Merry Christmas!!!

Quick NOTD pic - China Glaze Emerald Sparkle with konad plate M61 and konad special silver polish. Very very pretty... much better IRL!!

Enjoy and have great holidays!

Piggy Polish Snowmen!!! :D

Hi everyone!!

I went shopping yesterday and visited the only store in Montreal that sells Piggy Polish. They had the holiday 2-packs so I bought a couple of those plus another single polish :D I then decided with all the snow we're getting it would be the perfect time to try my snowman Konad stamp. I picked PP Blue-ty Call (beautiful shimmery light blue) as a base, and topped everything with PP Sunshine On Snowflakes, one of the best holo top coats there is. I LOVE it!!!

Enjoy and have a great weekend!! :D

SH Emerald Ring ★★★★★

Good morning everyone!

So after I removed KOTG last night, I got a message saying one of my swaps packages had finally made it to its destination... That meant I was now free to try the awesome looking Sally Hansen Salon in Emerald Ring! So of course I did, and it's such a fabulous color! Completely opaque in 2 thin coats, and super glowy :D I wanted a slightly more festive look, so I added present ribbons from Konad plate M61. I love the end result! Shade pic since it's snowing outside..

Enjoy and have a great day! :D

OPI Keep Off the Grass

Pretty color, but I don't think it's interesting enough for me, or a color I'd ever reach for again :/ It needs 3 coats to be opaque and even, but the brush strokes aren't really that bad. What do you think?

Have a great day! :D

Color Club Tru Passion ★★★★★

Hey everyone!

My swim meet is finally over so I now have a little time to catch up before I have to go Christmas shopping! I wanted to do a mani that would hopefully last through 3 days of swimming and putting on tight suits, so I chose CC Tru Passion, a fabulous super glittery bright purple. Compared to the other colors from the Glitter Vixen collection, it has a more opaque base, so 2 coats are enough to cover completely. It is however very gritty, so I used 1 coat of SH Insta-Dri (anti-shrinkage) and 2 coats of Oh So Wet (for smoothness). It ended up only lasting 2 days, but it was oh so worth it!! Top 20 material :D Please disregard the thicker spots on my tips, I had to retouch quite a few times :O

Enjoy and have a great night! :D

Black Hole Snowflakes!! :D

Here's my konaded Black Hole mani from yesterday... I added snowflakes from plate M59 using FP Easel Come, Easel Go! and I adore the way it turned out! I'll be wearing this until tomorrow for sure :D Please excuse the tone of my skin in this pic... the nail color is very much right on tho.

Enjoy and have a great day!! :D

Ruby Kisses Black Hole!! ★★★★★

Good afternoon everyone!!

I recently received this fabulous polish from a wondeful lady (wackymichy @ MUA), and thought it was finally time to try it! Turns out I'm almost speechless :O It's such a sparkly wonderful dark blue, and is almost good to go in 1 coat! It is a million times better IRL than the pic shows, and it's probably jumped right into my top 20 :D I must say it's also the perfect color to go with the -30C weather we're having today...

Enjoy and have a great day! :D

Nubar Hot Blue ★★★★☆

Just received some new Nubar neons last week from sparkling*nails on eBay, and this is the first one I try. I'm really digging these polishes! This one is a bright (not quite neon imo) aqua blue that's just a little too green on me to make it a perfect blue. And it applied flawlessly in 3 very thin coats! I can't wait to try the others I got :D

And now here it is with NFU Oh #49 added on top. I love this NFU! It's got pink-green-gold-orange flakies :D This pic is day #3!!

Enjoy and have a great day! :D

As requested, major ChG holo picspam!! :D

Good morning everyone!! Here are some past swatches of a few China Glaze holos, as decided by the votes. First up, the OMGs :D I really love all of the colors I own (and have since added BFF), and they are also fabulous to use with the Konad!

And now for the Kaleidoscopes! I now own that entire collection, and I must say I'm seriously considering getting backups before they become too hard to find. There also seems to be a difference in color and finish between the original formula and the more recent B3F ones... Unfortunately I haven't had time to swatch my most recent arrivals, so this is all I have :/

Enjoy and have a great day!! :D

Candy Cane!! :D

I was inspired in doing a candy cane mani by a pic of one of Christina's (ceeRennycee @ MUA) latest konadicures... and I'm so happy with it now! I used ChG White On White for the base (3 coats makes it even and opaque), then followed with the red Konad (I used part of one of the design of plate M65), and topped it off with ChG Tinsel to get the sparkly finish. Unfortunately I applied Tinsel a little too quickly and it ended up somewhat dragging the red pattern :( Oh well, even with my polish ADD, I think this one will last until tomorrow night! Please excuse the crappy pic, as there's no sun to be seen here today...

Enjoy and have a great day! :D

OPI Real Teal ★★★★☆

Good afternoon everyone! Here's today's NOTD, a polish I never thought I'd ever get my hands on (or on my hands?), OPI Real Teal. It's a very pretty blackened bluish green shimmer, but unfortunately feels kinda boring on me :/ Maybe it's because I just remove my super glittery mani or something else, but it just feels like it's missing something! Not bright enough, or sparkly enough (except in sunlight)... I think some Konad will probably fix the problem right up though ;-) Also, like many older polishes I've tried, it is super thin and needs at least 3 coats to be even (for me).

Here it is now w/ some silver Konad added to it. Somewhat better, but still not wowing me =( I don't think this mani will last much longer than tomorrow night! Crappy flash pic for now, hoping i can catch some sun tomorrow.

Enjoy! :D

Claire's Off To See the Wizard ★★★★★

Hi everyone!! I have a short break now during my swim meet, so I thought I'd show you an older pic of my current fabulous mani! OTStW is amazing!! Like the perfect bright blue glittery holo :D Unfortunately I still ended up with chips on the corners of every nail from putting my suit on... so I redid half of it this afternoon ;-) Here it is (I can't remember how many coats the swatch is, but I'm currently wearing 4).

Enjoy and have a great week-end!! :D

Nubar Green Tea ★★★★☆

This afternoon I decided to give one of my newest polishes a try, so I ended up picking Nubar Green Tea. This is the first Nubar I've ever worn for more than a swatch, and I must say I am very impressed! Green Tea is an almost pastel medium green creme (surprise!) that applied extremely well and is completely opaque in 2 coats! It is exactly what I wanted OPI Green-wich Village to be :D Unfortunately, the only pic I could get is a semi-darkness flash pic =( My skin looks extremely washed out, but the color isn't too far off from it's true color :/

As pretty as it was, it was clearly missing some excitement! I therefore added some Konad tonight using plate M65 with Essie The Cove Copper, a bronzey-gold metallic. I really like the result... somewhat blingy, but also subtle.

As always, I look forward to your comments and let me know if you have any particular requests!

Enjoy :D

Whimsical... OMG!!

As I said yesterday, I added some Konad to my ChG Whimsical mani. I thought something sparkly would look great, so I chose ChG OMG with the checkered pattern on plate M64. Unfortunately, the pics don't really show if off well as flash blings out the holo too much :/

Enjoy! =D

My favorite products... and chlorine!

Good morning everyone!

Seeing as I've been asked many times before about how I keep my polish looking good while spending so much time in the water, I thought I'd write up a short post about the products I like to use :D

First off, I will say that personally chlorine doesn't seem to affect my polish at all. It is more a case of getting chips when hitting the walls or lane ropes or other swimmers! Maybe I'm lucky, but it must also help I change my polish very regularly... although I've worn China Glaze Blue Sparrow for 6 days straight before with only a few small chips! Anyways, here are some of the products I love using:

Base coat: I usually pick between Barielle Camo and Sally Hansen Nail Quencher Hydrating Base. I've used Nailtek II Foundation and Precision Base a few times and they were ok, but not my favorites. I've also recently received Seche Base but haven't tried yet.

Top coat: My favorite top coat remains Sally Hansen Insta-Dri. Other ones I sometimes use are Sally Hansen MegaShine and Oh So Wet, but I usually only use these after my Konad. I remember reading that Poshe is supposed to last longer in chlorine than some other t/cs, but I've never really like it personally. EDIT -- My new favourite is Out The Door, and it wears really well for me :D

So these are my personal favorites, and they seem to work really well for me at most times :D Let me know if you have any questions!

China Glaze Whimsical?

Whimsical (which might not be Whimsical after all, more on that below) is a fabulous dark tealish forest green with gold and blue (and multi-colored) shimmer that mostly shows in sunlight. It applied very nicely and is completely opaque in 2 coats :D I'm really enjoying this mani for today, but will most surely be adding some Konad tonight to take it through day 2! From the "fake" swatches on the web and a bottle pic on eBay, it appears as if Whimsical should instead be some kind of dusty pink polish... The big question is: is my bottle mislabeled? or maybe it is a franken? or maybe there are 2 different versions of the same color? LOL! If anyone happens to have a bottle labeled Whimsical, please let me know if it matches mine! Enjoy =D

Let me introduce... my stash!

I just finished sorting all of my new polishes into their rightful homes last night, so this evening I took some pics for fun. I'm always amazed at how fast my stash is growing... I discovered the nail board last January when I only had about 10 polishes, and well now I have a *lot* more than 10!

First, here they are all together in their home:

And now by color...
Silver-White and Soft-Sheer:

Orange-Coral and Gold-Yellow:

Bronze-Brown and Black-Grey:

Green:

Red-Burgundy:

Blue:

Purple:

More purple and some pink:

Pink:

And the best for last!
Holos (OPI DS, OPI Summer for Shore, ChG OMG, ChG Kaleidoscope):

Glitters, flakies and random holos and top coats:

Finally, family pic:

Enjoy =D

My "other" side =D

Totally not nail-related, but I thought some might be interested in seeing the swimmer side of me! So here's a couple of photographic evidence I really am a swimmer (breaststroke is my best and favorite stroke, although it's also the hardest technically!).

 

And here are a few of the fabulous places I've been too throughout the years :D

Pierrelatte, France (1998) -- This is the D'Avignon Bridge (or what's left of it!)

Porto Rico (2005)

Izmir, Turkey (World University Games 2005)

Bangkok, Thailand (World University Games 2007)

Costa Rica (2007 and 2008)

So that's it for my other life :D And if you ever want to see what I do at school, there's a link to my home page on the right ;-)