The Fault in Our Stars

I definitely wouldn't say reading is one of my hobbies— let me rephrase that: I don't read. I'm a slow reader, so unless they're textbooks or mandatory for school, you wouldn't find me reading on my free time. For a while, my reason was that I didn't have the time. People would say it's because I haven't found the right book, but I realized now that it wasn't that; I haven't found the right author. After reading The Fault in Our Stars in 2 days, I guess you could say I found him! I love John Green's writing as much as the story, so I went ahead and bought 2 of his other books, BUT BACK TO NAILS!

Obviously, this design is inspired by the novel. The base colour is a liquid sand, OPI Tiffany Case, which dries instantly and applies really well. I did end up applying top coat to make the accent designs smoother, which defeats the purpose of the liquid sand, but the polish still looks as gorgeous.

Here's a close up! Painting the words actually took me a lot longer than painting the "Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set (that) Seeks the Butts of Children." I should've settled with "OK" and left the "AY" out, but I think it looks better this way.

Scenery

Aside from painting my nails, I also love taking pictures. If I could, I wouldn't mind being a photographer. I am absolutely in love with scenery; I could spend hours staring out my window and watching the clouds move.

I was walking home one day, and the view (much better in person) took my breath away. Painting scenery on my nails is something I've done before, and I've posted those pictures on my Instagram: one for a scenery contest and one inspired by the film, The Notebook. I had to do the obvious with these photos and paint them.

My nails make me cringe in this photo.. CRUSTY CUTICLES! But I wanted to show this photo regardless so you could see how I painted (polish) on paper then to my nails. I tried my best to illustrate the two photos above, and I will admit, the colours were quite tricky!

Here's the final look! I decided to add a kite after listening to Jess Penner's song, A Little Bit Crazy.. because she mentions a kite on a horizon in the song. Why not!

Rainbow Branches

This design was inspired by Robin Moses. She originally did a design with blended colours on the tip of her nails, and painted tree branches and birds on top. I've always wanted to do art with a ROYGBIV colour palette, and thought this design would be perfect! Here are the polishes I used for the rainbow colours.

This is the -before- look. I roughly blended the colours with a dotting tool, the same way I did the needle marble design on a previous post. The pictures are a bit smaller than usual cause they were taken with Beefy, my iPhone 4; I must've forgotten to take photos with Ryan, my Nikon camera.

I painted branches and love birds with a black polish above the blended colours, then applied top coat. Here is the -after- look! Robin Moses is a great inspiration and I adore her artwork incredibly!

20th Birthday

If I had to summarize my 20th birthday with one verb.. It would be eating! March 1st, 2013 consisted of me eating with different groups of friends throughout the day!

At midnight, my family gave me this chocolate brown Fossil watch, which had everything I wanted in a watch! The sparkly rim and the colour.

For breakfast that morning, I went with my younger sister and her friends to Denny's! Denny's gives free breakfast to birthday celebrants =) Then I went to uni for one class, and spent the rest of my time there with these three. We had drinks from Starbucks and food from OPA.

My friend since the 6th grade bought me a cake pop from Starbucks! It's so cute!

Then I met up with my dearest friend who brings out the silly in me. We coincidentally matched colours with our outfit and nails! We went off to watch Jack the Giant Slayer and bought tons of popcorn cause that is our weakness.

These are what she gave me: the cutest case I have ever seen and OPI Stay the Night Liquid Sand! Honestly, how bowful does Beefy look?!

Then we picked up our other friend and attempted to vlog.. but didn't work out very well cause no one was listening to anyone haha the three of us together get pretty crazy!

I asked my younger sister about 8 months in advance to bake me a rainbow cake for my birthday, and she pulled through! She divided the batter, used food colouring and placed the layers accordingly!

Time to make a wish!

It was the best cake I've ever had! The rest of my friends from earlier came over for some cake as well!

The cake looked prettier the next day cause the layers were able to cool in place overnight.

To thank my family for helping me prepare my birthday celebration, I decided to make breakfast!

I found a recipe online of Strawberry Shortcake Pancakes! Luckily, we had all the ingredients, and it tasted magnificent!

Then my family and I went to a restaurant for a fancy belated birthday dinner. That concludes the day I got rid of my favourite suffix -teen from my age.

I turned 20!!!

Holy smokes, I feel like I'm growing up so fast! My 20th birthday was on March 1st, so yes, this photo is 3 months old..

But anywaaaaay... I wanted to do a design that highlighted my teenage years, since I painted this on my last day of being a teenager. I wanted to be more creative than doing pretty sparkly birthday nails, so since I love reflecting back to old memories, I thought, why not paint them? 

Unfortunately, it's not as easy to understand without a description: 

• Index represents high school with the lockers in a hallway. 
• Middle represents school dances and banquets with the dj booth, balloons and dance floor. 
• Ring represents recess! My friends and I took plenty of pictures of our shoes during recess, haha
• Pinky represents sleepovers with all the pillows.

Essie Haul

I would like to introduce you all to my wonderful camera, Ryan Gosling (of course)! He's a Nikon J1, which I like to call as a half digital and half professional camera. This is what I use for my blog photos and YouTube videos; I use my iPhone 4 (named BeefnCheese Burrito for hunger reasons - nicknamed Beefy) for my Instagram.

HAUL-A! During my shopping, I picked up four Essie polishes and included swatches of those polishes below. The first is Where's My Chauffeur, a rich and lavish turquoise from the Winter 2013 collection. This colour is very close to the iconic Tiffany blue, which is why it's so popular and difficult to get a hold of.

Fortunately, my cousin works at London Drugs and was able to put this on hold for me cause it sold out fast! It's a really beautiful colour and I love the name! This is a description from the Essie website that I found amusing, "the nail colour that never fails to pick you up." Here's a bottle shot and my right hand.

The next two polishes, Sand Tropez and Bikini So Teeny, are painted together, cause I love browns and blues together! Just from hearing both their names, they sounded like a match-made-in-a-beach haha, I kid. I do get a sense of a Summer breeze in a beach with these two colours. 

The last polish is Lady Like, a sophisticated and elegant mauve. Lady Like and Bikini So Teeny were included in a sort of renewed collection, since these polishes and many more (like Butler Please and Mint Candy Apple) were so popular from their first launch, Essie decided to bring them back! Which was great cause my mini Bikini So Teeny was running low. But back to Lady Like, this photo was taken with a flash to show the flowers clearly.


The flowers were done the same way as I did the Polkadots and Florals design (previous post); swirling the colours with a small dotting tool lightly.

This polish is one of those colours that are soo pretty that I couldn't do an excessive design on top. A simple accent on both hands, and I like to make each hand a little different, so I often do an accent on my left ring finger and right index finger.

Flower Ring

This design was inspired by my flower ring. I always get compliments when I wear the ring, so I thought it'd be neat if I replicated the flowers onto my nails!

The polishes I used were Essie Beyond Cozy, L'Oréal Golden Lucks, L'Oréal Tangerine Crush and a jelly cream Barielle polish. 

Golden Lucks is very similar to the gold outline on the ring, however the polish is quite sheer. Instead of outlining the flowers with Golden Lucks, I used it as a base colour then painted the flowers. I didn't want to use rhinestones like the ring for this design, so I simply painted Beyond Cozy between the flowers with a dotting tool.

I like the idea of accent nails, so I only painted the flowers on two fingers for both my hands. This way it won't look overwhelming and busy. Here's another view of my hand!

Needle Marble

I'm behind on my posts since my nails have grown out of this square shape and into an almond shape now. So let's get to it!

Of all the types of nail art, water marble is probably my worst; it never turns out well every time I try. Having said that, I was excited to hear about an alternative marble design without using water! This is the final look of my version of needle marble nails. 

The polishes I used were Ciaté Power Dressing and Ciaté Cabaret. Power Dressing is a mini rich dark blue that came with my Ciaté mini mani month. Cabaret is a creamy purple that came with my Velvet Manicure set. My favourite part about Ciaté polishes are the packaging; the bottes and bows (of course) are absolutely adorable!  

To achieve this look, I started with a clear base coat, followed by the Ciaté polishes depicted below. I applied thick layers of each polish and lightly swirled the two colours with a dotting tool.

The swirling from the dotting tool adjusted the level of the layers a bit, and for that reason I used Essie Good to Go as my topcoat to make the design glossy and smoother. 

I love how my pinky from my dominant hand turned out, so here's a closer picture.

Aaaand here are a couple more snapshots with my thumb!

Polkadots and Florals

I couldn't have picked an easier combination to do than polkadots and roses! These were the first designs I practiced when I received my nail art brushes from eBay last year. Took me a few trials to finally master the technique.

The colours I used were China Glaze Tree Hugger, Essie Play Date, To Buy or Not to Buy, and Turquoise and Caicos.

I also used L'Oréal I Will (behind the four bottles) to highlight the roses. It's really simple, I applied little blobs of Play Date, then less blobs of I Will, swirled the colours together with a dotting tool (can be replaced with a toothpick), added Tree Hugger for the leaves, et voilà!

And finally, both hands! I used Essie Good to Go as my top coat cause it dries almost as fast as Seche Vite without the extra thickness. There's something great about the formula of Good to Go that somehow hides any flaws, like air bubbles or visible brush strokes, and I can go to bed a few minutes after and find zero bed sheet marks in the morning!