Towel Toes

I know there are some out there that don't care for pictures of feet. I'm actually not too crazy about my toes myself, but I do like to dress them up in the summer time and show them off in my summer shoes and sandals.

I saw a pedicure with China Glaze's Towel Boy Toy last year and was inspired to try this colour on my toes myself. I've said that I hate giving myself pedicures, and that hasn't changed, but I really wanted to get something on my toes, so I did this myself.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome, but this polish was almost impossible to capture on camera! The bottle shot above most accurately depicts the colour in my opinion. Below is the second most colour accurate photo, this was taken indoors with no flash. I played around with some fauxnad and rhinestones on my big toe :)

Below are some more attempts at getting the colour accurately captured, it didn't work. In the sun this polish looks so frosty on camera, in reality it has a superfine light blue shimmer that looks as though it's glowing.

One last close up (click for lager images!)

What do you think? I really love this polish on my toes, it was quick and easy to apply, and since it's a neon it dried super fast. I looooooovvvee this polish for my toes, the same goes for another polish from this collection, Flip Flop Fantasy, which is one of my absolute favorites from China Glaze. This makes me think I need to try out more from this collection on my toes lol.

What's your favorite pedi colour?

Dannii With BM Plate 221

As I promised today I have Zoya's Dannii with BM plate 221, below is a photo of the plate:

Such awesome designs, right? Does anyone know what he Asian character means on the left of this plate? I don't think I would feel right using it if I didn't know what it meant lol. I used the full nail design on the far right, pure optical illusion. I actually didn't think too much of this one when I first saw it but decided to try it anyways. I sooo ended up loving it :)

indoors, camera flash

I stamped with an old Sally Hansen 10 day no chip in Blackberry. This is my favorite non-konad black stamping polish. Look how perfect it picked up the image, but it never bleeds or streaks when I add a topcoat. I really liked working with these new plates, they feel stronger and thicker than before. So far I haven't had any issues with picking up designs on the ones I have tried :)

I love these sun photos, the gold shimmer in Dannii really shines though the black design. I couldn't stop looking at my nails when the sun was out.

So wow, Zoya polish is awesome and I cannot wait to participate in this program again next year. I am already making a list of polishes I want!

Dannii California

Happy Friday!!

Today I have the first ever Zoya polish I have ever worn, and it's only 1 coat! The formula of this polish was thick but manageable and very pigmented. It also wore amazingly, I wore it for 4 or 5 days before taking it off and didn't notice any tip wear at all. I'm sure the base and top coat helped out but wow, I am very impressed Zoya!

I wanted to try one of these as soon as I got my package but I felt like none of the colours I purchased were summery enough. This one is actually perfect for summer, I love how it looks in the sun, it's so much better in person.

Look how pretty! when I first saw swatches of it online it reminded me of the Claire's mood polish that goes from purple to pink. The Claire's polish has a silver shimmer, but Dannii has a beautiful gold shimmer that really makes it pop, especially in the sun.

The photo above is not colour accurate, but just wanted to include a picture of the polish with flash. I have more photos of this beauty coming up Monday with new BM designs, lots of sun pics coming up!

Whats In My Box?

IT CAME!... Well, actually it was delivered a while ago, someone just had to go pick it up. Here is the box containing my FIRST EVER Zoya nail polishes that I got in their latest polish exchange.

Whenever I see Zoya polishes in Canada they are usually pretty expensive and don't have a large selection, so I was really glad to participate this year and get some polishes I had been lusting over for only $4 a bottle! Withe the exchange it actually came out to slightly less, yay Canadian dollar!

Below I have Ivanka, Crystal (FINALLY!!) and Dannii :) To tell you the truth I got Dannii for the name lol, my brother and sister used to call me Dani when they were kids, to this day some people in my family still do. But I am super glad I got it, It was the first polish I wore and it was awesome!

Ivanka is a super shimmery green foil with tones of blue/teal and yellow/gold.
Crystal I have been lusting after forever! So hard to describe since I haven't actually tried it yet, but its more or less a blue base with gold and silver flecks. So pretty!
Dannii is a beautiful purple with awesome gold shimmer. This was the first one I tried so stay tuned for some photos.

The next 3 I got are Danielle (of course!), Dea and Dovima. The 3 D's, I so didn't do that on purpose either!

Although Danielle is my name, I saw this swatch, I think, on Scrangie's blog and before I saw the name I knew I had to have it. Its a milky sheer-ish pink with some white flecks of shimmer that you cant really see in the photo below, but they are there.

Dea I originally saw on Asami's blog and when she described the colour as milk chocolate, I knew I had to have it :)

I wanted a good matte black and Dovima seemed perfect (plus I needed at least 6 polishes for the promo)

So there you have it, my first ever Zoya's. Any favorites? Any ones you have been lusting for? What did you get in the exchange this year? I'm already looking forward to next year!

Testing Out the New Bundle Monster Plates

So, guess who made a request to try out my new Bundle Monster plates?

... here is a hint, this was the image requested:

Do you have any guesses...



It was my DAD!

And I swear he posed like that all on his own when I took the picture! lol I had just gotten the plates and was looking though them when he saw the skull and asked to see how they worked. There is an ongoing joke my dad has with me when he sees designs on my nails, he always asks if I can give him a black skull on his big toe lol.

Anyways, I showed him how it worked and he said, alright, now do the other hand! so yea, this was hilarious to me.

Aside from this being my first stamp from the new plates, I just could not wait to try them out! What an improvement from the last set, I am very impressed, especially with the choice of designs.

I had heard some people say that some of their plates were missing or defective, so I took a good look at all my plates, and this was the only one that had something wrong with it:

You may have to enlarge, I circled the issue in red.

Usually, I'm not one to complain about something so small, but the line did show up when stamped, and I really liked the design :(

I contacted Bundle Monster and they apologized and offered to send me a new plate! I will let you know how that one looks when I get it. There was one other plate with some weird markings on it, but they didn't effect the design so it's not really an issue for me.

So far from the designs I have tried out, I have not experienced any issues, they all stamp very well :) Which is your favorite plate or design?

Sale Hunting and Hauling

Hello ladies,

Hope all of those who had a long weekend enjoyed teh extra days off from work:) I feel like I have so much to show you in the upcoming weeks! Today I will start off with some mini hauls I made a couple of weeks ago but never got around to posting until now.

The first 3 polishes I got were from a Beauty supply I used to frequent, I don't go there as often anymore because the prices keep going up :( Lucky for me, the last time I was in there they had a whole clearance section of polishes they wanted to get rid off. All of the China Glazes in this section were $3.50.

I picked up 2 from 2009's summer collection, Orange Marmalade and Cherry Pie (far left and far right). The middle polish is actually from the current summer collection and is called Blue Iguana! I love that name! As I said this is from the current collection but I guess someone mixed it in with the other polishes, the shop owner let me have this one also for $3.50!

Next I have a teeny, tiny haul from Rexal, they had 40% off all their polishes last week so I checked out what they had. Last years promo was way better, they had 50% off, and I bought WAY too much polish, my recipt said I saved over $50! I also had a bunch of coupons I used with the 50% off. This year I only purchased 3 bottles:

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear, Strobe Light and NYC quick dry top coat. This is my favorite topcoat after Seche Vite. It dries super glossy and quick plus the formula is thin and easy to work with and the brush is just perfect :) I forget how much the Sally Hansen was ($2ish?) but the NYC's were $1.30.

Next I have some Salon finds. I just recently discovered a salon called Chatters which is Canadian only I believe. If any Canadians are looking for black shatter, I suggest checking them out, they had at least 50 bottles the last time I was there! And although their China Glaze Crackle did not come in on time, they took customers numbers for when they did come in! By the time they called me I already had the ones I wanted but I thought that was great service :) Anyways, they had some random polishes on sale so I picked up OPI DS Classic for $5.

It doesn't look holo in the photo because it was overcast that day, but its pretty blinggy in the sunlight!

Another salon find for $5.95 each, Nicole by OPI's My Lifesaver (from the Bieber collection... unfortunately), and an OPI ridge filler. I just used this and so far, so good :)

These polishes are from way back when I had a no buy...I only got these 4 though, so thats not too bad, right?

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Celeb City. I needed a good silver foil, and I got this one on sale for $1.

Next are random polishes that are not named. The first one is a light hot pink with white glass fleckes. The second is a dark green with gold shimmer and white glass flecks, this one remindes me a bit of Zombie Zest from China Glaze. Tthe last is a Claw Polish that is a straight black ( I think it's called Fright Night), I really wanted the orange and black bar glitter from this brand, and the place I got these at had every claw polish but that one! I got these 3 polishes for 50 cents each.

And last, but not least some beauty care. The Boy Shop had a promo for their new duo body butters, they were on sale for $16 I think, and I found a coupon in the newspaper where if you buy one you get any scrub you want for free. Score! I got a lemon scrub which smells so good! The body butter is Floral Acai.

That is all for now! I will have some comments on my new bundle monster plates tomorrow!

Copper Rain

Hello ladies,

So this is what I did with my Havana Nights mani. I wanted to cover up any imperfections caused by my base coat so I decided to try one of my new Sephora by OPI glitters, Traffic Stopper Copper. omg, love! This glitter is awesome, it has teeny, tiny little specs of copper gliter and larger hexagonal glitter. Sephora also has two other polishes similar to this one, Flurry Up ( Silver) and Only Gold For Me (Gold). I am lucky enough to own all three :)

I love the look these glitters give, it's always random and I really love the look of copper with the light blue. After I application I gave one final coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying of so many layers and it just blended everything together perfectly :)

The blue looks so perfect and milky against the shiny copper pieces. The weather has been so gray and rainy lately, hence the title of this post, and probably why I chose the colour combo in the first place. Just looking at my nails while walking outside just reminds me of some blingy rain.

I really love this mani and I am still wearing it today (I applied it on Saturday morning). It took a beating over the weekend too since I was helping my boyfriend paint his house. It still looks pretty good though, I have maybe one tiny chip. This next photo is most colour accurate, both were taken with natural light from an overcast and gloomy rainy day.

I may change it tonight or tomorrow though, not sure if I want to add to it or just take it off and try something else. I also just recieved my polishes from the Zoya exchange and my new BM plates, they were sent to the States then I had to wait for someone in my family to pick them up and bring them to me, thats why I got them so late. Look forward to some fun posts of those coming soon :)

Love/Hate Relationship

Hello ladies,

Today I have a polish that I LOOOOVED the first time I saw it. Such a beautiful light almost pastel blue, and I love my blues! I had debated for a while whether I should get OPI's What's with the Cattitude? or this beauty, Sepora by OPI's Havana Dreams. Havana Dreams was from Sephora's summer collection last year, Havana Nights, and although What's With the Cattitude? was not a complete dupe for it, I figured that I wouldn't need both.

I had heard many negative comments on this polish based on formula, but I figured it couldn't be that bad... unfortunately I was wrong. Now, I applied this polish 3-4 days ago, so I am definitely calm now, but during application I was really frustrated.

The formula is thin and watery and took 3 coats to be opaque and even. Then, to make things worse I accidentally smudged a few fingers :( On top of that I had some issues that weren't the polishes fault, I think my base coat had some dried up bits from the spout on the brush, so that caused some unevenness and bumping.


I was literally ready to just give up and take everything off at that point.

If I didn't have Seche Vite I don't know if I would have kept this mani on. I was so upset at the time I was ready to bring it right back to Sephora. The colour is beautiful though, such a shame that the formula had to suck. I don't think I'll bring it back based on the colour alone, I will just have to deal with the crappy formula and be very careful with application.

Stay tuned for tomorrows post to see how I made this mani awesome :)

Playing With Konad

Hello ladies,

Today I have some photos of me messing around with some new fauxnad plates I purchased from the Born Pretty Store. I wanted a nice pattern to go over the OPI, Bubble Bath mani I was wearing so I used my new white Insta Dri (works perfectly with Konad!) and picked this full nail pattern.

I also applied some of Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear in Strobe Light to the tips of my nails. You can see this better in the photos below.

THEN... I don't know what I was thinking, I ended up dotting every flower with OPI's La Paz-itavely Hot.

What do you think, cute, or over the top? I ended up removing it right after I took the pictures lol.

I Gave My Nails a Bubble Bath ^_^

Hello ladies,

Today I have one of my favorite sheers to share with you today, OPI's Bubble Bath. This makes my nails look so clean and polished. I have worn this in the past for French manis as a base of either 1 or 2 coats. Although sheer, I wanted to see how much it could be built up so I decided to wear this as a full mani.

The actual colour of the polish is a soft, milky pink. 1 or 2 coats gives my nails a heathy pink glow and shine. I used 3 coats when I wore it and this is how it turned out.

Indirect sunlight

I love how polished, clean and elegant this looks. Some nail line is visible but I kind of expected it and don't mind.

Indirect sunlight

I used Seche Vite over top to help with drying of the many coats, the high gloss it gave me was awesome!

Camera flash

I wore this polish for at lease 3 to 4 days before I started to get any chips or markings, and this was without a base coat. After 5 days I played around with some Konad and removed it for a new colour.

Camera flash

I really think I need a back up of this one, its the perfect sheer neutral for me and I love how it can be used under a French manicure or built up on it's own.

What's your go to neutral for natural looking nails?

Bubble White Review

Hello ladies,

Today I have a quick review on some nail cleaner/whitener that I purchased from Sally's Beauty Supply, Bubble White. I actually saw a review of this on YouTube and thought I would try it out for myself.

The instructions were pretty simple, empty the contents of the bag in to a small amount of warm water, put your fingers in and wait 10 minutes.

Below are a couple of pictures of my nails after removing OPI's Catch Me In Your Net. Besides some other yellow discolouring from constantly wearing polish (I can't rememeber the last time my nails went naked for more than an hour or two), CMIYN, turned not only my nails blue, but the skin around them too! Now, I tried to post the best photos I could get, but it is still hard to see the before and after difference. It was more apparent in person.

Gross right?! Oh yeah, I'm still rocking the more oval/squval shape on my nails as you can clearly see, I'm actually quite liking it a lot :) I do have to get used to shaping though, i'm so used to just squaring everything off! I think this shape gives my nails a nice feminine look :)

Anyways, back to the task at hand, after 10 minutes I scrubbed my nails with a brush and washed my hands with soap. From what I can remember I felt like I had some sort of film on my skin, kind of slippery? I also noticed that my nails looked like they had been eaten away at, if that makes sense. Not in a bad way, like the powder ate away at the stains. I gave my nails a quick buff and this is how they looked.

What do you think, a little better right? In the last picture you can still see some blue on my fingers, but that washed right off afterwords. Thre is still a little yellowing at the tips of some nails, but not as bad as before.

What do you ladies think?

Glitzerland in Spring!

Hello ladies,

Wowzers, where have I been this week?! I have actually been super busy with some tight deadlines at work and and was busy making the most of my weekend with the wonderful weather here in Toronto. Spring has finally sprung!

On to the polish, today I have another untried of mine that I purchased last August. Glitzerland was the only polish I wanted from OPI's fall/winter collection, and the only one I ultimately ended up purchasing. I thought it was perfect for winter and had this idea in my head or creating a gold funky french!

...Then I saw China Glazes Holiday collection and I knew I HAD to have Midnight Kiss. What an amazing gold foil! I actually wore that polish for New Years and totally forgot about Glitzerland. The other night I wanted a colour that I could apply quickly, dry fast and I was feeling neutral that day. I pulled out some sheers and nudes, but I just knew they would take forever to dry and it was close to 11:00, didn't want sheet marks. I looked though my OPI's and found a few untrieds and decided I would finally try one of them, Glitzerland.

Indirect Sunlight

My first impression of this polish? Thin. At first glance I thought it clashed with my skin tone. It also felt a bit weird wearing a gold shimmer in the start of Spring lol. 3 coats later and I thought it looked alright. I didn't have any application issues, and I didn't mind applying 3 coats, OPI polishes usually dry fairly quickly for me.

Indirect Sunlight

I had originally thought that Midnight Kiss would be the exact same but it's not, I find it is a true foil, where as Glitzerland is not, more of a shimmer. I also think that Midnight Kiss is a better Winter/Holiday polish, where as I can actually seeing me pulling off Glitzerland in the summer with a nice tan!

Camera Flash

This polish really grew on me, in the beginning I wasn't too sure it was the right polish for me, but the next day I loved it. It's a great base for Konad or any nail art and it looks great in the sun. It also lasted a full week with VERY minor tip wear, although since I had been wearing it for so long, it started to get tiny crack marks. I only noticed them right before I took it off. Removal by the way was a little difficult, but nothing like a true glitter.

I stamped a big bow on my ring fingers with China Glazes Flip Flop Fantasy , but forgot to take a picture :( oh well, next time.

Born Pretty Mothers Day Discount!

Hello Ladies,

How fitting that yesterdays post showcased some of the items I own from the Born Pretty Store...

They have sent me a coupon code good for 12% off of any purchase made on their website. The code is good from May 4th to 15th, so far this is the best percentage discount they have ever offered, so I would take advantage of it while you can!

Here is the code: HAPPYMOTHERS

I have tested it and it works for me. If you have any issue with it, please let me know :)

If you do plan on making a purchase from the Born Pretty Store, which you can access my clicking the banner on the right side of my blog, be sure to check out the "specials" tab. Before I told you about how their Konad "inspired" image plates were on sale for $1.55, that promo is now over, but they have some matte finish polish and new crackles in a bunch of fun colours on promo this time! I just might have to pick some up myself ;)

Any to all you mothers out there, I hope you have a very Happy Mothers day and a great weekend to all :)

Mani Refresh (Konad) and Supporting a Good Cause

Hello ladies,

Today I have a mani refresh with yesterdays polish, OPI's Catch Me In Your Net. I loved this polish so much I did not want to take it off, but I wanted to add something to it for fun :) and Konading is always fun!

I used my fake Konad plate from the Born Pretty Store, Plate M77. I used the necklace design on my ring fingers and thumbs. It was subtle but added the perfect amount of interest I was going for, not too over the top.

To give it that little extra something special, I used some small pearl accents, sent for me to review from the Born Pretty Store a while back. I added one randomly to the "pearl" necklace in the design.

I then added a white/clear rhinestone to the gem image in the stamp. I got a whole set of rhinestones in different shapes, colours and sizes from Dollarama of all places! This was in the arts and crafts section. I had found similar ones in the beauty section, but there was way less of selection, quantity, and the were cheap looking.

So many pictures! I feel that today's photos better represent the polish than yesterdays. I had more natural light for these ones, even though it was cloudy :( Stupid rainy weather.

And now for something totally of topic, but almost in perfect timing with this past Earth Day :) I was contacted my Sara Wilson a little while back to promote the Fresh Air fund. Most of you, as well as myself originally, may not have been familiar with this cause. Basically, they are looking for host families, for more information read on:

Friendly Town host families are volunteers who live in the suburbs or small town communities. Host families range in size and background, but share the desire to open their hearts and homes to give city children an experience they will never forget. Hosts say the Fresh Air experience is as enriching for their own families, as it is for the inner-city children. There are no financial requirements for hosting a child. Volunteers may request the age-group and gender of the Fresh Air youngster they would like to host.

I have taken this directly from their website, as it explains best. For more information, please visit their website here.

I figured if I can help them spread the word, why not :) If you or someone you know would like to help out, please go to their website to find out how to sign up.