Nerd Lacquer The Quantum Bluniverse Swatch

Greetings fellow polish lovers!

Today I've got a full mani I wore when I got my Nerd Lacquer order last week. I've almost completed my "Library" of Nerd Lacquers. My polish budget isn't what it used to be though, so I am going to start having to be more choosey during restocks! Shipping prices are killin' me!

Anyway this is The Quantum Bluniverse. *Sigh* I have been lemming it for awhile now. It did not let me down. Its stunning. There is just something about that blue mixed with richer blue glitters, sprinkled with yellow gold and then the whole thing just GLOWS with golden shimmer. Its perfect! I've tried to fill the void I had in my life with other blue/golds but TBH they just don't cut the cake like this one does!

This description comes directly from Amanda at Nerd Lacquer "THE QUANTUM BLUNIVERSE is a deep cobalt with golden shimmer plus royal blue and gold glitter. It's young, it's hip, it's extremely clever, and man is it foxy. BRIAN COX, YOU GUYS. Omg."

Yeah she is hilarious and her descriptions always are amazing. Lovin' this one.

Thanks for reading! 

Ericas Nails & More Nail Art Challenge! Day 5 Valentines Day Nails

Happy Valentines Day & welcome to day 5 of Erica's Nails & More Nail Art Challenge!

Today is clearly themed Vday nails. I spend my Valentines Day with my fur boyfriends and girlfriends at my local SPCA. I go about three times a week, and this week is no different :) Furbabies need loving too. Plus its way more fun than the same ol' dinner & a movie.

Anyway, I digress. Here is my manicure!

I used OPI Pink Friday, China Glaze Seduce Me, China Glaze Midnight Kiss & Rainbow Honey My Love! I was so happy to get my Rainbow Honey order so quickly & I was most excited to try the LE, My Love (my untried!). I love it! It is full of gold sparkle and pink shimmer, iridescent goodness, and silvered white and pink heart glitters! Very pretty combo. I added some stripes and heart rhinestones too :]

Do you like it? I'm quite happy with how it turned out! I like that CG Seduce Me darkens the tone of it a bit and the heart rhinestones and Pink Friday still add a bit of fun!

Oh and looky at what I got in the mail!! I was part of a Secret Cupid Swap and this is my gift that I received from the lovely Chasadie! I LOOOVEEE IT so I had to show it off! I had been lemming Zoya Aurora for FOREVER. And I wanted to try a liquid sand so badly and she picked the PERFECT colour :) I also got a ton of cool samples (I'm most excited about the John Frieda ones ;) I don't know how she knew that those are some of my favourite candies but they almost didn't make it to the picture because I ate them all up immediately!

And just for a bonus, here is a picture of my last years Valentine, Mr. Duke!! I am happy to say that a year later, he is in a happy forever home. Warm, safe & sound with a forever family. Now THAT is a happy Valentines Day story <3

Don't forge to check out the other awesome nail art from Day 5!!

Erica's Nails & More February Nail Art Challenge! Day 3: Glitter Loaded Nails!

Hello everyone and welcome to Day 3 of Erica's Nails & More February Nail Art Challenge!

I like to franken in my spare time :) Mostly I make polish for friends as gifts with names from our inside jokes... or I add them to swaps when I don't have any cool extras or candy around. I thought glitter loaded nails would be the perfect opportunity to show you guys one of my glittery frankens!

I have an obsession with Tolkien. Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite adventure stories in the whole world. Most of the polishes I make for myself, I name after Tolkien related things. I was originally going to name this one "Courage For Our Friends". Eowyn says this is Merry before the great battle for Middle Earth when arriving at Pelonnor Fields. Neither are even supposed to be fighting in this war but both end up playing important roles in the battle. I'm still a little unsure of its name but I will stick with it for now.

I used a clear base so I could layer it and:
Micro squares of light pink and copper
Medium bright pink, light pink, magenta, apricot squares & gold hexes
Larger matte pink & purple squares
I am thinking of adding some gold shimmer to it to spice it up some more!

This polish is my untried considering I just made it ;)

What do you think of my franken?!
Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out the other awesome nail art from the challenge!!

Deborah Lippman Swagga Like Us Swatch & Stamping!

Happy Friday!

Today I have pictures of Deborah Lippmann's Swagga Like Us. This polish has a special place in my heart because it was a Christmas gift from one of my closest and kindest friends. I'll call her V. She hasn't seen my collection but managed to get me a polish that is gorgeous, perfect with my skin tone, suits my personality, and last but not least... I did not already own it! That is quite a feat considering I am teetering over 500 in my collection. 

Here is the picture i posted to Instagram to show her how much I love it. If you have instagram, please feel free to follow me at caitcrawf23 :)

DL Swagga Like Us is a green/gold duochrome polish (read: Chanel Peridot dupe) & I really love it against my skin tone. It applied nicely, sort of like a chrome or metallic finish polish would and needed only two coats for opacity. It did show some imperfections on my nails, so if you have ridges like me, a base coat or a light buffing really makes application more smooth. I also REALLY love the name of this polish, reminds me of my friend, V, and the song... "no one on the corner have swagga' like usssss" Haha :)

GAH. Look at that ding on my pinky. Don't worry I fixed that up after I saw these pictures. This picture was taken still tacky and pre-topcoat and you can see a few brushstrokes. The picture below was taken AFTER topcoat and shows its real finish better.

Sigh. I really like how this turned out on me. Its flattering on my skintone and after topcoat does have a chrome like feel. Not like Layla chromes but a sparkly chrome look, if that makes sense.

& then I decided to practice my stamping skills. I was brave & attempted a full nail leopard design with Wet 'n Wild Black Creme. It could be more "clear" but I think it turned out well. I liked it so much I added rhinestones wore it as a full manicure :)

I'm very happy with this polish and manicure! I want to send happy vibes and hugs to my bff V for gifting me this beauty :) Thanks V!

Thanks for reading!

SMYTC Holiday Nail Art Challenge! Day 4: Bells!

Hello polish people!

Welcome to Day 4 of the Show Me Your Top Coats Holiday Nail Art Challenge! The theme of today is Bells! Now this was indeed a challenge. I do not own a stamping image plate for bells so I had to wing it and freehand this beotch. Let me know how you think I did!

My base color is Rimmel Camouflage. I haven't used this polish in at least 2 or 3 years! WHY NOT? Its awesome! Its a darker green gold and green shimmer. One coater! It has too short of a brush though :(

I freehanded that bell on my accent nail and I am actually pretty proud of it. It took me quite a long time and quite a few tries. I found it super hard to fit the bell on my nail and also super hard to make it look not too "cartoony".

So to finish it up I added gold and red dots on the index and middle finger and for some reason I liked how it looked with only red dots on the pinky! The Red is OPI Danke Shiny Red & the Gold is my all time favourite, a-England Holy Grail. Et voila! There is a bell on my nail!

 

& Just for fun here are some pics of the Rimmel Camouflage! I have fallen back in love with this color! 

 Alrighty and that is it for today! What do you think of my bell nails?!

Don't forget to check out the other awesome nails on the great ladies of SMYTC below!

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NOTD & Swatchey SPAM

WOOOO HOOO It is a spam day! Swatch and NOTD spam for your Saturday morning viewing pleasure.

Joe Fresh Cobalt & OPI Big Apple Red

China Glaze Electrify over China Glaze Kahlari Kiss!

Color Club Poptastic and Color Club Almost Famous

Zoya Ciara

Joe Fresh Iris

Color Club Almost Famous & Color Club Chelsea Girl

Zoya Marley

OPI I Don't Give a Rotterdam

Julep Pippa & Essie Theres No Place Like Chrome

Hope you enjoyed the spam!

Crows Toes Thing Swatch!

Herrrroh!

Today I am sporting a total glitter bomb. This is Crows Toes Thing! Inspired by the Adams Family.. Thing is the "hand" in the family! Haha As a kid he kind of scared me but as an adult I can appreciate his charm! There are two other glitters from Crows Toes inspired by the Adams Family and they are Morticia and Gomez! I tried out my Morticia the other day but I found that my bottle is VERY purple (it is supposed to be red) but then I came accross this post: http://thepolishedcrow.blogspot.ca/2012/07/a-naked-morticia-battle-of-batch.html on Crows Toes blog and have since contacted Leah Anne for a replacement bottle. She is on vacay right now so I will have to wait until she gets back to get a new bottle! No biggie. I love the way Lauri from Crows Toes handled the situation, totally professional yet cool at the same time. I feel like I would really like her in real life!

Anyway, on to the polish! SO SO many glitters in this one, lots of golden/bronzey ones but I especially love the kelly green and bright orange ones. Formula was thick, it was totally packed with glitter but not totally unmanageable. Someday it may require some thinner.

In this photo some nails have one coat, and some have two. I layered this bad boy over Essie Penny Talk.

I loved this combination on. Something about how the background of Penny Talked looked neutral and chrome-y while Thing totally stole the show with its awesomeness! I did need a coat of Gelous and a thick coat of SV to smooth it all out though. It was a pretty bumpy/hungry glitter. It is available at both Overall Beauty and Llarowe! I recommend both sites highly.

Have a nice day :)

a-England Holy Grail - Swatch

Haaai. Just taking a quick 5min break from work to post :D

This is my all time (as of right now) favourite gold polish - a-England Holy Grail. Most of the golds I own are foils, and don't look very good one me, too bronzy maybe? I love that a-England had a different take on gold.. and the product itself is awesome!

It is one of those glow-from-within polishes which makes it a unique gold and absolutely gorgeous. Its a warm toned gold, which makes it actually flattering on me, and leans yellow. Its incredibly shiny and shimmery. I swear that besides gold shimmer, I see a bit of red and green shimmer in there too. Its got an insane amount of depth to it. It is super interesting to look at, especially in the sunshine! But its gorggggge inside too.

This is two coats, no topcoat. It does longer to dry for me than my other a-Englands but some SV would speed up that process.

Sunshine

Shade

I love a-England as a company. Their polishes are of insanely good quality, every polish I have tried have had flawless formulas. They also offer free worldwide shipping (and it's fast, even to Canada). I've also experienced excellent and timely customer service :) I had a package that was taking longer than usual and I inquired about it.. within hours I had a response with an apology that it must be lost in the mail and they would be willing to ship another immediately or offer a refund, whichever I preferred.  And it wasn't like THEY made a mistake or anything, the mail did! Like I said, excellent and very timely customer service! :) That makes me a happy camper.

Also, whenever I hear Holy Grail.. it makes me think of this:

Hahaha I love Monty Python hahahaha If you haven't seen The Holy Grail or The Meaning of Life.. I highly recommend it. You'll hate it the first time you see it, but by the third you won't be able to stop laughing, rewinding, and telling your friends about it and forcing them to watch it three times too. Ok end rambling... back to work time! BYE!

Nerd Lacquer Beggars Canyon - Swatch

Hi! 

Today I am wearing another Nerd Lacquer. I feel kind of stupid posting these when they aren't available right now. Amanda, the creator behind Nerd Lacquer has, for a lack of a better word, disappeared from the Nail Polish Scene. I really hope she comes back.. her creations were the first indies that I fell in love with, purchased, and they are truely nerd-tastic. 

Even though this polish isn't available right now, I'm blogging about it because it is Fathers Day and the polish is inspired by Star Wars and more obviously Beggars Canyon! My dad introduced me to Star Wars before I could even sit up on my own, and I love him for that. I will forever be grateful to my Dad for making me a Star Wars geek. I watch it almost every night when I try to fall asleep. Almost everything I believe in is because of Star Wars. Yes, I know I have got to tone down my nerdiness sometimes. Anyway, Dad and I will be celebrating the day by watching Star Wars and having some BBQ (I got him a new tank of propane for the special day... God I am such a practical daughter).

Anyway, Beggars canyon is located on the desert planet of Tatooine. The Skywalker's are among a small handful of pilots capable of navigating themselves through a number of the obstacles located in the canyon such as the stone needle! I love Star Wars, I love the Skywalkers, and I love this polish.

Its a dark toned gold base, more of a bronze colour actually.. stuffed with gold and purple micro glitter and medium/larger hexes. Application was great, this is two coats and one coat of SV. That is something I did notice about Nerd Lacquer, they are really smooth with only one coat of topcoat for me.

I love it because it almost manages to be kind of a neutral while still being awesome and blingy. I hope Nerd Lacquer comes back soon :( Anyway, this is my Dad-inspired Manicure for the day. I'm going to go watch Star Wars with my Dad now! :)

OPI Spidermen Collection, Just Spotted The Lizard & - My Boyfriend Scales Walls Swatches

Holy moly, when I heard OPI was coming out with a Spiderman inspired collection I could barely keep my composure. Like.. needed to breathe into a paperbag and shove my head between my knees excited. I love spiderman so much. The kids I babysit and I used to play spiderman together all the time. I usually got stuck being Doctor Octopus or Sandman :P Just once, I wanted to be the good guy! Hahaha

I wanted to be knocked off my feet by this collection, I wanted to be floored with amazingness. Unfortunately for me, (fortunate for my wallet) .. I didn't really enjoy many of the polishes.. and I didn't feel they were very original or representative of Spiderman at all!! In my dream Spiderman collection there would be a cobalt jelly! An eye searing red! A sandy nude with black flecks! A dirty medium green shimmer! And thats just a few ideas that do scream spiderman to me.. not the frosty pink and random orange that OPI came up with. Okay Ill stop ranting now because I do really like OPI and I do like that they collaborated to make this collection (Nail polish and superheros are two of my very favourite things!!!)

Anyway the two colors I did pick up from the collection were Just Spotted the Lizard (a dupe for Chanel Peridot!) and My Boyfriend Scales Walls (a grey toned white).

Just Spotted the Lizard- A gold to olive-y green duo-chrome with a bit of dark blue at the edges of the nail in certain and specific angles. I really really wish the blue showed up more on the nail though :( Its a metallic with a slight frosty finish and it does have some brushstokes. Careful application and a good topcoat will fix most of that though. This is three coats and Seche Vite.

Lovely bottle shot! Why or why doesn't that blue show up better?!

Artificial Light

In the sunshine

You could kind of see the blue at the edges in this one.. or at least you could in real life. Not very noticeable though :(

In the shade 

& Here are some funky angles:

My Boyfriend Scales Walls- A grey toned white, not entirely unique. I bought it pretty much for the name but was pleasantly surprised. Formula wasn't so bad for a white (this is only two careful coats), and it has got just enough grey undertones to make it not chalky or stark. I like that.

Anyway, there you have it. My picks from the Spiderman collection. I'm thinking about picking up Number One Nemesis too, it actually looks pretty cool!

Hello Kitty Nail Art :)

Hello! 

Today I have some Hello Kitty nail art on my paws! (Get it? Paws... hahaha).

My sister and I used to love the TV show when we were kids and now we still collect little trinkets and notebooks adorned with Hello Kitty's famous face! She is just so cute and positive :) "Happiness comes in all colours of the rainbow!" (That was against every natural bitter bone in my body). Today I chose the colour pink because that is the colour Hello Kitty wears :)

It was mostly inspired by this cute little hello kitty nail polish I picked up at Old Navy near the cash on sale for $2.00. It doubles as a necklace..(not that I would wear it) and it is obviously meant for little kids.. but I couldn't resist haha! Its a Pink jelly with silver hex glitters but is so sheer it could probably not build up to opacity :(

My index finger is about 2 coats of Milani Gold (I kind of blobbed it around to cover the entire nail).

The middle finger is 2 coats of OPI Mod About You, then I picked hexes out of the Hello Kitty polish with a toothpick and polka dotted them on the nail. Then I added some loose heart glitter I got from online from www.DollishPolish.com

My ring finger is Mod About You again only this time with a white nail art striper I drew the top half of Hello Kitty's face on the tips and added a Bow sticker that came with the Hello Kitty polish. I used a toothpick with black and yellow nailpolish to add her eyes, whiskers, and nose). I got this idea from katikuykuy's photostream on Flickr.

The pinky finger is one coat of Color Club Foil Me Once, a really opaque light pink foil.

Et voila! Hello Kitty Nails! I hope you like them as much as I do :)

Lord Of The Rings Nail Art - One manicure to rule them all.

The Lord of the Rings is in my top 5 favourite book series ever. I read the series & the also The Hobbit when I was about 12 years old and I fell in love with the epic fantasy land of Middle Earth. I have seen the movies literally hundreds of times. I even learned how to speak a little Elvish with a friend in Jr High. No judgement please :D Hahaha!

This is a manicure I have sported several times but I definitely thought it deserved a permanent home on the blog. I first saw it on Billy The Brimes' Tumblr Page originally and I've seen it done incredibly well on The Nailasaurus (one of my very favourite blogs)!

The manicure is the the inscription on the Ring of Power, in the Black Speech of Mordor (where the ring was forged in Mt. Doom) but translated into Tengwar (A script created by Elves originally). Translated into English it means:

One ring to rule them all,

One ring to find them.

One ring to bring them all,

and in the darkness bind them.

Ahh Now I have goosebumps, and I have made myself sound incredibly nerdy. Whatever, I'm okay with that. While the design I saw on the blogs previously mentioned looked absolutely nerd-tastic, I was thinking to myself.. the inscription on the ring only appears when the ring is cast into flame and therefore... I needed to add some flame. It's not perfect but I love it.

Ooouu isn't it pretty?! Anyway this is how I did it.. I started with two coats of a-England Holy Grail, a gorgeous warm toned insanely shimmery gold. I wish I had a macro of this because it is just stunning.. and the perfect shade for the ring of power.

Next with a toothpick I freehanded some outlines of flames with e-England Percival mixed with a little bit of Joe Fresh Cherry. I filled in the holes of the flames with China Glaze Riveting.

Then I freehanded the inscription with black nail polish (can't remember the brand right now) using another toothpick. My lines are a little squiggly because I was a little shaky... I drink far too much caffeine.

Then I waited until I was sure the polish wouldn't drag, and I added some Seche Vite to make it smooth.

This one is in the sun.

 I hope you like it as much as I do :) The puns are endless with this one..
"One manicure to rule them all.."
"10 fingernails forged in the flame of Mount Doom" etc etc Hehehehe
I'm going to wear this for my next big LOTR movie marathon :)