Snowman and snow drifts

above and below; 3 thin coats of NYC Pier 17, Billie white for the snowman and Fing'rs nail art pen (old) for the glitter. I dotted on some areas with Wet n' Wild Kaleidoscope, and used Wet n' Wild Black Creme for the black accents. This was very easy to do but I think I will skip the scarf next time. I added a coat of Nailene Acrylic Strong TC, but I only wore this for the day. I intended to free hand some snowflakes on the rest of my nails, but I cannot do a good job with the free hand snow-flakes. I will stick to the stickers... ha-ha-ha, I mean I will stick to using nail art stickers for intricate things such as snowflakes and flowers, etc.

~ Snowdrifts ~

This is 1 coat of NYC Skin Tight Denim, followed by Billie Silver sponged on the diagonal with 1 coat of TC.  The sponge technique is a great way to add alot of flair to a mani VERY easily. I just dot nail polish onto a small piece of aluminum foil, dip the sponge in the polish and gently and dab it on my nails.... gradually fading it from the tips or towards the tips of my nails. I just used an ordinary kitchen sponge for this one, but using a foam craft brush works great, too.

Here is a great video for learning the sponge technique on YOUTUBE....

And here is a few more photos.... All indoors under fluorescent lighting.

The rest of these photos are 1 coat of NYC Skin Tight Denim, followed by Billie Silver sponged on the diagonal with 1 coat of TC.  The sponge technique is a great way to add alot of flair to a mani VERY easily. I just dot nail polish onto a small piece of aluminum foil and dab it on my nails.... gradually fading it from the tips or towards the tips of my nails. I just used an ordinary kitchen sponge for this one, but using a foam craft brush works great, too.

Here is a gret video for learning the sponge technique on YOUTUBE....


And here is a few more photos.... All indoors under fluorescent lighting.

This Billie polish is super- duper, ridiculously metallic... it looks like tiny pieces of metal. This bottle has contaminated 2 perfectly good bottles of TC, before I figured out why my TC had little bits of silver in them.....

♥

♥ A Winters Eve ♥

 Whew!  I am glad I added those two pretty winter looks to my blog first. This turned out as I envisioned ~ but my photos don't do it justice. If you are not familiar with central Canadian weather, then you cant imagine someone mocking the beauty of a snowfall. The temperatures in my part of the country are brutal, the wind is fierce and the snow falling is not romantic and charming like in the movies or TV - We finally got our first real snowfall, and although I think snow can be pretty, It's put me in dismal state. Is there a nail polish exchange student program..... anyone? I'd like to hang out in Florida or Mexico for the next couple of months!

 sigh - here is my first winter theme mani of 2010 - I call it ' A Winters Eve '. Wet n' Wild black for the base, some gorgeous Nailene and Fing'rs nail stickers, and rhinestones ( both dollar store and Nailene - more on that later..... ) and Wet n' Wild Kaleidoscope = I dabbed this on and smoosed it around, I wanted a sparse glitter look, not an overpowering glitter. I think if i used any other glitter it would overpower the Nailene Bedazzle #71042 stickers that look like snowflakes

Here is a photo I found of the Nailene Snowflake looking stickers from the Bedazzle #71042 nail art stickers....  The round holographic bubble stickers are from a long discontinued Fingr's set of nail stickers. 

From Nailene Reviews

and below are the more snowflake looking snowflakes

From Nailene Reviews

Also = In many of my photos below some of my nail crystals have fogged over, the ones that are still clear and faceted are Nailene Brand, and the ones that are foggy are the ones I found at the Dollar Rama Canada....they still look cool though, so I am not complaining. If you apply polish over these plastic 'rhinestones' they will loose their 'crystal-ness'

 so for this mani here are the products I used....

~ 2 thin coats of WnW Black Creme - best black polish EVER!!!!
~ applied nail stickers, Nailene and Finger's Brand
~ a dotted on WnW Kaleidoscope, and sorta 'smooshed' it around - I wanted a sparse glitter look.


Since there is no way I would be bare-handed outside right now - all my photos are indoors under fluorescent lighting, although I know this would look pretty outdoors with real snow in the background.

♥

A Few Winter Looks

- Winter Wonder-Land -

I looooooooove those Nailene crystals that have the extra bit of sticker surrounding them - they are easy to place and look really cool. See how I did this look HERE. They look like they have tiny little air bubbles in them, like real ice.

- Winter Wonder-Land -

This one below, is also one of my favorites - see how I did it HERE, the different sizes of glitter make this extra special.

- Snowy Snowy Eve -

- Snowy Snowy Eve -

- A Winters Eve -

I wanted to have a quick link to all my fun winter nail art...... so here it is! With more to come.....
♥

♥ Icing Purple PJ's & a quick comparison♥

 

Icing Purple PJ's is a very dark purple jelly-ish polish with subtle silver/lilac shimmery flakes. I should have known better and layered this over a similar coloured opaque polish as this is 3 coats with TC.  Next time I'll be layering this over NYC China Town or a another dark purple.

Further in this post is a quick comparison with some other sheer/jelly polish's that also have some flakie-ness. Every time I look at Sinful Colors I LOve You I immediately want to polish my nails with it. I love that polish but I have never worn it as a full manicure...! Also I am practicing free-hand nail art and added a not-too-bad photo of some zebra stripes......

At the moment I'm having some bloggy and camera issues, I miss posting stuff and have alot of backed up posts  :o(  . Is anyone else having blog issues?  Do I need to back link... whatever that means?

 ( indoor flo )

And a quick comparison of a few glass flecked blurple jelly-ish polish's I have...... Allare 3 coats without TC. It is sooooo worth it to layer these types of glass flecked jelly's over a similar opaque base colour.


L - R Sinful-I love You, Icing-Purple P.J.'s, Confetti-Happy B-day,and Arissa- Rock'in Amethyst,

L - R Sinful-I love You, Icing-Purple P.J.'s, Confetti-Happy B-day,and Arissa- Rock'in Amethyst,

 I made this brush thinner by slowly and carefully I snipping an old make-up brush to a thinner size. I am trying to work out a nice way to add some zebra stripes to all 10 nails..... it's very hard to do it on my non dominant hand.....

...... I need alot more practice

♥

Icing Grey LE and.... cheetah?

 I added the cheetah and zebra using black polish and a dotting tool, I did'nt fell like hunting around for my art brushes -but- I should have used a brush. It turned out decent for my first try. I may even try this with craft paint as it will eliminate some of the polish fly-away strings that are viable on some of my nails.


The base of this is an Icing ( by Claire's ) LE mini polish. I think this is the first GREY polish that I actually bought, and didn't franken myself. I think it is very pretty, the formula was great and the coverage was surprising. I have to add, that adding one of the primary colours to a grey franken (black+white=grey) a few drops of red, blue, or yellow, can subtly or drastically alter a grey franken.

There is a gazillion tutorials on You Tube for animal print nail art like this. I will definitely use a tiny skinny make-up brush next time, and will add the base colour of the cheetah spots, too.

Below is the Icing LE No Name grey no TC at 3 thin coats -  This applied very shiny but dulled too fast. I planned on adding the silver glitter that came in the same set to this but instead did these cheetah and zebra patterns (on my thumbs).

hmmm, this came out in summer 2010 I think.....

♥

Icing Roger That & Icing Rainbow LE set for Spring 2010

 ummmmmm, this does not look like this in real life... wtf happened?

This lovely Icing nail polish, Roger That, is much, much more green in real life. I think that I need o get some outdoor sunshine photos for this one. I have seen this posted on a few of the blogs and I noticed that those photos looked a little on the blue side, too.

I have been wearing this for two days and don't want to take it off. The lively teal base colour is saturated with noticeable glass fleck shimmer. It applied perfectly, in 3 coats and dried to a ridiculous shine.... I still used Top Coat anyway becuase it took a little longer to dry than most Icing polish's i have tried ( It is humid in my home atm ) 

I am sorry it took me so long to buy this!

What other polish's available have the same base colour as Icing Roger That?

.... and some lovely Icing polish's from one of their "LE" sets. I am pretty sure this came out in spring 2010. None of these have names but all 5 have a beautiful finish. I love that subtle shimmer.... anyone know what it's called?

 above 3 thin coats - no TC

2 thin coats - NO TC

1 ridiculously thick coat - needs thinner, with 1 coat of TC

 3 thin coats no TC

2 coats no TC

any names....anyone?

♥

3 older Sally Hansens

 Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Sweet Decadence

OMFG I have been so busy this week.... I need to park my bunz in front of the computer and start reading! I am so far behind on reading everyone's blogs..... I need a solid day and a half to catch up! 

These older Sally Hansen Hard as Nails polish's were found in the bargain-ish shops in my town.  All 3 of these polish's needed 4 or more coats = Thats how it used to be the olden days. I am thankful that I can currently pick up fast drying polish that is good to go in 2 coats . I

This is a weird colour ~ Sweet Decadence is a shimmery butter-scotch shade. This was 4 coats with Top Coat, it was sheer but build-able. I don't think I have anything like this.... I cant call it a 'yellow' or a gold....so butter-scotch it is.

 I was surprised that I liked this polish, below, so much. Sally Hansen Pleasurable Decadence is an interesting colour ~ I want to put it in the 'mink' colour family, as there is alot of blush and pink-ish tones in there.... This was 4 coats with TC. I'll have to hunt around my collection for something similar to this.

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Crystal Grape

This is a very sheer glass fleck polish. I used 5 coats here, and it was still very sheer. It is a lovely shade of purple and the sparkle is very prominent.

I tried the 'syrup' graduated mani here on my pinky.....  I think it looks cool

♥

♥ Some Funky Glitters ♥

top to bottom, 1 coat.... 2 coats etc.

Claire's Chunky Gold... this is more of a yellow, not gold. All of the Chunky Glitters were on the bargain rack at the Claire's store in my town in spring. I only bought the gold and Silver and now I kinda regret it becuase the snowmen polish ( blue-cross) have released very similar chunky hex glitter polish's in the USA. The silver is very pretty, and although this gold polish is beautiful in it's own way, they yellow tone makes it garish - but still wearable. I have whipped up a few cool frankens with this polish My (DL knock-off ) It was not as difficult to remove as I thought it would be...... other than that not much to say about it.

Below is a franken I made using Claire's Hollywood, a lovely multi-sized holo glitter. I added a small amount of Claire's Magic to this polish, I think it turned out very nice.

A note on making glitter frankens, add colored glitter to polish's that already have glitter in them. It is the FORMULA OF THE POLISH BASE that prevents the glitter from melting or loosing it's color.

This was 2 coats of my franken and on my ring nail is 2 coats layered over NYC China-town. I will likely add some purple or lavender glitter to this in the future.

Sun

Sun

Indoor Flo

 ...and finally a glitter sprinkle mani that was too thick but beautifully glittery.....

Below; before glitter. These are Nailene Natural Wear Artificial nails with the shimmery base # 77359. I added a coat of Sally Hansen Beyond Perfect in Fresh Lavender. Next time I am only doing the glitter sprinkle-ing once... and laying my hands flat instead of up ( duh ) the glitter effect became way to thick.

I tried to find a video on you tube on how to do this... but I could not find one. If anyone has a great tutorial on sprinkling glitter over wet nail polish, let me know ♥

I used and opalescent small square glitter that I found at Micheal's craft store around Easter-time. I did two 'coats' of glitter for this mani - and it ended up being way too thick. I also held my hand up immediately after and the glitter slid around on my nail.... leaving a large bump at my smile-line. So for next time it's only going to be 1 coat of polish, then a sprinkling of glitter, then a coat of clear and finally Top Coat.

 .... and there was glitter everywhere


♥