Black Friday! Let the Madness Begin!

If you're a shopper, today's the day you'll shop til you drop or click til you break the mouse (no wait, that's Cyber Monday, right?)  There's all kinds of Black Friday deals available; if you are looking for indie polishes, as I tweeted a week or so ago, Refined & Polished has a pretty comprehensive list of Black Friday sales for indie polishes here. The radio this week has been crazy announcing Black Friday sales here in Canada, too......I've also heard Tangerine Saturday and a variety of other colours with days of the week....what's up with that?  Anyway, I thought I'd do a Black Friday shopping mani to get you in the mood if you will be doing some online or in person shopping over the next few days!  

Started with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and FingerPaints Black Expressionism (no pix as have shown both many times before).  

Added assortment of images using variety of plates; MoYou Tourist Collection-06 (thumb), CH54 (index), Dash 7 (cart on middle), GA13 (computer on middle), and CH55 (sale on ring and $ on pinky).  Used Konad black special polish and Mundo de Unas stamping colours.

A look at the plates.

MoYou Tourist Collection-06

CH54


































CH55


GA13


Dash 7


Added a few random images to the middle finger to accent.



Mani still looked like it was missing something, so added a few random dots using same Mundo de Unas polishes.



Topped with SV to finish.  .



For some reason, I had a terribly hard time on the cleanup from the Mundo de Unas polishes as you may be able to see on some of the pix above. Not sure why; I've never had a problem before.  Took a couple pix the next day and it was much better.



Thanks for looking!  Good luck with your Black Friday shopping if you are doing any!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American Friends!

Thanksgiving has already come and gone in Canada as it's celebrated in October here. My daughter and I did these cute little turkeys for a potluck we went to; I thought I'd share if you are celebrating today!  And if you want a good laugh, go down to the bottom of the post!

 

Here's the gaggle of gobblers!

A little tutorial if you feel like making them.  This is what you'll need.  Oreo cookies for base and back; I used regular for the base and double stuffed for the back (don't try using regular Oreo's for the back; you will thank me for the tip!); malt teasers, caramel and/or peanut butter cups, red licorice, candy corn, black cookie icing and yellow decorating icing.

Insert the candy corn into the double stuffed Oreo's.

Using black cookie icing, attach the two Oreo's.  If you're having a problem getting them to stand up straight and attached, you can lean them up against something flat; we used a cereal box.  But we got good enough towards the end that we didn't need any type of support for them.  You have to wait a bit of time for them to set at this point; if I could offer any advice for these at all, I would say if you can use black coloured royal icing or anything that hardens in a short time, it would be worth it as it took a bit of time for them to harden but can't really be moved otherwise until they do.  . 

Anyway, when they have hardened or at least are at least enough to adhere without rolling, lay on their sides. 

Attach peanut butter/caramel cup to cookie base with icing.  (The pix we were trying to copy had cut them and put them on their side but we thought the head would be easier to adhere/have less candy waste this way.)

Put malteser on top of it and dab with icing to secure too.

While we were waiting for them to harden so the head didn't fall off when we stood them up right, we added licorice at base of the head, dotted eyes and beaks for the birds and then dotted eyes with the black icing.

Stood up and done! 

Now for the funny.  As I mentioned above, the family was attending a big potluck.  I was googling Thanksgiving food ideas and found the one below; this is the pix that I was trying to copy.  Of course, I didn't read the instructions on how to make them, I figured I know my way around the kitchen, I can figure out the ingredients and set off to make one the night before so I knew how long they would take.

After some struggling, finally got the candy corn in the regular Oreo but broke one from the force. Not to mention all the cookie icing all over everything.  Finally got the malteser to finally stay on top of the cup but had to use lots of icing and had to hold it in place with fingers as at the time, didn't know to lie them down ...made a real mess as you can see lol!

Success!  I got it to work!

Oh, oh!  Wait!  I spoke too soon! The head fell off not too long after.

And then it rolled right off!  Seriously....you don't know how hard my family laughed at this poor pathetic turkey!

So this is my Pinterest Fail...well, I didn't get the idea from Pinterest, but if you see the link here, you'll know what I'm talking about!  I think there's a whole bunch of these Nailed It! on Pinterest too!  I may add mine!

Thanks for looking...and Happy Thanksgiving!

Holo Gradient Using Aly's Dream

I have nothing of interest or catchy to open with for this post.  The truth is I was looking for a polish to do my nails and was looking for one that would easily remove because of the poor, sore state of my cuticles. I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about the woes of my poor, sore state of my cuticles for the last month as they seem to be monopolizing my posts lately...and even made it to my newly started Twitter feed lol! The good news is (knock on wood and checking nails right now), I think they are behind me (although I'm pretty sure I have lots more pix to share so just overlook them...and I'll try not to bring them up again!!) So here's a pretty holo gradient that I did not too long ago.

Started with a base of two coats of Aly's Dream Bayouberry, no topcoat.

Sponged on a Aly's Dream Duchess Blue.  Didn't topcoat; just waited for it to dry while I looked for a plate to use.

Stamped using MoYou Tourist Collection-07 using white Konad special polish.

A quick look at MoYou Tourist Collection-07.

Topped with SV to finish.

Speaking of my Twitter feed....I started this a little over a  week ago if you haven't seen it on the right of the page.  I did it for a few reasons....believe it or not, I do more than paint and stamp my nails!  I realize that my blog isn't the most personal as I don't share a whole lot about what I do in life (and that probably won't change much as my blog was started and always will be for the most part, keeping track of my mani's). But sometimes I stumble across polish sales or great finds.  In fact, not too long ago, I found a whole bunch of Essie's for $2.  But I recognize I'm slow to post and I may never do a post to let people know via the blog that there are $2 Essie's for sale. But it's easy enough to tweet about it in a few seconds. Same with the recent tweet about the Black Friday sales and the blogger who is compiling the list; or the info about the recently released Bunny Nails plates. I also do quite a bit of travelling around Ontario doing different things and thought I may share some of the pix of my travels that may not be nail blog material but may be of some interest.  The feed may even highlight other blogs or items/posts of interest out in the blogesphere. Things like this. While I haven't done a whole lot of tweeting, the intention is that it will be a mix of what I'm doing of interest (that may not be too much when you consider one tweet was me making rice crispy squares!) as well as some polish and/or plate news/commentary.  I don't expect that I'm going to get a huge Twitter following; that wasn't the intention, but more so to add it to the blog page just as a quick update to see what's currently happening if that makes sense!

Thanks for looking!

Lick and Smooth Method Works!

I didn't have any intention of posting this mani.  I did it a couple nights ago simply to change my nails but because I'm feeling all crappy about the sad state of my cuticles and have been waiting for them to heal (see the ouchie still on the middle finger?  *sigh*), I was just going to do a polish change and not really worry about taking pix along the way to share as I usually do.  I took a few pix just in case it turned out OK, bad cuticles and all, but it really wasn't what I had in mind. Honest! In fact, I hardly took any pix of this mani; less than 30 in total (considering some mani's I take a couple hundred pix, this is low!) Anyway, I loved how this turned out so I'm glad I took a few pix to share.





I didn't have anything specifically planned or in mind when I started this mani; I realized I've been wearing a lot of blues lately (even though they have yet to be posted!) so wanted something different on my nails and just looked through my polish stash for the first polish that seemed to be calling my name (although I don't think I strayed too far from the blue spectrum with this choice!).  Did two coats of Elevation Polish Mount Cangyan, no topcoat.



While the base is stunning, I was less than happy with what's going on at the tips here so decided to do some layering on top of it.  I happen to see Pahlish Your Possible Heart sitting there handy at my desk and thought it would be an interesting cover, so added a light coat of it on top.



In different lighting; the pix below is more colour accurate.  No topcoat.  (Topcoat would have added greatly and if I wasn't going to stamp on top, I would have added it now.  But of course, I knew I was going to stamp on top of it so waited for it to dry.)



While my nails were drying, I was looking through my plate stash to pick out an image.  Unfortunately, the sticky from a clear plastic plate covering caught my still wet nails, denting then as well as taking a couple little chunks out of the pinky and ring finger polish when I peeled the plastic off.  As they were semi-wet still and I didn't really want to take off the polish on just those two fingers and reapply, I just smoothed them down with my finger (aka, the "lick your finger and smooth" method!) and then added another coat of Pahlish Your Possible Heart on top to even. Of course, had to wait a while longer for them to dry.  You can see that those two fingers, the pinky and ring, look slightly different than the other nails in the pix below as not as much of the base coat is evident underneath/you can see more of Pahlish Your Possible Heart as its now two coats on those fingers.  It's not that obvious of a difference in real life.

I didn't want to hide too much of these pretty colours so decided upon an image from LS-20; stamped with China Glaze 2030.





Topped with Sally Hansen Diamond Flash Fast Dry topcoat (aka, the one in the black bottle).





This is one of the more interesting layering combinations I've done in a while...and I'm glad I took a few pix along the way to share....just please excuse the ouchies as I didn't edit them out!

Thanks for looking!

Smitten Bifrost Covered in Snowflakes

Is it too early to say the "s" word?  As in snow?  Here in southern Ontario, we've been lucky so far; other than a few flakes one day last week, we've been snow free. However, in snow belt areas in Ontario, they already have a couple inches of the white stuff according to friends and family who live there.  I personally don't mind the snow; just hate driving in it. And it's not my driving in it, it everyone else's! Anyway, I recently received a few Smitten polishes; this is one of them, Smitten Bifrost, which got covered in snowflakes.  If I'm being honest, this really is the only snowflakes I really want to see.....on my nails!





Started with a base of two coats of Smitten Bifrost, no topcoat.





I was looking for an image that the base could still be visible underneath. Decided upon MJ VII, stamped using white Konad special polish.



Topped with HKGirl QD topcoat.






Sometimes blurry pix are better....




Hope you had a great weekend; thanks for looking!