Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone, I hope you've had a great day and that there are tons of kids trick-or-treating at your houses like there are currently at mine! I, unfortunately, didn't get to dress up this year due to two midterms and a 4-hour lab this week but I did get to do something lovely on my nails! Instead of me dressing up in a costume, it's like my nails are wearing their own Hello Kitty costume, haha! I followed this tutorial by Kayla Shevonne for the thumb and ring finger kittens but I was inspired by this mani by MaD Manis for the flowers on the other fingers.

Keep reading kittens! :3

Hey guys! Today I'd like to show off a mani I did this summer when I had a lot more free time, and the rest of my nail polish stash with me! It is inspired directly from this tutorial by the brilliant and talented Kayla Shevonne, a fellow Canadian nail blogger. She's one of my inspirations in the lacquer world and I have since tried a few more of her easy to follow tutorials!

I know - major lobster hands here! The colours I used for my spin on the patchwork mani were OPI Funky Dunkey, OPI Gargantuan Green Grape, China Glaze Custom Kicks and an Art Deco nail art brush in black. 

A Lot of First Times Around Here Lately

A few days ago I showed you a double first for me: my first full water marble mani and my first time using a Zoya polish! I'm excited to tell you guys today that I had another first this week: my first time using a Color Club lacquer! (boy is it ever difficult to resist writing the "u" in color..Canadianisms) I chose Masquerading for my debut Color Club mani and it is even more beautiful on the nail! I definitely didn't have anything like this in my stash before.

This is two coats of Masquerading, but if I had been more careful I could've gotten away with only one. You know what this means...good stamping polish! I have no complaints about the application, the formula was really nice, but I do have complaints about the wear. I put this colour on Wednesday evening and this was what it looked like when I went to take pictures on Friday afternoon..major tip wear even though I wrapped my tips. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the fact that I didn't wrap my topcoat on my tips, but I'm not too upset because I wasn't planning on wearing this for a long time!

My First Full Water Marble Mani

How are you guys today? I'm spectacular because I get to show you all a first for me, never before had I devoted an entire mani to water marbling. An accent nail here and there was all I had to show for my technique until this mani, and I'm so glad I went all the way with it! It looked great and I got a lot of compliments throughout the week. 

Here are my two best shots showing off both hands. The colours I used were OPI Alpine Snow, OPI Ski Teal We Drop and Zoya Ashley (the first time a Zoya polish has ever touched my nails!) over one coat of OPI Alpine Snow. It's not my favourite colour combination but I don't have too many cremes with me in Montreal right now. I feel like it looks like I was trying to go for Christmas colours, but perhaps by a misjudgment in colour I grabbed teal and purple instead of red and green. Photo spam after the jump!

A Brownie for Suzi

Today OPI released the artists renditions of their Spring 2012 Collection and the theme appears to be: Holland! This is very exciting for me because the collections that OPI bases around countries tend to turn out awesome (Spain and France anyone?) and it looks like they're on the road to recovery after a dismal display with the Texas Summer collection and the mediocre Touring America Collection for fall.

I got this photo from the official OPI Facebook page. Here are the names of the colours in this order: Gouda Gouda Two Shoes, Wooden Shoes Like to Know It, I Don't Give a Rotterdam, A Roll In The Hague, Petal Faster Suzi, Dutch Ya Just Love OPI, Thanks a WindMillion, Red Lights Ahead...Where?, Kiss Me On My Tulips, Vampsterdam, I Have a Herring Problem, & Did You Hear About Van Gogh?

Are these the funniest names ever? I can't believe they didn't include anything about legal marijuana use..that's one of my first thoughts (and definitely a popular stereotype). Maybe they're not allowed to make drug allusions (but a joke about the Red Light District is ok?) Well I made up my own name, hence the title of this post. :)

Right now I'm left wanting I Don't Give a Rotterdam, Petal Faster Suzi, Dutch Ya Just Love OPI, Thanks a WindMillion, Vampsterdam and I Have a Herring Problem, but I can't wait to see what these polishes actually look like as OPI's bottle drawings are known to be more than a bit off sometimes! Spring 2012 is going to be brilliant for OPI with the bright and daring Nicki collab and the pretty and feminine Dutch collection! My roommate who is from the Netherlands approves of the quirky names too. 

Not Cozu-melting for this Polish

The weekend goes by way to fast lately, doesn't it? Today I have a colour to show you ladies that I had wanted for a long time and I purchased at Cosmo Prof a few months ago..but I can't say I'm loving it! This is OPI's Cozu-melted in the Sun, a light pink shimmer that I think would make an awesome lip colour but I'm not crazy about it on my nails.

I don't even think I have a reason for not liking this polish, except that it's not that flattering on me. Application was great, opaque in two easy coats, I've had it on for three days now and there are no signs of wear, it's a really solid polish as I've come to expect from OPI..I just don't love the colour! 

Nicki Minaj for OPI

Hey Ladies, Happy Saturday!
Yesterday there was some interesting news dropped in the polish world, Nicki Minaj's OPI collection was shown for the first time and will hit shelves this January. Let's take a look at the colours...

This is the official word from OPI, this picture was taken from their Facebook page. They want to "clear some things up" and show fans the real colours to be expected with this collection. What does that mean, clear things up? Keep reading..

Steady as She Rose? Lilac? Lily? Lavender?

Hello and Happy Tuesday everyone! This is a queued post because I have a crazy midterm on Wednesday and I need to use every single minute to study. After all the glitzy shimmery and sparkly polishes I have had on lately it felt good to be back to a creme formula. Oh cremes - you always know how to even yourselves out perfectly... except this one. This is OPI Steady as She Rose from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. Application was decent, it had a really hard time evening itself out on my nails so some of the ones on my right hand look a little odd, but a coat of seche and some Konad always works wonders.

SaSR is a .. well .. I'm not really sure what colour to describe it as. It's an extremely pale dusty creme that can look light purple in most lights, but once in a while I see it from the right angle and with the right lighting and I go, "oh, so THAT'S why it's called rose" and it all makes sense. It's very muted, dusty, greyed looking and really pretty and delicate. You could definitely pull this off at an office, and I think it would make a really great base colour for a lot of nail art, even a purple or pink themed splatter mani or water marble. Keep reading after the jump if you want to see what I did with this mani :)

Midtown Magic

Hi everyone! It's Monday, a fresh week meaning a fresh manicure! Today's post is on China Glaze's Midtown Magic from the Metro Collection. I recently saw the entire collection being sold at Winners for 7 dollars each, it made me so mad because this happened after I bought three at full price from Chatters! Oh well, what's done has been done. Anyway! Midtown Magic is a beautiful rich brown with tiny golden and bronze fleck throughout. It's the perfect color for autumn, especially with the great earth-tones and changing leaves that comes with this season. Autumn is great, except for the fact that it's getting chillier, as well as the fact that it gets darker and darker each day. However, the moon has been incredibly bright and gorgeous to look at through the window, can't complain about that! Ok, enough rambling, here's CG Midtown Magic!

3 coats Midtown Magic

More pictures after the jump!

Felix Felicis

It's starting to feel just like fall in Montréal, that's one of the things I love most about this city is that it doesn't skip autumn. There are red and orange and yellow maple leaves all over, and Mont Royal looks absolutely beautiful, like it's out of a pretty movie. To go with the season I decided to put on one of my untrieds that I was very excited about. I bought OPI Rising Star last May, I remember because I had just gotten back to Calgary and I went to Cosmoprof and it was there on a discount rack, but none of the other Burlesque polishes were left. That's okay, I have a few others from the collection but I didn't manage to get my hands on this one while it was in stores, so you can imagine how excited I was. As soon as I put it on I knew it was meant to be, this polish is amazing! It glides on perfectly, as expected from OPI, and is like a warm copper toned gold part foil part glass fleck shimmer that lights up an entire room. 

Unfortunately, I may or may not have waited a little too long to finally take swatch pictures and there is extreme growth here. I was waiting for some sunshine to properly capture the GLOW of this polish but no such luck. This polish reminds me of Felix Felicis from Harry Potter. I think this is exactly what it would look like, some people imagine it as more of a yellow gold but I don't want my lucky potion being a dull yellow gold, I want this warm lively one! Maybe I should put it back on for my Organic Chem midterm on Wednesday...hmmm..

Tag Post - Then and Now

Hey guys! I saw this tag post floating around on a few of my favourite blogs lately and I decided to join in, because I was looking through my photos the other day and I found some awfully hilarious nail fails. The point of this tag post is to post a picture of your nails when you first started taking pictures of them, and one now!

OKAY? These claws? Did I think I was some sort of cat? Yikes..This is some China Glaze colour that's actually really nice, I should try it on some more tamed nails. Keep reading after the jump.

Fan-freaking-tastic Facets of Fuchsia

Funny story, the other day I drop by Pharmaprix and I notice the beautiful new Revlon collection. Well I'm not one to love glitter in a clear base, and baby pink and silver just wasn't doing it for me, but when I laid eyes upon Facets of Fuchsia I just knew that we were going to get along great. I immediately texted Mandy and told her I had just grabbed a bottle, and she replied that she had too! The same day! We decided to both post our swatches and reviews so you can get two opinions and see how it wears on two different people, and also it's a pretty enough polish that you PROBABLY won't mind seeing it twice. Without further adieu, I bring to you Revlon's Facets of Fuchsia, a mix of magenta-esque hex and fine glitter in a black jelly base.

This is three coats of FoF with (one or two, I don't remember) coats of Seche Vite. Since it's a jelly the first two coats look super thin, but it builds up really nicely. I think if you wanted to use less polish you could layer one or two coats over a coat of a black creme, but where's the fun in that? I love the effect that you get where you can see glitter trapped under a coat of jelly. The formula was easy to work with and I can't say enough great things about this polish. As for its dupe-ability, I have read and seen swatches comparing it to Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance, and they are definitely very similar! Unfortunately I don't own BR (or any Lippmann polishes - yet!) so I can't do a comparison, but with the Revlon ringing in at anywhere between $3 and $6, it's not a bad option. Check out some photo spam after the jump!

Spotted: Fantasy Makers

Hello everyone! Just stopping in to let you know about what I spotted this past weekend at the Pharmaprix across from the Provigo Mont-Royal: Fantasy Makers! They had four different polishes, some eye shadow palettes and fun stuff like that, but what intrigued me most was the loose holo glitter they had! I thought I was looking into a bottle of Nfu-Oh 61, it was crazy! I googled it and saw that a few people had frankened with it before, but I didn't pick any up because I have a pretty tight beauty budget this month. Anyways, I snuck a photo for you guys from my blackberry (I've got to stop doing that or they're going to ban me from Pharmaprix).

Also, the post I have queued up for you tomorrow is awesome. Don't miss it. 

Love always, Nikki!

Illamasqua Does it Better

Remember the heart nails that appeared in an Illamasqua press release a few months ago? I sure do, and I thought to do something to spice up this mani but it didn't really turn out like I had hoped. Keep reading after the break!

Feeling Blue

I grabbed this colour from my untrieds (read: before I was actually interested in nail polish) and decided to put it on for my ex-roommate's 19th birthday dinner. Big mistake. My friends kind of look to me for inspiration for nails lately and this streaky, frosty, cheap mess was NOT appropriate for going out! This is Rimmel in Chill, I don't even think I've seen a bottle of polish that looks like this in years. I was definitely not pleased with it, although it partly is my fault for even buying such a frosty colour in the first place. Did I really think I would like it?

Bling

I don't have any other words to describe the latest glitter addition to my collection, OPI Crown Me Already from the recent Miss Universe 2011 collection. CMA is a clear base absolutely PACKED with silver glitter, and I mean it when I say packed. This polish has three different sizes of silver hex glitter as well as small silver square glitter. It is pretty dense and it just screams NEW YEARS EVE to me. For my swatches I used one coat of CMA over China Glaze Liquid Leather, and 3 coats of CMA alone on my ring finger. In the future, I will probably wear CMA alone to appreciate it's full beauty, but I think you could put it over a nice silver foil and get the same effect without having to use so much of one polish. 

Photo spam after the break!