Springin’ Sprinkles

If I have learned anything over the last year and a bit of pandemic life – and that is highly debatable; in most respects, I actually feel like I’m regressing – it’s that our existence is fragile, and we could all use a hell of a lot more sprinkles. I’m talking here about metaphorical sprinkles – those sparkly, too-fleeting moments of hope and joy and love and understanding – but also the real kind, the ones composed of corn syrup and cellulose gum and palm oil, and a certain childlike glee in having your foodstuffs adorned with the same.

It was with that thought in mind – “Want pretty sprinkles for sweet foods!” – that I placed an order for a beautiful mess of items from Sprinkle Pop, a candy maker I found through the always dangerous platform of Instagram (dangerous in that I can always find some completely random new area of interest to occupy my time and money. Bespoke sprinkles – *snort* – is just the latest.)

Sprinkle Pop’s surprisingly tasty adornments – flavoured jimmies, metallic spheres, glittery dragees, and colourful mixes loaded with tiny, hand-piped extras – come in three sizes, eight ounce jars, four ounce jars, and two ounce sample packs. The sample packs give you about a quarter cup of sprinkles, which in my (newly acquired) experience will decorate about three dozen cupcakes, or two sprinkled-spackled cakes. Here’s the Robin’s Egg sprinkle mix (perhaps my favourite) sitting prettily atop some cupcakes I recently made (chocolate with salted caramel buttercream icing, in case you feel like driving yourself mad with desire, and yes, they were totally delicious!)

I chose six sample packs, three perfect for the just-passed Easter season (from left to right, Hangin’ With My Peeps, a mix of pastel jimmies and tiny royal icing Peeps; Egg Hunt, another springy rainbow mix studded with hand-piped bunnies and carrots; and Robin’s Egg, with its sweet, speckled eggs) and three just-because-they’re-pretties (from left to right, Royal Plume, a fun mix of bright, peacock-inspired hues; Love You a Latte, a soft, Valentine’s Day-appropriate blend of coffee-flavoured jimmies; and Leprechaun Loot, which is clearly going to have to wait until next year to properly exercise its lucky charms.)

Then because I have plans for them, I bought two mixes in the slightly larger four ounce size, Dark Unicorn, a sugar’corn-studded blend of blacks and brights and neons, and Strawberry Shortcake, which is delightfully self-explanatory.

I even managed to derive some nail art inspiration from Egg Hunt!

Neat! Important, necessary, critical to my existence? Definitely not. But a sweet diversion in a world that could use a lot more sprinkles, and a fun thing in my life.

Zombie Cakes

Here’s a terrible joke for you – what do zombies use to bake their cupcakes?  A brain pan.  Wah-waaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh. 🙂

Zombies were the name of the game for the fourth prompt in the nail art challenge I’m participating in on Instagram.  I wasn’t in the mood for your more traditional blood ‘n’ guts design, choosing instead to go with this cutie pie cupcake manicure, which even features two of my favourite zombie-themed polishes, Girly Bits Cosmetics’ Dead Man’s Toe and Dollish Polish’s Look at the Flowers, Lizzie.  Can’t go wrong with brain cakes drizzled in sanguine coulis and snot green frosting, can you?

 

6th Blogiversary Cupcakes

Yo, check it – Finger Candy is six years old today!  That, according to my site analytics, translates to 70,000 views of 1,634 POSTS (wow, really?) across 37,000 visitors.  Which is actually nothing terribly impressive, but it’s nothing to sneeze at either.  I wish I had a count on the total number of words; now, THAT would be impressive, ’cause I be wordy.  Not bad for the little blog that just sort of sprang up out of nothing.  Good on you, Finger Candy, I’m proud of you.  And proud of me, too.

And while we’re at it, proud of you as well, dear reader or occasional dropper-byer!  You’re fun, thoughtful, witty folks, and it’s been a blast getting to know you through this platform.  You’re the audience I always have in mind when I come up with a new idea and think to myself, “Is anyone even going to know what this is?”  Because the answer nearly always is, “Aw yeah, X will TOTALLY know what this is!”  Which really makes it all the sweeter.  So thank you, as always, for being a good neighbour.  I endeavor to continue respecting my side of our shared (Internet) fence to promote harmony in the blogisphood. 😉  To the next six!

Cupcakes by the Ocean

Well, that’s a terrible pun based off a not-so-great song (Cake by the Ocean by DNCE) that was nonetheless a total ear worm, which is how I wound up doing these nails yesterday when I was in a funky bad mood and could think of nothing better to cheer myself up than some nail art and a bit of bad punnage.  So mission accomplished?  Because I’m feeling much better today, and these nails are pretty funny, and maybe even just plain old pretty. 🙂

Sweet Heart

Sweet hearts for your sweetheart!

Frighteningly Delicious!

Well, it’s just downright spooky how well these adorable Halloween cupcake nails turned out!  This manicure also marks the third time this week I’ve done nails featuring a cute little critter with creepy eyes…or AN eye, singular.  Yummy!

Glitter Cakes

Or cake, singular, of the cup-type variety, which is actually a quite large, crystal-studded nail charm from Daily Charme. Nail charms are one of those embellishments I have a hard time getting behind, and not just because even at their tiniest, they’re still rather obtrusive. No, my issues stem from the fact that they’re very “one look”; unless you have mile-long talons that can accommodate a jewelry box worth of studs, charms and crystals, the best you can do is to simply lay the charm on your nail, the end. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And so knowing that, I thought I’d highlight this adorable, but simple, cupcake charm by laying it atop another product I often struggle to find multiple uses for, mega glitter bomb crelly (ugh) and jelly polishes (here KB Shimmer’s Sweet Egg-scape.) I absolutely adore these kind of polishes (they always either look like jam or sprinkled frosting to me) but their utility is limited, particularly those featuring some of your more unique colour combinations. So it was great fun to find a polish that plays off so nicely against the cupcake charm, with Sweet Egg-scape’s pink, silver, red, turquoise and periwinkle glitter picking up the tiny iridescent flashes of the charm’s crystals. Sweet and charming.

Sweet Tooth

Uh oh, looks like somebody may have overindulged.

Zombie Kitty

These Hello Zombie nails are my entry in Nail Polish Canada’s annual Halloween Nail Art Challenge. I didn’t participate last year, having only just started dabbling in nail art some months prior and having not yet discovered the delightful, bank account-draining world of online polish stocklists. So it’s with excitement that I submit these zombiefied Hello Kitty nails that I think are so, so cute without being all gross and bloody (some of the Google images of Zombie Kitty are disturbing.) Just a hint of exposed organs – and one yummy-looking brain cupcake – for my Kitty. 😉

If you think my brains-obsessed Kitty is swell and you’d like to vote for her in the Nail Polish Canada contest, you can do so here. My entry is “Zombie Kitty/Finger Candy” – not that you’d be able to miss her cute little neon green mug! And thank you for thinking enough of my work to take the time to vote. It’s a lovely feeling indeed to know you care, you really, really care! But in all seriousness (in this most serious business of nail art) thank you.

Sprinkles

Continuing my streak of manis featuring Polish Me Silly polishes (guess who got her post-Christmas nail mail today?) this manicure features a fun neon glitter topper by the name of Freckles and the third nail art design I ever attempted, the almighty fluffy cupcake!

The indie polish market is flooded with neon glitter toppers, most of them quite similar, but Freckles is a standout – with its mix of fine matte glitter and ultra even coverage, it gives an almost dainty look to your nails, a word not normally found in the same sentence as either “neon” or “glitter”!

Note: I feel the somewhat unnecessary (but it’s nagging me, so I’ll do it) need to point out that I’m not affiliated with Polish Me Silly in any way, just a new and very impressed customer trying out her lovely goodies. Although it is rather outstanding that they went four for four in one order – not a dud in the bunch, and that’s a bit of a rarity. Plus, it’s always nice to acknowledge the good work of a company – particularly a small one – that has their act together.