Leafly

Here’s a pretty, autumn-appropriate polish to add a bit of subtle sparkle to your seasonal soirees, ILNP’s chromatic flakie, The Road to Awe (as in “Oooo!” not “Awww!”)  Despite being released two or three years ago, this polish is still available on ILNP’s site, a testament to its beauty and popularity – it’s just a gorgeous polish.  And a fantastic pick for the Fall, too, with its colour-shifting chromatic flakies in a range of plummy purples, bronzey oranges and leafy yellows (here over a basic black creme, always the best base on which to show off any of these kind of chromatic polishes; classic bedfellows, if you will.)  I also love the smattering of hyacinth blue flakes – they’re the perfect hit of neon to liven up The Road to Awe’s crunchy, glittery “leaves.”  Perfect and perfectly pretty.

Fall Fun Series: Forest Floor

A number of blogger friends participating in the Fall Fun Series live in Florida, which is currently being lashed by Hurricane Matthew.  Being roughly 1,600 miles from the action, there’s little I can do but wish for my friends’ continued safety and a speedy resolution to the storm.  But while they’re all hunkered down, I thought it might be a nice little diversion to take a peek at the softer side of Mother Nature with both this very leafy manicure, and some of the changing leaves I’ve recently spotted around my neighbourhood.  And not for nothing, Florida friends, but when this coming winter rolls around and I’m up to my Canadian eyeballs in freezing rain, you will have it allllll over me!

This simple, sponged-on manicure was a total breeze and so much fun – I love nail art that calls for you to just play around with a whole mess of colours.  It also reminds me of the crisp blanket of multi-coloured leaves that fall to the ground of a maple forest floor.  And nothing more exciting here than red, green, orange and brown polishes randomly sponged over a light tan base and topped with ILNP’s very leafy-looking The Road to Awe multi-chrome flakie.

But looking up from my nails for half a second, one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about participating in the Fall Fun Series is that it has forced me to stop, slow down and really appreciate the beauty of my surroundings at this time of year.  Living on the bend of a tree-lined river, with the leafy Gatineau Hills visible from every one of my windows, I suffer an embarrassing amount of leaf riches.  And yet, every year when the final burnished leaf hits the ground, I’m surprised that Fall came and went so quickly, and I hardly even noticed its presence. No wonder Ma Nature’s so pissed come wintertime.

But this Fall I’m finding myself present, to use an obnoxious term, in ways I’ve simply not been in years past. And if that comes at the behest of a blogging challenge, well, that’s just fine with me.

I can’t just lay down some lacquered leaves, though, and leave (wah-wah) it at that.  So how about the real deal? Like these leafy trees (against an endless-looking sky) along the Ottawa River that are just beginning to turn.

Or these vibrant trees edging the parking lot of a local theatre (where I recently watched Bridget Jones’s Baby, which I quite liked.)

Or this tree that stands to the side of a path directly below my balcony.

There’s so much beauty out there – you just have to pull your head up every now and then and actually enjoy it. Stay safe, and happy Fall, friends.

Sunset Flakies

Here’s a simple and striking manicure that’s evocative of the colours in a warm summer sunset, kind of like the ones I am fortunate enough to frequently enjoy from one of my two balconies. Tonight’s sun has very nearly set, but here’s a pretty picture from a couple of weeks ago.  My city enjoys some of North America’s best sunsets; it’s an added bonus that I can just glance out my kitchen window and see this:

For these nails, I layered ILNP’s The Road to Awe, a green-to-gold-to-fuchsia-to-purple chromatic flakie topper, over KB Shimmer’s Soul Deep, a deep, blue-black creme.

I’m in Awe

Of how beautiful this polish is, I Love Nail Polish’s ridiculously pretty chromatic flakie, The Road to Awe. I own two other ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies, hot pink-to-green Electric Carnival and purple-to-teal Supernova, and both of them are among my favourite polishes of 2015. The Road to Awe shares a similar formula with EC and Supernova – that is to say, a fabulous one. Chromatic flakies like these don’t stick to your nails the way iridescent shards will, and remove with the ease of a creme polish. You can get these flakie polishes opaque in three coats, too, but I find they take on an almost furry look that I don’t much care for. So I always layer them over a deep and dark creme, preferably black, just like I did here with The Road to Awe, for a sleek look that really highlights the bonkers colour-shift in these gorgeous polishes.

And what of The Road to Awe’s colour-shift? Bonkers. 😉 And so gorgeous, swinging from violet to vibrant fuchsia, then on to marigold and the barest hints of teal. It reminds me of both the sunrise and the sunset, all at the same time. An especially lovely addition to the Ultra Chrome family of flakie polishes.