Breakfast for Dinner (31DC2015)

Does anyone remember the ads for sugar bomb cereals like Fruity Pebbles and Count Chocula that used to run during Saturday morning cartoons in the ’80s? The ones where an announcer all hopped up on Red Dye No. 6 and Frankenberry dust would bellow that your bowl of crunchy neon glucose was “part of your balanced breakfast”? And then they’d show these crazy feasts that included bacon, eggs, toast, fruit salad, milk, juice and, yes, your bowl of mouth-shredding Cap’n Crunch, with the insinuation that you eat this way every morning? I have never once in my life had a breakfast like that! I’ve come awfully close at a couple of my mother’s Christmas buffets, but in terms of a sit-down, “I eat a short stack every day before school/work!” – no, never. Hmm, could we be overcompensating for something here, Big Cereal?

These nails that break the fast have a bowl of something sugar smacky on my thumb, but otherwise, it’s quite a respectable spread. This manicure is actually my entry towards day five’s theme of blue in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge on account of the polish I used as the background, OPI’s No Room for the Blues. I use No Room ALL the time, at least a couple of times a week, because it is a perfect, neutral sky blue, and applies flawlessly. The breakfast goodies are tasty-looking, but sort of incidental!

End of Summer Carnival

When I was a kid, there was no more bittersweet joy than welcoming the Exhibition to town, a Canada-wide touring carnival whose presence in my city for the final few weeks of August always signaled the end of summer and the start of another school year. The Exhibition was kind of a big deal for my friends and I – lots of attractions to ride, lots of mini donuts to consume, and then when we got a bit older, lots of concerts to attend, lots of boys to flirt with. I have so many great memories of mucking about the Ex with my parents, childhood friends, boyfriends, baby-sitting charges, besties and random strangers alike – it was all-inclusive fun, so long as your idea of fun is having your best friend yak her chocolate custard cone all over your knapsack two seconds after stepping off the Pirate Ship (true story!)

All this carnival talk springs from the polish I chose to accent these simple, summery racing stripe nails, Candy Lacquer’s pastel matte glitter topper, Carnival Games. Carnival Games is one of my favourite polishes, and despite looking like it’s just a bit too much of absolutely everything, it’s actually THE perfect mix of pastel and mid-toned matte glitter in triangles, circles, hexes, stars, rings and micro dots. Here I’ve paired it with another favourite, OPI’s No Room for the Blues, my go-to shade of cerulean and a fantastic polish in its own right – I use it as the background for so much of my nail art because it flows onto the nail beautifully and self-levels like a champ. No fuss, no muss, which is exactly the frame of mind you should be in come carnival time.

Nail Sushi

Who’s up for a late sushi lunch? ‘Round about this time of year I pull a favourite purse out of seasonal storage, a 15-year-old cloth fabric tote with wooden handles emblazoned in a pale yellow sushi print. I adore this purse, and what better way to show my love and appreciation than by painting a similar type of allover design on my nails (I say “similar,” as I learned my lesson long ago that yellow bases read through any and all colours you put on top of them, particularly stark, sushi rice-hued whites; besides, don’t we love this base polish completely, OPI’s No Room for the Blues?)

And we shall not speak of what happened to the design on my thumb. It was supposed to be a cute little piece of anthropomorphic Tamago, but regrettably, it was more like a Tama-no. Eh, thumbs are overrated anyways! 😉

We’re All Stars Now

I adore star imagery – I have a couple of tattoos that would speak to that assertion – and despite a pre-tattoo, high school habit of inking rings of rainbow stars around my wrists with scented Crayola markers, I really can’t draw a star to save my life. They always end up looking vaguely like bottom-heavy starfish, and I invariably lose at least one of the star’s points to some odd miscalculation of angles on my part when forming the other four points (here’s where Mr. Finger Candy would rudely – but truthfully – butt in and point out that of course I suck at drawing stars; it involves math. I’d be offended, but it’s true – my talents do not lie in mathematics. One need only consult my high school math teachers to verify that one (because really, I naturally suck so hard at math, and no, not because I spent all of my class time drawing rings of rainbow stars around my wrists!)

So it was with great joy that I stood back upon completing this manicure and saw that these free-handed stars are not bad, not bad at all! This is a simple, allover starry design that takes inspiration from the pattern on a teeny little party hat I once bought for my cat. I probably don’t need to tell you that she HATED IT with the fire of 1,000 burning suns and fought its existence for the entire 37 and a half seconds it was on her head, which turned out to be all the time I needed to snap a few embarrassing photos, and after that it went into a bucket full of old cat stuff and was never heard from again. Just the way she would have preferred it all along, sneaky girl. 😉

For this manicure I used two China Glaze polishes and two OPI polishes over Orly’s silver holo, Mirrorball, China Glaze’s hot pink Rich & Famous and jade green Four Leaf Clover, and OPI’s lush blue No Room for the Blues and royal purple Do You Have This Color in Stock-holm?

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!)

Ice Storm

These nails are a nod to this evening’s forecasted weather, which calls for snow, ice and various snow ‘n’ ice-related activities. Sounds like a good time to stay in, cozy up by the televised log and do my nails!

These nails also represent my first ever entry in a nail art contest! Sponsored by the fine folks over at http://www.nailpolishcanada.com/, purveyors of all my favourite lacquered goodies, the Holiday Nail Art Challenge covers three weeks and three themed designs. This week’s theme is snow , which is appropriate since, you know, hey look, there’s lots of it from which to draw inspiration RIGHT outside my window. And gathering on my balcony. And piling up along my windowsills…

This design is a bit of a modified pond manicure, in which I layered opaque snowflake designs between multiple coats of sheer polish. I fancy it looks a bit like tiny flakes flash frozen in ice.

For this manicure I used Essie’s super sheer Adore-a-Ball over OPI’s No Room for the Blues, with just a few glittery accents in OPI’s (Liquid Sand) Get Your Number, THE perfect sea blue glitter. Icy fun for the whole family!