Polish All the Nails

Finally, a holiday made for me!  New Years Eve has been designated the sparkly night and that's actually a lot of pressure for me.  What, you mean I have to choose just ONE sparkly?  But I'm sparkly all year round!  I decided that since I usually dress up in all black, why not go simple with black and silver nails.  I'm glad I did because OMG the sparklies. 

I'm pretty good with glitter.  Give me a pattern and a little time, odds are I can produce it with glitter.  Acrylic paints, on the other hand, yeah, not as good.  I think it's because with glitter it's really easy to correct mistakes - just move the glitter around - but paint is so unforgiving.  I'm jealous of the incredibly talented people who do amazing things with paints so I trimmed down a few more brushes and gave a new pattern a try.  I saw a great tutorial from Nailumium for Geometric Skittle nails  and gave it a shot.  Well, two shots, and this is the better one.  Let's take a look, shall we?

I've been calling my glitter placement nails "mermaid nails" for a while now, because the hex glitter reminds me of sparkly scales, and that mermaids are better than fish.  Now I have so much more glitter to play with - especially circles - I can have a go at a proper scaled mani.  I've tried it once before with 3mm circles but they're just a bit too big and the top coat doesn't apply well.  Turns out 1mm is just the right size!

When you've done as many posts as I have, coming up with new content gets really difficult!  You end up having to be creative, even if it means throwing on all the glitter you have on your nails.  Which is awesome, because I'm not the biggest fan of the more subdued manis.  If it hurts a little to look at, that's what I want.  Let's take a look at what it looks like when you cover your nails in glitter, with no two pieces alike on an individual, nail, shall we?

Alrighty!  It's December 20th and it's probably about time I did Christmas nails properly.  It wouldn't be me without the sparklies so of course it's going to be all done in glitter. At least I used five different types of glitter!  And pretty base colours!  Let's take a look, shall we?

Guys, I'm struggling with inspiration a bit lately.  I've just done so many different glitter manis that it's getting quite difficult to come up with new ideas.  Or ideas that are different enough from what I've done a bunch of times already.  I spent two House episodes last night effectively just staring and stirring my little bags and pots of glitter, hoping for inspiration to strike.  I got a bit stuck on my gold holo circle glitter so that was the winner.  It's really hard, guys!  At least China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy is amazing. 

I love glitter so much it's just not even funny at this point.  My challenge now is filling out the gaps in my collection - getting glitter that's the same size in as many different colours as possible so I can do, well, stuff like this mani!  I ordered a TON of new glitter  from Borough Babe Supply on Etsy and the clear standout was a crazy mix of small circle matte glitter called Lichtenstein .  It my not be sparkly but it certainly is colourful!  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

So I have the plastic tray, right.  All the times I do glitter and I have bits left over but mixed together a bit, it goes in the tray.  I like to look at this tray cos it's sparkly and I like that.  I want to apply said mix to my nails but choosing is hard because there's so many different shapes and sizes.  The little hexes have the largest variety of colours and finishes, so why not that.  So I did that.  On all fives nails.  Over two days.  Cos this takes ages.  But sparkly!

Ok so considering I did what might have been my most sparkly nails ever the other day and that I have that same glitter in two other colours, there is hardly surprising I'm going to do the same thing again.  I just like looking at this glitter.  It's just so interesting in it's dazzle finish, and so sparkly.  It's much better to talk about the sparklies rather than how angry I am at my inability to take photos of red things.  Look how blown out my fingers are here!  Admittedly it's better than my last attempt at red nails but still bugs me.  Oh well, sparkly!  

I apologise in advance for any and all meme related content in this post but come on, how could I not do it?  So here we go: I heard you liked nail polish so I put some polish on your nails!  With polish!  But not actually polish, acrylic paints!  I don't know how I'm going to hold all this polish on my nails!  Yayyyyyyy! .... sorry . I'll stop now. 

For almost two years and five hundred posts, I've been working to be the most sparkly I can be.  I love glitter and nothing makes me happy quite like having sparkly nails.  I was delighted to see OPI I Snow You Love Me as not only did it have circle glitter but it has that dazzle finish that's so very sparkly.  I'm not the biggest fan of fishing glitter out of a polish so I went one better - I found similar dazzle glitter on eBay.  Let me therefore present to you what might be the most sparkly mani I've ever done.  

I get asked a lot about how often I do my nails.  It's every day.  Unless I'm sleeping.  That means though that you guys don't get to see all the nails I do.  I have to like how the photos came out, how well I cleaned up, etc for me to actually post it.  So these nails were from a little while ago and I think they'll do for today.  Let's take a look at OPI Incognito in Sausalito, shall we? 

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Sephora Formula X polishes.  I love them, because they're gorgeous and hate them because they're $15 each.  I hate them a bit more for being so gorgeous I'll PAY $15 each.  After Outburst was so stunning the other day, I had to get the red one, Voltage.  Next pay I'll probably get the other three.  Sigh.  Let's bask in sparkliness, shall we?

So I got some incredible circle glitter in the mail the other day from an eBay store.  White pearl, black matte and three different colours of "dazzle" glitter - what more could a glitter-crack-addict want?  This of course means I had to try an experiment: mermaid scale nails.  I've tried this mani before but getting the glitter to sit flat and stay has always been an issue.  This glitter is too gorgeous not to try though.  Let's take a look at my proper rainbow fish nails, shall we?

Ooooo I'm excited today because I have the fruits of late-night eBay binge to show you!  I got so carried away the envelope the glitter came in was HEAVY.  My boyfriend handed it to me like it was bomb, going to explode glittery all over him.  Inside, FIVE new circle glitters, three of which have that amazing finish the OPI I Snow You Love Me has.  I FOUND THAT GLITTER GUYS.  So of course I had to bung a bunch on my nails.  Over an amazing hot pink, no less. 

Urgh, I hate being busy at work.  And needing to sleep.  Together they don't leave a ton of time to be sparkly.  This took me three nights to do.  Three!  The last day I walked around with just my middle finger not done as I had to sleep.  That doesn't matter now as I have reached maximum sparkliage on my right hand and that's allllll that matters.  Let's take a look, shall we?

I wonder sometimes what you think when I write a more critical review of my nails.  I hope it's not that I'm fishing for compliments - I swear that's not me.  I just like to be honest about how something turned out sometimes.  Like this ruby slippers mani:  looks a bit like fruit in jello, doesn't it?  And for some reason that just skeeves me a bit.  It's still pretty though!  I guess!  Let's take a look, shall we?

As you can imagine, I was pretty excited when the new Sephora X polishes came out.  Not only were there a million of them, but I could go see them in person, circling the huge stand and singling out my prey.  I'm not the most happy that the good ones are FIFTEEN dollars each but what am I going to do, not buy any?? That's silly.  I have few now but my favourite so far as to be the incredibly Outburst.  LOOK AT IT:

Fire nails! I felt like doing 'em, so here we are!  I did at least try something different with the base - this is Play Koi, one of the new Triple Shine polishes.  I mean, we all need another shaped Sally Hansen polish bottle like we need holes in the head but eh, it's an excuse to buy polish.  Cos, you know, I don't have any other them!  Let's take a look, shall we?

After having so much fun on Saturday playing with polish with Kristin  and Lindsey , my real-life Instagram BBFs, I had to have just as fancy nails for myself as I did for them.  Given Lindsey got rainbow mermaid scales and Kristin got 3D glitter cubes, I knew i had to be pretty sparkly to beat...myself? in sparkliness?  I don't know, I just wanted to be sparkly too.  Good job introduction writing, Laura. 

Guess what guys?  The ridiculous amount of Hex Nail Charms I ordered a while back arrived!  I've been seeing them all over the internet so of course I need them too.  I probably shouldn't have ordered ~25 of them but whatcha gunna do.  I needed something awesome to pair them with so why not a gradient with Ozotic holo polishes?  Unicorns need rainbows, it's the law. 

Guess what guys, it's not glitter today!  Instead, I have the incredibly amazing ILNP Ultrachrome polishes to show you!  I saw a picture of these on the ILNP site and gasped out loud when I saw the colour shift.  I totally didn't sit for an hour at work, refreshing the page when the preorders went up.  That would be silly.  I was so excited when they arrived as they looked as amazing in the bottle as they did on the site.  I swatched each polish over black, took the photos, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the finish to a place where I was satisfied.  I'm sure it's something about the way I was applying it, but there would be little bumps or inconsistencies in the finish and it was annoying.  So I didn't post them.  I gave them another shot in a taped mani and YES THIS IS BETTER LOOK:

Hi, not dead, just busy with Halloween party that was totally awesome, and then my computer making burning smells.  Still not sure what's doing that.... Anyway, I have something unprecedented to show you today - a third version of the same mani!  This one is particularly special to me as it was my first post to really take off and is still my second highest viewed post of all time.  I'm talking about my Electric Mermaid Nails , and Electric Mermaid Nails 2: The Mermaidening .  Let's take a look at the Electric Mermaid Strikes Back, shall we? 

I'm going to do my normal intro but I have to tell you about Saturday just gone.  I'm sure a lot of you will understand that it can be hard finding real-life people to go nail polish shopping with.  Rarely can you state polish as your sole shopping goal because most people just don't understand.  Not this Saturday!  I took a chance and posted to Instagram about going polish shopping at the Eaton Centre here in Toronto.  I was so excited to have two awesome ladies show up, Lindsay  and Kristin .  We had the most fun afternoon shopping for polish, culminating in actually being able to buy the 22 mini set of Sephora X polishes because we could split them three ways!  Of course I had to do ridiculous glitter nails, I had to maximise the attention I can get in real life!  Let's take a look at my sunset mermaid nails, shall we?

One of the first polish brands I became obsessed with was Nfu-Oh.  They had the most fabulous holo and flakie polishes in unique bottles and the only place to get them from was a questionable site.  I eventually couldn't stand it any longer and had to order 61 and 51, the holo and flakie, respectively.  I've had both of them proceed to sit in my drawer for 18 months because I could never do them justice.  Every time my base colour would be wrong, or not smooth enough and it would be unsatisfactory.  Finally, finally, finally I found a way to make the multichrome flakie 51 match the brilliance in the bottle, and all is right in the world.  Let's take a look at one of the most breathtaking single polishes I own, shall we?

Do you know how hard it is to write another glitter intro?  Like, sure, I haven't used this glitter before but you've seen this with different colours.  You know, this might not be a bad time to just talk a little about my camera setup and how I'm happy I've finally found a way for the holographic rainbow in my glitter to show up.  I have quite a complicated setup for my photos.  I have a Canon T3i DSLR with a matching 60mm 1:1 macro lens.  This means I can get realllllly close up photos, like the ones I take of my thumb.  What this also means though is that I have to get really close to my nails with a big camera, something that's super difficult to light.  So I have a lightbox .  That's fine, but it gives out really even light which eats sparklies.  To compensate for THAT, I have a ring flash on my lens.  Until recently, when I put fresh batteries in it, I didn't realise it was cranked way down.  So I put it on full brightness. ...

So I got some glitter in the mail last week from Glitties.com .  In it, was a bunch of glitter colours small square glitter in a mixture of metallic and holo finishes.  You surely know what's coming right?  With a long weekend of not much happening because I'm Australian and have no family in Canada?  That's right.  ALL.  THE.  FREAKING.  GLITTER. I posted a picture of this on Instagram earlier this morning and the response was predictable: awesome, but who has the time?? I DO.  I will sacrifice as much time as I need to to show you maximum sparklies!

Can I ask you guys a question?  What do you like to see here on my blog?  Do you like swatches, glitter placements, taping, acrylic free-hand painting, dots, watermarbling or a general mixture?  Cos I do a lot of glitter placements, obviously, because that's what I like.  Do you like them too or should I make an effort to do other things?  I'll <3 you forever if you leave a comment below.   With that being said, let's take a look at another glitter placement! At least it's with a holo base colour, and half moon chevrons!

I was contacted by someone from Glitties.com recently, offering to send me glitter to review.  Of course I'm up for that!  My jam is making patterns with glitter so I was super happy to see so many different glitter colours in the same size and shape.  I'm like a crackhead for holo glitter, so the gold, silver, turquoise and light blue 3mm hexes were of course going to be my first choice.  SO SPARKLY. Let's take a look at my latest mermaid nails, shall we?

I apologise for yelling at you yesterday.  I was super frustrated that all my pictures came out a different colour.  Today is better because I used glitter.  Everything is better with glitter.  Especially massive holographic circular glitter that is not only sparkly but so big it actually goes rainbows in all lighting conditions.  Shall we?

Brace yourselves, I'm quite a mix of strong emotions today.  Ahem: WHY DO YOU HATE ME RED POLISHES.  I LOVE YOU AND YOU MAKE IT LOOK LIKE MY HANDS ARE BLEEDING AND THAT I TOOK PICTURES WITH A POTATO THAT CANNOT REGISTER COLOUR PROPERLY.  THIS RED IS BEAUTIFUL AND DARK BUT IT LOOKS THREE DIFFERENT SHADES HERE AFTER I SPENT 20 MINUTES TRYING TO FIX IT.  ONE OF THE SHADES IS BLEEDING.  THIS IS A LOT AND I WISH YOU WOULD BE NICE TO ME.  Also, studs are pretty cool, and I kiiiinda made it on the popular page on Instagram and I'm really excited about it :D

Ok so I did t his mani last weekend.  It was good, but it could be sparklier.  I know that was a lot of glitter last time but JUST NOT SPARKLY ENOUGH.  So realising I now have the full rainbow of holo colours in my small hexes, of course I'm going to do proper.  Sparkly.  

Sometimes things done turn out how you planned.  I've been doing a lot of glitter lately so when I sat down to do a mani that wasn't glitter, I decided to follow suit with jessuhhkuh on Instagram and do a girly, soft rainbow mani with Color Club Halo Hues polishes.  I did that but instead of being flowery and soft it came out really grundy.  Turns out that's ok too!

I swear I'm a bit broken.  I get home from my weekly Tuesday movie (yay /r/torontoevents!) and have my exciting Dollish Polish package waiting for me.  Eleven polishes!  Including the gaming collection I've been lusting over for, like, a year!  But no, midnight is a silly time to do just a simple glitter swatch, it must be sparklier!   And more time consuming!

I don't even know how to introduce these any more.  It's a lot of glitter.  Like, a lot.  I was showing off my glitter stash to instagram yesterday and realised I had more holo glitter than I thought, in the smaller size that fits with my matte and metallic rainbow glitter.  So of course I'm going to do something excessive with it.  Cue the pictures!

I've had this little bag of gold holographic square glitter sitting on my desk for a little while now, taunting me.  "I'm not that small!", it says. "You can totally start a mani with me now, at 11.45pm, and you'll totally be done by 1am!".  IT'S A LIAR AND I SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO GLITTER.   I was talking to my new friend Antonia and she had the great idea of doing an art deco mani with glitter instead of tape.  See how these two things came together?  Yeah, well, I love the idea and hate the glitter.  And my execution. 

For the longest time, I've admired Sarah's work over at ChalkboardNails.com.  Her technique is flawless, her photography is flawless and I basically hate/love her for being so amazing.  So I was just casually reading Tumblr last night and I see a post of hers, a gorgeous mani with holographic charcoal glitter for her 17th day of the 30 day challenge.  I squee-d a bit then once recovered I clicked through to her site.  There, right at the top, is this: If there's one day to tackle a glitter placement manicure, it's the "Glitter" day of the 31 Day Challenge. So I put on my big girl pants and said a prayer to the god of glitter placement,  Polish All the Nails . Like, just kill me now.  I was so excited I fluttered a couple of laps around my apartment, woke up my boyfriend to tell him then tracked down all the places she posted it and gushed praise all over everything.  It's so excited, I can't really words good right now.  It was already 11.30p...

My favourite thing about the nail art community is that every single person is just about the nicest person I've ever met.  Everyone is so encouraging, so supportive, it just makes me so happy.  I'm not so rosy-glasses about myself.  I know I can't produce masterpieces every day so let's take a look at a mani I'm not so happy with, for a multitude of reasons. 

Time again last night for the Reddit monthly meetup so of course I'm going to do super sparkly nails to maximise the amount of attention I can get from the occasion.  I had some gold and black glitter sprinkled on a piece of plastic for some reason, so that was the winner candidate.  And blue too because it was there too.  Let's go look at this, shall we?

I got paid yesterday so of course I'm going to go buy more polish.  It's the good pay, where I don't have to pay rent, so I kind splurged a bit, picking up the other half of the Zoya Fall Pixie Dust Collection, a Deborah Lippmann, a couple of Nails Inc and a few cheap drug store polishes.  Shh I'm an adult.  I've seen some lovely manis with rainbow stripes and texture polishes so of course I'm going to try out my new Zoyas.  

Once in awhile, I get the urge to do what most would consider insane levels of glitter.  I do it because I love it and I love sparklies.  This took a really long time to do - two night in fact - but it's totally worth it because it's just so very, very sparkly.  The glitter from LoveNailz etsy store goes so well together too.  I hope I get reincarnated as a mermaid, and my tail looks like this.  That would be nice...

It may sound a bit excessive but I don't feel totally set for a day if my nails aren't a bit crazy.  It's mostly because I like the attention.  If I don't have a ton of time, and I don't have a specific polish in mind to try, I'm going to do glitter dots because it's surprisingly fast to do.  What I'm about to show you I got done from base coat to top coat in about 45 minutes.  

I'm not normally big on the "normal" style of swatches but I found the China Glaze Halloween Collection 2013 in TBBS yesterday and I couldn't resist getting them.  Then actually using them. Because they're ALL AMAZING.  Let's take a look, shall we?  I have about three million pictures, so get comfy!

Since I've been busy doing my nails for Revlon  (I love saying that, even if it is just for their Tumblr), I haven't been able to do as much glitter stuff as I'd have liked as they didn't send me any!  I'm just going to have to make up for it now by taking an already very sparkly polish, Floss Gloss Stun, and add mega sparkly glitter allllllll over it.  IT'S SERIOUSLY SO SPARKLY.   LoveNailz does the best glitter.  

If I see an interesting nail polish, I'm prooobbabbbly going to buy it.  Using it is a completely different thing but I'm definitely going to buy it.  I picked up the pink Nails Inc Leather Effect polish Ladbroke Lane ages ago and I haven't really known what to do with it.  It wasn't until I caved and bought the black one, Noho, that I finally figured out what to do with them.  Leather chevrons!

You might notice I've been a little light on the posts lately.  I have a good reason!  Recently I was contacted by an agency in New York that wanted me to help them make content for Revlon's new Tumblr !  Of course I was going to say yes.  My first entry went up last week and I'm quite proud of it.  As a side note, I wouldn't totally hate it if you liked it on Tumblr , because I like winning, even if it isn't a competition.  THIS WILL BE THE ONLY TIME I ASK THIS, I SWEAR.  Anyway, that hasn't been leaving me a ton of time to do complicated things so it's down to whatever strikes me at the time.  In this case it was an attempt at a black-on-black texture thing with Ozotic 623.  

When someone visits my apartment, if they sit still for more than about five minutes I'm going to paint their nails.  It's inevitable.  I'll get a guy one of these days... Anyway, I had my nice friend Erica around the other day and because she does amazing work painting intricate shoes, I instead bribe her to actually paint my nails.  She did a great rocket cat themed mani for me earlier in the year so of course the next logical progression is Long Cat.  That looks like my cat.  Yeesssss

You guys know I'm a little bit cray about glitter by now so I'll spare you the defensive excuses-so-you-don't-judge-me bit and move straight to the glitter.  Because holy crap, look at this glitter would you.  I ordered some new glitter from LoveNailz  and just *die*.  I got a whole mess of glitter but the ones that really stood out for me were the tiny holo squares in red, blue, purple and pink.  I had some free time the other day and knew I had to use this glitter, to its full potential.  I think I did that. 

I was contacted a little while ago from Iona from StickyNails Nail Stencils about trying a new product she was working on.  I like to try new things so I gave her custom nail decals/stencils a shot and look!  Her package included a few different patterns of nail stickers but I'm always partial to a good chevron or zig zag so after pulling out the brightest colour combination I could find - Claire's Neon Orange and Pretty & Polished Boombox - I went to work. 

When I get paid, I find it extraordinarily hard not to just blow money on toys.  Preferably nail toys.  Because that way I can justify it as being for my blog!  Anyway, I've been looking at the Sally Hansen Gel Nail Strips for a while now and when there were on sale at Shoppers the other day, I couldn't resist.  Full disclosure: I tried these around Christmas just gone and they didn't even last a full day.  I had a feeling I did it wrong - I was in a hotel room without all my supplies - so I thought I'd give it another chance, with some fancier nail polish strips, this time in Perfect Poison.  I'm actually going to do this: there's a twist to these pictures...