Hammy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian friends!  As has become my holiday tradition, here is a festive manicure featuring my favourite – and most successful – homemade polish, Hawaiian Ham (so named after those alarming, 1950s-style ham casseroles topped with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries.)  I made up a bottle for some American friends recently, substituting the yellow, pineapple-y glitter for a red-tinged bronze, and renamed this shade Canadian Bacon. 😉

But speaking of rings on the Thanksgiving dinner table, here’s a fun, older mani of mine in which I honoured that most Canadian of festive foodstuffs, the uncut – very important, that – ringed log of cranberry sauce.  Just shoot it straight out of the can and onto a fussy little garnish dish!  The polish I used here was KB Shimmer’s Leaf of Faith; I think it looks like extra chunky cranberry jelly.  Hope you all have a delicious one!

Fall Fun Series: Thanksgiving Ham

Today’s prompt in the Fall Fun Series calls for the participants to share their Thanksgiving plans.  But I have a triple whammy going against my particular Thanksgiving plans in that 1) I’m Canadian, so my Thanksgiving is long since past, 2) I’m Canadian, so my Thanksgivings are more functional than traditional and 3) I’m Canadian, so this morning I woke up to THIS:

Which means that Fall is now naught but a memory, and we are firmly in the winter of our discontent (oh no, run!)

But to my American blogger friends, I wish you a wonderful week in the lead-up to the big day, and Thanksgivings free of family drama, travel woes and salmonella.

Which is actually NEVER an issue when you limit your Thanksgiving meats to your manicures!  And no, I’m not going the Full Gaga on you here – just making a super awkward transition to talking about this polish, Hawaiian Ham, a homemade creation I widgeted together years ago specifically with those unidentifiable Thanksgiving (or Christmas, or Easter) ham casseroles in mind.  You know the casserole I’m talking about – the one your father’s great-great aunt has been making since the late 1950s, an abomination of a Good Housekeeping throwback containing ham, pineapple, maraschino cherries and three kinds of processed cheese?  Still, it’s gotta beat Aunt Bethany’s lime-and-cat food Jello mold!

And so on this Thanksgiving, American friends, this Ham (manicure) is for you.  I hope you have wonderful holidays, all.

Hammy

There’s still a few hours left on Thanksgiving here in Canada, and my nails are looking at some second helpings with this fun, hammy design (featuring my favourite homemade polish, Hawaiian Ham, so named because it reminds me of one of those horrid 1950s ham casseroles covered in pineapple rings and maraschino cherries.)  I even added some little cloves to my lacquered hams, because they looked a little bare without.  Cute and yummy!

Hamming It Up

This polish, Hawaiian Ham, my first – and so far best – homemade creation is the lacquer equivalent of a snuggly security blanket.  Its mix of pink, brown, copper and marigold-hued glitter is warm and homey-looking, and its name conjures up fond memories of holiday meals past.  I can also always count on adoring whatever manicure Hawaiian Ham touches, but then again, I’m rather biased.  The Ham just completes me.

It may also be because I’m still in total awe of the fact that I made a nail polish.  And not just A nail polish either, but one that’s pretty, applies nicely and has remained goop-free and colourfast for two years now. Like, that’s some advanced DIY-ing right there! Looking forward to trying my hand at some glittery presents for friends and family this year; if they turn out half as well as Hawaiian Ham, I’ll be a happy little polish maker indeed.

 

 

Vanilla Coke-Glazed Ham

That sounds so delightfully nutty; I can hardly believe it’s a real thing (along with other 1950s-style “miracle foods” such as mayonnaise chocolate cake and aspic anything.) For the Vanilla Coke logo on my two middle fingers, I used a couple of wonderfully fitting polishes from last year’s Coca-Cola Collection by OPI, classic Coca-Cola Red and cream-coloured You’re so Vain-illa, while my remaining fingers sport three coats of Vain-illa topped with one coat of my favourite homemade glitter polish, Hawaiian Ham.

That the Ham, my first attempt at making homemade polish, turned out so well has come as a completely delightful surprise. I wasn’t expecting the glitter mix to blend so nicely, I wasn’t *really* expecting the suspension base to actually suspend anything and I certainly never thought that nearly two years to the date of its creation, it would still be performing beautifully (no glitter curling, no colour bleed.) And that’s saying nothing of the wordplay possibilities that exist when you’re dealing with a polish with “ham” in its name! I actually wanted to paint a bone-in ham on my thumb, but then held back at the very last second – that seemed like an excessive amount of nail art theming for one hand. 😉

Ham Sandwich

What do you get when you combine a jelly sandwich manicure and my favourite (and best) homemade polish, Hawaiian Ham? A ham sandwich! Ba-dum-ching! Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waiter, and please try the ham.

Note: This lame joke was made possible through the combination of Hawaiian Ham, an ultra sheer pink polish that I made loaded with red, pink, yellow, brown and copper glitters, and Mentality Nail Polish’s Coral glazing polish. I particularly love how the slight shimmer of the glaze adds a ton of subtle visual interest to this standard jelly sandwich mani. Sweet (or salty)!

Favourites of 2014

Personal struggles aside (2014 shall hereafter always be known as The No Good, Very Bad, Super Stupid, So Relentlessly-Difficult-it-Practically-Burns Year), 2014 was a pretty fabulous year for nail art. Here, of course, I’m talking about the hundreds of amazing designs I’ve encountered over the past 365 days (the creativity displayed by the larger nail art community is simply staggering), but also my own work, which has seen an appreciable boost in quality, particularly in recent months. I’m wicked proud of about, say, 87 percent of the nail art designs I did this year – the other 13 percent being of the “Whuuuu?” variety – and I’ve really enjoyed the super rewarding experience of watching my technique improve with each and every lacquered brushstroke.

And so on that horn-blowin’ note, I thought I’d share this collage of my nine favourite designs from the past year in the hopes that you also think I’m as cool as I clearly think I am! 😉 But to bring it down all serious styles for a second, really, my most sincere thank you to everyone who has popped by to visit my little lacquered-up corner of the Intersky this year. Your interest, support and kind comments have spurred me on to what I think are bigger and better things, and I look forward to continuing to bore you with endless stories about Disney World, my cats and “the good old days” in 2015. Happy New Year!

If you are interested in checking out the original posts for these manis, please click the links below.

1. How’s That For a Slice of Fried Gold?! – Shaun of the Dead-inspired nails.

2. Diet Coke – nails honouring a friend’s fun aspartame addiction.

3. 999 Happy Haunts – my favourite design of the year, inspired by the damask-style wallpaper that lines the halls of Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

4. Zombie Kitty – Hello Kitty goes walking with the dead in these fun Halloween nails.

5. A Personal Choice – a sweet, creamy-looking gradient topped with my favourite homemade polish, Hawaiian Ham.

6. You Can’t Close the Beaches! – let’s just say the Mayor of Amity really should have closed the beaches.

7. Coral Reef – a super pretty mani featuring every colour and shape of the underwater universe I could squeeze onto my nails!

8. This Split is Bananas – tiny little banana splits with sprinkles! Plus I got to make a B-A-N-A-N-A-S joke.

9. Brrrraaaaaaiiiiinnnnnsssss – pastel zombie nails for the softer side of Halloween.

A Personal Choice (OMD2)

The final day’s theme in the Oh Mon Dieu nail art challenge was personal style (well, signature style), and what’s more personal than nail polish you made yourself? I would never consider myself an indie polish maker, more an acetone dabbler (just not that kind of dabbler – please don’t come and arrest me, meth-watch programs.) I make polishes for my friends and family and, of course, for myself when I’ve got something in mind that just doesn’t exist in either real or online life. That’s how I wound up with this polish, my first foray into make-yer-own and a favourite amongst a becoming-difficult-to-contain stash. Her name’s Hawaiian Ham, and she’s a mix of rose, chocolate, red, yellow and copper hex glitters in an ultra sheer pink base. Why Hawaiian Ham? Because the glitter mix I cobbled together reminded me of one of those frightening 1950s-type ham dishes covered in pineapple and maraschino cherries (which would be called Happy Ham Surprise or something equally un-descriptive) and hams are damn funny. That’s just good comedy there.

For this manicure, I topped a cream soda-esque gradient (fitting, seeing as I used two of the colours from OPI’s Coca Cola collection) with one coat of the Ham. Glitter topper aside, pink and cream are two of my favourite colours to decorate with (our first bedroom was this gorgeous, warm, rest-inducing rose pink), so I suppose this manicure does qualify as personal style, for my home at the very least.

Gettin’ Crafty With It: Hawaiian Ham

I think Hawaiian Ham, the first polish I successfully made, stands hocks and pork shoulders above all the other polishes that have come out of my “workshop.” It’s the perfect combination of weirdo, this-shouldn’t-work colours and subdued glitter – nothing too flashy for my hammy honey. 🙂

Here I’ve shown two coats of Hawaiian Ham over top of OPI’s Princesses Rule!, and, as nearly always, a petite ring finger piggy to supervise the action.

Christmas Ham

This manicure, the head-on collision of some of my favourite design elements (pigs, hams and glitter, pffft, of course), represents my third and final entry in Nail Polish Canada’s Holiday Nail Art Challenge. This week’s theme was holiday memories, and because some of my favourite holiday memories involve moments shared around the dinner table, I thought I’d highlight, well, festive food. Or, you know, a festive food, namely the ham in its pre-and-post-cooked states. Yes, I’m kind of sick that way.

Here I dressed my becoming-signature piggies in some Santa caps, laid down a bit of homemade glitter over top of a gradient on my ring finger (called Hawaiian Ham, appropriately enough) and whipped up a glazed holiday ham over on my thumb. It’s like the circle of life. Quick, someone ring up Elton John – what that Lion King song needs are more references to pigs and smoked pork products!

So if you think my swine are fine and you’d like to vote for my festive fingertip piggies, please do so! The pigs and I thank you for your support. 😉

http://www.nailpolishcanada.com/2013-holiday-nail-art-challenge-week-3-holiday-memories/