Dry Splatter Mani

I had a lot of fun with this one, also made a grand mess.

Instead of using nail polish and a straw with a normal splatter mani, I used a makeup brush loaded with loose pigment and tapped off the excess onto the nails. 

My colour choices. Next time I'll use much brighter colours, and maybe a base colour instead of clear.

How to:
Apply your base coat to a couple of nails, and start picking colours to put on your brush and tap over the nail so the pigment falls off. Once you figure the polish is probably dry, blow away the excess and add a top coat.

Sonnetarium Polish

I don't care that it's after Christmas. I finally got my hands on this polish, so I'm gonna put this polish on my hands!

Sonnetarium's Peppermint Kiss. You might remember it from this post about my favourite holiday polishes. Well after it being sold out for a while, me checking their website repeatedly paid off! It didn't take long to arrive despite it being the holidays, and it got here bubble wrapped, in packing peanuts, in a little box, with a hand signed business card.

It's everything I hoped it would be, looks like you could eat it, and I got a compliment at work today about my nails when I just painted them this morning ;) awe yeah!

(Please forgive my crappy pictures...)

Sonnetarium polishes are big 3 free (no formaldehyde or the other icky harmful things). You can check out their polishes on their website, and their facebook to see when things are getting restocked.

Holiday Nail Polishes

Thanks to the wonderful creative minds of people, you can get 'big 3 free' nail polishes that suit any theme your heart desires through etsy, facebook and the like. Handmade with care! With the holidays coming up I wanted to share some of the best festive polishes that I've seen out there.

(To note, I've pulled the pictures off of etsy, but the majority of them come from Chalkboard Nails, a great nail art blog that does a lot of indie polish reviews. She's great, and you should check her out.)

Hurry Down the Chimney Tonight A cute white and red shard and bar glitter topcoat.

I'll Wait Up For You Dear A super fine red and green glitter. Cute!

Peppermint Kiss Ugh! How amazing is this?! I've never seen a nail polish that I've called 'delicious' before, but seriously, it looks good enough to eat. If this was available on their website right now I would already have bought it.

Candy Cane Crush I love hex glitters, this topcoat is definitely great!

Think of All the Fellas That I Haven't Kissed blues, purples, glitter.. A great combination.

Something About Merry I think my favourite part of this one is the light green semi transparent pieces.

Christmas In Bordeaux Square glitter and gold thrown in the mix to keep things interesting. I think it looks best on the right, over gold.

 Very Merry Holly Berry Just red! Looks similar to a polish I ordered in the mail (still waiting on.. It's a brand thats only avail online in the US so I had to go to ebay for it) but this one is a clear base. I really like it.

Up To Snow Good Beautiful! I'm such a fan of teal though, why are we even surprised this makes the list ;P.

I hope this gets you ready to festivfy.. Festivify.. Get those nails festive! I've been looking into making my own polishes (sadly I missed out on the last run of base that was available, and I'm kicking myself for not ordering it even though I was told not to because of the holidays) but I'm sure it'll be available again someday. Until then I'm mixing all my ideas up in topcoat bottles. Works okay, but I need to shake the bottle pretty hard after everything settles. Still! I've gotten quite a few compliments on my last few colors and a woman at work told me to sell her a bottle so eventually when I can make these the way I want to, who knows.. Maybe I'll see some fancy nail polish blogs doing reviews of my work ;P. I'll have to get some pictures to share with you. Sometime. Before the holidays are over...

Mani Saturday: Halloween Nails

I just wanted to share my Halloween mani that I've been wearing this week (which I will probably have until Wednesday, unless it severely chips within the next couple days).

Orange base coat, covered with a coat of glow in the dark, black french tips and then leopard and lace stamping. I love it! Many other people do, too. Anyone else rocking some Halloween nails??

Post craft show post & nails

So the craft fair ended up to be a very rainy day and sadly that kept many people away, but I had a great time, met a lot of wonderful people and it was definitely worth my time going there :).

I ended up having quite the collection of pieces that were piling up around here after random experiments, playing around with ideas, or having pieces I had for a while that I wanted to get rid of. I ended up putting them all in a rummage bin (far left of the table). People got some fun one of a kind stuff for really cheap (3 for $5) and I now have a lot less stuff sitting around. Everyone wins! Especially since I wasn't making money off things that no one saw and weren't listen online everywhere.

I'm hoping to get my etsy store fixed up within the week, though I did take down everything that's gone :).

Aaaaand these are my nails for the week. Getting kind of halloweeny now :). Take care everyone! 

Mani Monday: Saran Wrap

Have you seen this kind of nail yet? You put your base coat down (2 coats of black) then add a top coat of whatever color (this strange beetle green) and while its when you pat your nail with scrunched up saran wrap. It's kind of cool, I must say, and super easy to do, though I did pat a couple nails on my right hand too soon and it took off a bit of the black as well.. Not really noticeable though.

Mani Monday: Sponge Gradient

So I decided to finally try the sponge gradient for nails, where you rip off a little piece of a makeup sponge, paint your polish on it and then dab it on your nail. I must say its virtually fool-proof, I thought it would take a few tries to get the hang of it but each nail came out perfectly. 2 layers of silver base coat, plus 2 coats of gold sponged on.. Though, since subtle is not my forté, I decided to add a little more bling with silver glitter on the silver part, and gold glitter the same shape and sizes on the gold part. Sally beauty makes my favourite glitter, multi sized hex glitters, and I buy it everytime I see a new color. So far I've got 3 :).

I still find it a little too subtle for my nails but I really wanted to try out the gold polish and I didn't want to end up wearing black polish twice in a row. Next time though, go bold or go home!

Tutorial: Cross-hatched Nails

I think this mani is so fun! It was surprisingly easy to do, if you have a stamping kit and a little patience. Best part is you can do this with any stamp and get all sorts of different looks :).

How to:
Add a base coat if you so choose (I left mine blank)
Choose your colors! I used lilac, sky blue, soft red, navy blue and mint colored polishes, all creams.
Using your stamping kit (mine is Konad's m57) I added spots all over my nails one color at a time.
Clean up any polish that gets on your nails, add a top coat and you're done!

It's also a great way to use the stamps because they're not big enough to cover my whole nail.

Plase ignore all my cuts and scrapes :P

I also finally made myself another banner for my blog, and I quite like it. What do you think??

Edit: I ended up repainting them because my old topcoat sucks and the whole thing peeled right off, so this time I did it over black. I like this one way more.

Sticks N Stones

Indie polishes have become more and more popular as time goes on, understandably. Many are made without the harsh chemicals that some people like to avoid, they're different from anything you see in stores, and its got a pokemon-esque feeling of gotta catch 'em all. I only own one, and I must say I love it! I had to sign up to a mailing list so I would know when it was in stock again, but it was worth the (slight) wait and didn't cost anymore than a regular polish. 

Sticks N Stones over Madame X

Sticks N Stones is a black and white matte glitter of all sizes and shapes, and looks great over any bold color. Now considering that I'm freely able to paint my nails for work again, this is the first one I cracked out.

Sticks N Stones can be purchased here. :)

Nail Fun

I realized that since I'm not allowed to paint my own nails much anymore, I also haven't been sharing with you all the amazing nail art that I've been coming across lately!

Genius idea to making your own nail art stickers by painting onto tape. Source. 

Burn and dodge, tutorial here.

If you like nail art you should check out the above blogs, they're great! Also, check out some Nightmare Before Christmas nails I just finished for commission. I really hope she likes them.

On a final note, I just got an instagram account, if anyone is interested in following me and seeing random pictures of adventures to drawings of raccoons on bicycles. @tamedraven :).

Cadbury Nails

I absolutely love Cadbury Cream Eggs, they're my favourite Easter snack. I love even more when the holiday has passed and they go on sale! Haha. I've always noticed that the tinfoil packaging on all these holiday candies are so pretty but what can you do with them...

How about a fun mani? I just finished this and had to share it with you.

What you need:
Scissors
Nail file
Clear nail polish
Candy wrappers

How to:
First, flatten out the tinfoil as best you can. It doesn't have to be perfect, but get all the big wrinkles out.

Lay the tinfoil on your nail and press down to make an imprint of it, and then following the lines, cut out the shape.

Put a layer of clear nail polish on your nail, and press the tinfoil down, making sure to press it around the edges.

If the tinfoil is too long, use the nail file to trim off the edges/shape it to your nail better. Repeat for the rest of the nails and you're done!

If you're using uncolored foil or one without a pattern you could add a very quick topcoat but take note that the colors will melt if you go over it too much. That might make it look cool too, though! When you're done, just peel the tinfoil off and use nail polish remover for the clear polish. If you want this to hold better, I would suggest trying nail glue, but I have none to see if it would work.

If you do this I would love to see your version!