Last year I titled a post, featuring a bow-centric manicure, Bowverkill!, thinking I had achieved maximum bowage per nail. Turns out there’s always more room for bows, as this manicure certainly bears out. Here I used a sweet, summery polish from Delush, 50 Shades of Yay, topped with OPI’s matte topcoat for a frosted, almost candied sort of look. Plus bows! So many little bows. 🙂
Or ears to me! Or would it be ears for me? At the very least they were purchased by me. And usually only worn by me, although I’m clearly not opposed to sharing.
I was on-property at our resort, the Port Orleans Riverside, approximately seven minutes before I had snapped up this glittery Vintage Minnie headband. I’ve always, always wanted to buy a set of mouse ears, but headbands and I have historically been no bueno – they pinch the sides of my skull in a way that provokes instant headaches in this already headache-prone person. But I was on a mouse ears mission, and I could not say no to this vintage-style set, with its shimmery, sequined polka dots and ultra trendy rose gold bow. Also the cute little flower that sproings off the middle at a charmingly daffy angle.
But did they hurt? Actually, no, they didn’t. I didn’t get a single headache from either set of ears I purchased (the others being the Sally ears my husband is sporting in the picture above.) Toward the late afternoon I’d begin to feel a little tenderness behind my ears, but nothing unmanageable, and no headaches! I credit the ample padding in the band. And also a lot of mind over migraine matter, because I really wanted these ears! As did everyone else; they had just hit the resort shops, but had not yet been released to the parks. Over the first couple of days of our vacation I was stopped by probably two dozen people asking where I got them. Yup, that’s right, you’re in the presence of mouse ears greatness! Impressed yet? 😉
And as always when I’m charmed by something, I put it on my nails! To mimic the sequins on these ears, I used two glittery textured polishes, OPI’s blue Get Your Number and Nicole by OPI’s pink Candy is Dandy. Super cute.
Geographic nails – excellent practice at keeping a steady hand with a detail brush, and a great excuse to just mess around with a bunch of pretty polishes, here OPI’s royal purple, Do You Have This Color in Stock-holm?, Essie’s orchid-hued Play Date and Sally Hansen’s warm pink, No Ifs, Ands, or Buds (am I the last person on earth to resist the Oxford comma? Here it is on my nail polish, for cripes’ sake!)
Ending the month with a look back at some of the adorable Hello Kitty gifts I received this Christmas from friends and family, all of whom enable my love of Miss Kitty to varying degrees (Mr. Finger Candy is particularly fond of giving the gift of HK.)
This year I got some super cute, mostly nail art-related goodies, from an awesome Hello Kitty nail art book (look for some follow-along nail art from that in the coming weeks) to a definitely impractical breakfast sandwich pan with an embossed bottom. Everything’s a bit quirky and not quite the usual, and with Hello Kitty adorning all of these gifts, of course I love them! Let’s look at some of this bounty in a bit more detail, shall we?
Starting with the most random, here is an adorable Hello Kitty nail art kit filled to the brim with kid-friendly polishes and nail care goodies. Housed in a hard-shelled plastic Kitty case with a sturdy little handle for portability, the polishes are sort of rubbery in texture – a sure sign that they’re water-based (aka kid-friendly.) I wasn’t really expecting much from the contents of the kit (particularly in light of the fact that the best before date on the bottom of the case is/was 2015!) but the polishes went on really well, if oddly. I say oddly because I’ve never quite encountered lacquers like this before – they were rubbery in texture once dry (and indeed, peeled off my nails just like liquid latex) but the polish that came out of the bottles was thick, and a bit gloppy. And yet not the least bit unmanageable, applying smoothly and cleanly. Which is a bonus, because these sorts of water-based polishes do not play nicely with acetone, making cleanup rather unpleasant. So as always, polish between the lines, because there’s really no way of walking back your boo-boos without literally picking them off your nails. Such anomalies, these Kitty polishes, but also very, very pretty. I particularly like the glowy jade green.
More Hello Kitty nail art goodies came in the form of one of OPI’s mini kits from last year’s HK collection. I haven’t yet given these traditional Kitty colours (with a nifty dotting tool and brush) the go-round, but I plan on using them to try out some of the designs from the Hello Kitty nail art book. I love the yellow here, My Twin Mimmy – it’s the precise sunshine yellow of Kitty’s adorable little bean-shaped nose.
Finally, we have the gift I’m torn between using and hanging up in my kitchen as an object de pop art, a Hello Kitty breakfast sandwich pan. A gift from my brother-in-law and his lady, both of whom appreciate my love of all things Kitty, this little non-stick pan is the perfect size for toasting your egg sandwich to golden perfection. That is, if you weren’t afraid of setting the bottom ablaze, and possibly also melting the decorative handle when it gets too close to the burner, which it will, because it’s the circumference of an English muffin! And I am afraid of all of those things, so perhaps best to leave this one as a decorative object!
Getting back into the swatching swing of things (following a wicked run-in between my left hand ring finger nail and, of all the stupid things, my vegetable peeler) with this lovely lacquer, Picture Polish’s beautifully blue Alice.
I already own a handful of Picture Polish’s superb scattered holos, and Alice is a fantastic addition to the collection. Looking very much like one of my all time favourite blue cremes, OPI’s No Room for the Blues, but formulated like one of Picture Polish’s rock solid holo-creme hybrids (of which Electric Dream is another favourite), Alice is perfection in a little square bottle. It applied beautifully, wore well and removed nicely, its tiny bits of raggedy holo glitter wiping off quickly and cleanly. And what of that beautiful sky blue colour? It’s simply divine! And not for nothing, because presentation is vastly underrated, but the graphic design on Alice’s bottle is darn adorable. Well worth heading down the rabbit hole for.
Picture Polish’s lacquers are available via a number of international stocklists, although I purchased Alice – and all of my Picture Polish polishes, actually – through Nail Polish Canada.
Toronto’s annual Caribbean Carnival, a three-week bonanza showcasing Caribbean art, culture, music, food and big, honkin’, feather-adorned parade costumes, actually wrapped up last weekend, but its spirit lives on in this manicure, which was inspired by one of the gorgeous feathered headdresses I saw on a fabulously bejeweled (and befeathered) attendee. You can find great photos of some of the costumed revelers in this CBC article here. So beautiful – like exotic, turquoise-tinged birds (here a new favourite polish of mine, OPI’s Sailing & Nail-ing.)
A quick word, though, about the pink shimmer/frost/creme hybrid I used here, Pure Ice’s Peony – love the colour, love the way it applies (like silk), hate the fact that it gives my nails lumps and bumps where there are actually none, even after a thick coat of a super smoothing topcoat and base coat. Bit of a bummer, that.
Clear blue skies and humid temperatures in the 40s call for three things: 1. Air conditioning, 2. A swimming pool and 3. Watermelon. Actually, these are pretty much the only conditions under which I’ll eat watermelon, as I’m really not that fond of it. It’s a filler fruit, like honeydew. And cantaloupe just flat out makes me want to hit things. I’m clearly melon biased.
Except when it comes to this fun glitter topper, Whimsical Ideas by Pam’s Wacky Watermelon, a fun, summery favourite of mine that I layered over a pretty new acquisition, OPI’s pale turquoise creme, Sailing & Nail-ing. In the last week alone I’ve used this polish in three different manis, it’s that great.
I did have a bit of trouble with Wacky Watermelon in that it bubbled fiercely, leaving unsightly pockmarks all over my otherwise pristine manicure. I’m chalking this up to the unholy humidity we’re experiencing – I’ve actually noticed that none of my polishes behave all that well in these kinds of temperatures. Just like me!
With apologies for my recent absence (busy busy with the necessities of life, and maybe a bit of hiding out from the horror show that IS life), here is an exceptionally impractical manicure I crafted together out of some cute items I recently purchased from Daily Charme, home of the fun, super obtrusive nail art embellishment. “Crafting” always seems like the right word when it comes to my adventures in 3D nail adornment – there’s always a lot of glue and tweezers and frustrated screaming involved.
For these nails, I laid down a base of two super summery polishes, Picture Polish’s sparkly coral, Paris, and OPI’s pale turquoise, Sailing & Nail-ing, before topping my two middle fingers with a cluster of little clay flowers. I then added a single marigold-hued bullion bead to the centre of each cupped flower (that’s just a very, very tiny gauge of bead) before filling in the spaces around the flowers with lime green beads.
And in case you’re wondering what the life span was on these particular nails, about seven minutes! 🙂
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Coming at you this evening with some very simple clover nail art atop a festive polish I don’t use nearly enough, OPI’s hunter green Live and Let Die. Live and Let Die was released in 2012 as part of OPI’s Skyfall Collection, so a bit of an oldie here. Also one I did not forget to pair with a base coat, on account of its fine golden shimmer, which, while beautiful on the nail and in the bottle, combines with the green base to create mega stain-y turquoise. And we all know what turquoise does to bare nails (stains, precisely!) So polish safe, friends, and enjoy the rest of your evenings!
Continuing with this week’s unofficial theme of Valentine’s Day, here’s a jammy-looking mani featuring an OPI oldie, pink-red-and-white glitter topper Minnie Style. This polish was released in 2013, and for a three-year-old glitter polish, it’s still doing pretty well for itself – no glitter curling, and the base hasn’t dried out or thickened up. The one ding against this oldie but goodie is that over time the hue has leached out of the pink glitter, staining the once-clear base a rather vibrant rose. Absolutely not a problem if you’re layering Minnie Style over a pink or red or some other dark hue, but be mindful that it will add a pink tinge to whites, pastels and other pale shades.
Finger Candy 