Keep Calm and Enjoy Summer

Summer has officially arrived and we finally have had a few hot days.  A little too hot but are we ever happy with the weather?  Too hot, too cold, too much rain, no rain...never happy, I tell ya!

Started with a base of Color Club Peace Out Purple, Color Club Mrs. Robinson and Morgan Taylor Anime-zing Color!, with accent nails using all three in a sponged gradient, then topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top.

Stamped using images from UberChic Beach Please (ring, pinky and index), Lina 4 Seasons-Summer 03 thumb) and Moyra 6-Exotique (middle) using Painted Polish Midnight Mischief, with shadow stamping using it and MdU 20 on the thumb.  Topped with a final coat of KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish.

Thanks for looking and enjoy summer!

Enjoy These Last Days of Summer Weather!

Southern Ontario is going through a little heat wave these last few days even though the first day of fall has come and gone!  Not that I'm complaining; we didn't have that great of a summer as it was cool and raining so much in the spring and early summer as well as unseasonably cool in late summer.  Anyway, not like we have any choice in the matter but I thought I would at least share these summer nails that I was sporting about a month ago!  Here's what I came up with!

Started with a base of Quo by Orly Femme Fatale, no top coat.  I love this colour; so bright and fun; it's the colour that I've wore on my toes most of the summer!  Yes, I try to take my own polish when I get a pedi so that I have it in case I need a touch up.  I also take my own quick dry top coat because they never, ever have quick dry tc at the salon and I can cut down dry time (plus am usually wearing sandals all summer long so my dry time is cut down substantially) so I keep this polish and a bottle of KBShimmer Clearly on Top in my purse.  I have a couple backups of this too because I love it so much!

Topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top.

Stamped using images from MoYou Tropical 16 (middle), MoYou Tropical 06 (thumb), Lina 4 Seasons-Summer 03 (ring), Lina 4 Seasons-Summer 02 (image over words on ring) and Lina Feeling Shapely! 02 (index and pinky); used Painted Polish Midnight Mischief.

Topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish.

Thanks for looking...and enjoy this summer weather while we can!

Beachy Fluid Art!

I know it's Tuesday and not Friday but I did share some fluid art on Friday over on my instagram account, just didn't get around to sharing what had been stamped on it yet.  So I thought I would get this post done of the stamping and the fluid art base now before too many other posts got in the way!

Last week on IG, I had seen a couple stories about a colour scheme that had been chosen by @damningeden and @nailartaddict_em and remembered that I had a fluid art trial from a few weeks ago that would probably be close enough to fit the challenge so decided to share it too!  This is the base and the stamping!

This is the fluid art (in the middle; the ones to the left and right were total fails but you never know if you got the DIY formula right until you try it!).  You may recall from a post here a few weeks ago that I had been making fluid nail polishes and this was one of the trials.  While not the best, it did have cells as you can see although they weren't overly prominent on the nail.  

Here's what it looked like once applied.  Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of the polishes used as I pretty much spent a weekend making fluid polishes through trial and error using my less expensive brand of polishes.  And you can see a couple cracks in the base but I had applied a yellow base coat ahead of applying the decals.  The other thing to keep in mind is this polish base has been on a container lid for over a month so it was starting to get brittle and wasn't as pliable as if it had just been made which is why there is the odd crack here and there. But it still seemed to bend enough to fit the nail so I decided to use it but there were a couple issues.

Topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top.

Stamped using images from Moyra 66-Exotique (middle and thumb), Lina 4 Seasons-Summer 03 (index), Sugar Bubbles SB 065 (ring and any birds you see on any nail) and Sugar Bubbles SB 031 (pinky) using MdU 2.  The words on the index finger were shadow stamped using MdU 2 and 11.



Sugar Bubbles SB 065.

Moyra 66-Exotique

Lina 4 Seasons-Summer 03

Topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish.

While I really like the fluid look of these types of nails, I find applying the cut out decals pretty time consuming and then there is all the clean up needed, even if I do trim them down quite a bit.  And it never fails that I have some colour in the decal that is horrible for clean up!  The other thing to point out for this mani is it was one of those that it looks great in the pix but just looking at it on the nail, it looked like a hot mess as the images aren't very obvious unless you are looking pretty close to the nail.  Overall, I think it turned out OK!

Thanks for looking!