettias, would it, lovelies?

No, it would not. (Look at how glorious and long my nails are here! I weep for you, my pretty nails!)

For today's look, I began with a base of two easy coats of Shirin, which is way more gold and way less yellow-orange than it appears on the Mentality website (which is a good thing, for my skin tone). I then painted on the poinsettias with Fire It Up, Tomato, Nightmaren, and St. Petersburgundy. The leaves were done with Recycle and Shawn. The little dots were done with Streetside NYC and Mellow Yellow.

I didn't like these once I'd done them, I found them sloppy, but I think they've grown on me.

Polishes used:

Mentality - Shirin

Layla - Souftouch 08 (Fire It Up)

Joe Fresh - Tomato

Pretty Serious - Nightmaren

OPI - St. Petersburgundy

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Recycle

Zoya - Shawn

Elevation Polish - Streetside NYC

Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

medium detail brush

My adventures in nubbiness start tomorrow! I really can't get over it. I've broken nails before but it hasn't ever really been this bad. It'll take at least a month to get any reasonable sort of length back. But I'm trying not to give up hope! Or, not hope, but resilience. Or something. You know what I mean? Sure you do. *whistles*

xo,

J.

CHECK OUT WHAT THE OTHER TALENTED LADIES OF THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN ARE UP TO:

Puzzle Pieces

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Hello lovelies!

Today's post is all about my Follow the Devil ABC Challenge prompt: P for 'puzzle'.

This is a pretty straightforward look. It took waaay longer than it should have, though.

I started with a base of two easy peasy coats of Where the Wild Things Are. It's a beautiful polish, but it's subtle, so you won't get the full gorgeousness of it through my photos. There's a macro down near the bottom that will hopefully help with that. I am always drawn to greyed-out blues / blue-toned greys like this. Add in tiny silver glitters and iridescent glitters and micro-shards and, well, you have a polish with my name written all over it. Plus it applied like a charm, requiring almost zero cleanup.

I then painted on the squares in white acrylic paint. And here's where it took forever: I had to go over them three times to get them to opacity. (And they still aren't COMPLETELY opaque.) Argh! Once done, I used a dotting tool to place the 'interlocking' bits of the puzzle pieces in mostly random order. So long as you have a dot per side of a square, you're good to go.

Finally, here's the macro I promised you. Check out the golden/green shimmer, too!

Polishes used:

Cadillacquer - Where the Wild Things Are

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat; two coats to smooth out the bumps from the dots)

white acrylic paint

one-stroke brush for painting the squares

dotting tool

This cold I've got just won't kick the bucket. I'm a snifflemonster. I'm making tons of soups to try to rectify this, and I'm sleeping like a sloth, but still I sniffle. SNIFFLEZ 4 LYFE.

xo,

J.

Catching Fire

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Hello lovelies!

Today I decided to be topical. I also wanted a bit of a break from detailed work like my last polar enterprise, though this ended up being more of a hard case than I anticipated.

Sorry about the smudging! Topcoat can be a real bitch when it wants to, hey?

My aquatic mani from a long time ago was very popular so I thought that, with the new Hunger Games movie coming out today, it might be nice to try it with fire. It was sort of a bad idea? I mean, it all got smudged and the white unders are peeking out and bah! BAH.

Anyway. I started with two coats of Don't Pretzel My Buttons, followed by painting on the fire shapes with French White. I then painted on the fire bits with the rest of the colours, going from yellow to red.

Polishes used:

OPI - Don't Pretzel My Buttons, Y'All Come Back Ya Hear?

Nina Ultra Pro - French White

Revlon - Electric

Essence - Fortune Cookie

American Apparel - Lopez Canyon

Inglot - 724

Layla - Fire It Up (Softouch Effect 08)

Sally Hansen - Cinna-snap

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

Next up, Outrageous Ville. I'm thinking of something Effie Trinket inspired... makes sense, goes with the theme, might be impossible, you know. The whole shebang.

xo,

J.

DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK: Black & White Plaid

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Hello lovelies! Remember yesterday, when I said that today's mani was my least favourite? It WAS the truth, and then... well... read on.

I'm not sure why it is, but the moment I heard about the theme for this month's Digit-al Dozen week, I knew I was going to do plaid. It was ~fated~.

I actually had to redo this mani as the first attempt was awful. I know, I'm a perfectionist, my definition of awful may vary from the norm-- but I assure you that, in this case, I do mean awful. So I've spared you the sight of it! Hooray!

Of course, Jacob had to come say hello. And flip up my background and install himself in my lightbox until I coaxed him out of there. 

I began with two coats of White On, followed by thick lines in Ridnitsohkka. I then went into the intersections of my grey lines and filled them in with Recycle to mimic overlapping. I used White On again for the thin white lines, and Camelot for the thin black lines. My linework is improving, hey?

Polishes used:

Sally Hansen - White On

Elevation Polish - Ridnitsohkka

China Glaze - Recycle

A England - Camelot

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

thin liner brush

tiny detail brush

I bet you're relieved that today's mani was something more normal, right? I must have been taking a trip through the Twilight Zone yesterday.

xo,

J.

CHECK OUT WHAT THE OTHER TALENTED LADIES OF THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN ARE UP TO:

DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK: Black & White Music Notes

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Hello lovelies!

SO BEGINS DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK #2.

This week, we're doing black and white manis. This is exciting to me. I love constraints like this, I find it helps me to imagine nail art possibilities better than being told to do anything.

For Day 1, I opted to combine my Digit-al Dozen prompt with my ABC Challenge prompt, which was M for Music. This mani started with two coats of White On and one coat of HK Girl on all fingers.

I then put two thick coats of Moonlight on my thumb and ring fingers as accent nails. To be honest, this is one place where I rubbed against my Digit-al Dozen prompt a bit. This would have looked so BOSS with a brightly coloured glitter topper, and I had just the one in mind (Moosh by Happy Hands). Argh! Oh well.

The designs were all done with Camelot and my trimmed-down long liner brush and tiny detail brush.

Polishes used:

Sally Hansen - White On

Indigo Bananas - Moonlight

A England - Camelot

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat -- trying it out, have heard good things, will report back soon)

tiny long liner brush

tiny detail brush

I'm really happy with how the lines came out in this mani! They would have been even better if I'd used a fluid acrylic paint, but for something done with nail polish, I'm quite pleased. :) Come back tomorrow for another black & white mani!

xo,

J.

CHECK OUT WHAT THE OTHER TALENTED LADIES OF THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN ARE UP TO: