Happy Hands Afternoon Thunderstorms

So I've posted a few Happy Hands polishes before, and it's safe to say they're fast becoming favourites of mine.  I love their interesting collections, creativity, and sense of fun.  She can really turn an idea into a great product, and today I'm showing you one of my favourites from the brand.

This is Afternoon Thunderstorms from the Florida collection(I also have The Swamp, which you will see another time).  This is a grey polish with heavy golden shimmer and two different sizes of black hex glitter.  The grey base is sheer without being TOO sheer, and the glitter shows through beautifully.  I think another blogger said it looks like stone, and I totally agree.  It also made me think of my aunt's Dalmations when they've been playing outside.  The gold shimmer is what really makes this special, though.  It's just amazing.

Application was great considering the glitter density - A little extra attention needed, but not much.  I am wearing two thinner coats here, which was plenty opaque for me, but your mileage may vary.

Photos in natural light, no flash.

Afternoon Thunderstorms is still available on Etsy, and if you love a good grey, I say snap it up!

With this Butter London polish on, I feel like a pretty Posh Bird.

So I recently got a tax return.  A big tax return.  And a little promotion at work.  So I let myself spend some money on evilbay.  Not a lot, but enough to treat myself to some new pretties.  I'm pretty good at getting great deals, and I picked up this baby along with another new BL, that you'll see soon, for less than $10 each including shipping.  I also picked up Slapper, a sexy teal which is currently on my toes, for about $12 including shipping.  But enough bragging about my eBay sniping skills...  Onto the polish!

Posh Bird is exactly the kind of colour I usually hate.  It's that Chanel Paradoxal-ish(UGLIEST COLOUR IN THE WORLD) purple-y grey, but this is more purple and less weird and awful.  It has an amazing silver shimmer that brings it to life, and it's nice and neutral so it'll flatter a variety of skin tones.  I don't know why I love this but I do.  The first swatch I saw, I knew she would be mine, and she's even better in person.  This is probably the classiest polish I own.  I think I'll be reaching for this baby a lot when I have fancy places to go.  It's so gorgeous.  I die.

On another note... I hate swatching Butter London because the bottles are hard to hold nicely.  But the formula was absolutely to die for, so that made up for it.

This is two thinner coats with Butter London hardwear topcoat.

Wherein people know me better than I know myself...

So I didn't buy anything from the OPI German collection.  After a cursory glance at swatches there wasn't much interest and I didn't feel like throwing any money at it.

But then, as is often now the case, someone gave me a bottle of polish(As a gift for baking them cookies, how sweet!), and they proved that sometimes people know you better than you know yourself. 

Nein! Nein! Nein! Okay Fine! is an olive-y grey colour that I didn't think was too exciting until I actually put it on my nails.  Now we're in love.  It's so oddly flattering and wonderful!  I can see myself pulling this out for classy occasions.  It's just really cool.  This is two easy coats

I hate the name, though.  I think it was Kas who said it sounds creepy.  And it does.

My Imaginary Boyfriend Scales The Walls.

I don't have a boyfriend.  But if I did, I can't think of a much better one than Spiderman.  I've loved the past few Spiderman ficks(especially the last one... Andrew Garfield UNF) and I'm just getting into the comics(how I made it through college without them I have no idea, all the boys in my program were obsessed).  So I was pretty bummed when most of the colours in the OPI Spiderman collection were a bit of a bust.  Aside from the two Chanel dupes, I wasn't too interested.

But, somewhere in my search for a kickass white, I picked up My Boyfriend Scales The Walls.  He's not perfect, but he'll do the trick.  This is two coats on most fingers, three on my index because I bumped it.  It doesn't level out as well as I'd like and the formula will take some work, but overall I'm happy.  And I like that the little bit of grey makes it not so stark.

He's cute enough, he'll do the trick.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game!

So I love baseball.  I grew up playing T-Ball and then softball, and growing up going to games was one of my favourite things.  My grandmother and I would watch Toronto Blue Jays games from her bad in her nursing home, and my first memory is watching her squeal with glee over Pay Borders and his dirty hat.  I have never been one to really follow or root for a specific team(though obviously my loyalty lies with the Jays for purely nostalgic reasons!) but I just love the sport.

So when my friend Stella and I went to a ball game the other night, our Jays vs the Yankees, I decided that we needed some ballpark nails.  I went with the old Blue Jays logo(the new one is so boring!) and a little itty bitty Yankee logo on my pinky.  We ended up trouncing those Yanks 6-0, though they did kick our asses last night.

But then.... GASP... Tragedy struck!  My nail art brushes and dotting tools, they were missing!  How was I going to do small details without tools?  Well, I  persevered, and I ended up doing the whole design(including the polka dots on the other hand) with the jaggy end of a bent hairpin.  I think I did a pretty good job despite lack of tools :P

Polishes used:  Orly Royal Navy, OPI Big Apple Red(for the shadow on the text and the red on the logo), Color Club French Tip(THE BEST WHITE EVER, I swear it's sorcery how perfect this formula was.  What you see on my middle finger is one thin coat), Illamasqua Serenity, China Glaze Sea Spray, and a plain black stripe rite brush with some sliver glitter.

Pretty proud of my itty bitty maple leaf :P 

Ran out of time so the other hand was just dotty, but I think I did a damn good dotting job given that I was using a craggy old bobby pin!