The Long Weekend

Gotta give it up for you Americans, you really know how to stretch a long weekend.  I appreciate the whole “Well, the holiday falls on a weekday; looks like the rest of the week is a wash!” approach to civic holidays. These red, white and blue nails (really pink, white and blue on account of the colour-bleed that occurred with my red glitter polish) are for those lucky Yanks celebrating their second weekend of the 4th.

The nit-picky details, for the curious, are a basic white creme topped with two festive glitters, Sally Hansen’s Complete Salon Manicure in Over the Rainblue and Strawberry Shields (the bleedy one that regrettably stained my pristine white creme polish a watery, red-shirt-in-a-load-of-whites pink.  Not an issue, though – I think nearly everything benefits from a touch of pink, including the old red, white and blue.)  I then added a couple of white bow charms from I truly can’t remember as the final finishing touch (helpful, I know, sorry!) Happy continued 4th, friends!

Fireworks on 4th

Merriest of Independence Days to my American friends. 🙂  Now, go celebrate making it through the past five months by blowing up a small piece of your nation, colourfully. Sorry, colORfully.  American grammar rules only today.

Baby, You’re a Firework

Bet that’s only the 20th time my American friends have seen or heard that phrase this Independence Day. Bless you, Katy Perry, patron saint of shooting stuff out yer boob cannons.

Happy 4th!  If you’re celebrating this evening, I hope your fireworks blow up real good. 🙂

Earth Day

Happy Day, Mother Earth.  Or as Will Smith said in THE most patriotic movie ever committed to film, “Welcome to Earf!”

Last Minute 4th

Happy (evening of) the 4th of July, American blogging friends and nail art aficionados! These simple nails – nothing more than three coats of Mentality Nail Polish’s blue glaze topped just at my cuticles with KB Shimmer’s red and white (and peppermint-scented!) Candy Cane Crush – took next to no time at all, which is perfect if you have July 4th plans you’re dashing out the door to attend to and have no time to wait around for perfectly patriotic paws. Good Independence Day, all!

4/4ths

There’s still a few hours left in which to revel in some all American good times this Independence Day, so here’s a round-up of four July 4th-inspired manicures to see you through the fireworks and beyond, including a bonus striped design I did right at the very beginning of this nifty nail art odyssey. I actually love going back over old designs, because it’s proof irrefutable that my technique has really improved in all sorts of areas (the least of which is tidiness – keep it clean, kids, even in nail art) and that’s never anything but encouraging.

Peel ‘n Stick 4th

I was visiting a friend and her new babies this afternoon, and when I commented that these nails were not freehanded, but were in fact nail art strips, her son let out a tremendous squak, I suppose in protest of my sheer laziness (hmph, judgemental baby.) 😉 But if I *could* argue the finer points of nail adornment with him (it’s hard to argue with someone in a onesie), I’d deny that it’s laziness that motivated these super fun July 4th nails, because come on, look at them! They’re totally awesome! Here I’ve shown a set of nail polish strips I purchased late last summer and have been hoarding ever since in anticipation of exactly this date, Incoco’s Stars & Stripes. I’ve come out swinging in favour of Incoco’s products in the past, because they’re just great, and these appliques proved to be no exception. And because my nails are on the shorter side, as are my friend’s, and these nail strips are double-ended, I was able to get two full manicures out of one set, so we could both proudly rock patriotic paws (okay, so we’re Canadian, but we both have American relatives, so it’s chill.)

Glittery 4th

Happy 4th of July, American nail art fanatics! And it’s a great day for nail art, too – lots of fun, festive designs kicking around the interwebs over the past few days (including my own vintage, deconstructed take on the American flag.)

Miraculously enough, I possess no red, white and blue glitter polish. Buuuuutttt, I do have a matte blue glitter (Formula X for Sephora’s TNT) and a scented, red and white glitter (KB Shimmer’s Candy Cane Crush) that make for a pretty fantastic and holiday-appropriate substitute when combined and layered over top a bright, summery polish like this one, OPI’s No Room for the Blues. The resulting effort is a fun, looks-harder-than-it-was, splatter-type effect that’s perfect for showing off, no matter what shenanigans you find yourself up to this 4th (and you needn’t tell anybody how easy they were; much like that dip recipe that everyone fawns over even though it’s nothing more than a tub of sour cream and four types of MSG, keep this one to yourself! Some secrets are not meant to be shared!)

Vintage 4th

I’m Canadian, and so I suppose I should be concentrating my nail art activities on tomorrow’s Canada Day (also known as “Sweating Your Ass Off at a Cottage with a 2-4 Day”), but I thought I’d jump ahead and highlight a manicure I did in honour of the other national holiday taking place this week, Independence Day.  The American flag in particular, with its bold colour palette, whimsical stars and precise, horizontal lines is a design dream come true, and whether you stick to the basics or take a few liberties with the overall design, you’ll still wind up with perfectly patriotic polished paws to see you through every party this July 4th long weekend.

For these nails, I layered a handful of holographic polishes in subdued, slightly dusky hues (Cirque’s Luminous Owl and Sky Woman and KB Shimmer’s In Bare Form) over striping tape to create a soft, almost vintage-looking deconstructed American flag design, minus the stars!

What’s Red and White and Minty All Over?

Here’s a sweet and simple, July 4th-appropriate manicure featuring the last polish in my KB Shimmer throwback haul (in that I finally caved and bought a couple of polishes from last winter’s holiday collection), Candy Cane Crush. It’s your pretty basic red and white matte glitter topper, with the twists here being a) it’s positively stuffed with itsy bitsy hexes, giving the polishes it tops a sort of splattered, speckled effect and b) it smells like peppermint-vanilla! Simultaneously refreshing and subtle, it has a sweet, pleasant scent, not a bit cloying like some of the more traditional scented nail polishes on offer (and here I’m thinking of the polish I once regrettably purchased from a junk jewellery store that smelled exactly like electric bubblegum on crack. Plus it was an ugly colour.)