Striping tape diamond crosshatch design in red, orange, and white

How's about another pain-in-the-ass striping tape mani? This one may not be as bad as that right angle black and neon green one was, but I did both hands this time, so really you could say the expenditure of striping tape was about the same. I did this one back in mid-June: Why it takes me so long to post things sometimes, I don't know. Clearly I just need to quit my job and do my nails full time.

 

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Turquoise and holo lightning bolts

A quick and easy mani for you today featuring lightning bolt nail vinyls from Nailvinyls.com. Linda was a big sweetie and sent them to me along with some other of her vinyls to try out. We all know how much I love these things, so I gleefully accepted! I had also just received my first GG Couture polishes in the mail (had to order that spectraflair top coat) and so I had some fun with this simple mani with a subtle splash of holo on the middle nail.

 

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Lazy Sunday: Pure Ice glitter gradient

This simple two-polish mani was done about six weeks ago and like many of my other recent posts it seems, it got burried somewhere in my Mac hiding from publication. The inspiration for this mani? The polish line itself: "Pure Ice". I saw these two colours at Walmart and thought they would work beautifully for a simple icy glitter gradient. Doesn't hurt that Pure Ice is only $1.97 each at Walmart... and that's regular retail price!!!

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Mani swap with Dorra of Didoline!

Why is it that all french nail bloggers are so amazing??? I mean seriously. What. The. Heck. I am so happy to share with you today a mani swap with one of them, the super sweet Dorra of Didoline's Nails! Dorra chose to replicate my super time-consuming neon and black hypnotizing square mani and I went the simple route baha and chose one of her Fashion Friday nail arts, this one inspired by the Fausto Puglisi 2015 Resort collection.

Pink and grey holo fancy chevron scaled gradient

Further to my futuristic teal mermaid-esque scaled gradient, today I'm having some more I Love Nail Polish (ILNP)* holo fun! This time with 'fancy chevrons' - who knew errthin' be gettin' fancy these days? I'm pretty sure this is one the sexiest mani's I've ever done. Yep, I just called nail art sexy.

 

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The Great Polish Giveaway hosted by Nail Polish Canada

Img credit: Nail Polish Canada

You best enter this!! Nail Polish Canada is hosting a massive giveaway that is currently at 135 nail polishes of varying brands - but high quality amazing brands like Cirque, NCLA, piCture pOlish, OPI, Cult Nails, A England, and the list goes on to a maximum prize of 200 nail polishes! That's basically all of our dreams.

I've nominated Cult Nails' 'Nevermore' to be added to the grand prize. You may be thinking why, it's just plain black? Well, yes, this is true, which why it is an absolute essential for any nail artist. Every time I use black in my nail art I always reach for Nevermore because it is super glossy, seriously opaque (a one-coater!) and its application is always flawless. I'm halfway through my own bottle and I just add a tad of nail polish thinner and it's back to its original fluid consistency. I figure if you're going to win dozens of amazing nail polishes, you need at least one perfect black!

Here's some examples of where I've used Nevermore in nail art:

Geometric print pattern

Matte flakie skittle over black

Neon holo jelly wavy skittle

Hypnotizing black and neon squares

Enter in the rafflecopter widget below, and you can gain extra entries by following me on Facebook. I don't use Twitter so you can forget about that part :) The giveaway is open to Canadian and USA residents.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Leadlighting with neon holo jellies

Last week I reviewed six awesome new neon holo jelly polishes by Beyond the Nail. Today I've got some nail art using a technique that is completely new to me, but I got to use all six polishes from the BTN collection - score! 'Leadlighting' is a relatively new nail art technique first popularized by Messy Mansion where you dab sheer jelly polishes over a white space with a stamped black pattern to fill in the pattern. Karen of @sharingvu on Instagram began using jelly polishes to fill in spaces she freehanded with Chinese calligraphy brushes (also known as 'sumi' brushes) and white/black acrylic paint over a black/white base. I was directly inspired by Karen's take on the leadlighting technique but put my own spin on it by painting a swirly and dotted pattern I have done elsewhere, and evidently, I'm not using just any sheer jelly polishes, I'm using NEON HOLO JELLIES!

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Work appropriate mani Monday: Rose water decals over not so apparent gradient

Another slightly dated mani for you today, cause I'm purging myself of old nail photos! These were done about a month and a half ago with water decals I randomly got of Mynailproducts.com a while ago. I actually thought that the decals would be transparent (not white) and so you'd see the bottom half of my gradient, but as it turned out they were white, so my initial gradient efforts were lost anyways when the decal covered up the bottom half of my nail. Boo.

Looping effect over iridescent teal

Found this one in my unpublished folder, looks like I did it in May. In any case, I'd bought KB Shimmer 'Teal Another Tale' because, well, it's teal, and it's sparkly, and even shifty. So pretty that I didn't want to interfere with its magical colour properties so all I did was add a simple white looping effect freehand design, some dots, and swarovski flatback studs for extra bling (picked them up at my local craft store).

Split baby blue and gold with crackled studs

Studs! The first time I've ever used any, actually. Born Pretty Store sent me these super cool crackled leopard studs and I thought they were pretty unique compared to the typical monochromatic studs we see everywhere these days. I used the colours in the stud as a point of reference and picked my polish colours from there.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!