Ice Cream Hunt

I’ll keep this short, because I’m pissy at the utterly counter-intuitive nightmare that WordPress’ block editor has become (shouldn’t have to Google a “how-to” on every. single. action I try to carry out) but Mr. Finger Candy and I found this fun, new-to-us ice cream shop in Carp, Ontario called Carp Custom Creamery, and their heavenly, undoubtedly totally calorie-free confections are ah-mazing. So amazing, a recent jaunt out to the wee Town of Carp for a much-coveted tub of Easter Egg Hunt inspired some fun, thematically-appropriate nails for the long weekend.

Carp Custom Creamery sold over 1,000 litres of Easter Egg Hunt this season, and its run is now finished for the year, but I can assure you that they have many, many more tempting treats, including ice cream cakes, waffle cone tacos, hand-spun milkshakes and so many delicious flavours of ice cream, it’ll make your head spin. My husband and I found this place one bitterly cold February day when it seemed totally reasonable to be standing out in -17 degree temps, holding a cup of Pop Tarts ice cream aloft (I’d do it again in a frozen heartbeat!)

Depending on whatever miserable – but necessary, sigh – public health-related lockdown measures are in place on any given day (also feeling pissy about Ontario’s ever flip-flopping, wholly ineffective approach to the pandemic) you can roll on up to Carp Custom Creamery for cups and cones, shakes and tacos, or grab a few pints for home. On our last trip, we sampled the super popular Coffee Break (if you’ve ever had an affogato – espresso poured over rich vanilla ice cream – this creamy, caffeinated confection tastes exactly like that), Peanut Butter & Jelly (tasted exactly as you’d expect) and Nerd (black cherry ice cream studded with tart Nerds candy; it was SO unexpectedly delicious, and just look at that gorgeous grape colour! I sense another manicure coming on!)

Okay, feeling less cruddy now. I guess ice cream has a way of doing that. 🙂 Anyhow, TL;DR;JD (too long; didn’t read; just drooled) get thee to Carp Custom Creamery – you won’t regret it.

Stranger Manis: Scoops Ahoy!

AHOY, FRIENDS!  Please join me today as we set sail on an ocean of flavour.  My name is Sandra and I’ll be your captain on this delicious journey.  Can I interest you in a USS Butterscotch?

Actually, I am quite interested in a USS Butterscotch, and thanks to a fun collaboration between Baskin-Robbins (31 Flavors for you American peeps) and Netflix, I could pop on down the road and have one (you know, once the store opens in, oh, six or so hours.  Little early for ice cream right now.)  I have tried the Upside Down sundae, though.  Mr. Finger Candy and I shared one some weeks back, before the third season of Stranger Things had even dropped, and it was delicious, but as deadly as its namesake.  One little inverted cup of pecan-studded chocolate ice cream (the nuts, whipped cream and cherry were on the bottom, with the caramel sauce and ice cream layered on top of that; cute) nearly did us both in.  I can’t imagine the pain I’d be in if I actually set sail aboard Scoops Ahoy’s signature dish, the USS Butterscotch.

I really love that Stranger Things is now enough of a part of the cultural lexicon that these kind of cross-promotional collaborations are downright commonplace – Stranger Things is EVERYWHERE this month.  I won’t complain (okay, I’ll only moderately complain about the awkward – and frequent – New Coke mentions in the third season.  They were shoehorned in all over the place, and a huge, climactic action sequence comes to a literal screeching halt while one character expounds on the goodness of New Coke.  It’s pretty painful.)

But overall, I’m just totally in love with Stranger Things season 3, particularly the Scoops Troop and the nautical-themed ice cream parlour that serves as their place of employment and base of Russian spy-busting operations.  MANY more Stranger manis to come, please stay tuned.

Ice Cream Jelly Sandwich

It occurred to me today that I haven’t done a jelly sandwich manicure in ages.  So I rectified that odd little blank spot in my nail art endeavors, creating a jelly sandwich – that’s glitter polish sandwiched between layers of a sheer jelly polish – before topping the whole works with a couple of ice cream nail charms.  Et voila, a creamy, sprinkled, ice cream jelly sandwich! That’s also some quality nail art word association, no? 🙂

Ombre Ice Cream

From chocolate to vanilla, and always with sprinkles. 🙂

Custard Waffle Cone, with Sprinkles

The weather around my part of the world has taken a delightful turn for the spring-like, and with it has come some pretty hardcore longing for warmer times and climes.  I’m normally a cool weather kind of person, but I have found this winter just brutally long and unpleasant.  I suppose I say that every year – to gripe a-boot the weather is to be Canadian, eh?

So with visions of melting mounds of snow finally appearing right before my very eyes, I decided to honour the warmer weather with some ice cream cone nails.  I adore the polish I used here for the ice cream, Dollish Polish’s Get Your Sprinkle On!, a custardy yellow creme dotted with multi-coloured glitter.  It’s bafflingly difficult to find a soft yellow polish; most err on the side of vibrant Lego yellow or super pale, this-is-actually-off-white.  Get Your Sprinkle On! is a proper pastel yellow, a creamy-looking confection dotted with a smattering of colourful glitter.  Sweet!

Foot Candy

No, I have not changed the focus of this blog to foot fetishism…yet.  Rather, I received a rather awesome pair of ice cream-style ballet flats for Christmas (generous gift-giver: me!) that were just begging for a sweet matching mani, and who am I to deny my shoes when they’re calling out for love?

This manicure is your basic drippy waffle cone design, but the shoes are a different matter altogether. Available solely (heh) through Shoe Bakery, these flats, and their many gorgeous high-heeled cousins, are handmade, custom made and beautifully unique – edible-looking, wearable works of art that are now inspiring this edible-looking, wearable work of nail art.  I can’t wait to give these guys a proper workout come the spring and summer – just in time for ice cream season.

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.

Sprinkled Waffle Cone

Candy Lacquer’s ultra fine rainbow micro glitter, Tropical Sugar, is the perfect finishing touch on these dipped-and-rolled nails that look like sprinkled waffle cones. And now that I’m thinking about it, I just realized that I haven’t actually eaten my ice cream in a cone in about 25 years. I’m a terrible dawdler when it comes to eating (when I was a kid taking my sweet ass time lingering over the last morsel on my plate, I apparently called it “savouring”), and so the soupy bits in the bottom would destroy the structural integrity of the cone, and next thing you know, I had a lap full of melted ice cream. Best to keep the mess confined to a cup, as well as my nails!

Disney Eats (31DC2014)

So here we are, friends, at the very bitter – or should I say sweet? – end of the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge. I’m proud to say that unlike my last stint at the month-long challenge rodeo, I actually kept pace with the daily themes, falling behind only for a couple of days right at the very end (“inspired by a pattern” made me very grumpy, and I wasn’t too fond of the fashion prompt either, although I really like the manicures they eventually inspired.)

For the final day’s theme of nails inspired by the work of another nail artist, I decided to put the candy back in Finger Candy with a frosted and sprinkled manicure that I admired just yesterday on Instagram from Karen G. Nails. I love the fresh, candy-coated look of her manicure, although I chose to mix it up with some black touches myself and, of course, a sticky, drippy Mickey head ice cream bar.

Mint Chip (OMD2)

Contrary to some commonly held beliefs, Canada, my home and native land, is not a frost-covered wasteland. Frost-covered, yes, but hardly a wasteland (green and verdant is our true north strong and free. Except when it’s covered in frost.) The truth is that in the summer, every part of Canada experiences a heat wave to some degree, with us soggy sods down in Eastern Ontario seemingly bearing the brunt of the humidity. Kind of like the humidity that settled over my city a few days ago and has thus far refused to leave. Which is a problem for yours truly, as I am pale and delicate and prone to wilting. I’m a pansy!

But you know what beats the heat (AIR CONDITIONING – the answer is always air conditioning)? Ice cream. So in dubious honour of the heat wave that won’t quit AND as my first entry in the Oh Mon Dieu 2 nail art challenge for the theme of mint, I submit these ice cream nails, dripping with refreshing mint chip ice cream.