Eight Years to Hold You

This world is just THE most random place sometimes, innit? I was sitting here trying to think up a suitably pithy title for a post about this blog’s eighth birthday when the phrase “Eight arms to hold you” popped into my head. I know that as the title of a Veruca Salt album from the late ’90s, but just in case I was wrong (I rarely am about grunge era music) I thought I’d run it through the old Wiki machine all the same. That’s where I learned that Eight Arms to Hold You was actually the working title of the Beatles’ 1965 film Help, and in addition to being the title of a pretty dynamite Veruca Salt album, it’s also the name of a song on the soundtrack to one of my favourite movies of all time, The Goonies.

So in keeping with the theme of complete happen randomstance and the number 8, I ditched the anniversary nails I had planned (eh, you know, pink, glittery and invoking various sweet foodstuffs) and did a simple mani using Enchanted Polish’s Octopus’s Garden (jeepers, what was up with the Beatles and cephalopods?) a lacquer that, as one of the first ones to hit my collection, is also celebrating its eighth birthday. Cheers to you, tiny everlasting bottle of noxious chemicals!

And cheers to you, Finger Candy, for limping along through these last two years of massive change. I know I’ve neglected you terribly, old friend, but I hope that one day soon we’ll be seeing more of one another.

Sprinkle Pop Tie Dye

I’d love to say these cool, tie dye-patterned nails were an intentional thing, but like all delightful creations, they began in a very different place from which they wound up. I was going for another fluid art look, this time in a bouquet of spring pastels, so inspired by some springin’ sprinkles I recently purchased from Sprinkle Pop (more on the fab world of bespoke sprinkles next post.)

But I jumped the gun and didn’t let my little self-made nail decals dry thoroughly, so when I topped my finished mani with a requisite coat of Seche Vite, it smudged up into this still-pretty tie dye concoction that reminds me of Hypercolor shirts from the ’90s (a type of tie dye, I suppose, if watery pastels mixed with sweat is your bag. Yikes, the ’90s were a rough time, sartorially speaking!)

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.

Feeling Fluid

The ingenuity of the nail polish world never ceases to amaze me. Just when you think you’ve seen every variation of a nail lacquer – truly, how different can those 50 mint green polishes be from one another?! – something new comes along, opening up a whole new world of nail art possibilities.

Shocker to no one who’s been following this sorry excuse for a nail blog over the past year, but there’s been a certifiable dearth of actual nail art embedded in the actual ones and zeros contained therein.  The long and the short of it is, I’ve had zero interest in fiddling with my nails.  And when I have, it’s been gardening season – and at that time of year, they are anything but tidy little finger canvasses! 

Then I ran across this trendy fluid art polish I purchased last year, Baroness X’s Nacre, and I decided to treat myself to a pretty new manicure.  We shall not speak of my first attempt, which I chalked up to a lack of practice over the last, oh, eight or nine months.  But my second attempt went swimmingly, and I’m so pleased with the results! 

Here’s how fluid art polishes work.  Containing a higher than usual percentage of oil, fluid art polishes interact with more traditional, water-based lacquers in exactly the way you would expect oil and water to combine – breaking apart into delicate lace, puddly little cells and swoopy streaks.  I created the manicure shown here by dabbing three polishes – hot pink, orchid purple and plain old white – out onto a small silicone mat, one on top of the other.  I immediately topped the tri-coloured polish pile with a generous blob of Nacre, before pinching the mat between my fingers, smooshing the four polishes together. 

You will not think that this will do a dang thing – and it didn’t work for me the first time I tried it – but when you pull the mat apart, you’ll see the polishes spread out and split up into lacy cells, right before your very eyes.  It was really so cool – effects polishes, when they behave, can produce the neatest looks.  And Nacre is a great choice for experimentation, as it doesn’t have the most colour presence beyond that lovely mother of pearl shimmer.

After creating six or seven of these little cellular strips (I was just doing my one hand) I let them dry for an hour or so.  Then when it came time to actually do my nails, I treated them exactly like nail decals, carefully cutting each delicate strip into a shape roughly the size of my nail bed, and then “sticking” it in place atop a single light layer of clear base coat.  I then cleaned up the raggedy bits by my cuticles with a detail brush dipped in acetone, before topping with Seche Vite, as always.  Et voila, a rather stunning and spring-y fluid art manicure, and a small, encouraging step back into the nail art world. 🙂

Nail Polish for Hanukkah

Thinking here, of course, of the Daveed Diggs’ jam he recently released on Disney+ for Hanukkah 2020, Puppy for Hanukkah (and if we did celebrate Hanukkah, like so many of our neighbours do, we’d apparently be way out of step with this year’s most desired gift, because we just got a cat! More details about him than you’d really ever require in another post shortly.) 😉

But nail polish for Hanukkah can definitely be a thing, particularly when it’s a beautiful, rich blue that makes your fingernails look like they’re glowing from within.

This is Kathleen & Co.’s Superionic, another polish I grabbed from Polish Pickup back in who-knows-when.  It was just a few months ago, but with the way time has been moving this year, it could have been February.  Or yesterday.

So pretty, right?  And plush; one of those polishes that feels like you’re applying flowing silk to your nails.  And that colour?  *chef’s kiss*  What a stunner!  Perfect for any of the eight celebratory nights.

Beat the Heat

Wow, is there ever zero heat to be beat around Eastern Ontario come this time of year. It’s currently two measly degrees above zero, on its way down to minus 6. Yesterday it snowed. Why do we live here again?! Ah yes, because Canada is wonderful. But that wonderfulness also comes with about six months of shit weather from coast to coast, and the fleeting heat rarely factors!

Know what else doesn’t factor? I thought this gorgeous, colour-changing polish, Heather’s Hues’ Beat the Heat, was a thermal polish, meaning it would change from a vibrant neon orange to a cool, deep plum depending on the temperature of my hands and fingers. Think of it as mood polish.

So when I sat down to test out Beat the Heat for the first time, I was pleased with the consistency and application – so smooth in three light coats – but disappointed in the thermal effect, as it was completely non-existent. “Drat, looks like I got a bummer,” I thought as I went outside to take pictures of my decidedly non-colour-changing manicure.

Then I stepped into the sun, and to my amazement, Beat the Heat came alive, morphing quickly from a lush, neon pumpkin, to a warm, coral-y pink, and finally on to a rich, plummy purple. So pretty! And clearly totally unexpected.

Lesson learned here? Open your eyes and definitely DO judge a book by its cover – stamped right on the bottom of the bottle was the word “Solar.” Duh. 😉

I nabbed Beat the Heat during Polish Pickup‘s September release. They typically feature at least one Heather’s Hues polish per monthly release, and they’ve got another one coming up at the beginning of November. So if you like Beat the Heat – and I certainly do; for a polish that morphs through this many colours, it’s incredibly flattering – you may want to check out one of their other offerings.

Smurf Genome

Wuh oh, now we’re into the chromosomal make-up of a Smurf, and apparently they glow in the dark! Can’t say I remember that from the Smurfs’ adventures with Gargamel and Azrael (“adventures” being the most politically correct way of saying their entire lives were devoted to not being genocidally wiped out by a bi-polar, misshapen baldy and his raggedy cat.)

But I digress!  This is Polish Molish’s Smurf Genome, another lacquer I nabbed during Polish Pickup‘s September release.  And it would seem that much like the polish I highlighted yesterday – Nailed It’s magnetic Neural Network – and then the one the day before that – Different Dimension’s likewise magnetic It’s Electrifying – Smurf Genome is what I call a gimmick polish, or something beyond the standard, be it magnetic, thermal (one of those coming in a day or two), fluid art (ditto) or glow-in-the-dark.

And boy howdy, do these Smurfs ever glow in the dark!  The glow power, if you will, in this polish is STRONG – just the kickback off your phone screen will be enough to fire up your falanges. 😉  And the polish au naturel is darn pretty too, featuring a vibrant, blue jelly base positively stuffed with red hex and iridescent shard glitter.  Beautiful, and a fun polish to add to my collection.

Neural Network

To all those about to go “Whu…?” – I salute you!  Because there’s lots to whu…? about here, as in two different blog posts on two different days, and featuring two different polishes, no less!  It’s almost like I’m a semi-functioning nail blogger again (although, barely – WordPress’s not-remotely-new block editor is an exercise in extreme frustration.  Every time I’ve walked away from a post lately, it’s because I’ve just spent the past 45 minutes sifting through online tutorials, trying to find the answer to a question that used to be easily, readily apparent.  Life’s not crappy enough, WP?!)

This pretty polish is Nailed It!’s Neural Network, another magnetic polish I grabbed during Polish Pickup‘s September release.  Like the magnetic polish I featured yesterday, Different Dimension’s It’s Electrifying, Neural Network is packed with glittery metallic flakies.  Can’t speak to the hue of snapping synapses, but I imagine this burst of jagged metallic rainbows is a pretty good mimic for a neural network’s mimicry.

This polish is so gorgeous, but the flakies, just like It’s Electrifying, obscure the intended magnetic effect.  I didn’t see much difference between Neural Network in the bottle and then magnetized on my nails.  Perhaps there was a tiny deepening of the base colour, a peacocky, bluey-purple-green, but nothing that made me stand back and go, “Yup, Nailed It.” 😉

Still, it wore like the dickens and made my nails look pretty for a week.  Who’s going to argue with themselves – or a computer trying to mimic themselves – over that?!

It’s Electrifying

WHAT is this, an actual blog post about – *gasp!* – nail polish?! How could it be?

Okay, so quick bit of real talk to not remotely explain away my months’ long absence, and that is that the world has me way down. I probably don’t need to elaborate; life is difficult on about 87 different fronts, and I know I’m far, far from the only one feeling the pinch.

So I regrettably haven’t felt much like blogging. Moreover, I haven’t had much to blog about from a nail art perspective – the only manicure I’ve sported this spring, summer and fall is a dirt-encrusted gardening mani, and the last time I bought nail polish was…oh wow, last year.

So I recently rectified that very serious error and snapped up a few treats for myself during Polish Pickup‘s September release, because the fun doesn’t totally need to stop, does it?

Here’s the first polish I, uh, picked up, Different Dimension’s flakie-loaded It’s Electrifying. This is a magnetic polish, one of two I purchased, and pretty though it is, I’m not totally sold. Not actually sure I’m totally sold on magnetic polishes, period, though I’ve had better luck running a magnet over solid colour polishes, as opposed to these more glitter-laden lacquers.  Magnetic polishes (are supposed to) work thusly: Paint on a coat or two of a dark, solid colour creme such as black.  Brush on one thin coat of the magnetic polish and let dry.  Then, working one finger at a time, brush on another coat of the polish, before holding a small magnet just off the surface of your nail for about 25 to 30 seconds.

Nail art magnets are available in different strengths, and produce a wide variety of looks, from hash marks, to chevrons, to cats’ eye.  But the cool effects tend to get lost when there’s this much stuff in the polish.  Still, It’s Electrifying is so, so pretty and nicely colour-shifty, and I won’t pretend that it hasn’t been nice to finally treat myself to a little bit of frivolous fun. 🙂

Go With the Flow

I was recently the lucky recipient of these lovely Zoya polishes – pink Kristie, blue Maren, turquoise Harbor, and purple Jessica – thanks to the kind folks at Nail Polish Canada.  I swatched them all, of course – see my previous post for those details – but I also wanted to do a bit of nail art with my new, candy-coloured polishes.

Problem: I’m SO out of practice these days, both in terms of nail art ability and actual nail care, that a good mani for me is one in which my nails are not encrusted with a solid quarter-inch of gardening grit.  I figured at best I’d come up with something ultra easy, like a simple dotticure.

Instead I decided to shoot for the moon and do a water marble manicure, perhaps THE most difficult nail art technique, one that requires you to float polish on the surface of water.  Because that just sounds SUPER easy (spoiler alert: it’s usually not, and it’s always hella messy!)

Except….this time, with these polishes, it wasn’t.  Even after my extended absence from the nail art realm.  I think it’s because these four lacquers – rich cremes, all – are brand new, and at the peak of their polish power, having not picked up months’ and years’ worth of oil and grime.  All four are of a completely identical consistency as well, making it ultra easy to float the polish on the surface of water AND toothpick-out a swirled design.  TL;DR?  These Zoya polishes make water marbling EASY, even for the woefully out of practice.

Speaking of, I realize that without photos of the water marbling process, this must all sound like utter gibberish.  So might anyone be interested in a little tutorial?  Because I’d like to give this technique another try, see if I could come up with a slightly more consistent design finger-to-finger (much as I like the every-digit-for-itself approach.) 😉  Please do come back soon to see how I work out with that!