The Digit-al Dozen Does Animal Week: Octopus

Press Sample Purchased by Me

Morning loves! Here we are at Day 4 in the Digit-al Dozen's Animal Week and I have some more under the sea themed nail art to share with you. I absolutely love octopuses for a number of reasons. First of all they are incredibly cool looking and amazingly smart animals. I watched a documentary on octopuses and apparently they are on the same level of intelligence as humans but they broke off development somewhere early on and have almost a completely different biological makeup!

I google image searched octopus to get some inspiration and one of the first images that popped up was this post by Sonoma Nail Art. I absolutely loved her octopus so decided to take it as my inspiration but switch up my colours as well as where I placed him.

I started with China Glaze For Audrey as my background and then used a variety of purple polishes and my smallest nail art brush and dotting tool to create my octopus.

On my thumb and pinky I decided to create a glitter gradient using Jordana Cosmic and Icing Disco Ball. I used Cosmic on the octopus nails to create some more visual interest.

Here are all the purples that I used! I almost pulled out every one in my stash ;)
Barielle Grape Escape
China Glaze Gothic Lolita
Nail The B.Y.T.C.H. Fruity Cutie Butte
Zoya Keiko
Wet n Wild On A Trip
Rimmel Night Before
Sally Hansen Insta Dri Vigorous Violet
I'm also trying out this new hand position, what do you all think?

I really enjoyed creating this octopus look, and love having sea creatures on my nails! I am a huge fan of all BBC productions such as Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Life and the underwater portions are my favourites to watch! What are your favourite kinds of animals?

Make sure you come back tomorrow I have some of my best nail art ever to share with you :D Check out the rest of the Digit-al Dozen's posts below!

A Royal Skittlette

Afternoon! So many double posts going on up in here! I've got a skittlette manicure to share with you today. Marta of Chit Chat Nails is having a skittlette nail art contest. She defines skittlette as a manicure with two or three different accent nails. Y'all know how much I love to mix up my nails so I was super excited to enter this contest!

The inspiration for these nails was OPI Can't Let Go Liquid Sand. I had recieved it in the mail the day before I did these, but knew I wouldn't have time to swatch it and then create a look. So I put it on my middle nail and thumb and completely fell in love.

I love the combination of purple and gold so I ran with that for the rest of my nails. My index is Alter Ego Goldpanner with a dotted gradient using, Nail the B.Y.T.C.H. Fruity Cutie Butte, China Glaze Creative Fantasy and Rimmel Night Before. My ring nail is my reverse fishtail using Creative Fantasy, Essie As Good As Gold and Night Before. My pinky is Night Before with an ikat print using Good As Gold and a black and white.

I love the colour purple. Sometimes I go through phases were I become obsessed with a colour and this happens quite often with purple. When I was in first year of university one of my friends made me a purple box with purple candy and a plethora od purpleness.

I'm really excited to see the rest of the entries in the nail art competition! What do you think of my royal skittlette? Do you like the purple and gold colour combination?
You can check out the rest of the entries in the contest here!

Hope you're having a great day!

31 Day Challenge Day 10: Gradient

We've reached the tenth day of the challenge! Yay! One third of the way through! Today's theme is gradient. Gradients have been sooooo huge recently and there are some amazing tutorials out there showing you how to get that perfectly smooth gradient. I saw a manicure called the Harlequin Hardware about a month or two back and I immediately jotted it down in my nail polish notebook. I thought this was the perfect time to pull it out and try it!

So, not your typical gradient, but I really love the effect! I used Nail the B.Y.T.C.H Fruity Cutie Butte as my purple base and then sponged on China Glaze Gothic Lolita around the outside of my nail. I went back and sponged on a little of Fruity Cutie Butte again in the middle where I had overdone it with the darker purple. I then used striping tape to tape off a clean line for my tip and used Pure Ice Silver Mercedes as my silver tip! Add a coat of NYC In a Minute Top Coat and I was all done!

I love how simple this is to do, yet it's a really funky effect and a neat way to use a gradient! I can see myself wearing this in all sorts of colour combos!

What do you think of my unconventional gradient nails?! Do you like the Harlequin Hardware manicure look?

Make sure you head over to The Lacquerologist to see what Emily has come up with! I'm sure it's fabulous!

See you all back here tomorrow to start on the second third of the challenge :D

31 Day Challenge Day 6: Violet

It’s violet day! I’m not sure about you, but violet is essentially purple right? Well I’ve got some purpleiffic nails to show you today.

Candice from Mr.Candiipants posts some epically awesome manicures and awhile back when gradients were all anyone was talking about she decided to amp it up a little and do this amazing block gradient. It has been bookmarked in my Nail Inspiration folder ever since she did it and I figured it was finally time to recreate it!

These are actually super easy to do! Here is the tutorial from Candice, but I’ll do a quick run down of what I did. I started with a coat of Nail the B.Y.T.C.H. Fruity Cutie Butte the lightest purple and the colour closest to my cuticle. This does not have to be opaque because you’ll be going over it with the rest of your gradient! I took my favourite medium length striping brush and my middle colour Sally Hansen Psychedelic Purple and made a block in the middle of my nail. Then I went down the gradient using Essie Jamacia Me Crazy and Zoya Keiko creating again blocks about 1/7 of my nail long. I filled in using Fruity Cutie Butte near my cuticle making sure there were no bald spots. Then I went from the middle of my nail to the tip using, Barielle Grape Escape, Konad Special Polish in Purple and finally Rimmel Night Before on my tip.

Now if you aren’t crazy like me and don’t have 7 purple polishes that you can use to make a block gradient you can do this by mixing one colour with black and white crèmes! This was actually my initial plan, but then I hauled out all my purples and realized I had enough… I’ve got a lot of polish ok. :D

I added those two rhinestones on my thumb and ring finger to bling it up a little, buuut turns out you couldn’t really see them. Oh well. I still like them there.

I love the idea of the block gradient, and it’s pretty fly and all you need is a striping brush and all you have to do is draw lines! And even if your lines aren’t straight since it’s a gradient, who is really going to notice?! Ya I just realized I said fly… he he…

Do you love the idea of the block gradient as much as I do?! Thanks for coming up with such an awesome idea Candace!

Now head over to The Lacquerologist and see what Emily has done for violet day!

Six down, twenty-five to go. I’ll see you tomorrow with some black and white nails that I’ll be attempting tonight! I’m super excited about them! :D

Like a Princess

Gooooood Morning lovelies! How are you all doing this Friday morning? I am hopefully fabulous. I'm scheduling this post in advance. Today is my one year anniversary! :D We've got a very romantic day and evening planned and I am very much looking forward to it. My boy always tells me that I'm his princess so I did some princess inspired nails for you today. :)

I've been seeing quite a few manis around that incorporate some nude nail. So I decided to go with that theme. I did a base coat of my favourite Essie Grow Faster and then used reinforcements to create a half moon. I did two coats of Nail the B.Y.T.C.H. Caught in Candy and removed the reinforcements, which left me with a nude half moon. Caught in Candy is a little brushstrokey, but it isn't a complete frost. I really love this blue. Then I took some iridescent loose glitter from Born Pretty Store and with a dotting tool placed the glitter in the half moon. One coat of NYC Top Coat and I was feeling like a princess.

These were very simple and to do and literally took me 20 minutes to finish both hands. Exactly the kind of mani that I need while in these last few weeks of school. :)

Nail the B.Y.T.C.H. polishes can be found here for a mere $6.00 a polish! AND my Canadian friends they have started shipping to CANADA! How exciting is that!? So all of you should scoot over here and pick up a few. ;)

I love playing with loose glitter. Have you ever incorporated loose glitter into a mani? Is this something you would spend time doing?

I hope you are all having a fabulous day!! I will talk to all of you lacquered lovelies tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by! :D

Marry a Cutie Butte

Morning Dears! Today I have a quick post for you. Last week when I was wearing Nail the B.Y.T.C.H.'s Fruity Cutie Butte I was loving it so much that I really didn't want to take it off my nails. Unfortunately after a while there was a little tip wear so I needed to spruce up my mani.

I took China Glaze Marry a Millionaire from the Eyecandy Collection and was originally going to do a glitter gradient, but I screwed up. I slipped and ended up with the polish down half of the side of my nail. So I just went with it and ended up with this half nail of each!

I really like the final result of this and it let me keep wearing Fruity Cutie Butte for a few more days.

Do you ever add a little something to a mani to get a few more days wear out of it?

Until next time,

Sincerely Stephanie

Nail the B.Y.T.C.H's Fruity Cutie Butte

Hello Everyone! Happy Hump Day!

Today I have a new to me indie brand of nail polish to show you. They are called Nail the B.Y.T.C.H (Be Your True Creative Heroine) and was created by two cousins Jennifer and Lanaia from Chicago. Their line of lacquers "feature exuberant, bold colors and names that appeal to the edgy, everyday consumer who wants to be their own fashionista." I was lucky enough to win this bottle of Fruity Cutie Butte on twitter. Let's take a look!

Fruity Cutie Butte is described as "I heard it through the grapevine...this Purplicious cutie is hard to find. Fun, flirty and ready to show off her assets in a pair of hot pants!" And is this polish ever fun and flirty! A three free creme in an orchid and lilac purple colour. The formula was amazing on this, full opaque coverage in two coats. I probably could have gotten away with one coat on this one but decided to go with two to really let the colour stand out.

The brush on this polish is so easy to use. All my photos are without clean up! There was just nothing to clean. So easy to control. Can you tell I am a huge fan of this brand?

I am completely in love with this brand. Another awesome thing about them? Their polishes retail for only $6.00 US for a 15mL bottle!! You can't get any better than this. I luckily have two more of their polishes and can't wait to show you those. You can purchase these online here. So what are you waiting for? You're probably not even reading this anymore, probably on their website deciding which pretties need to be yours.

Until next time,

Sincerely Stephanie

*I won this on twitter with no promise of a good review. This is my honest opinion of the polish*