Hey guys!

As an homage to Cassandra from Both Hands Polished, who I featured as my December featured blog, I decided to use one of her recent manicures as inspiration for my one of my own! I loved her The Grinch mani from a few days ago and although I was a little hesitant to try such a detailed design, I really wanted to give it a try. Well, I'm glad I did because I absolutely LOVE how this turned out!

I wanted to change things up a bit to make the design more my own so I basically only recreated The Grinch himself from her mani and I altered the rest of the design.

I hope you all like it and I hope I made Cassandra proud!


Products:
OPI Chip Skip
CND Stickey Base Coat
Orly - Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (base)
China Glaze - White on White (base for french tips, base for The Grinch's face and hat, hat fluff)
Orly - Star Spangled (french tips, hat)
OPI - Who the Shrek Are You? (The Grinch's face)
China Glaze - Lemon Fizz (eyes)
China Glaze - Salsa (pupils)
OPI - Black Onyx (black details on face)
Seche Vite Top Coat

Hey guys!

Welcome to December's featured blog post!
For my newer followers who haven't seen one of my featured blog posts before, check out my Featured Blogs tab at the top of the page for more information.

I know it's a little early to be posting my featured blog of the month, but starting on the 21st of December I'm going to have a new and special series for you that will be taking up the rest of the month's posts. Keep your eyes out for that series!

December's featured blog is actually owned by the winner of my Essie Braziliant Collection Giveaway! Cassandra and I have spoken several since times she won my giveaway and she is SO sweet. She's new to the blogging scene and I don't know why she didn't start blogging earlier because she's got some serious talent!

Like I said, she's a new blogger so there's not a whole lot of content yet but she's been posting some really great nail art and I'm looking forward to seeing much more from her.

Here's a sneak peak of her work:


Keep reading to find out more about this great blog!

Hey guys!

Yes, I'm doing Christmas animal print. Can you say you're surprised? I'll totally rock animal print during any season.

Today's mani is extra special because myself, Rebecca (of Rebecca Likes Nails) and Sarah (of Chalkboard Nails) all decided to create Christmas animal print designs and post them today! I got cheetah/leopard print, Rebecca got zebra print and Sarah got her pick of any other animal print, haha. The only rule was that we could only use red, green and white in our designs.

I had to schedule today's post since I'll be working and then shopping for Christmas gifts all day so unfortunately, I don't have the direct links to their posts yet. For now I'll just leave links to their blogs but when I get home later I'll provide the proper links to their posts.

Rebecca Like Nails
Chalkboard Nails

Hope you enjoy today's mani!
And be sure to check Rebecca's and Sarah's as well - I know they're going to be awesome!

Edit: Click here to see Rebecca's Christmas zebra print mani and here to see Sarah's Christmas snakeskin mani!


Products:
OPI Chip Skip
CND Stickey Base Coat
Orly - Au Champagne (base)
Orly - Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (cheetah spots)
China Glaze - Ruby Pumps (outline of spots)
Seche Vite Top Coat

Hey guys!

Ok, I know I said in my last haul post that I was going to be limiting my polish purchases because I'm moving. But before you scold me, hear me out!

One of these polishes is from a Secret Santa exchange that I participated in with some polish gals on Facebook and the rest of the polishes were purchased long before David and I found out about our new apartment, it just took a while for them to get here. So, I'm still being a good girl and the only polishes I've purchased in all of December were bought using some PayPal credit that I had. I'm very proud of myself!

Fortunately my purchases in November have provided me with plenty of new stuff to swatch and show you guys. So let's see what I got!


Cult Nails: My Kind of Cool Aid, Iconic, Living Water, Cruisin' Nude, Always Winning, Clairvoyant (a.k.a Unicorn Puke)
I took advantage of Cult Nails Black Friday sale and got these for 25% off! I already wanted Clairvoyant so I figured this was the perfect time to try out some others from this brand.


Illamasqua: Viridian
This is the polish that I received from my Secret Santa (who isn't secret anymore - thanks Katie)! This shade has been on my wishlist for a while and I'm oh so happy to be adding it to my small collection of Illamasqua polishes. I still want SO many more Illamasqua shades so it's probably a good thing that it's not easily available to me because I would be so poor!


Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe Collection: Gingerbread, Holiday Splendor, Sugarplum Fairy, Jingle Jangle, Beyond the Mistletoe, Cotton Candy
Yes, this is yet another Holiday Collection by Color Club! That's three this year! I'm not complaining though because I love Color Club sets. I got this from a friend in the US because I hadn't seen them at Winners here yet and since they're cheaper in the US, it worked out to be about the same price with shipping that I would have paid for the set here.


Look out for swatches of all of these polishes in the near future!

Hey guys!

So before I get to today's mani, I want to quickly fill you in on some information that will affect my blog. I'm going through a lot of changes right now, and although they're all good changes, they're going to be taking up a lot of my free time.

As some of you may know, I finished my degree this past Thursday, which is super exciting but also really scary. I've been a University student for the last 5 and 1/2 years so it's going to feel very weird to not go back in the winter semester. As well, today I started a new job (within the same company I was already working part-time, but this is a whole different position). This is a Monday-Friday, 9-5 type job, which is something I've never done before so it's definitely going to take some getting used to. And finally, my boyfriend and I recently got our own place and are in the process of moving. We'll be moving in sometime early in January so we have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. Plus, it's the holiday season which is already busy enough as it is!

With all that said, I may not have as much time to devote to my blog/my nails over the next month or so. I'm going to try my very best to post as often as I can but I hope you will all understand and bear with me until I can get settled away with all the new (but exciting!) things going on in my life.

Now, onto today's mani! Back in June I featured MaD Manis as my featured blog of the month and it's still one of my favourite nail blogs. I always look forward to posts from this Mother-Daughter team of nail bloggers.

Recently, Amanda posted a super cute penguin design that I knew I just had to recreate for my Christmas series. She also posted a tutorial which made recreating it even easier. Now, I've seen plenty of penguin nail designs before but this is by far the cutest and most original one, in my opinion. The way her penguins were peeking out from the sides is too adorable for words.

Anyways, I hope you like my interpretation of Amanda's awesome design!



Products:
OPI Chip Skip
CND Stickey Base Coat
China Glaze - Glittering Garland (base)
China Glaze - Party Hearty (over base)
Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme (penguin body, eyes)
OPI - Alpine Snow (penguin belly, base for santa hat)
Orly - Spark (beak)
China Glaze - Salsa (santa hat)
Seche Vite Top Coat

Hey guys!

Some of you might remember that roughly a month ago I posted this haul which included a few older China Glaze polishes that I had purchased from a blog sale. I swatched them right away but they've been sitting in my "To Post" folder ever since. So, today I'll finally be showing you swatches of them!

I won't go into detailed reviews about the polishes like I normally would for current collections since most these aren't even available anymore unless you find them on eBay or through a blog sale like I did. However, I'm sure you could do a quick google search and find plenty of reviews of these shades from when they were first released.



Keep reading for the swatches!

Hey guys!

Welcome to the first post of this year's Christmas nail art series! All of my final papers are due today and my last exam is this evening so now I'll have time to get back to my nail art again!

As I said in my tutorial yesterday, my snowflakes design from last year is one of my all-time most popular posts and it's still one of my personal favourite nail art designs to this day. So, I knew I wanted to do another snowflake design this year. However, I didn't want to just recycle last year's design so I changed it up a bit and used some polishes from a few of this year's holiday collections.

Hope you like this design as much as last year's!



Products:
OPI Chip Skip
CND Stickey Base Coat
China Glaze - Blue Year's Eve (base)
China Glaze - Lorelei's Tiara (tips)
OPI - Alpine Snow (snowflakes, falling snow)
Seche Vite Top Coat

Hey guys!

Today I have my first Christmas tutorial for you! This is for my first Christmas design from 2010's Christmas series but it's still one of my all-time most popular posts, so I figured it was worth it to do a tutorial on it.

Most of you probably haven't seen this design because I had less than 200 followers when I was doing my Christmas series last year. So, to refresh, here's the design I'll be showing you how to do today:


Keep reading for the tutorial!

Hey guys!

It was bothering the heck out of me to not have anything on my nails so I took a brief break from paper writing/studying last night to do a quick mani.

I wanted to use some of my new Hits polishes so I pulled out the ones that looked the most Christmas-y and created this simple but still festive mani. I applied 2 coats of Hits Ares (a red holo!) on all of my fingers except for my ring fingers. As an accent nail, I applied 2 coats of Hits Hera (I'll do a separate swatch of this at another time since I've covered it up today) and then I applied 1 coat of Hits Samba on top.

Warning: This post is photo heavy! I couldn't narrow down the photos I wanted to show you so I just decided to show you all the ones I like! I'm sure you won't mind.


















I'm seriously amazed by these Hits holographic polishes. They apply like no other holo polish I own and they just look so smooth and perfect on the nail. Plus, you would expect that because the polishes are on the smaller side (6ml), that the brushes would also be small, much like we generally see from mini polishes. However, the brushes are regular sized as well as very easy to work with. I definitely wish the bottles were bigger but luckily these are not limited edition so I can always re-stock if need be.

Granted I've only used the flakies polish on two of my nails, I can see that I'm already loving those as well. I can't wait to try more of them!

You can purchase the entire line of Hits holographic and flakes polishes from the US stockist llarowe. The holo polishes are $10 each and the flakes polishes are $8. Also, don't worry if you live outside the US/Canada because llarowe ships internationally.

Hope you guys liked my simple holiday mani!

P.S. Some of you may have noticed that I cut my nails down quite a bit! I'm really liking this length on me. What do you guys think? Do you prefer them this length or when they're longer (such as in this post)?