Guest Post

Guest Post on Polish Pixelle

6:00:00 PM

Hello lovely followers!  How are you tonight?!

Today I bring you something I have been looking forward to doing for a while - a guest post for my friend Ave over at Polish Pixelle!  Originally, Ave and I were going to guest post at the same time on each others blogs, but due to my great injury on my pointer finger, I was unable to post when she posted on my blog.  I was so happy though that Ave shared her awesome Street Nails  while I was unable to do nice designs.

Now my nails are nubs, but the injury has completely grown out, meaning I am able to return to the great world of nail art!  I could not be more happy!  You have no idea how insane I was going just doing "plain" manicures and then adding something to refresh them.

So now I shall leave you with a sneak peak of my design for Ave....head on over to her blog if you want to see the full post!!!


<3

Animal Print

Neon Leopard!

7:49:00 PM

Neon, neon, neon!!!! I'm obsessed with neons!!! When I first saw the China Glaze Summer Neon Collection, I was unsure if I would purchase any. I have a Sinful Colors neon which I loved, but it was a jelly and took about 4 coats to get full coverage. When I saw the neons again released this season from Sinful Colors, I debated on purchasing them, but decided against it since they were flat cremes, and personally I'm not a huge fan of cremes. Shimmers are my friend. After seeing some swatches of China Glaze and the shimmer these neons had, I needed to find them and purchase them! So happy I did because I'm hooked and by far they are my favorite polishes!

Originally, I only purchased three polishes from the collection, Hang Ten Toes, Splish Splash, and Sun Kissed.  Days passed, and after much consideration (okay maybe not much) I went back to the store and purchased I'm With the Lifeguard.  After these purchases plus a top coat, I may I need to go on a no-buy again.

I ran home and immediately put Hang Ten Toes on my toes for by far one of the best pedicures I've ever had.  For my nails, I put on Sun Kissed, the obnoxious highlighter yellow polish.  I could not stop staring at my nails!  After two days of continuous typing thanks to a final paper, the tips were becoming a bit worn, so instead of touching them up, I decided it was time for some nail art....and what better than neon leopard nails?  I'm in love with leopard nails, and in fact did a guest post featuring leopard spots over on Ryan's blog Dream a Little Dream of Polish.  I figured why not do a design I was in love with on a color I am in love with.

Can you see my injured nail?!  It's grown out so well!!!!






And for my right hand!  I think I'm getting better at photographing it!!



Colors Used:

  • Base
    • China Glaze - Sun Kissed
  • Leopard Spots
    • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
    • Sinful Colors - Black on Black
Goodness gracious, how I loved this manicure!!!!  I wish my camera accurately capture the amazingness of this polish!  The black kind of muted it, but still, it was so bright!!!  

For those of you who haven't tried leopard print and really want to, it's easy!  With a dotting tool, I dotted on some uneven white dots.  With a tooth pick, I stippled on the uneven lines around the white, and then filled in some of the blank spots with some more black.  

These are my first ever China Glaze polishes, and I will be going back and purchasing more!  The application was amazing!  I had read a couple reviews that the polishes were goopy and hard to apply, but I didn't have a single problem!  Sun Kissed had full coverage with two coats and with some Out the Door top coat, the matte finish it dried with went to shiny.  Same with for Hang Ten Toes.  I do not have a single complaint about the polish and just am in love...can you tell???  To me, the shimmer makes this polish that much better.  If you're looking for a neon, go out and hunt these down, you will NOT be sorry.

Do you have any of the Summer Neons?  Are you hooked?  What's your favorite?  Are you one for animal print manicures??

Stay tuned for some more neon-rifiic manicures.

Shatter

Yet another Simple Mani

7:15:00 PM

I shall start this post by saying that my left hand pics still show damage.  I probably should have never posted them and will get random rude comments, but whatever.  I liked the mani and wanted to share.  And I'm too lazy to photoshop a smile or sad face over it.  Luckily, the nail now is grown out and I am one happy chicka.

______________________________________

I did it again, another simple manicure, and this time, it is even more simple than my last simple one.  I haven't felt too well lately, weather has been funky going warm to cold back to warm again and it has done a number on my sinuses.  When I sat down to paint my nails, I just wasn't feeling it.  I wanted something quick, easy, and cute.    Plus, since I still have that lovely damaged nail, I didn't want to waste extensive time on nail art.

Sure enough, simple turned difficult.  I hated everything I was doing and ended up taking off three manicures before settling on some glittery pretties.  I probably should have just done nail art and it would have been faster.

Here are the right hand pics...not too shabby, kinda blurry. 



Then my injured left hand in the sun.




Colors Used:
  • Revlon - Charming
  • Sinful Colors - Frenzy
After a few days, I was still not feeling right and was still rather lazy so instead of taking off my manicure, I decided to refresh my nails!  A few diagonal swipes of shatter, and my worn off tips were not noticeable!

I couldn't get a decent picture of my right hand, so here's the injured lovely.




Refresher Polish
  • OPI Black Shatter
I haven't used my Shatter polish in ages.  Not going to lie, I'm still rather intrigued by it.  It amazes me how it crackles apart and doesn't destroy the paint underneath.  Since I was tired, the shattered lines weren't as straight as I would like, but it did the job for the time being.

Do you do refresher manicures?  Have Shatter? Love it, hate it, confused by it?  Also, who else wants Spotted?!  OPI better offer that in the US soon.

Julep

Julep "It Girl" Nail Art

11:22:00 PM

Well, here it is!  My post to go along with my Julep Maven Intro Box Giveaway.  If you haven't entered yet, you must!!!


As I stated in that post, I had ordered the It Girl Introductory box.  At the time I ordered it, I thought I was receiving Spring colors, but instead I was pleasantly surprised by three different colors.  Those are Lily, a pretty pink creme, Daisy, a mustardy yellow creme, and Sasha, a coral creme.  Out of all three of these polishes, Sasha is my favorite, but we'll get to that.

When I first sat down to paint my nails with these polishes, I was stumped.  I had no clue what nail art pattern I could do with the three colors since they all were all darker cremes.  I'm not one for yellow nail polish (unless it's neon), so I didn't want to put Daisy down on all my nails.  After playing around with the polishes for awhile, I decided to revisit a previous manicure - the vintage roses.  I loved this manicure when I first did it, and I thought it would be fun to do them in a different color.

Here is what I came up with:






Yay non dominant hand photography = slowly getting better.




  • Colors Used:
    • Julep - Sasha
    • Julep - Lily
    • Julep - Daisy
    • Sinful Colors - Snow me White
    • Revlon - Sassy
I really, really, really am in love with Sasha, reason why I painted that as a base on majority of my fingers.  Right from the start, I knew that is what I was going to do.  The color was just perfect, I wish my camera captured it better, because trust me, it was so much more gorgeous than what this looks like.  With the white stripes on it, the color really popped out.

Lily I liked as well, and was my second favorite from the box.  I had a polish by Maybelline which is very similar to this color, but it's literally from 6 years ago.  I'm actually shocked the polish still is workable, but that's another story.  My only complaint about Lily was that it dried matte.  Of course with top coat this problem was easily fixed and dried shiny just like the rest of them.  As dark as it looked on the nail, it was still a bright summery color, which I will be using for some pedicures in the near future.

Daisy, I'm eh about.  The color looks a lot brighter in the bottle than what it translates to on the nail.  It's more of a mustard yellow than bright, which in my opinion isn't too summery.  When I heard the name "Daisy" and saw the bottle, I thought it was going to be bright like the centers of daisies. Maybe with some white undies it would be brighter. Application was just as good as Sasha as well.

For the roses, I wanted to mimic the "fiesta" roses I have in my back yard.  I'm really not sure if they fiesta roses, but that's what my dad and I call them.  For those of you who do not know, these roses bloom yellow with orange tipped petals.  They're gorgeous in the sunshine....


Pretty yellow roses with orange tips.  I did the accent nail of Lily, then put a dab of Daisy and then I was upset to find that the yellow didn't show up well on the pink.  I decided to reverse the colors, and was very happy with the result.  Added some Revlon Sassy for the leaves and was pleased.

For the yellow nail, I added some dots of Lily, which kind of blended into the yellow color and made the polish a different shade of pink.  Kind of gross, I wasn't too thrilled with that nail.


If you are in love with these colors and must have them, now is your time to get them for a penny!!!! click here, select the "It Girl" box and use the code "MAVENINTRO". :)

Foodie Mani

Strawberries

9:00:00 AM

Guest posts are amazing, and if you haven't seen Ave's (Polish Pixelle) yet, you need to go right now and take a look.  Thank you so much Ave for the amazing lil street nails you did!  Love it, and most likely will copy it!!!  Can't wait to do a guest post for your blog!!!

Ahhhh June...the official beginning of summer, and the beginning of homegrown strawberry season!! Last week I went strawberry picking with the neighbors and had a blast!  This is by far one of my favorite annual outings!

A few weeks ago, when I first saw homegrown strawberries appear in the grocery store, I decided to paint the delicious fruit on my nails.  I kept them in my nail art folder until the week I went strawberry picking to post, so they were done before my lovely pointer finger injury.

Here's what I came up with.






Colors Used:

  • Strawberry
    • Sally Hansen - Red Carpet
    • Sinful Colors - Black on Black
  • Leaves
    • Revlon - Sassy
    • Sinful Colors - HD Nails
  • Flowers
    • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
    • Sinful Colors - Let's Meet
The nails were kind of a pain in the butt, mostly because of the strawberry leaves.  I started with a base of red polish and dotted on some black seeds with a tooth pick.  Once the polish was dried, with a tooth pick, I outlined the green leaves with Revlon Sassy, and then filled it in which was very difficult.  I think if I re-do these nails next year, I  With a stripper, I added some HD Nails to give it the effect of leaves.  I think if I were to do these nails again next year, I would put the leaves at the tip of the nail, and not at the cuticle.

I wasn't 100% happy with the nails though and wanted something more.  The accent nails needed something on them, I just wasn't sure what.  I was looking through my mobile uploads album on Facebook and came across this picture from last years strawberry extravaganza.


Wild daisies were growing up in between the plants throughout the strawberry field.  They were so pretty and were throughout the whole field.  After Googling for some accent ideas, I found a few other girls incorporated flowers onto their strawberry manicures, so I figured this would be perfect.  I dotted on a flower, added a lil vine and ta daaaa! my strawberry nails were completed!!!

What do you think?  Do you like strawberries?  Have you ever gone strawberry picking??

Fun fact: strawberries were actually my first ever attempt at nail art last year.  I wish I had a picture of them so I could have compared! 


Also, don't forget to enter my Julep Maven Intro Box Giveaway!

Giveaway

A Julep Giveaway!!!!

9:00:00 AM

I'm very excited to be part of the VIP Julep Blogger program! I was hoping to be able to post the giveaway after I did some pretty little nail art with their polishes, but I'm still waiting on the polishes to come in the mail.  Since the giveaway is only through June 29th, I have decided to post the giveaway first, and then once I receive the box do my awesome, fantabulous nail art review!!!!

So ladies, here is your chance to win an intro box similar to the one I will be reviewing.  I will be reviewing the "It Girl" polish box which is beyond gorgeous and I can't wait to actually use.

If you cannot wait, or have horrid luck and can never win giveaways, well you can receive a Julep box for only a penny with free shipping! How can you go wrong?! Just Click Here, sign up and use the code "MAVENINTRO".

I kind of wish I knew about this program more before the VIP Blogger program because I would have signed up myself.  I absolutely love how Julep's polishes are 4 Free.  For someone who gets rashes from formaldehyde/formaldehyde resin, this is marvelous.

Anyways, I can't wait to review my box and I can't wait to see who wins this giveaway!!!  Good luck everyone!!! :)


  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway prize provided to me by Julep.

Guest Post: Polish Pixelle Street Nails!

6:00:00 PM

Hi ho cherry-o! Ave from Polish Pixelle here with one of what will hopefully be many guest posts! Alaina and I had been planning on doing guest posts on each others blogs for a while and when tragedy struck (read: severely broken nail) I decided to step up and help Alaina out :) Once her swatching nails have recovered hopefully you'll see a guest post on my blog by her!

I was nervous about this guest post since this blog is all about nail art and my blog is more swatch focused. However, I attempted to step up to the challenge with some street nails I had been thinking about for a while. The inspiration for this was China Glazes 'Stone Cold' which to me looks very similar to asphalt.

For this mani I used:

- China Glaze 'Stone Cold'
- Julep 'Blake'
- Toothpick for dotting

I applied two coats of Stone Cold, and used a toothpick to create the yellow lines with Blake.









I really like how these came out. Maybe an unconventional mani, but that is what makes it fun! I got tons of compliments (and a few strange looks). I think I may try this again at one point, incorporating street signs.

See my swatch and review of China Glaze 'Stone Cold' here
See my swatch and review of Julep 'Blake' here

What do you think?

Blue Glitter Nails

9:00:00 AM

I must start this post off by thanking Tianne for sharing her AWESOME Galaxy Nails on my blog!!!  If you have yet to see them, please click here to go see and leave her a comment!  Anytime you want to guest blog again Tianne, just let me know!!!!

Now to my crappy nails which I wish did not have to follow Tianne's since they complete stink in comparison.  I have no idea what to call these nails, all I know is that they're rather perfect for Father's Day because they kind of remind me of a tie.  Mainly since they're blue, but hey, it works right?

This is my first paint job after The Great Injury of 2012 and was unsure if I was going to post it at all.  @PlaidMcPlatypus gave me the idea to put a band-aid on my nail with a lil drawing.  Instead of doing that, I went and photoshopped a sad face onto my pointer nail.  If it weren't for her, I never would have thought of this and I would probably still be sitting days later on my butt wondering "Should I paint my nails blue or purple?"  I think my lil photoshopping made this post more amusing hahah.

We shall start with pictures of my right hand.






And now for my Sad Left Hand that I normally photograph -



Colors Used:
  • Base
    • Color Club - My Mystery blue polish which I believe is Factory Girl
  • Glitter
    • Sinful Colors - Hottie
  • Accent Line
    • Sinful Colors - Midnight Blue
  • Top Coat
    • My new Out the Door Fast Dry! which I LOVE!
I have been dying to use Hottie for the longest time.  It is an amazing glitter set in a jelly blue base which I was very hesitant on purchasing.  I am beyond happy I did, because the few times I have used it, I am beyond in love.

I DO NOT want to hear from anyone "I can't do that manicure!"  It was done all with  regular brushes, except the accent line with a striper.

A simple manicure, which I'm eh about, mainly because my lack of left finger nail, the lines being funky (thank you exhaustion), and the fact my pictures just aren't amazing.  Can I tell you how difficult it is to photograph your dominant hand with your non-dominant?  I seriously felt like I had never used my left hand to even lift an object before in my life.  I'll use this time to practice photographing both hands.  I always do my nail art on both hands, so I think it would be cool to post both hands, especially on my more intricate designs.

Have you ever attempted to photograph your dominant hand?  Any tips?

Until the next post, have a great one and Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there! :D


Galaxy Nails!!!!

10:22:00 AM

Hey everyone!!! My name is Tianne and I am super excited to do this guest blog post for The Little Canvas =) I don't have a nail blog of my own and I've never done a guest blog post so hopefully this works!! Anywaaaaay I'm blogging about my Galaxy Nails. This was my first EVER attempt at these nails so I hope you like!!

When I first decided to do these nails I really didn't think they would turn out. I had little faith in myself for some reason. It took my a while to decide on what colors I wanted to use too. I was staring at all my polishes for what seemed like forever but I ended up choosing these colors:

  • Seche Vite bottom and top coat
  •  Zoya "indigo"
  •  Sinful Colors "snow me white"
  •  Sally Hansen "mellow yellow"
  •  Sinful Colors "cream pink"
  •  Pure Ice "french kiss"
  •  For glitter - Nailene sparkle coat
I always have so much stuff around me when I am painting my nails. For these nails I need a piece of sponge for each color, my dotting tool with the smallest tip, a couple toothpicks, a piece of paper to put polish on, acetone, q-tips and of course all my polish colors =) Before I began this design I did my usual nail prepping after taking off my previous polish which consisted of:

  • scrubbing my nails with warm water and whitening toothpaste
  • using a 4 sided nail buffer to smooth out my nails
  • clipping all my nails to the shape I want them
  • taking a nail file to them
  • pushing all my cuticles back
This process might seem like it takes forever but it doesn't haha After all the prepping was done I started the design. It will be easier for me to type if I list the steps out so that is what I am going to do, sorry for all the lists!! haha

  1. Used Seche Vite base coat. I love this base coat! its kind of a light cream color with a tint of a shimmer
  2. Used Zoya "indigo" as the dark blue base color. In the pictures it looks like I painted my whole nail black but its actually a dark blue. I used this particular color because it has small specks of glitter in it. Its very hard to see in the pics but its there, I swear =)
  3. I began painting a nebula on each nail with Sinful Colors "snow me white". I don't like just putting the nailpolish directly on the sponge so I put the polish on a piece of paper then dip the corner of the sponge in it. For each nail I did a nebula in a different spot too.
  4. Once the white was dry I dipped my sponge in Sally Hansens "mellow yellow" and went over all the white with the yellow polish using the same technique. 
  5. When that was dry I dipped another piece of sponge in Sinful Colors "cream pink" and put it on the ends of my nebula or in the middle of the nebula.
  6. I used Pure Ice "french kiss" to blend the nebula into the dark blue background. I used the sponge technique and did it on each side of the nebula where it met the background. 
  7. I used a toothpick and dipped it in Sinful Colors "snow me white" for the stars. I clustered most of the 'stars' in one area. 
  8. I used my smallest dotting tool to make a few larger stars by dipping that into Sinful Color "snow me white" and just made a few of these larger 'stars' anywhere on the nail.
  9. The glitter I used is more of a shimmer. It came in a pack of different glitters my mom got me a while ago but its so sheer and pretty I use it on almost all my nail designs!! I just painted it over the whole design and it totally pulled it together!!
  10. I sealed my design with Seche Vite top coat. I love this top coat also. It gives it such a great shine and dries super quick. 
When I sponged the pink onto the nebulas I started freaking out because it was so bright and I thought I ruined the entire design but once I finished the design and put the top coat on it, it worked out PERFECTLY =) 




Everyone absolutely loved this design and I got SO many compliments on it so hopefully I will do it again sometime soon!! I really hope you enjoyed this guest blog post and would love to hear what you ladies think of em =) xoxoxooxoxo <3 T


The Great Injury of 2012

7:00:00 AM

I never used to care when I broke a nail or had peeling, but now I do.  Ever since I started blogging, I try my hardest to baby my nails so I can photograph them and share my designs with everyone!


This week, after one day with my gnome nails, a little uh-oh happened which made me feel as sad as that adorable puppy I found on Google.  I managed to rip off a chunk of my nail on my left hand, which is my hand I photograph for all my posts.  After it happened, I stood staring at my  nail going "Oh no, how am I going to blog?! How am I going to post!?"  I know, stupid right?  Especially since it's just a nail, but I really have fallen in love with painting and sharing my nails.

For the squeemish, I suggest you don't take a gander at the photo, but for those who don't care, have a look.  This is what my poor nail looks like.  It could be a LOT worse, so I'm very grateful.



Fun and Random

Creepy....I mean, Gnomes

10:02:00 PM

This is Minnie, Nicole's (owner of the blog Polish Me, Please!) puppy.  She is fighting off sleep due to the fact she is terrified of the creatures that live in her backyard.  These creatures are none other than Gnomes.


A few weeks ago, I was talking with Nicole (@PolishMePlease)  and Gabi (@RubyStein79).  I'm not sure how it came up, or how the conversation actually started, but we all found out that Nicole has a lovely little gnome collection.  These are her gnomes.  The drawing she did personally and his name is Gus.


In honor of Nicole's gnome love, I decided to paint gnomes on my nails.  Here is what I came up with....






Colors Used: 
  • Base
    • Color Club - Mystery Blue (which I think is Factory Girl)
  • Gnomes
    • Face - Zoya Avery
    • Body - Sinful Colors - Midnight Blue
    • Hats - Sally Hansen Red Carpet
    • Beard - Sinful Colors - Snow Me Whtie
  • Trees
    • Sinful Colors - Nirvana
    • Sinful Colors - HD Nails
    • Revlon Sassy
  • Mushrooms
    • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
    • Sinful Colors - Pandora
    • Sally Hansen - Red Carpet
  • Grass
    • Revlon - Sassy
    • Sinful Colors - HD Nails
Whew!  Those crazy lil creatures were a lot of work!!  They were rather fun though, minus the creepiness of them.  Each and every little guy was created with a tooth pick.  The tree trunks were done with a tooth pick, then I used my marble dotting technique to make the leaves.  The mushrooms were done as well with toothpicks.  To finish off, I took my striper and dunked it into the green polishes to make grass.  Finished off with a top coat and bam! done!

I had fun doing them though and they really got my creative mind working!  Thank you to Gabi who talked through the design with me after Nicole had to go have a tea party with her gno...I mean go to her husbands baseball game.

To be honest, I think this is one of my favorite posts/manicures because it really shows how amazing this nail blogging community is.  If I never started blogging, and never met Nicole and Gabi on Twitter, never in a million years would I have come up with this idea or challenged myself to do them!  This blog is definitely keeping me creative and thank you to everyone else who has tweeted me ideas in the past!  All your ideas have not gone un-noticed and will be on the blog some day soon!


It's Raining, It's Pouring...

12:31:00 PM

I'm not sure about you, but I hate thunderstorms.  There is something about them, especially at night, that really freak me out.  Maybe it's the brightness that lights up the whole dark room, or the loud noises that wake me up...I don't know, I just hate them.  Rain though, I love.  Give me a nice rain storm, especially at night, and I'm the happiest of happy.  Nothing is more calming than the sound of rain on a roof top.

Miss Gabi (@RubyStein79) loves rain as well.  She's jealous because where I live we seem to get tons of it this time of year, and well she gets none.  We got into a conversation on Twitter about rain, storms, etc, and I decided I was going to paint some storm nails!  It was perfect timing too, because yesterday we had a random rogue thunderstorm, complete with quarter sized hail.

Here's what I came up with.  Of course it was sunny when I took the pictures lol.  Ignore the edges, cleaning the black polish up was a royal PAIN and of course I ended up taking some polish off all together.  To take the pictures, I touched those areas up with a Sharpie.  Can you guess which nails I did that with??






Colors Used:

  • Base
    • Sinful Colors - Black on Black
  • Clouds
    • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
    • Pure Ice - Kiss Me Here
  • Rain
    • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
    • Sinful Colors - Sweet Dreams
    • Sally Hansen xTreme Wear - Blue Me Away!
For the clouds and rain, I did my favorite technique, the marble dots!  I've used these for my Lilac Nails and Rubber Duckie Nails.  I originally put on plain grey clouds, but I was not happy.  To do the marble dots, you drip a few drops of the color polishes you want to use on a plate, then take your dotting tool and dip it into both colors.  Dot on the plate a few times until you get the marbled look you want.  

I think it made the clouds look super cool and just like those scary clouds that come out of no where!  Like these that brought all the hail yesterday.  Literally, the dark clouds were eating up the white fluffy ones and pretty blue sky.


Do you like storms?? Why do you like them?  Do you also hate black nail polish as much as I do?