Holiday 2018 nail art

Hello~ a quick post before we all get back to our turkey dinner leftovers and/or Boxing Day shopping (hopefully online). Lately I've been focusing more on knitting but I wanted something easy but still unmistakably festive.

I started out knowing I'd paint one nail with a wreath and keep the rest simple to make things quick. Essie Going Incognito is a great deep green to represent holly and Christmas fir trees, while my workhorse Orly Luxe gold is a perfect base for Sephora Formula X glitter in Starlight for a multi-dimensional sparkly gold nail.

Nail Art Inspirations: David's Tea 24 Days of Tea

Last month, I gushed over the charming, festive packaging of David's Tea's 24 Days of Tea advent calendar. Penguins! Teal! Pastel mint! Tea! All things I love. I said I would probably end up doing some nail art inspired by the illustrations in the advent calendar, so here are the results!

Sometimes I use acrylic paints in nail art--it's honestly way easier and forgiving to use, and much easier to clean out of nail art brushes. For some reason, I was determined this time to use all nail polish, so everything used in this look is nail polish! The other reason why I like using acrylics is to mix colours to create just the right shade I need, but surprisingly all the polishes I used are a dead-on match to the colours in the advent calendar.

Polishes used:

• Essie Going Incognito (dark green: little finger base colour)
• OPI Alpine Snow (white: stars, branches, penguin's tummy)
• Orly Luxe (gold: stars, penguin's beak)
• American Apparel Peacock (teal: base colour)
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Blue-Away (light blue; penguin body, dots)
• butter London Pillar Box Red (bright red: base colour, penguin's scarf)

As always, I had a lot of fun! I dug up a lot of my older polishes for this, and it made me remember how much I love Essie Going Incognito for its rich, deep green, and butter London Pillar Box Red for its stunning formula and colour.

Did you pick up this advent calendar set before it sold out? I mayyyyy have cheated and opened a few early.. I couldn't help it, I really wanted to try Gingerbread Cookie and Cardamom French Toast--and it was worth it because they are both delicious! >:D

butter London Fiddlesticks

I briefly thought about just putting up swatch photos of butter London Fiddlesticks and nothing else, because look at it:

Are words really needed?

But okay, a little extra info: Fiddlesticks is a release from Holiday 2012, which was an absolute glitterbomb of a collection. Packed with fine glitter and glass flecks, it has a beautiful glowy-ness. The glittery bright magenta (butter London calls it "raspberry") initially reminded me a little of OPI DS Extravagance, but the OPI is a little deeper, leans more purple, and is a scattered holo instead of normal glitter/glass fleck.

My skin looks strangely washed out here, but the photo above just shows off that glass fleck and magenta so well.

It dries practically matte and needs a super shiny top coat to really bring out its beauty (Seche Vite is my go-to). I put off swatching this on my nails for so long because being so glitter-heavy, I knew it would be extremely difficult to remove. And then I bought blessed, blessed peel-off base coat. It does chip off way faster with the peel-off, but I have the attention span of a goldfish when it comes to keeping my nail polish the same beyond 2 days, so...

*swoons*

Year of the Sheep (or Goat)

I wasn't really planning to do a nail post for Chinese New Year but then I remembered, SHEEP. They are so cute and fluffy. So yes, I have a Chinese New Year nail art post for you.

Red and gold together are terribly tacky to me any other time of the year except CNY--everything is red and gold. Orly Luxe, a gold foil that shows few brush strokes, and butter London Pillar Box Red, a deep, bright red, fit the bill perfectly. I used Orly Luxe for the little finger and all the little gold details on the other nails. Pillar Box Red is the base for the middle and index fingers, as well as the lanterns on the ring finger. I used Mineral Fusion River Rock for the green details on the lanterns, but decided it leaned too grey brown and went over it with Clinique Hula Skirt. I used OPI Alpine Snow as the base for the ring finger and to draw in my sheep and goats.

SHEEP

There is some confusion as to whether it's the year of the sheep or the goat; it could be one or the other depending on the country/region. Goats are kinda cool I guess, so I worked them in with the sheep as well. (The sheep were more fun to draw though.) I got the idea to draw the sheep in this way, peeking out from the edges, from this Instagram account. which you should totally follow if you love detailed nail art.

Why butter London Lady Muck is aptly named

This is probably my third or fourth time swatching and photographing butter London Lady Muck. The photos turn out badly or I'm not happy with the application, blah blah. I finally snapped some photos that look okay, so here we are. This was a gift from a sweet friend who gave me 3 butter London polishes off my wishlist one Christmas.

Lady Muck is a soft blue-grey with a slight pearly finish and a superfine silver shimmer. The colour reminds me of the sky over the ocean on an overcast day. It is very similar to China Glaze Sea Spray, but deeper and with the silver shimmer. I have seen swatch photos where Lady Muck looks like it has a much brighter blue base, but for me this is a very subdued, muted blue.

Lady Muck is apparently British slang for an arrogant woman or a woman that has "pretensions of a high station" yet is anything but (thanks, Urban Dictionary!) This is actually a rather fitting name, but not in a good way. Because my other butter Londons have been so amazing formula- and colour-wise, I expected the same from Lady Muck. Unfortunately, the formula on this one is kinda unforgiving: thin, doesn't level itself well, and can show brush strokes readily (possibly because of the pearly finish.) So it has a fancy, pretty butter London bottle but the formula is hardly what I expect from butter London.

It's pretty but not one I reach for often because the application requires more effort/patience than usual.

Have you ever had a "Lady Muck" product? (i.e. something that looked fancy and awesome but disappointed you)

Nail art inspiration: butter London Steampunk Ball

I pull nail art inspiration from everything from nature to architecture to graphic prints, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a lot of my inspiration still comes from the beauty world. (Case in point: my Marc Jacobs Daisy Dream nails, and FYI I have another Marc Jacobs-inspired nail post coming soon!) When the holiday Steampunk Ball set from butter London popped up on my Instagram feed, I instantly went YES, DOING THIS and took a screenshot.

image via Nordstrom

I just love the look of all the gears and cogwheels; butter London is amazing at making covetable polishes and packaging.

I started out with a base of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out as the base (two coats), then topped it with L'Oreal The Matte Velvet, a mattifying top coat (I love this one for the not-super-flat finish.) Next, I painted in the gears and cogs with Orly Luxe and China Glaze Gossip Over Gimlets. butter London seems to use only one shade of gold on the packaging, but I thought it would be fun to have a two-tone thing going on.

For the longest time, I just could not figure out why my gears made me think less steampunk-industrial and more weird metallic flowers. I realized that I painted the teeth on my gears (called cogs apparently; thanks Wikipedia!) way too closely together--these gears are definitely just for show because they can't mesh together with other gears haha! I've since found out that butter London has a whole Steampunk Ball collection, including a set with rose-gold gears, so I might try this again and pay a little more attention next time.

What's a holiday beauty set that's caught your eye lately?

"Find What You Love" This Weekend At Metrotown

One of the first images I pinned to my nail Pinterest board was a pictorial for simple but adorable layered hearts nails from The Beauty Department. I kept putting it off forever, but I finally did it! Because my repin originally did not have a proper source (found out it was TBD later with some Googling), I actually did this going only by the pictorial and not the instructions; I see some imperfections that probably could have been avoided if I had found the post first!

Little finger is a base colour of butter London Slapper, then Orly Ancient Jade and Orly Dazzle layered over top. Other fingers are the same except I swapped Orly Dazzle for Orly Jealous, Much?

Here's attempt #2. The shades are a little more matchy here, with a base of China Glaze Kinetic Candy then layers of China Glaze For Audrey and L'Oreal Colour Riche Not A Cloud in Sight. I love the really calm blue tones in this mani.

If you're wanting to try this for yourself (and are in the Greater Vancouver area), come see me this weekend June 22-23 at Metropolis at Metrotown mall in Burnaby! I will be there with fellow bloggers Lindsay of Lindsay Windecker, Winnie of The Rawr Shop, Jayne of Cosmetic Proof, and Dee of Deez Nails to help participants tackle this look and two others over the next three weekends.

Details: there are a total of six 90-minute workshops this weekend to help you get a perfect layered hearts mani using circle reinforcements. The second weekend is geometric nails using tape, and the weekend after that is polka dots with paper clips (I won't be at this one myself though). Among other goodies, participants will get their own nail polish minis to complete the look and keep after the workshop. All of the workshops are by donation with proceeds going to Beauty Night, an organization that provides many services including wellness programs and makeovers to women in shelters and health care facilities. It's an all-around win-win for everybody!

I'm super excited to be a part of this event and to work with some seriously talented nail bloggers. I hope to see you this weekend :D If you have any questions about the event, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me via the Contact tab above or on Twitter at @dowantmakeup.

Red on Red

Also known as my extremely belated Valentines Day nails, these were supposed to be my more conventional alternative to the Mint Love Nails I posted, but I kept putting it off until now. I was so annoyed at my super-dry fingers and cuticles that I was avoiding editing and posting them for a while. Doing close swatch photos like these really forces me to see the unattractive lines I don't notice in real life, and this one was an extra bad reminder. I've starting making a conscious effort to moisturize my hands and cuticles, so awkward dry-hand photos will be a thing of the past (after I get through all my unposted photos, that is.)

On to the actual polish-- index finger is Nicole by OPI I Love You Cherry Much; middle finger is OPI The Spy Who Loved Me (gifted to me from sweet Sarah); pinky and ring fingers are my favourite red to date, butter London Pillar Box Red, with silver foil Orly Dazzle and The Spy Who Loved Me. It's hard to see because The Spy Who Loved Me was unexpectedly such a close match to Pillar Box Red, but the ring finger has a heart made of alternating silver foil and red dots.

Can you tell I am really starting to embrace red polishes? :D I Love You Cherry Much and The Spy Who Loved Me are close, with the former being more pink-y and less of a deep red than The Spy Who Loved Me. I Love You Cherry Much (these long names are killing me) features red flakies, which as you can tell by the photo, were hard to capture on camera. They're subtler than glitter or shimmer and add something unique to the sheer pink-red base. The Spy Who Loved Me is packed with very fine glass flecks that practically glow after a super glossy coat of Seche Vite. I love both polishes, but The Spy Who Loved Me has a slight edge for me because it reflects light so beautifully.

2012 Favourites

Is it too late for a 2012 retrospective post, given we're two weeks into 2013? I also said I probably wouldn't do one, mostly because I moved from Tumblr to Blogspot in 2012 and didn't have a full year's worth of content yet. but! I realized I could look back on a lot of non-beauty 2012 things too. I think usually people do a monthly favourites post? Here's some of my favourite things from last year (in the most random order possible):

butter London polishes

Due to a really awesome Coterie sale, I was finally able to indulge in a longing for butter London nail polish that I had nursed for quite a while. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a slippery slope, because now I know for myself that it is a fantastic formula with some very unique shades and I want more. For my birthday/Christmas, a very sweet friend gifted me with several of my most wished-for shades, so look forward to more butter London swatches soon!

LUSH BB Seaweed

One of my most favourite masks ever, I fell head over heels for this little pot of nourishing seaweed from LUSH. I am trying out other LUSH masks at the moment, but I have a strong feeling none of them can top how freshened and healthy my skin felt after using this one.

Wreck-It Ralph

You have no idea how excited I was about this movie when I first saw the trailer. Your favourite video game characters having a life outside of the game? Beloved villains in a support group? Um yes please. I loved everything about it and you bet I will be buying a copy when it is released. It has done so well in theatres that it's believed Disney will soon confirm a sequel.

butter London All Hail The Queen

Finishing off the swatches from my butter London Coterie order is All Hail The Queen, a beige with holographic shimmer. If it wasn't for the Coterie sale, I probably never would have picked it up because I was convinced it was a near-dupe to the Orly Nite Owl I already owned and loved dearly. Happily, I was wrong.

All Hail The Queen is absolutely packed with holographic shimmer; I would already love the flattering beige base if it was all by itself, but the holographic effect makes it extra-special. I admit I'm not a big fan of holographic polishes, but in All Hail The Queen it's there just enough to add dimension (subtle enough that you can get away with wearing it in a very conservative workplace) but still wows you when you look close enough.

Orly Nite Owl (ring finger) from the Birds of a Feather collection also has a beige base that I thought would be identical to All Hail The Queen, but side-by-side you can see Nite Owl is taupe-ier and is cooler-toned, helped along by the fine silver shimmer. This was my favourite "beige with a shimmer twist" polish, but it's been replaced by All Hail The Queen; I like that it's a bit warmer and something about it is just so, so pretty and elegant. Nite Owl looks a bit thick here because I applied three coats to match the three needed for All Hail The Queen, but only two are necessary.

Close-up, with flash

Despite the differences, I still don't think it's necessary to have both. They are still very close. Nite Owl is a gorgeous polish and roughly half the price of All Hail The Queen, something to keep in mind if you're on a budget. I wish I could have photographed them in natural light though, my indoors/artificial lighting doesn't do either of them justice, not to mention it tends to make my fingers take on a lovely red lobster-iness. (Edit 12/17: I've added some marginally better photos in natural light at the bottom of the post!)

Which would you choose? Are you a fan of holographic shimmers?

Natural light!

Flash in natural light

We had some rare sunlight so I whipped out my camera ASAP to snap a few more photos. These were taken on day 3-4 of wear, so there's a bigger gap now between the polish and cuticle. Hopefully these are a better example of the closeness of Nite Owl to All Hail The Queen.

Adventures in Whistler

Recently, I took a weekend trip to Whistler with some friends, so here's a journal of my (non-)adventures. Whistler is a really popular spot for tourists, especially after the 2010 Winter Olympics, but Vancouverites also like to come up for a day trip or longer since it's only a two-hour drive away. (Click to enlarge pictures)

We stayed in Whistler Village, which is the main area where hotels, restaurants, shopping, and gondolas to take you up the mountains are all in walking distance. Vancouver is such a huge city that it's refreshing to be able to walk to everything in this cute village. Naturally, there's a lot of touristy shops here with things like $10,000 geodes on display. I've also noticed that very "Vancouver" stores like TNA/Aritzia, lululemon, and Roots have a strong presence here.

Whistler Mountain officially opened for snow season the weekend we arrived. This was kind of a minor detail for us, since we were there just to hang out and get away for a bit; skiing and snowboarding definitely weren't in the budget! This probably sounds weird to people living anywhere else in Canada or any non-Canadians that believe we all live in igloos, but we don't experience much snow in Vancouver, so it was nice to see snow-dusted trees and mountains closer-up.

Being a tourist destination, pretty much everything about Whistler Village is expensive, including the restaurants. We decided to save some money by going for a hotel room with a full kitchen (we'll use "full" loosely here...) and bringing along groceries to cook most of our meals. I made a rip-off of Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana for dinner one night. It's spicy, filling, and satisfying, all the things you'd want in a meal after traipsing around in the cold! My friends liked it so much, I was forced swayed into making it again for breakfast on our last day.

... Unfortunately, all the cooking and cleaning I did wreaked total havoc on the fresh polish I applied the night before we left ;__;  I was really loving butter London's All Hail The Queen, too! This is the photo I took in crappy hotel lighting after realizing my mani would not survive the trip.

butter London Wallis

If my last butter London post hasn't convinced you yet, let me introduce you to the finishing blow. Wallis is named after Wallis Simpson, an American socialite who married the former King Edward VIII. It's "former king" because a consort with two living ex-husbands was pretty scandalous at the time (it might be even now), so Edward was forced to abdicate the throne to be with her (source). A great deal of mystery and rumor surrounded her, inspiring a glimmering, metallic, dark olive-gold that basically sings fall/winter. It has a glow and a mystery to it that keep you staring. It's beautiful and really, the glow part is important to emphasize.

Application is smooth and opaque in two coats. What's especially nice is that it's also missing the streakiness that sometimes comes with metallic polishes.

There's nothing at all like it in my collection. On first glance, I thought it might be close to Rimmel Rags to Riches, but I realized I was way off after comparing swatches. Although also metallic, Rags to Riches has much less gold and is cooler-toned. I have heard whispers of a dupe in Forever XXI's Love and Beauty house brand, but otherwise it seems to be a very unique polish.

Glowing!

Conveniently, I've just found out through Nouveau Cheap that on Black Friday (November 23), butter London is offering Wallis free with any orders over $50 using the code celebrate12. (Is that the walls of your resistance I hear crumbling?)

butter London Pillar Box Red

With my nail polish collection having grown at a somewhat frightening rate, it's a little surprising that I haven't bought a proper red creme until butter London's Pillar Box Red. Whether it's lipstick, clothing, or nail polish, red exists in my mind as that super-sexy, bold femme fatale (all things which I am not) colour that I shy away from. On my nails, I'll wear deep navy that skirts on the borders of black, bright metallic green, gold glitter, and so on, but red polish is like this weird final frontier.

Of course, the fact Pillar Box Red applied so beautifully smooth and just so, well, buttery, helped distract me from my red hang-ups. This is the first butter London I've ever tried, and I can honestly say I'm in deep trouble, guys. I was in shock mid-stroke with how fantastic the formula is. The size of the brush also happens to fit the curve of my cuticle perfectly. Basically, I can never go back to a time when I could resist paying $17 CAD for a nail polish, knowing what I know now.

The tomato red quality of Pillar Box Red has a brightness that makes it look fresh and not at all moody like I had expected. Although it doesn't seem to get as much love as its sister, Come To Bed Red, comparison swatches I've seen make them look almost identical. Come To Bed Red is possibly a bit deeper, but if someone swapped my bottle, I might not even know it. I really like this colour and spent a lot of time admiring it, but I think I still couldn't shake my thing about wearing red. I couldn't feel 100% comfortable wearing it, although even bf said that it "suited my skin tone" >ω<

Do you love red polishes, or do you have some kind of hang-up about them like me?

Coming up: butter London swatches

Smitten by the UK-tastic polish names and gorgeous colours, the only thing holding me back from buying up every shade was my wallet eyeing the $17 CAD pricetag warily. Thanks to a certain Coterie sale not too long ago, I was finally able to snatch up a few butter London polishes for much less.

Because the sale was a choice of three out of six possible shades, I didn't exactly pick the colours I've been wanting the most (Slapper and Lady Muck, I'm looking at you), but it's kind of good to be pushed out of my turquoise comfort zone. All Hail The Queen is a beige beauty that is closest to my usual taste, but is packed with holographic shimmer to give it an interesting twist. Wallis is a metallic olive gold with a darkness and vibrancy that makes it perfect for fall. Pillar Box Red is actually the most out of my comfort zone, and is--believe it or not--my very first red creme.

Did you buy anything from the Coterie butter London sale? Stay tuned for swatches!