St. Patrick's Day Nails: Matte Green & Layers of Gold

As a nod to my Irish heritage, I've got some green St. Patrick's Day nails today. But let's be honest - even if I weren't Irish, I'd be celebrating, right? That's how we do things in America. And on May 5th, we'll all be Mexican. #Freedom.

Here's how my nails are getting in on the holiday action:

The green is Balsam Fir by Revlon and the gold is a combo of Big Spender by Nina Ultra Pro and Crystal Gold from Forever21's Love & Beauty line.

I used two coats of Big Spender on my ring and thumb nails and topped that with 2 coats of Crystal Gold, which is a fairly sparse yellow-gold glitter in a clear base. It would have been way cooler if it was more jam-packed with glitter, but you can't win them all! Do you have a favorite gold glitter that's pretty opaque? Give me the deets!

I used 2 coats of Balsam Fir on all my other nails and finished those nails off with a matte top coat. I topped the gold nails with Seche Vite, to make them really shine and contrast with the green.

I'll be doing a bit of St. Patty's celebrating tomorrow with my friends at some Irish pubs around town. I can't stand the taste of beer, so no Guinness for me, but there may very well be some Bailey's Irish Cream in my future.

There's also a slight chance that I'll check out the (in)famous Southie St. Patrick's Day parade on Sunday... though that may be biting off more than I can chew, since Southie is known for becoming pretty chaotic on parade day. We'll see!

What are you going to be up to this weekend?
Are you wearing any green on your nails to celebrate?

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{Linking with The Nail Files and Fab Favorites}

Christmas Nails: Holiday Cheer!

Today we are heading off to Whistler for a mini pre-Christmas trip! We'll do some hiking, snowshoeing, and enjoying the winter wonderland while trying to avoid being run over by packs of rabid skiers. I actually haven't even checked the weather yet but hopefully we're not due for just straight rain for the next 2 days... that'd be a bit of a pre-Christmas bummer.

I didn't think there'd be much time to post any other blogs between now and Christmas so these may be my final Christmas nails. I hope they make you merry.

 

There are a ton of great Christmasy colors in my stash of polishes, so it was hard to choose which reds and greens would go into this look. Here are the colors that ended up on my nails: Ruby Jewels by Milani, Envy by Sinful Colors, Gold/Green from Love & Beauty, and A List by Essie.

Have I mentioned how much I love Milani's Ruby Jewels polish? (I have.) It's the perfect "Dorothy's ruby slippers" polish... so keep that in your sneaker for the next time you're looking for the right colors for your Wizard of Oz themed nails...

I changed things up a little bit on my right hand:

Which do you like better?

I bought my first pair of snowshoes yesterday at MEC in Vancouver. In the past I've just rented snowshoes or borrowed Dave's. Now I have my own and am officially a big girl. #Score. I'm excited to break them in today in Whistler!

What are your Christmas plans? After we get back from Whistler, I'm looking forward to a day of at-home cooking (mostly by Dave), hot cocoa, and all-day movies on Wednesday. There are lots of small presents wrapped beneath our tree right now and I can't wait to dig in and unwrap them on Christmas morning - even if I bought/wrapped most of them myself!! HAHA! Is that weird? When I was a kid there were always PILES of presents beneath the tree, and it's pretty important to retain that feeling as I get older... don't you think?? The piles may be a lot smaller now, but they're still piles. ;)

Merry Christmas errrrrr'body!!

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{Linking up with Monday Must Haves and Mani Monday}

Chevrons: Round 2!

So I attempted a chevron trick on my nails last week and it was a demi-fail, but I wanted to redeem myself by trying again. The good news is that Chevrons: Round 2 was a success!

And there's no bad news! So that's cool, right? No one needs bad news the day after Thanksgiving. 

I was trying to choose which 3 colors to use for this chevron mani, and was having a tough time deciding. Trying to go for something autumnal, I grabbed my Revlon bottle of Raisin Rage, which is a shimmer-free, raisiny burgundy shade. That's when I said, "Oh day-um. There's a color scheme right there!"

See?

So I decided to use the Revlon bottle of polish as my inspiration, and gathered a gold and a black polish too:

I followed the exact same steps that I took last week, except this time I gave the base color (gold) more time to dry before applying the chevron nail decals. I also did some de-sticking of the decals before placing them on my nails - meaning that I first stuck the decal strip to the back of my hand a couple of times to remove some of the stickiness. This gave me a better chance of not ripping up my base color when I went to remove the decal from my nails.

The gold polish that I used - Big Spender by Nina Ultra Pro - isn't the same "yellow-gold" as the gold on the bottle of Revlon polish, so it's a slightly different look. But I don't actually own any yellow-gold polishes - guess it's not my favorite color.

And speaking of Big Spender, I'm OBSESSED with the brush that comes with this polish.  It's like it was MADE for my fingernails. See here for diagrams and illustrations of exactly what I mean.

If you want to order some of your own chevron nail decals, I ordered mine from Inspired Nails. (Not an affiliate link... what do I look like? Some sort of professional??)

I am satisfied with how these came out, and they made a fine addition to my Thanksgiving outfit. 

What did you rock on your nails for the holiday? I'd love to see! And now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, we can officially move on to Christmasy nails without shame. I'ma deck the shit out of my halls nails. WHO IS WITH ME?

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{Linking up with The Nail Files and What I Learned Wednesday}

Witch-Inspired Halloween Nails

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Goodness this week flew by! I can't believe it's Friday already, but I'm so excited for the weekend. Tonight I'm going to dinner in Vancouver with a handful of fabulous ladies that I met at the #blogvancity event last month. I'm really looking forward to dressing up a bit and heading out for a girls' night!

Today I have some more Halloween-ish nails for you. These colors remind me of a witch's outfit - black and purple with a few pops of gold and green.

A few weeks ago I picked up this really cool nail polish from Forever21's Love & Beauty line - it's a clear base jam-packed with tonnnnns of gold and green foil flakes inside. The flakes actually remind me of the gold flakes that are found in bottles of Goldschläger, #AMIRIGHT? The polish seemed like something that would work well for both holiday nails and Halloween nails, so I scooped it up to add it to my collecksh. (That's short for collection. Sound it out.)

After first checking out how the gold and green flake polish looked over a white polish base (it looks fine, by the way), I decided that it needed to go over a black polish next, for a Halloween look. I love the witchy color combo of black and purple, so that's why I went with purple for the accent.

.  gold/green by love & beauty, stiletto by revlon colorstay, amethyst by sinful colors  .

This purple polish - Amethyst by Sinful Colors - is the perfect Halloween purple! 

Did you even know there was such a thing??

As a parting sidebar, the brush on the Revlon Colorstay Stiletto polish was awesome - wide with a round, tapered tip, which made for really easy application.

Do you have a Halloween costume picked out already? Are you going to do your nails along with the rest of your costume? I'd seriously love to hear how you're going to be dressing up!

{Linking up at The Nail Files, Tell Us Tuesday, Friday's Fab Favorites,   What I'm Loving Fridays, and Friday's Five} 

Mixed Metals Mani

This week's nails are brought to you by the elements Cu, Ag, and (variations of) Au. #MetalsBitchessssss #Chemistry(sucks)!

(Seriously though, I hated chemistry.)

Don't worry, I'm not going to make you Google them. Cu = Copper, Ag = Silver, and Au = Gold. On top of those three, I've also got a Rose Gold and what I will call Antique Gold. Those symbols aren't in the periodic table of elements, so someone really messed up there.

Anycrap, today I decided to use them all on my nails, because why choose one metal when you can rock five at once? #AMIRIGHT?

And what I learned during this experiment is that it's dreadfully hard to take photos of metallic nail polishes and have them really show the true color. Womp wommmp.

The one on my thumb looks silvery in the photo but it's actually a pale gold in person.

Here's what I used for my metallic mani:

From left to right...

• Pure Ice - Fast Lane (copper)
• Orly - Buried Treasure (antique gold)
• Love & Beauty - Bronze (I prefer to think of this one as rose gold instead of bronze)
• Love & Beauty - Grey, with a coat of Pure Ice - Beware (silver)
• Love & Beauty - Pewter (which like I said looks gold in person)

Are you a fan of the mixed metals trend? If you are too bashful to rock mixed metal jewelry, try out a mixed metal mani next time instead! 

As a fun aside, today is my brother Rob's 23rd birthday. #MAZEL! Happy birthday bro! May the universe grant you at least 75 Facebook notifications today.

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{Linking up with the Nail Files, Friday's Five, Show & Share, and Friday's Fab Favorites}

Golden Starfish Nails

This week my nail polish is once again inspired by an outfit - this time it's a dress! A few days ago a friend posted a Facebook picture of herself wearing >> this beautiful Reese dress << from Boston-based clothing designer Laurla. Here's the photo collage my friend Lauren posted:

.  cutie patootie  .

I think both dresses provide great inspiration for nail polish interpretations, but I decided to tackle the starfish dress first. I used Ruby Ruby by Sinful Colors (red), Big Spender by Nina Ultra Pro (shimmery gold), and a holographic gold glitter polish by Color Club.

Step 1: Paint all your nails two coats of red polish and allow it to dry completely.

Step 2: Put a few drops of gold polish onto a piece of scrap paper and use a toothpick to dab the gold polish onto your nails in a curved star shape - which makes it look a bit more like a starfish and less like a regular star.

Optional Step 3: I also added a coat of the holographic gold glitter to the top of my thumbnails for some extra sparkle.

This was a fun and nautical look to try. As it turns out, the dress that Laurla makes is actually a burnt orange color and not a red at all, so... Joke's on me! It looks red in Lauren's pictures though, right??

What do you think of this look? Will you try rocking some golden starfish nails?

p.s. Lauren's own Demoiselle Jewelry inspired a past nail polish look here on my blog! Check out my Fancy Jewelry Nails.

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New Year's Eve Pop Champagne Nails

Here's one more New Year's Eve nail polish idea for you before YBN (YA BIG NIGHT). For this you'll need a white nail polish, a chunky silver glitter nail polish and a golden glitter nail polish. Ideally you'll also have this blog bookmarked - where I show you how to take glitter nail polish off ya precious nails. Cause that shit's a bitch. I call this look Pop Champagne Nails, because as my blog's tagline indicates, I do what I want.

.  clink!  .

I just picked up both of these spicy little ladies from Forever21 the other day:

.  featuring ya girls Crystal Gold and Crystal Silver from Forever21's Love & Beauty line  .

Crystal Gold has a transparent base with small, round yellow-gold glitter. Crystal Silver has a transparent base as well, with small, round silver glitter and larger chunky hexagonal glitter.

To start, paint your nails two coats of your white polish:

.  basic bitches  .

Add a coat of your gold glitter:

.  frost yaself!  . 

On top of that, add a coat of your chunky silver glitter:

 After that dries, add one more coat of the gold glitter:

And there you go! 

.  pop champagne ain't a damn thing change  .

I bet this would also look pretty fresh and poppin' on top of black polish as well, if that's more your steez.

Sidebar, sorry that the pics are slightly out of focus. Apparently it's hard for a camera to figure out where to look when there's so much bling going on - it wouldn't focus on more than one nail at once!

Have fun tomorrow everyone, look fly!