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!

Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party

I’m generally opposed to evoking the holidays any earlier than Thanksgiving, but seeing as I’m Canadian and our Thanksgiving was over a month ago, this merry Mickey mani is fair game.  And it’s even fairer game given that Disney has had the parks decorated for the season since the beginning of the month.  I’ve never visited during the holiday season, but with a non-stop parade of fun, festive activities and attractions – sometimes actual parades! – including Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, I hear it’s a circus.

For this merry mani, I spruced up two coats of Pure Ice’s gold-tinged green, Lucky Charming, with one light coat of Sally Hansen’s Complete Salon Manicure in Over the Rainblue, a blue hex and silver bar glitter-stuffed topper, and one slightly heavier coat of Whimsical Ideas by Pam’s All Ears, a red, white and yellow glitter speckled with matte black Mickey heads.  The resulting manicure is like the aftermath of a parade during Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.  Hopefully one day very soon I’ll get to experience it for myself, and I definitely know the manicure I’ll be sporting when I do. 🙂

Speckled Sandwich

I’d typically tell you to beware the sandwich that’s speckled in anything (except for that crunchy munchy flax stuff; it’s delicious) but this isn’t your usual sandwich (besides, I shouldn’t have to tell you NOT to put it in your mouth. What, are you a toddler?!) You all know I’m a real sucker for a jelly sandwich manicure, not just because they’re quick, easy and effective, but because they really allow you to stretch your creative, create-a-polish legs and cobble together some fun, Designer Imposter-type looks (I just lost everyone under the age of 25. Are Designer Imposter perfumes even a thing any more? Think cheap body sprays described as “Like CK One” or “Sunflowers-esque.” They were super popular in the ’80s and ’90s. Then again, so was Exclamation and Love’s Baby Soft, which smelled like diapers before the aforementioned toddlers got to them.)

Take this creation, for instance, a combination of Mentality Nail Polish’s red glaze and Sally Hansen’s glittery Over the Rainblue. I saw a similarly composed indie polish on Instagram the other day – simple and striking, but maybe not something I needed right that very second. Especially not when I thought I could maybe create something very similar with a couple of polishes I already had at home, which is precisely what I did. And while the inspiration for these nails was actually a holographic polish, I think the slight shimmer of the cherry red glaze and the tiny holo bars in Over the Rainblue are perfectly acceptable substitutes in this basic glitter-over-polish manicure (or, more accurately, glitter-over-AND-under-polish manicure.) I especially like the way the holographic blue glitter shines through the red glaze, making these speckled nails look as though they’re lit from within.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I know all you Americans are coming down off (or coming back up out of) major gravy-based comas and/or recuperating from injuries sustained during the Battle of Black Friday, and so the upcoming holiday season is probably the furthest thing from your minds, but here in Canada we’ve been good to go since the middle of November (and if you’re a major retailer like, say, craft store Michael’s, who in recent years have pushed their “holiday” season into groundbreaking and obscene new territories, it’s more like late August.) I hung our outdoor lights a few weeks back and I’ll be digging the tree out of storage this weekend, so I’d say this Christmas thing is pretty well on.

And on my nails as well, where a pond manicure Christmas tree design meets a favourite glitter jelly, KB Shimmer’s Get Clover It, and two different Sally Hansen glitters, Strawberry Shields and Over the Rainblue. Quite festive.

Rainblue-on-Rainbow

It’s all grumpy, cold and overcast in my neck of the world today, and if precipitation were to happen, it’d be snow as opposed to rain, but none of that is going to stop me from brightening up my day and yours with a simple, glittery mani featuring all the cheery colours of the rainbow. The glitter topper I used here is Sally Hansen’s Over the Rainblue, a basic, but deceptively pretty, nail polish stuffed with blue hex glitter and silver iridescent bar glitter. I know not everyone is a fan of bar glitter, but these are wee little baby bars that don’t stick up all over your nails, just waiting to snag on something and destroy your manicure. And as you can see, the iridescent glitter looks fabulous over a wide range of colours, throwing off rainbow prisms (or is that rainblue prisms?) with every shift of your nails. Just lovely!