Zoya - Giovanna

Leave it to me to break three nails just as I start blogging (almost) every day again. My nails are shorter right now than ever!! And oh man they are painful too. They're not used to being stubs. Sad face.
So until they grow back in a little I'll have to round up some photos from the past few months that I haven't posted yet!

Today I've got swatches of a pretty green polish from Zoya.

Zoya - Giovanna
I have a total soft spot for greens, especially emerald green. So naturally I love this shade!
I got this bottle in my Ipsy bag for October and I was totally pumped that I got the green and not red or blue.

The formula is flawless, just two coats to cover evenly and I had no issues with staining.

I wore this color alone for a couple of days, and then I added some green glitter!

Adding Shimmer - Linna on top was like the magic touch! It was so pretty. But the reflective nature of Giovanna made it impossible to capture how good the glitter looked on top. It blended in great and I had wonderful sparkly green nails! Just how I like it.

distressed nails à la chalkboard nails!

As soon as Sarah from Chalkboard Nails gave me a sneak peek of her Distressed Nails, I pretty much recreated them instantly. Like, within the hour.
The design and the colors were just perfect for me and I had to do it!

I even used some of the same colors that Sarah did because we share a mutual L.U.V. for the China Glaze pastel neons from the Sunsational Collection.

The purple is China Glaze - That's Shore Bright.
The turquoise is China Glaze - Too Yacht To Handle.
The pink is China Glaze - You Drive Me Coconuts.
For the white base I used Color Club - French Tip and for the black I used Color Club - Where's The Soiree?

The trick to getting this look is brushing almost all of the polish off of the brush and then adding random strokes to create almost smudge-like areas of color. It's simple and quick and fun! The best part is that you don't have to be neat at all so you truly can't mess it up.
And it's really easy to get your non-dominant hand to look just as good!

I totally love this look. Thank you Sarah for all the inspiration, girl!
 Now if only I could get my photos to look as good... Haha!

Welcome to The Lacquer Legion!

Hey everyone! I'm really excited to be sharing this post with you today - get ready for a new nail art initiative!
As a community, nail art and nail polish enthusiasts love helping each other out and being a part of group projects! I could name a bunch off the top of my head (such as the 31 Day Challenge) and they're definitely a favorite of the participants and readers alike.  We all know how hard it can be to get inspired for nail art, and collaborating definitely helps us keep going, makes us push ourselves to try new things, and we all work better when we work together!
So when my friend Sarah of Chalkboard Nails came to me about wanting to start a new community nail project, of course I was in.

With the help of two other lovely ladies - Leslie of work / play / polish and Sammy aka The Nailasaurus - we have formed The Lacquer Legion, and we hope you'll join in and be as excited as we are!

The Lacquer Legion will be a once-a-month, no-pressure endeavor, where we will put out a theme/prompt for your interpretation. On a set day, we all will post our resulting manicures! And we will use a hashtag to keep all our posts together and make them easy to find across social media.

And hey, we all find ourselves in a slump sometimes - no biggie if you don't wanna participate every month. The commitment is low but the end results should be great!

So what's the first theme?

Reinvention! This theme is really perfect for me especially, considering the blog reinvention I am working on. I really couldn't be more excited about all that is going on! And I'm delighted to be sharing this great opportunity with the rest of the Lacquer Legion and all of you guys!

If you have any questions, pop on over to facebook.com/thelacquerlegion for more info (be sure to “Like” it for updates)! The four of us will be watching the page to answer any questions.
We really hope you will participate in this awesome opportunity to have some fun with fellow members of the nail community!

OPI - Baby Please Come Home

Hey everyone! If you're reading this on a blog reader you might not have noticed, but I have a new blog layout! And I am pretty darn fond of it. Yet another step into the new year of blogging for me!

Another thing to note - OMG I hate the winter and I never leaving my house again! If you're in Canada or the parts of the US suffering from this storm you probably know all about it. So much snow... And so little electricity. We lost it for most of yesterday and we froze our butts off. And now they keep shutting it off to different places periodically throughout the day to "conserve" the power so we don't blow it all again. I feel like I am living in the dark ages! HA! Energy conservation? What is that?! iPad, iPhone, laptop, camera, charge charge charge!
I think we are in for a loooong, hard winter.

Today while I've got some power I decided to post about another Liquid Sand from OPI.

OPI - Baby Please Come Home
This is another polish from the Mariah Carey holiday collection from OPI which was a giant collection with 12 shades plus 6 Liquid Sands and a special white gold/silver flake topcoat. 
I've picked up my fair share of products from the collection and I will definitely be posting about all the sands because that's how I do.

It's hard to tell from my photos but this has a bit of a lilac hue to it, and can look really purple in certain lights.

I think I photographed this late at night so the purple wasn't coming out to play, and just the rich gunmetal tones. It looks gorgeous either way. I really like wearing this one because it's not neutral but it isn't crazy either. Feels a little luxurious.

Not to mention how cool the metallic + textured finish is. It's so sparkly and reflective that you almost forget that it is matte! All of these Liquid Sand releases were huge hits for me!
Also check out my swatch of Kiss Me At Midnight, with more to come soon.

Urban Decay - Vice

Hey guys! Today I'm going to be posting about one of Urban Decay's new relaunched nail polishes!
A couple of months ago they released two shades and then two more have come out for the holidays. So far I own three... I gotta get that last one but I have spent so much money on UD in the last few months, I need a break! (Plus it ain't on Sephora...)



Aren't these the most badass bottles you've ever seen? I'm in love! They're the kind of bottle that does not hide away in my drawers of polish, and they get to sit on a shelf and look purdy! Not to mention the beautiful polish within them.

Urban Decay - Vice is a deep dark purple with multi-tonal shimmer showing sides of pink or blue depending on the way you look at it. The formula is dreamy, needing just two coats to look nice and smooth and rich. 

The bottles are so detailed, it feels like they really put a lot of effort into creating this product and I just love seeing that from a brand. That's one of the reasons I am so obsessed with everything by Urban Decay - you can just tell they love creating their products and spend a lot of time making them perfect.

I legit think I should work for Urban Decay. Dreamssssssss.

I am an Urban Decay hoarder and I am not sorry! Do you own any of these beauties?
I'll be posting the other two that I have in the near future to keep up my new-year-new-posts attitude! Hehe!