Friday, November 27, 2015

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Comics/Cartoons

Hey there!  This week's Crumpet's Nail Tarts theme is Comics and Cartoons.  I thought this was a really fun theme since we could do specific characters that we liked or do something more general.  I decided I wanted to do a general comic mani because it gave me the perfect opportunity to use this Comics-03 plate that I bought from MoYou London ages ago.  I love collecting stamping plates but too many of them sit unused while I use the same plates over and over again!  



Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Wolf Nail Stamping

Hey there!  Okay these were supposed to be my post for the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Halloween week a month ago but at last second I decided that they really weren't Halloween-y enough and did something new.  BUT I did really love these but I didn't know when would be a half decent time to post them.  Well, guess what...tonight's a full moon which seems like a good enough time to post a wolf mani.



Tuesday, November 24, 2015

HPB Presents Monochromatic Blobbicure

Hey there!  It's time for another Hobby Polish Bloggers link up.  Hobby Polish Bloggers is a great group of folks who love blogging about nail polish.  Each month we have the option of posting manis with a specific theme, which is always really fun for me.  For November we're bringing you monochromatic manis - monochromatic, in this case, can mean various hues of the same color or the classic monochromatic black and white.  I tried one of each but this A England blobbicure, all in shades of purple, turned out better so this is the one that I've decided to share today.


Monday, November 23, 2015

UberChic Beauty Christmas Plate Review

Press  Sample

Hey there!  Okay I don't try to hide my love of UberChic Beauty's products and I'm lucky enough to be able to review her products sometimes, including her first Christmas plate that I'm sharing here today.  I know it's not quite Thanksgiving for those of you in the US but, here in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving in October so I can totally rock the holiday manis already.  I must not be alone because this plate has already proven very popular!  I've done three manis with it that I'm posting today (and plan on doing another one tonight).  This plate is going to be high rotation for me for the next month, that's for sure.  Keep reading to find out all the details.      


Sunday, November 22, 2015

Sunday Stamping - Something Cute or Fluffy

Hey there!  Wow I've been nail-lazy this week.  So much so that I didn't even do a new mani for this week's Sunday stamping theme.  So I'm cheating today and posting something that I did a couple weeks ago that happens to fit with today's theme.  Today our challenge is "something fluffy or cute nails".  I thought this owl stamping was pretty darn cute so I think it's theme-worthy.


Friday, November 20, 2015

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Grey + Color

Hey there!  This week is a color week for the Crumpet's Nail Tarts 40 Great Nail Art Ideas challenge. The prompt was "Grey + Color" and the pattern I was designated was scales/mermaid.  If there's a color that isn't remotely mermaid like, I think it's grey.  At first I wanted to try to do Greyscale (from Game of Thrones) but what I tried turned out terribly.  So I paired grey with pink and did these scaled stamping decals that I ended up really liking.



Thursday, November 19, 2015

ILNP Overnight Bag and Glory

Hey there!  It snowed again last night...yuck!  Even though this fall has been unseasonably dry (we normally do have snow on the ground this time of year), I guess I need to accept that winter in Canada is inevitable and it's starting now.  So I thought I better post this mani that I wore before it's full blown winter here.  I usually wear some sort of nail art but sometimes it's nice to just wear a plain polish or two.  I saw some awesome swatches of ILNP Glory stating that it's fall in a bottle so I snatched it up as soon as I could.  Here's Glory over ILNP Overnight Bag.



Wednesday, November 18, 2015

UberChic Beauty 6-03 Stamping Plate Review

Press  Sample

Hey there!  Today I'm finishing up my review of UberChic's latest collection of stamping plates, Collection 6.  On Monday I showed 6-01, Tuesday I showed 6-02 and today, you guessed it, I have 6-03.  If you've checked out the other two posts on this collection you've seen me pretty much ranting and raving about how much I like it so I won't pester you with that yet again (though I do REALLY like it).  Instead I'll just get to the nails...



Tuesday, November 17, 2015

UberChic Beauty 6-02 Stamping Plate Review

Press  Sample

Hey there!  Today I'm continuing my review of UberChic Beauty's newest collection of stamping plates.  Collection 6 came out just over a week ago and, as I said yesterday, it could be my favourite collection to date.  The designs are lovely and, as always, the quality is top notch.  I've done two designs with plate 6-02 to share today.  All the details are below.  



Monday, November 16, 2015

UberChic Beauty 6-01 Stamping Plate Review

Press  Sample

Hey there!  UberChic Beauty is really exploding these days.  There's a new Facebook group devoted to UberChic products AND the UberMat is now available on Amazon!  So I'm really excited to be showing you part of the latest UberChic stamping plate collection, Collection 6 today.  I received these and the new Christmas plate last week and I haven't stopped playing with them since.  I'm always amazed at the quality of plates and the creativity of the images that UberChic puts out; this collection is definitely no exception.  I do believe it might be my favourite collection to date.  I'm going to post manis done with each plate separately this week so, logically, today I'm starting with the first plate, 6-01.



Sunday, November 15, 2015

Sunday Stamping - Abstract

Hey there!  So this week for the Adventures In Stamping Sunday challenge we were told to "unleash our inner Picasso's" and show it on our nails with some abstract art.   I scoured all my stamping plates looking for images I thought would work well for abstract nail art and I think I found the perfect one!  Keep reading to find out all the details...



Friday, November 13, 2015

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Your Job

Hey there!  This week Crumpet's Nail Tarts are doing their jobs!  On their nails, that is!  I usually think my job is pretty cool and, lucky for me, stamping plate makers seem to agree with me so it wasn't a problem for me to put my job on my nails.  By day, I work in a university research lab as a molecular biologist which means I treat DNA like a really fun puzzle.  I've done DNA-related nails a ton but it's never too much for me.  This time I included a first layer of stamping that I thought represented something I've been doing lately in my job...cell culture...scary to a DNA person like me!



The Digit-al Dozen does Inspired by Pinterest/magazines - Day 5 Alcohol Inks over Metallic Polish

Hey there!  Holy man, could that be a longer post title?  I really need to learn to be more succinct!  Anyway, today is the last day of The Digit-al Dozen's Pinterest/magazine week.  My inspiration for today's mani came one night when was just interested on how to color metal artwork so I hit up Pinterest...though don't ask me why I was curious about that since I don't do anything resembling metalwork.  That evening ended with me finding a whole lot of alcohol ink pins that I wanted to turn into nail art.  This is the one I did.  Other than the stained skin, I loved how it looked so I (not so subtly) cropped out as much of the staining as I could in a couple of photos.  How can I stop the alcohol inks from invading my skin?!?  It's the one reason I don't use them as much as I'd like.



Thursday, November 12, 2015

The Digit-al Dozen does Inspired by Pinterest/Magazines - Day 4 Blingy Nails

Hey there!  For the fourth day of The Digit-al Dozen's Pinterest/magazine week, I have another mani inspired by Nail It! magazine.  This one had a full tutorial that I tried to follow.  It didn't turn out exactly like the original but it definitely ended up shiny.  I should really start using more bling (like the Bling Queen, Vic from Glowstars) because have super sparkly nails is really fun.  I've recently started buying the Swarovski crystals that I used in this mani and they really are so much prettier than the general nail rhinestones you can buy so I think you should expect more bling on my blog soon!




Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Digit-al Dozen does Inspired by Pinterest/Magazines - Day 3 Lip Print Stamping

Hey there!  For the third day of The Digit-al Dozen's week devoted to Pinterest/magazines, I have a complete copycat of one of the first stamping manis I ever saw and fell in love with.  This design was originally done by Chloe's Nails as a Konad stamping tutorial (back when stamping was brand new).  It might have even been what motivated me to go down the rabbit hole that is nail stamping...and I'm so glad I did!  I adored this look so much that this isn't even the first time I've redone it.  I first tried it back in 2013, before I started my blog, so this was the perfect excuse to do it again so I could share it during a Digit-al Dozen week.  



Tuesday, November 10, 2015

The Digit-al Dozen does Inspired by Pinterest/Magazines - Day 2 Autumn Striped Nails

Hey there!  For the second day of The Digit-al Dozen's Pinterest/Magazine week, I have my re-creation of a mani that I saw as an article header in my favourite magazine, Nail It!  I must have loved that photo because I busted out the vinyls to do this...and if you know me at all you'll know that I always complain when I use vinyls.  Not that they're not awesome and easy to use, I just worry about drying time before I use them.  I really should do it more often though since I always love how striped manis turn out.



Monday, November 9, 2015

The Digit-al Dozen does Inspired by Pinterest/Magazines - Day 1 Dandelion Nails

Hey there!  Happy Monday folks!  Today marks the beginning of a brand new Digit-al Dozen week and this month we're doing manis inspired by Pinterest and magazines.  I do like Pinterest but I'm not a hard core Pinner so, personally, I have a mix of Pinterest and magazine-inspired nail art.  Today I'm sharing a Pinterest-inspired design that ended up being my favorite of the week - even if it is incredibly non-seasonally appropriate!  But I guess if I'm willing to wear summer neons in winter, why not wear spring dandelions in fall?!



Sunday, November 8, 2015

Sunday Stamping - Snow & Ice

Hey there!  This week for the Adventures in Stamping we were given the option of two themes - Snow & Ice and Remembrance Day.  I did mani's for both themes this weekend but I think I'll save the Remembrance Day one to post on Wednesday.  So for today I have these snow & ice nails that I wore today.  As it turns out, these were very appropriate today since we ended up while a whole lot of snow...and rain (which hopefully doesn't turn to ice tonight).



Friday, November 6, 2015

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Black & White

Hey there!  This week us Nail Tarts are bringing some black and white nail art ideas.  I have to start this by saying I cheated (but just a tiny itty bitty bit) by using a bit of a sheer blue.  I was assigned leopard print to go along with the black and white and I couldn't just leave my sad little snow leopard without blue eyes, could I??  So here you have it - a cartoon snow leopard.  You'd think he'd be happier now that the weather has gotten chilly.  A snow leopard should like the cold, right?



Thursday, November 5, 2015

More Indie Support

Hey there!  Recently I've read about more indie nail polish drama so I thought now would be a good time to share this stamping that I did to show how much I still love the indie polish community.  I'm not one to let a couple bad apples ruin the bunch.  I did these with indie polish, indie stamping polish and an indie plate maker.  Hooray for indies!



Monday, November 2, 2015

Galaxy Nails for Halloween

Hey there!  I love space stuff so it's no surprise that I love galaxy manis.  It's also probably why my sister texted me this pin with galaxy makeup with the challenge to try it which I couldn't pass up.  Luckily Halloween was the perfect excuse so I gave it a shot, with galaxy nails to match!  If you want to see a really bad selfie of my galaxy makeup, feel free to keep reading. 



Sunday, November 1, 2015

Sunday Stamping - Red and Black Nails

Hey there!  Now that Halloween is over, it's onto some non-holiday challenges.  This week's Sunday stamping theme is "red & black", my personal favourite color combination.  So much so that just last week I did red and black nails for last week's Sunday stamping challenge.  I'm more than okay with wearing the same color combination again so I did these for this week, inspired by this awesome mani done by @constantlypolished.  Hers is way prettier with the gold stamping but I didn't mind mine at all.