Born Pretty Store Review - Black Studs

Good afternoon everyone! Today I have an awesome manicure to show off with some products that I was sent from Born Pretty Store to review for my readers. If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I have been purchasing nail art supplies from this store for ages and I'm always happy with the products, these black studs are no different!

Wow - that's bright! This is Quo by ORLY Femme Fatale and here is a link to the exact studs that I was sent to review. I chose black, but there are quite a few options! I just stuck them on while my manicure was tacky, which means before it had dried completely, and sealed it in with some top coat.

These studs are 3D and here you can see a photo of just how much they are raised off the nail.

These blacks studs were very easy to use and they're great for nail art. This manicure literally took me less than ten minutes and it sure looks edgy.  The Born Pretty Store has tons of nail art supplies like this, and Cutie-cles readers can get 10% off their order every time with the coupon code BQL91 which you can find in the sidebar on the right of this page! Tomorrow I have one more product from the Born Pretty Store to review for you guys so check back then!

Lynnderella The Glittering Crowd

Morning everyone! I have a confession to make today..this is the manicure that I wore on New Year's Eve. That's right..nearly three months ago. I honestly just found these photos and I couldn't believe that I've waited so long to show you this stunning Lynnderella polish.

I really wanted the glitter in this polish to stand out so I layered two coats over black. Did you know that there are over 100 different types of glitter in The Glittering Crowd? I was so lucky to snag a bottle of this before Lynn stopped making it!

As soon as I applied the polish it was begging me to matte-ify it, and I complied. Following one easy coat of Essie's Matte About You this is what my nails looked like.

Mmmm, look at all those different glitters. This look is so fun and colourful.

What would you use as a base colour for The Glittering Crowd?

Barry M Peach Melba

Morning everyone! Today I have another one of the polishes that my friend brought me from England - Barry M Peach Melba. I'm embarrassed to say I had to look up quickly what peach melba is, for anyone who's interested it's a dessert. I was immediately reminded of Melba Toast - anyone else? Apparently they were created by the same chef for the same lady...lucky girl!

I am in love with this colour, it is the best peach polish I have ever had the joy of wearing. Barry M is always spot on with their formula in my experience and this is no difference, Peach Melba is a must have if you're looking for a colour like this. I decided to add some detail to the tips using a black striping polish.

I love this colour, it's the perfect shade of peach - not too much like a bandaid but not too pink.

What are some of your favourite peach nail polishes? Is this a colour you can see yourself wearing this spring and summer?

Sheer Water Marble

Hello everyone! I'm not really sure what to call this post, it's a technique that I've shown you before on the blog where you watermarble with an opaque colour and a sheer one to make sort of a peek-a-boo over a pattern. I've been envisioning this manicure for ages but unfortunately the black polish that I used didn't spread in the water as much as I would have liked.

Gorgeous, right? 

So to get this look I first did gradients on each of my nails. If I remember correctly, the colours I used were OPI The Thrill of Brazil, Zoya Arizona, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, OPI Green-wich Place, OPI Fly, and OPI Do You Lilac It? For the water marble I used Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress and OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!

I think I need to find a black polish that would spread better in water, if there was just a little less black here I think I would be much happier.

Have you ever tried this technique? What colour combinations would you like to see?

Zoya PixieDust - Swatches & Review

Hi everyone! So you probably all saw my last post featuring the Zoya PixieDusts where I featured them in a striping tape manicure, and today I finally have swatches of the entire collection to bring to you.

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Keep reading to see all my swatches, I've put it under a jump because there are quite a few!

Striping Tape Manicure ft. Zoya PixieDust

Hi everyone! Today I have a breathtaking manicure to show you all that I am so proud of. I really wanted to incorporate the Zoya PixieDusts into some nail art so I sat down last night thinking about some of my favourite nail art looks and I immediately thought of this blog that has gorgeous manicures and whose striping tape skills are unparalleled. If you aren't following Dressed Up Nails yet I highly recommend you take a peek - you won't be disappointed.

I applied two coats of Animeniac Cosmetics Sandman for the base of this manicure. I reviewed this polish and a few others by Animeniac Cosmetics in a post from last week that you should check out if you haven't yet. Keep reading to the end of this post to claim and exclusive deal for Cutie-cles readers that the lovely people at Animeniac Cosmetics were generous enough to offer me!

So you can probably tell which two Zoya PixieDust polishes I chose to create this look - Chyna and Dahlia. I will have my full swatch and review post up of the PixieDust collection in the next few days, but I couldn't help showing off this nail art look first!

I simple painted on my two coats of Sandman followed by one of Seche Vite, then I applied my striping tape and one coat of the PixieDust shade I was using on that nail. I was a little worried that the Zoyas wouldn't play nice with the base underneath them, but I had absolutely no problems at all!

This manicure has already jumped to the top of my "Best of 2013" list and it's only the beginning of March! The PixieDust polishes has great application even over the other colour and this really makes for a stunning combination - not only is there a contrast of colours but of textures too which is what makes this look so special.

I am in love and I never want to take this manicure off my nails!

Have you purchased any of the Zoya PixieDusts yet? I think I want to try another striping tape manicure with them soon, I'm so pleased with their application. You can get the Zoya PixieDusts by following this link to their website. These polishes are $9.00 each and as I told you the other day, they are coming out with more of them for Summer! 

The above link is my personal Share the Love link.

Now remember I told you above about a special offer from Animeniac Cosmetics?  They have been generous enough to offer 25% off to all my readers! At check out, enter the coupon code CUTIECLES25 and it should take that amount off your order. This code is good through March 31st, 2013. I hope you guys can take advantage of this awesome deal! If you want a reminder of the shades that I reviewed you can visit my post here or another awesome review by ChitChatNails.

Some of the products in this post were provided to me for review.

Black, White, and Pink

Hi guys! Today I have some bold black and white nail art with pink accent nails. I really love combining a bright colour with black and white, it's the simplest type of colour-blocking and it all goes well together.

Unfortunately, upon application of topcoat I had some minor smearing. The colours I used were OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress, and OPI If You Moust You Moust.

What do you think of this look? What's the next colour I should combine with black and white? I was thinking a sage green maybe..or a baby blue.

Bright Little Flowers

Hey guys! I hope you're all doing well! Today I have a pattern that I adapted from The Illustrated Nail. I can't find the original post, but here's a picture. Can you see which nail I chose to recreate? It would be fun to do a Nail Art Challenge just recreating some of her designs!

I used a base of OPI Did It On 'Em, then my go-to black and white polishes for the flowers - Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I like these, they weren't difficult or time consuming at all.

Not much time left until Daniel makes his first trip out to Montreal to visit me! I should start working on some posts to queue up during that time. Any ideas?

Thanks so much for reading!

Leopard Print Gradient

Hi everyone! Today I have a leopard print gradient on the blog for you to enjoy. I wish I had practiced my freehand leopard spots a little more before embarking on this manicure! A couple of them turned out looking like hearts, which I guess is pretty cute.

I did a gradient with China Glaze Happy Go Lucky and Zoya Arizona, then finished off the look with Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress.

I can't get enough of gradients lately, I'm just having trouble thinking of what to put over top of them.

One day, with any luck, I will master freehand leopard prints.

Super Bowl XLVII Manicure

Hi everyone! I bet many of you are really excited about the Super Bowl tonight! As a Canadian, I follow the CFL and am a pretty big fan of the Calgary Stampeders, so I can't say I'm too concerned about tonight's event. Llarowe decided to host a Super Bowl themed manicure contest to celebrate the big game, and while I can't say I know anything about the two teams facing off tonight, I worked my butt off to create two manicures to submit to her contest! I think she'll judge them either tonight or tomorrow - fingers crossed!

So here is my first of two manicures for the Ravens! Part of Llarowe's rules were that we could ONLY use team colours, making this extra hard. My original idea was to draw a football field and have a bunch of ravens (the birds) in Ravens jerseys, but that didn't work out.

The colours I used were OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, OPI Funky Dunkey, Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich, and Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress.

The ring finger here is supposed to be the eyes in the old logo, as seen in this picture. This manicure was my favourite of the two I did and for that reason I'm saying Go Ravens tonight!

Leah Ann was sweet enough to let us each have two entries, one for each team! I knew I had to take advantage of that offer so I called in the help of my boyfriend Dan for a 49ers manicure. This one was SO HARD TO DO because Leah Ann listed only Red, Gold, and White as the team's colours. It is so difficult to not use black! The colours I ended up using were OPI Thrill of Brazil, Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich, and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

So my index finger is a candlestick, get it? Candlestick Park? My boyfriend came up with that one, I never would have known that. My favourite nail is the one with the helmet - so cute! Not sure how I feel about my attempts at the logo, I'm surprised at how much harder a text based logo is to translate to nail art than a picture logo.

A close up of my sweet little football helmet! I'll definitely take note of this for the CFL season so I can rep my Stamps!

Is anyone doing something fun for the Super Bowl tonight? Do any of you have NFL-themed manicures to celebrate?

Wish me luck in this contest! ;)

EDIT: No prizes for me :( Dang, I already had plans for my new Girly Bits & CrowsToes polishes! :P

Ikat Nail Art ft. OPI Euro Centrale

Hey everyone! One of my favourite nail art bloggerts, Kayla Shevonne, posted an awesome tutorial last week about how to create the Ikat print in a manicure and I couldn't wait to try it out. I know you like seeing colours from new collections incorporated into nail art, so I took three of the Euro Centrale colours and came up with this pattern.

The colours I used for this eye-catching manicure were OPI My Paprika Is Hotter Than Yours, OPI My Vampire's Buff, OPI Can't Find My Czechbook, and Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress. I used a very thin nail art brush, I think next time I will use a real striping brush though because this made my design turn out a little rougher than I would have liked.

This is a really simple way to incorporate a few colours into nail art, but Kayla Shevonne's tutorial makes it perfectly easy to understand how to try it out. I really recommend you all check it out if you're interested.

What do you think of the ikat print? I have an ikat scarf that I really like, I should find an excuse to wear it this week.

Don't forget that I have a giveaway going on where you can enter to win one Liquid Sand polish from the Mariah Carey collection and one polish from the Euro Centrale collection. This would be a great way to try out the liquid sand texture without having to invest your own money, though honestly, I think those polishes are so worth it!

Matte Splatter Mani

Morning everyone! As I mentioned before, I'm getting ready to pack up everything and move across the country to start the new semester. I have mixed feelings about it, but there's not much I can do now! I'm trying to get ahead with my nails so that I'm able to better adjust to being away when I've been home for six months. Today I have a splatter mani to show you all, which I then took to the next level and mattified!

I'm getting kind of bored of winter, so I decided to use some spring or summer colours and maybe summon some sunshine and warm weather! For a base, I used Quo by ORLY Little Black dress, then did the splattering with Zoya Arizona, Zoya Zuza, and China Glaze Happy Go Lucky. 

I'm not sure how I feel about those bubbles and all those smears. I guess a splatter mani isn't supposed to be perfect, right?

In case you're all intimidated by the clean up of a splatter mani, this is how I do it! Lots of scotch tape to cover the places that I don't really want to bathe in acetone.

What do you think about this colour combination?

Birthday Manicure

Hi everyone! As some of you may know, today is my 20th birthday, so I have a fun manicure to show you. I  mentioned that I had been experimenting with glequins so that I could use them in this mani, and though they didn't turn out perfectly, the effect is still there.

These are so chic, I'm in love!

As you can see in the photos, I used Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress as the base. I applied the gold glequins using the tip of a dotting tool. I then taped off triangular sections and used Essie Matte About You.

I'm really proud of these, I wish I had been a little more patient in doing them. I guess it's my birthday and there's more important things to do than obsess about manicure details!

Who wants to see what I got?

My parents bought me this super cool watch. Can you believe I'm turning 20 and have never owned a watch?

My boyfriend Dan gave me a Lululemon top that I was really wanting, but I can't find a pic of it right now. My Grandparents sent me a card with some money, and my sister is going to make my boyfriend and I a dinner as soon as I give her a date. 

Halloween Water Marble

Happy Halloween! Are you guys doing anything special for Halloween today? I'm doing the usual, going to university, but I think I'll dress up to hand out candy tonight, maybe! Today I have a water marble to show you, which I'm actually really proud of. I personally think these are great Halloween colours, but a couple of people I talked to didn't agree - what do you guys think?

I used a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and then I marbled with China Glaze Kiwi Cool-ada, OPI A Grape Fit, and Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress. I think this is one of the best water marbles I've done, in the sense that all of my fingers ended up with a nice pattern.

This green looks radioactive to me, I wish it glowed in the dark, that would be the only think I think I would change about these nails.

To be honest, I'm sort of happy that Halloween is here, I'm bored of seeing so many Halloween manis, including my own. Bring on November!

Don't forget to check out my ongoing giveaway, you only have until Friday night to enter, that's 2 days!

You can follow this link and enter via Rafflecopter here.

Blood Splatters

Hi everyone! Welcome to my first Halloween manicure for this year, I actually have three manis prepared and this was my least favourite, so I thought I'd give it to you first and let you appreciate the other two closer to the spooky day itself. To create this look, I used the splatter technique, where you drip a drinking straw in polish and blow through it onto your nails.

I used a coat of China Glaze Liquid Leather as the base coat for this, and OPI The Thrill of Brazil and China Glaze Ruby Pumps for the splatters. They don't show up as well as I had expected on the black background, but this kind of adds to the creepy look in my opinion.

Here's the aftermath of my splatters, I actually did mine inside an old Tampax box. Eh, whatever works!

Bonus photo of my hands pre-cleanup, I feel like someone with a nosebleed sneezed all over my hand - gross!

If you haven't yet, make sure you head over to my very first giveaway featuring a Lynnderella, CrowsToes, and some beautiful one-of-a-kind custom indies! Yes, this is INTERNATIONAL!

Quo by ORLY Celebration - Swatches & Review

Hi everyone! I hope you're all having a nice weekend, I sure am! Today I have an exciting collection to swatch and review for you, which is the Canadian exclusive Quo by ORLY's Celebration collection. This collection is full of beautiful glitters and a black creme polish. I neglected to take a photo of the entire collection together, so here is a press photo that I was provided with.

I was so excited when I came across this collection at Shopper's Drug Mart because it's pretty rare to see a drug store polish release an entire collection of chunky glitters, at least in Canada. I'm fairly sure that these are complements of the ORLY Flash Glam FX collection. This post is a swatch and review post, and thus by nature is going to be long and picture heavy!

The first polish of this collection is called Cheers To You and it is holographic gold hex and bar glitter. I used two thin coats for the photos below. The glitter in this polish wasn't difficult to work with per se, but I opted to use a traditional method of applying nail polish instead of dabbing on the glitters, which made it a little more challenging. I layered this polish over the gorgeous OPI Unfor-Greta-bly Blue.

I love the way these two polishes look together, this is a combination that I will wear again in the future.

Here's a look at how this polish looks in the shade, still just as pretty!

The next polish in the collection that I have to show you is Paint the Town Red, a gorgeous red hex and micro glitter mixture. Show below is only one coat, so this polish could definitely be built up to opacity. I chose to showcase it layered over Zoya Kristen.

I really like how this looks in the shade, the bottle picture looks like it's glowing!

The next polish in this beautiful lineup is An Affair to Remember. This polish is full of blue hex glitters, as well as blurple microglitter that really gives this polish something special when the sun hits it. Shown here are two coats layered over OPI Do You Lilac It?

Can you see the tiny little glitter that I'm talking about?

This combination reminds me a lot of Lynnderella's Bride of Franken, don't you think?

This one was the hardest to work with of the bunch, but I must admit I didn't wait very long in between coats and probably didn't give the polish enough time to dry.

Here I have Quo by ORLY Pink Champagne layered over the black creme polish from this collection, Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress. The formula on the creme polish was good, pretty basic for a black creme, nothing outstanding but no complaints either. I used two very thin coats, but I imagine with some more patience you could get one thick coat to reach full opacity. Pink Champagne was surprisingly easy to work with, I used one coat here and got quite a bit of coverage. It's holographic pink/purple bar glitters in a clear base.

This one is my least favourite from the collection, but only because I don't really love bar glitter by itself.

Last but certainly not least is my absolute favourite polish of the collection, Quo by ORLY Throw the confetti. This polish has two sizes of gunmetal gray glitter, it is so gorgeous I don't even have anything else to say. I used only one coat here, so again this could be easily built up to opacity. I have shown this layered over OPI Thanks a Windmillion from the spring 2012 Holland collection. I am enamored by this combination.

I really like the combination of the small and large hex glitters.

I think this one is the most versatile in the layering possibilities.

In the shade it looks a little more silver than gray.

What are your overall impressions of the collection? I know there are quite a few of similar chunky glitters, but these ones are easily available to Canadians at Pharmaprix and Shopper's Drug Mart. Quo by ORLY polishes usually retail for $10.00 CAN and I do believe these are limited edition. My favourite from the collection is Throw the Confetti, followed by Cheers to You, but there isn't one single polish that I could say that I dislike.

Some of the products in this post were generously provided for my consideration and honest opinion.