Cult Nails Manipulative

Morning dears! 


So yesterday I spent the whole day moving and unpacking. It's so tiring! My nails also suffered a little damage, I got a few chips so I'm sporting nubbins again! 


This week is going to be Cult Nails Divas and Drama collection week! I'm going to be posting both swatches and nail art using all of the shades in this awesome collection. 


First up I am going to show you Manipulative. I'm starting the week off with this shade because my awesome friend Goisa over at Life in Color has started something called Monday Blues where we showcase a blue colour on Mondays! 

Manipulative is a dusty blue opaque creme with a hint of green and a gorgeous subtle shimmer that really stands out in the sunshine. You all know I am a hug fan of blues and this is no exception. 

Maria was inspired to create this colour when she was vacationing with her family, she says, "We went to a local beach and the water was this amazing milky blue color that kept showing hints of green. When the sun would hit the water just right, this amazing shimmer throughout the water was noticeable. I must have taken a hundred photos of the water and as soon as we returned home, I set out to replicate it in a polish."


I think she completely captured shimmering water. This colour really is breathtaking. I used 2 coats for these pictures and had no trouble with the formula. It was beautiful and was almost a one coater, just needed the second to even everything out. 

For my nail art for this polish I grabbed some of my black rhinestones and started placing them in a line on about a third of the way in my nail. 

I love how edgy the rhinestones look against the polish. I wanted to do some nail art that captured the name, Manipulative. I felt that something edgy would represent this well. 

Even though I loved how this looked I got a sneaky idea. I grabbed Sneeze Breeze and striping brush and went to work. 

I'm loving this so much!! I feel like Sneeze Breeze was such a perfect compliment to Manipulative. 

Manipulative is a beautiful blue that is 4-free and cruelty free. It can be purchased from Cult Nails for $10 USD. I strongly encourage you to go buy the beauty! 

What do you think of Manipulative? Do you like wearing these kind of dusty blues?

Do you like my edgy nail art?

Don't forget to check out the other girls participating in Monday Blues!

Goisa from Life in Colour

Marta from Chit Chat Nails

Mandy of Chameleon Stampede Nail Blog

Black and White Challenge: Day 10

We made it! It is the last day of the challenge! This has been an absolutely awesome month and these girls have inspired and amazed me time and time again throughout this challenge!
Today's challenge is manicure of your choice. We decided to pick a mani that one of us has created through the past month and recreate it! This was one of the hardest things that I had to do in this challenge. There were so many amazing ones to pick from! I had such a hard time narrowing it down to even one per person! 


Finally after probably hours of deliberating over which nails I was going to recreate I decided on Sammy's Day 5 nails,

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them

One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

I used Orly's Luxe and black acrylic paint to achieve this look. I think what finally settled me on creating this manicure was that I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I read all the books when I was very young, have reread them and seen every movie multiple times! After I finish this post I'm going to put one on in bed and drift off watching :) 

Mine is not an exact replica of Sammy's, she got some of the detail so small! So it is slightly different lettering, but still has the same idea! 

Eeeee I totally love them!! This challenge has been one of the best things I have done since I started blogging. Chatting with these fantastic ladies has been so wonderful, and they are all amazingly talented, creative and just some of the nicest people you can meet! 



I'm really excited to see what the rest of the sexy6 has recreated! Make sure you go check it out! 

Nails and Noms

Let Them Have Polish (has dropped out :()

The Nailasaurus

Fab Fingertips

The Lacquerologist

Full Spectrum of Reggae to Riches

Morning Folks!
Today is my last day at my job!! I'm so excited, yet I haven't started to pack at all and I move on Sunday... Well that's what Saturday is for right? Since I have been tying up loose ends and spending lots of time with family and friends I haven't been able to get as much nail art done lately as I would have liked, I'll have some more for you next week I promise :)

I have an accent mani to show you all today. Sally's Beauty Supply has had a Buy 2 get 1 Free sale on lately. I wasn't intending on buying anything, but I needed some thinner and once I walked in I couldn't resist getting 3 lovely new bottles. These are 2 of them that I picked up, China Glaze Reggae to Riches and China Glaze Full Spectrum from the Prismatics collection.

Reggae to Riches is a beautiful red to magenta to violet jelly that is seriously packed with blue micro shimmer duochrome beautifullness. There is no other way to describe this polish other than it glows. It is like some deep blue fire from within is pushing through the bottle and out onto your nails. It is like the blue part of a flame that is right in the centre, the hottest part of the fire. The blue shift is all throughout the bottle and boy does that transfer onto your nails.

So gorgeous. It reminds me of what an alienesque berry could look like. It is slightly translucent, super squishy, and incredibly juicy polish that just looks delicious. Can you tell I'm falling head over heels for this polish?

And check out what it looks like without the blue shimmer. Depending on what light or how you move your fingers the polish is constantly changing. The coolest thing was when I was typing and my nails kept moving, the colour kept shifting and I had a hard time concentrating because I was just drawn to look at my nails.

Now if you know me I have a hard time just leaving a polish alone so I grabbed Full Spectrum. The description from China Glaze is, Baby pink bursts into holographic magenta to party with silver, gold, blue, pink and green particles. This is exactly spot on. When I was in the sun my nails were literally holoriffic. It stunned me just how gorgeous they were! Unfortunately by the time I got home the sun had gone away so I wasn't able to snap a picture of it in the sun. Maybe because I layered it over Reggae to Riches, this polish seemed more of a purple shade that shifted to lavender. It looks pretty lavender in my above picture.

And above I think it looks more pink. I wasn't impressed with the original swatches I saw of the Prismatics Collection, but in person WOW. I think every blogger has said this, but they are seriously amazing in person.

The formula on both of these were perfection. Reggae to Riches is thick, yet fluid and simply flows off the brush onto your nail. I had zero clean up with it. Reggae to Riches really is the perfect lady. It is part of the China Glaze Core collection and should be available wherever China Glaze polishes are sold. Full Spectrum was also beautiful to apply. Simply went on and the glitters stayed in place. I used 2 coats for both of these, so on my accent nails there are 2 coats of Reggae to Riches and then 2 coats of Full Spectrum. There was still a little bit of VNL with Reggae to Riches, but the duochrome covered it for the most part.

I love this combination so much. They colours complement each other so well and Reggae to Riches is jumping pretty high up on my list of favourite polishes. Jelly duochrome?! I can't ask for more than that.

What do you think of this? Are you in love with it as much as I am? Any fun plans for this weekend?

Sincerely Stephanie

Sally Hansen's Celeb City and Orly Luxe

Morning Folks!
We're almost through the week here, which means I am almost done my job! My last day is tomorrow and I'm really excited to be done. Anything exciting coming up for any of you?

Today I am showing you my favourite silver and gold foil polishes. I find that I tend to use these a lot in nail art or as bases when doing nail art, so I thought it was time to show them some love on their own.

First up is Orly's Luxe.

This was part of Orly's 2010 Foil FX collection. The polish is 3 free and went on really smoothly for me and didn't show brush strokes! The colour is really close too a true gold, but I think there are silver particles running through it which keeps the polish from getting too yellow.

I love this foil. It is so shiny. This only required 2 coats for full opacity and is for sure a get noticed type of polish. I have no top coat on in these photos. Also don't you love the name? Luxe just sounds so luxurious!

My favourite silver foil is Sally Hansen's Celeb City from the Xtreme Wear line.

I got this polish over a year ago before I found my insane love for polish and nail art. This was just when Black Shatter had come out and I managed to snag myself a bottle, because let's be honest, Shatter was the coolest thing anyone had ever seen. Then I needed something to put under it. I thought I didn't have anything in my about 35 bottle collection that would look right with it. So I found this and used it under my then precious Black Shatter. The night I happened to use it was a girls night and I got so many compliments on my Shatter and Silver nails. Ever since I have been in love with Celeb City and have used over half the bottle in a year.

The formula on this polish is awesome. It can be almost opaque in one coat, which is mad fantastic for a foil. I used 2 coats just to even everything out. It is so shiny I have no topcoat on in these photos and if you add a topcoat it can get even more glistening.

Thank goodness this polish is part of the perm collection because I think I am going to need bottle after bottle of it.

Do you have a favourite gold or silver polish that you keep going back to? Do you own these and madly love them like me?

Sincerely Stephanie

Black and White Challenge: Day 9

Day nine of the challenge! We are so close!


Today's challenge is a black and white water marble. I am not a good water marbler. In fact I am a terrible water marbler. I have used filtered, bottled and boiled water at room temperature and it never works for me. Oh yes I can get the polish to spread. And then I can draw a design, but for some reason when I dip my nail into the water all the colours mush together and I end up with a mess. I have watched hours and hours of you tube videos of people doing them and I think I'm doing it right? Who knows haha. Anyway I used China Glaze White on White and Wet n Wilds Black Creme for this mess.

Bleh. Not impressed.

I took these off as soon as I was finished them. And I spent at least 4 hours working on these. Redoing nail after nail and this was the best I got. I know it's awful. If you have any water marble suggestions please help!

*EDIT:* One of my lovely challenge buddies Esther just suggested to me that my nails remind her of this picture, but in gray tones! What do you guys think?

On another note we are almost done! Just the recreate your favourite day. There have been so many amazing and creative nails done that I have no idea what to do! It's going to take some thought.



Don't forget to check out what the rest of the sexy6 did! I'm sure they managed to actually do one lol

Nails and Noms

The Nailasaurus

Fab Fingertips

The Lacquerologist

Elle's Spell on Rhinestones

Morning! I hope your week has started out well. I woke up this morning to it snowing!! I can't believe it's almost May and snow is falling. I only have 4 more days left at my co-op job and then I'm back to school! I'm really excited to get back to school for the summer.

Ever since I saw swatches of Barielle's Elle's Spell I was lemming it hard. A deep red jelly base with red and orange opal flakies? Right up my alley. Since the only places to really find Barielle's in Canada are Winners, I started looking for it every time I was in one. Eventually I found it!

The red base shows up almost a magenta pink on my nail because it is so sheer and jelly. Some people have complained about the flakies getting lost in the base, which they do because the flakies are so similar to the base. I don't mind this though because it gives the polish a bit of a different dimension than a traditional flakie.

I loved this and wore it on its on for one day but my Essie's Matte About You was sitting on my desk and I kept wondering how it would look matte!

My goodness I love this even more! Once it is matte the flakies stand out even more against the base and really shine.

This reminded me of those little bouncy balls that I used to have when I was little. I couldn't find an exact picture, but if this was red with similar flakies instead of white, it would be spot on! (Image courtesy of Google Images)

See the similarities!

So I could have stopped there, but there was a little bit of VNL so I grabbed some handy reinforcements and created a half moon with Wet n Wild's Black Creme.

I'm all over the half moon look lately. It is so easy to do and there are really infinite colour combinations.

It needed one more thing at this point, rhinestones!!

I first grabbed my 3mm rhinestones and placed them in the middle of each of the half-moons. It didn't look finished so then I took 1.5mm rhinestones and added one on either side and I loved this.

To me this looks so simple and classy at the same time. I'm glad I kept going with this mani and didn't stop somewhere along the way.

What do you think of it? Do you love half moons as much as I do? Does this look classy to you? What are your thought's on flakies?

Sincerely Stephanie