Some pride manis (pic heavy!)

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Thursday! One more day until a long weekend for Canadians, right? :) And Americans get Monday off, I imagine... ;) It's a good weekend, I think! I leave for my cruise for Alaska on Sunday, yay! I have some posts prepped for while I'm away and Nicole will be looking after everything for me! :) I won't be online at all during the week I'm away, leaving the laptop behind and making sure to keep my phone off!

Today I have a couple of rainbow manicures. Today is the last day of LGTB pride month. I'm going to try not to get too political here but I can't help it - I believe all human beings are equal, regardless of who they love or who they are.

As some of you might know if you follow me on twitter, my previous roommate, Kaydee, is a lesbian. I often referred to her as "my lesbian". Obviously I don't do this because I define her solely by her sexuality - she is one of the best friends that I've ever had and I love her to bits. It just seems to be the thing that people remember about her.

Kaydee came out when we were still in middle school. She dated my best friend at the time. And it wasn't really a big deal to our group of friends, but to other people it was. The city we graduated in is part of the Bible belt of BC. I'm not going to sit here and talk smack about religion, but the way some "Christians" behave to gay people is straight up horrifying to me. I wasn't originally from that city, but Kaydee grew up there. It saddens me to see so much hatred in the world, especially over something like who a stranger loves. I have quite a few gay friends and I love them all. Gay marriage was legalized in all of Canada in 2005 (it had been legal in eight provinces and a territory since 2003). I was fifteen and it was amazing. I knew that someday I'd be able to watch all of my friends get married, not just the straight ones. And I knew then, and still know now, that I will be there, wishing them a lifetime and happiness of love. I don't care who's packing what below the belt, love is love. And that's all I'm going to say.

So for this first mani, I was dying to try out one of those awesome splatter manis inspired by one of my favourite people. Jen posted an awesome tutorial on how to get this look, so after I got some straws, I went to work! I used quite a few colours for these rainbow manicures, obviously. For this one, I used Revlon Red, Color Club Wham! Pow, Color Club Almost Famous, Color Club Pucci-licious, China Glaze Kiwi Cool-Ada, China Glaze Towel Boy Toy and Color Club Warhol. All of this was over one (thick) coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear blah blah white. I topped with a Fast Forward and Seche Vite combination. I'm sorry about the lack of sunlight pictures, it was a miserable day when I wore this!

What do you think? Not bad for my first attempt, eh? I think if I were to go back I wouldn't put every colour on every nail... Pucci-licious seemed to take over quite a bit whenever I used it!

For the second rainbow mani, I used the same colours. I just swapped Towel Boy Toy for Color Club Chelsea Girl, because I thought it would work better. I started out by laying down a coat of white, then dabbed colours on in random spots on my nails. This is what it looked like when I was done.

Bit weird on its own, of course, but I had never intended to just leave it! Then I stamped over it using Konad M57, of course. I love animal print and I wanted to rock some fierce nails in support of my gay friends, who I generally lovingly refer to as "my homos". <3

Then I wanted to add some sparkles, so I went over that with a coat of China Glaze Wireless Holographic topcoat.

Sorry for the different sized pictures but I didn't want this to take all day to load LOL. Hopefully it helps! I wanted to show individual shots of each nail because each one looks different!

So that's it from me today! What do you lovelies think? Have you tried out a splatter mani yet? Did you do any rainbow manis this month? Have you tried any blobbing (clearly the technical term) and stamping manis yet? I really want to try something like this - it's one of my favourite posts that Kari's ever done and I loooove her blog and have for ages. She's such a sweetheart too - last week she tweeted at me out of nowhere to say that she was proud of me - she was one of the first blogger friends Nicole and I made on twitter, and she was right there celebrating 50 followers with us, and she's still celebrating with me now. Last night was a straight up lovefest on twitter and it just reminded me of what a great community I've become a part of. <3 ANYWAY, mushiness over!

 Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Don't shoot me!

Hello lacquered lovelies! I KNOW IT'S WEDNESDAY AND I'M NOT WEARING PINK. I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't get anything prepped in time so I'm wearing pink as I write this - and of course, the weather is miserable outside when it was supposed to be "partly cloudy". Yeah... it's raining. I'm hoping it will get sunny like it does later and then I'll schedule this mani as a post for next week... hopefully! And I'm sorry about the lack of a post yesterday... I was really cranky and didn't want to bring it here, so I spent my day on twitter instead. I'm sorry!

I'm going to keep working my way through the Color Club Starry Temptress set. I was so stoked on this set and I was thrilled to find it! I love glitter and I love having obnoxious, attention-grabbing nails sometimes (most of the time... unless it's a Channelesque/Below Deck type of shade. I love those hard) so this set was beckoning from etailers for months, begging for me to allow it into my home.

So I'm showing the orange, You Got Soul-ar. You knew I would love this, didn't you? My love for orange is almost obscene. These colours are tricky to capture - they're sooo neon but to try and get them to be somewhat colour accurate while still showing the glitter is tricky. I was just looking at Scrangie's swatches and have come to the conclusion that you should really just own these. Pictures can't do them justice.

I used three coats - and a topcoat, since apparently people hate seeing neons matte haha - for these pictures!

So that's how my camera captured it normally. Pretty decent, but think more neon. So I remembered that I have a vivid colour setting on my camera that's supposed to help pick bright colours up better, decided to give that a go...

It makes my hands look really tanned and weird - seriously weird - but I'd say this is more colour accurate. Not quite this dark, a touch lighter.

Someone else said to try taking pictures with my nails underwater... I don't think it worked very well with this colour!

I love these. They're so unique. I love the Color Club brush too, and their bottles are definitely easier for my carnie hands to hold.

I got my set for $12.99 at Winners. Fellow Canadians, you might have some luck there!

What do you lovelies think? Do you like this collection? How do you feel about glitter that isn't really sparkly? Do you like neons?

 Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Some franken fails/naked nails?

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Monday! It's a huge sale day at my work today... really not looking forward to it at all. I can't wait to go on the cruise, we leave Sunday!

I was looking through pictures and decided to do a combination of a couple of things I've got lying around. Two frankens I hated and naked nails. Weirdly, I get a lot of requests about what my nails look like unpolished... uhh? It's not pretty... I'd like to find something for the stains but hey, it's the price I pay. Any recommendations?

This first one was made using a bunch of stuff. The glitter is Wet 'n' Wild Party of Five Glitters and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear blah blah in Strobe Light or something? I can't find the bottle. It's that shimmery bit, anyway. I swatched it and then thought it would look better more opaque, hence why my middle finger looks different. This one is totally crap. Thick, difficult to work with, difficult to clean up (hence my horrible lines) and not at all what I had in mind.

The only nice thing about it, for me, is the shimmer. That's the Sally Hansen stuff poking through. I think it's pretty.

Aaand another fail. This one was made using OPI Pamplona Purple and some gold glitter. Look at the bottom of the bottle and you'll see why it's a fail.

Yeah. All that hex glitter and it didn't translate onto the nail at all. BAH. So I tried layering some of the hex glitter on there and then adding another coat of the franken.

Umm... yeah. Still not keen, though it does look better with the hex glitter, I think...  I dunno. I think the problem is that I hate the base colour LOL. It looks really... granny-ish to me.

Okay and WARNING: STAINED NAILS AHEAD. They're not as bad as they were but yeah, still not nice. This was about a week and a half ago...? The bottle I'm holding is an American Classics treatment called Growth Spurt - I loooove this stuff. The only thing I like about my naked nails is that I think I have decent nail lines lol. That's part of why I don't mind VNL when I wear jellies, etc. The thing that bugs me most is all the problems my middle finger gives me - all of my other fingernails grow relatively square, but my middle fingernail does whatever it wants. Irritatiiiiing. I've fixed the issue since (sort of), but I apologize.

So yeah. I wanted to get the naked nails out of the way and thought maybe starting off with some laughably bad frankens would help ease the pain of seeing my stained nails. :(

That's it from me today, icky and gross! Have you guys had any franken fails recently? What do you use to keep your nails unstained? Are your nails stained? Are they gross like mine? Do you ever have naked nails? I went out in public ONCE recently with bare nails and I kept hiding my hands because I felt embarrassed. Eww!

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Look what I found!

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Saturday! What are you up to today? Any plans? I'm working again today haha. Ah well, such is life!

Today I have a polish from a collection that I was super excited to find. You know when the Color Club Starry Temptress collection came out? I was dying for it. Neon glitters that aren't actually sparkly? NEED. I love neons (though I don't show them, like, ever - do you know why? It's because I photograph almost all of my manis and neons are too difficult LOL) and obviously I love glitter... or my blog wouldn't be called Glitta Gloves haha! I found this at Winners for $12.99, so Canadians, if you're wanting some Color Club sets, check the Winners closest to you - there was loads of stuff at mine!

So this is Otherwordly, the awesome blue. All of these polishes are basically the same as the Poptastic polishes, just with glitter. Normally this would bug me but I love the Poptastic collection, so... I did two coats for this, but I think I should've done three. Just for a mani, as I was intending to wear this, I would've been okay with two. For pictures, it should've been three. Ah well! I added topcoat as well, since I figure it's more useful to see these polishes the way that most of you would actually wear them - honestly, you all are probably a lot better than me about remembering topcoat!

Mmm. This didn't dry super gritty - it's not super gritty but it's not perfectly smooth either. I added China Glaze Fast Forward, which got absorbed rather quickly, and then slapped some Seche Vite on. I find that's the easiest way to avoid shrinkage and still get all the crazy shine of Seche Vite!

That's it from me today! What do you lovelies think? Do any of you have tips for photographing neons? I'm dreading doing the purple from this set LOL, purples are notoriously difficult anyway and this one looks mental! Have you picked any polishes from this collection up? Does this appeal to you?

 Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

A franken for Friday: Forbidden Forest!

Hello lacquered lovelies! First of all, I want to wish a very happy anniversary to my parents, who I miss already and can't believe they've not killed each other yet... and a happy birthday to my brothers, who are legal (19) today! This is the first time in my entire life that I haven't been able to be home for this day and I'm feeling depressed about it, so let me talk about this instead. First, the title of this post...

YES I LOVE ALLITERATION. I can't help it. It appeals to me on so many levels. Anyway, happy Friday! Do you have any plans for the weekend? :)

Today's polish will be filed under the "I made this" tag. Apparently I didn't have a franken label until just now... LOL.

Anyway, I have a franken today, obviously. I had about a third of a bottle of Wet 'n' Wild Clear left, so I decided to use the empty bottle to franken something. After digging around for a while, I came across this GOSH pigment. It's GOSH Holographic Silver Effect Powder. I didn't take a pic of it, but check out this blog post on Found on Film. You'll immediately see why I ended up buying it LOL. I do believe I sent some to Jen in our swap too!

I added a pinch and then started thinking about holos I'd want to see. Immediately, my brain settled on a dark green holo. Cool. So I grabbed a bunch of polishes and got started. I don't remember everything that I used, but I remember that I used OPI Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow and some other darkish green cremes I had to get the colour. Then I added OPI Blue Moon Lagoon, China Glaze He's Going in Circles and a couple of drops of OMG...

All of those light colours kept lightening the base up, so I took to twitter to ask advice on how to darken it. Black wasn't working out, so I asked twitter, and Laynie responded and said that I should add a couple of drops of red, since it's the colour opposite. She also said to be very careful, because it doesn't take much. I made a full bottle and used four drops of red to lighten this up, so be careful!

So, here it is. In honour of the fact that it's almost time for MY CHILDHOOD TO END (or the last Harry Potter movie coming out), I decided to give it a Harry Potter name. I kept thinking about forest faeries but after a lot of talk on twitter (and Jeanette saying it should have "forest" in it), I decided on Forbidden Forest. Devil's Snare was also suggested, which would've been wicked, but I've got another idea for what I think a Devil's Snare franken would look like!

For anyone who isn't a Potter nerd (wtf how do you exist), the Forbidden Forest is on the edge of the Hogwarts grounds. It's the home of all sorts of scary creatures, like giant spiders (;dhg;ads my skin is crawling), but also to beautiful creatures, like unicorns. Oh, and there's centaurs. I love centaurs. So Forbidden Forest fit to me - dark but still with the holographic. Mostly for the unicorns. I love unicorns too. This was three coats, no topcoat.

 

I'm in the process of decanting this into smaller bottles to add to swap packages and a mini will be going in a future giveaway, I think, if you guys like it?

So that's it! I know I was wordy/a bit pic heavy today, I apologize. I stopped myself from going on in my posts from the last two days, there's only so long I can restrain myself LOL. 

What do you lovelies think? Have you made any cool frankens lately? What would your Harry Potter nail polishes look like? Can you believe no companies have gotten on that? It boggles my mind!

 Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Fun with flakies!

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Thursday! You're nearly there, people with a normal work schedule! *Coughs* Today I've got another quickie (LOL) for you. I was reorganizing my polishes (they're back by brand again - I do miss the colour organization now but I think once I adjust I'll like the brand way better!) and I came across Nubar 2010 again. I wanted to try layering it over a lighter colour, and Icing J'Dore caught my eye. I only picked that polish up because I don't have any baby blue cremes... in my head at least. I found that I did indeed have a couple once I came home and looked but ah well!

I started out with two coats of J'Dore. This is a nice formula and I quite like the Icing brush - it's not too wide for my nails (I find the OPI brush can be) and it's not thin, like I find the China Glaze brush to be. I wish more polishes had brushes like this, personally! It leveled itself out easily and I added ChG Fast Forward because I was feeling impatient. Then I added a coat of Nubar 2010, waited about fifteen minutes, then mattified it. I loooooove matte flakies!

These were taken after I got off work, I'm sorry! This chipped a bit, but only around the cuticle, which seems to happen pretty often with mattes on me... weird! I'm keeping the pictures small because my hands were dry, ewwww.... sorry! :(

That's it from me! What do you lovelies think? Do you like layering flakies over lighter colours? Do you wear your flakies glossy or matte? Which do you prefer? Have you used any good flakies lately? Any recommendations?

 Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

A new OPI Avojuice!

Hello lacquered lovelies! Just another quick PR post for the night and then I'll be done! I got this one in French and in English, so I'll post both versions - it's more properly Canadian of me anyway, right? I'm excited about this, I love hibiscus flowers and I love the Avojuices - I love to keep them in my purse! :)




Hydrate Dry Skin for Summer!

OPI Introduces NEW Avojuice Skin Quenchers

Hand & Body Lotion in Hibiscus Blossom

  

OPI launches new Avojuice Skin Quenchers Hand & Body Lotion in an enticing Hibiscus Blossom scent. This island blend of hibiscus blossoms and tropical fruit, saturated with natural moisturizers and soothing avocado and aloe extracts, will moisturize both hands and body for smoother and softer skin.

“Not only are Hibiscus flowers aesthetically pleasing, their exotic scent blended with a tropical fruit aroma creates an irresistible, delicate fragrance,” says Suzi Weiss- Fischmann, OPI Executive VP & Artistic Director. “With its lightweight texture, Hibiscus Blossom can help women bare their legs with confidence this summer by turning cracked or dry skin velvety soft.”

New OPI Avojuice Skin Quenchers Hand & Body Lotion in Hibiscus Blossom  will be available beginning July 2011 at Professional Salons and Spas for the suggested retail price of $9.95 (CDN) for each 200 mL bottle.

For more information, please call 800-341-9999 or visit www.opi.com. Follow OPI

on Twitter @OPI_PRODUCTS and become a  Facebook fan!

Hydratez votre peau sèche pour l’ été!

OPI présente la NOUVELLE lotion hydratante pour les mains et le corps Avojuice au parfum de fleur d’hibiscus

OPI lance la nouvelle lotion hydratante pour les mains et le corps Avojuice au parfum enivrant de fleur d’hibiscus. Ce mélange des îles au parfum de fleur d’hibiscus et de fruits tropicaux, saturé d’hydratants naturels, d’avocat apaisant et d’extrait d’aloès, hydratera vos mains et votre corps pour rendre votre peau plus douce et plus lisse.

« Non seulement les fleurs d’hibiscus sont plaisantes du point de vue esthétique, mais leur odeur exotique mélangée aux arômes de fruits tropicaux crée aussi un parfum irrésistible et délicat, déclare Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, vice-présidente exécutive et directrice artistique d’OPI. Avec sa texture légère, Hibiscus Blossom permet aux femmes de montrer leurs jambes avec confiance cet été en transformant la peau craquelée et sèche en une peau douce comme du velours. »

La nouvelle lotion hydratante pour les mains et le corps Avojuice d’OPI au parfum de fleur d’hibiscus sera offerte à partir de juillet 2011 dans les salons professionnels et les spas au prix suggéré de 9,95 $ CA par bouteille de 200 mL.

Pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez composer le 800-341-9999 ou consultez le site www.opi.com. Suivez OPI sur Twitter @OPI_PRODUCTS et sur Facebook!

Yum! I can't wait to try this one - you can never have too many lotions, right?