Cel-e-brate Good Times (Come On!)

And what good times are we celebrating with this very inedible scented wax sheet cake?  Just that my blog no longer looks and behaves like a sack of ad-laden crap.  Break out the plastic forks before Marjorie nabs the last corner piece!  Or not, because, you know, wax.

It recently came to my attention that my blog – particularly the mobile aspect thereof – was looking, to put it delicately, like a bag of hot buttered ass.  I rarely check on the functionality of Finger Candy’s mobile side, naively assuming that everything is hunky dory.  And you know what happens when you assume – your blog looks like utter shite.  Ads EVERYWHERE – sometimes two or three peppered throughout one post – for creepy pop-up things like how to melt your belly fat using this one! easy! trick! and more distressingly, for items like holographic, enamel-plated gun scopes.  I’m not down with fraudy, click bait ads, and I’m not down AT ALL with WordPress inserting multiple advertisements for gun paraphernalia into my blog posts.  That one actually made me quite ragey, and spurred me into action.  As in I ponied up for a premium-er plan, one that will shelve the irksome ads and other visual obstacles, particularly on the mobile side of things.

So going forward, you hopefully won’t be driven off by a top-down drop menu, a minimum of two mid-body ads, and two back-to-back footnotes per post.  And I apologize for the prior state of Finger Candy – it was well nigh unreadable, and if you found yourself just rage-closing mid-way through a post, I understand.  It looked and behaved like every blog I’ve ever abandoned because the navigation became a burden.  So consider the burden lifted, and please return for more meandering non-sequiturs about nail polish, pop culture, Disney, cats, smelly things, smelly cats and more.  I’ve missed you, and please won’t you be my neighbour?  We have cake!  It’s beyond inedible*, but still, cake. 😉

*an SMT creation from my customs order last year, it smells like Willow’s Cuppy Cake, Marshmallow Noel and Vanilla Bean Noel, and it is nuh-ummy.

FingerCandy.ca, eh?

This post has been edited for clarity.  As in when I wrote it, I could not have been less clear.  So let’s try this one more time!

These nails – which I am super proud of, by the way; that lettering was not easy, and drawing maple leafs has never been my forte – honour my recent acquisition of the FingerCandy.ca domain name.  As it stands right now, this blog, which I publish via WordPress, is somewhat encumbered by its lengthy URL (FingerCandy.wordpress.com.) Moving to a .ca address simply makes Finger Candy easier to find during web searches, all by removing that bulky “wordpress” identifier.

So what is required of you, my dear readers?  Follow/unfollow?  Re-up your subscription? Clear your cookies and, um, cache your browser something-or-other? Actually, there’s no action required of you at all – type “FingerCandy.ca” into a browser and you’ll automatically be re-routed to the FingerCandy.wordpress.com page, same as it always was.  Or if you’re super wedded to typing “wordpress” into the URL, you can stick with that, too – both addresses take you to the exact same site, so it’s really a matter of personal preference.  And if you’ve been kind enough to subscribe to my blog or follow it via the WordPress platform, nothing will change there either – you’ll still be subscribed and you’ll still receive notifications (you *can* turn those off, by the way, in the event you’re feeling inundated.)

So basically nothing has changed, eh?  Just the way we Canadians like it. 🙂

Whale of a Tale

Gather round the old timer, friends, and listen to her spin a yarn as old as the seas themselves about ruined, nautical-themed nail art, misbehaving topcoat and, just to add abject insult to injury, a publishing platform that wishes to do no such thing.

First, this nail art is adorable, right? I am a huge sucker for horizontal stripes, particularly of the blue and navy variety, which match the pyjama pants that I am absolutely not wearing right now at four in the afternoon. I’ve also had these little whale-shaped nail vinyls for a while now, and I wanted to use them before the whale watching season is well and truly finished for the year. Owing to the striping tape and nail vinyls I used to achieve this look, these nails required a longer than usual drying period (polish tends to build up along the edges of tape and vinyls, which promptly gets swept down your nails if you go after it too quickly with your topcoat.) So I sat here all dainty-like for well over half an hour, my fingers fluttering gently off the edge of the coffee table for maximum drying power. Aaaannnnnnd it all went to shit the second I layered on my Seche Vite, which, when it’s working properly, is a nail artist’s greatest friend, sealing in, protecting and enhancing even the most basic of manicures. But mine wasn’t working today, and indeed, I believe I may have a bum bottle, because it really hasn’t been working ANY of the days, smudging, smearing and going the full goop a mere quarter of the way through the bottle. It’s a wicked pisser, nail art friends, as you are no doubt aware, to spend a good chunk of time on a manicure, only to have it ruined by the very thing you put on top of it to protect it! The expensive thing, I might add, which makes this whole smudgy debacle that much more infuriating. It’s also why there’s no thumbnail to this manicure – the Seche literally pulled the polish straight off my nails, even after half an hour of drying time. I’m actually quite baffled as to what happened here.

Then WordPress decided to be a dick. Sorry, got no other term for it – WP’s a dick. “Beep beep boop,” you say, as you hang there, refusing to publish? Holy cripes, could we BE more juvenile? It’s never bothered me before, mostly because I’ve never had to sit here for half an hour while WordPress vapour locks, but it’s seriously childish and unprofessional. I’d respect WP more if they displayed a simple error screen when problems crop up as opposed to the “Beep beep boop” not-a-progress-bar progress bar.

Thankfully Mr. Finger Candy is the next best thing to a technological wizard, and so he put his raging wife on the path of lowered blood pressure by forwarding me some very helpful links that had me up and publishing this post in next to no time. Still, I’m giving this win to Finger Candy Industries’ hard working IT department (said department consisting of one bemused husband and a half-asleep cat, both of whom are willing to work for Panera takeout) because WordPress itself was not much help.

Okay, done griping. Thanks for listening, and as always, feel free to chime in with your own (beauty) blogging issues. Misery loves company and all that jazz. 😉

One Lovely Blog

Well, I certainly think so. 😉 And as Finger Candy nears its one year blogiversary, others apparently do, too, as I recently received another lovely blogger “nomination” from enthusiastic reader Jadie for, appropriately enough, the One Lovely Blog Award. I have discussed in the past – at length; concise I am only occasionally – my reticence at getting involved in these kind of chain letter-esque love fests, finally coming down on the side of me being a big old snob who needs to get the hell over herself. Somebody has put themselves out on a limb in paying me a compliment, and I ought to receive their kindness as graciously as it was offered. It’s just part of being a good member of the larger blogging community. Now let’s all hold hands (making sure our manis are dry, of course) and sing some Maroon 5 (no, no, I’m kidding – let’s never sing the Maroon 5, okay? Like, ever.) Actually, let’s look at this gallery of some of my lovelier, and loved-up, designs instead:

Ah, but there are certain obligations I must fulfil in recognition of this award, including thanking Jadie for her pay-it-forward-type kindness. Please do visit her blog and keep this polished circle of life moving, won’t you? Wait, do you know how many “circle of life’ jokes I’ve made on this blog? LOTS. And I don’t even like the Lion King!

Next up are seven (further) random facts about me. Now, I happen to think I’m endlessly fascinating, but you may feel differently, particularly when you learn that:

1. My three favourite movies, still, since childhood, are The Lost Boys, The Goonies and Beetlejuice. Although that’s not so random, seeing as I’ve talked about those three movies on this blog a combined 8,756 times.

2. I’m fond of making up wild, not-a-bit-accurate numbers to “support” various claims (“I’ve been waiting here for nine years,” “There were, like, eight billion 12-year-olds there,” “I’ve seen The Lost Boys, The Goonies and Beetlejuice a combined 8,756 times,” etc.)

3. I recently discovered that it takes about two solid weeks to paint all the moldings and doors in a 2,400 square foot house. I really wish this was knowledge I didn’t possess.

4. Having said that, I’m amazed at what I accomplished physically (and mentally) when I recently helped fix up a relative’s house in preparation for sale (see above, re: 2,400 square feet of moldings and doors.) It serves as a great reminder that I feel better about myself when I step outside the box, even if I occasionally have to be given a firm shove first.

5. When I’m trying to fall asleep, I recite the salient plot points of Stephen King books and short stories in my head. I know them so well, it acts as its own sort of internal white noise, and typically by the time the Creed family has settled into their charming home beside the Wendigo-haunted burial ground, I’m out like a light.

6. Although this ritual could also certainly account for the disturbing – and disturbingly frequent – dreams I have about everything from tentacled critters crawling on the ceiling to insane clowns staring up at me through the shower drain.

7. I think this may be a bit disturbing to those who have known me for a very long, coffee-slugging time, but I’m *whispers* not all that fond of Starbucks’ pumpkin spice lattes any more. They make my teeth feel all fuzzy.

So on that non sequitur, I’ll move on to the third part of the nomination, which requires *me* to nominate 15 fellow bloggers for the One Lovely Blog Award. Seeing as most of these bloggers have had more than one crack at this particular rodeo and probably don’t need to jump in line for another round of the seven random fact hokey pokey AND because I can never truly play by the rules, I’ve decided to go about things a different way, choosing instead to highlight 10 individual posts by favourite WordPress bloggers that have wowed and inspired me throughout the year. Hopefully you’ll fall in love with a few new lovelies yourself.

1. Craftynail‘s monarch butterfly nails with individually hand-placed glitter gradients. Some of my favourite nails of the year, and an idea I need to steal for myself!

2. Flight of Whimsy‘s adorable under da sea mani. The colours in this one are summertime perfection.

3. Dee’z Dazzling Designs‘ mega juicy-looking pond manicure.

4. The Adorned Claw‘s stamped tiger stripes over top of caviar beads. The mind, it boggles.

5. Wonderful Wolf‘s impressive striping tape manoeuvres.

6. Eeeek! Nail Polish!‘s adorable little witch and her feline familiar.

7. Perfectly Nailed UK‘s cool, black-lined doodle mani.

8. Wicked Splatters‘ simple, adorable watermelons. It’s a classic design for a reason.

9. Nails By Night‘s delicate, pastel opal mani.

10. Polish Me Snazzy lays out a nice tutorial for her interpretation of watermelon nails.