Should Have Been Birthday Mani

This is Astra, by Zoya. Had I known of it, or had it before my birthday, it would have for sure been my birthday manicure. This is every girly girl's dream! Pink and lots of glitter!





It has flecks of pink, red, silver and even gold colour glitter (at least in my eyes). In this shot above you can kind of see the gold shine in the middle two fingers, towards the left side of both.




This is just the shiny sparkly goodness of Astra.



It looks so good in all lights, I wish I could capture the stunning girly colour here!




Even outside it shimmers and sparkles like no polish I have ever seen before. I am in love.


This will be my birthday, New Year's, Valentine, Christmas, every single holiday mani! Okay probably not but still, I really love it. It just looks so festive and ready to party!


Do you guys love Astra as much as I do?

If that is even possible...

I Never Knew I Loved To Be Nude

No worries, this is still a blog about nail polish, nothing dirty!

This is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Choco-Latte. Great formula, really smooth and creamy to apply. I have had great results with all the Complete Salon Manicure line so far, and have a variety of colours that were provided by the company for me, this one included, so thank you Sally Hansen for sending this wonderful new love to me.

The only slight issue I have with it is the name, as any polish called Choco anything to me would be more brown. But hey, when it looks this good who cares what its called?
Today i wore my first nude nail colour! And I fell in love. For a girl who thinks brighter the better, this amazes me that I could love this colour so much. Something about the neutral, skin tone, creamy colour appeals to me big time. It is somewhere in between a pink, beige, peach combo and I really love looking at it.

Of course I had to add a little Konad to it, m57 of course. With Konad Special Polish in brown to stamp.

My lighting makes this nude creme look incredible! I feel so Hollywood movie star glam with this, even though its not a typical glam colour. It just blends into my skin like butter. Normally I want a polish that you can see really well, something that says "Bam!". But this little lovely says in a more sophisticated and subdued way "Hello, here I am, I am beautiful in my own understated way". At least that is what it says to me...

I only put the leopard/cheetah stripe thing on my ring and thumbs, as a diagonal, just to add something of interest to look at and notice from far away. Anyways, I cannot stop staring at it and cannot wait to wear it again and again!

Here was how it looked before I Konaded it. It just looks like a better versions of a non-polished nail I think. Skin tone with a but of warmth and pink to it.

Thanks again to Sally Hansen, and boy oh boy do you keep impressing me Miss Sally!

Love It!

Brisk Blue Lace & Flowers

Here is one of my latest (and in my opinion greatest) Konad manicures.
I used Insta-Dri in Brisk Blue, as my base. It dried pretty fast and I used two coats just to even everything out, but I probably could have done with one.



I used image plate m57, one of my newest and favourites. I used the full nail image of lace criss-cross diamond whatever you wanna call it. I angled it to cover half my nail on a diagonal, which was not as hard as I was afraid it would be. This was stamped in Sally Hansen White On.

Then I used the same image plate, and used the flower design with Sally Hansen Black Out. I used the larger flower for my thumbs, the two smaller ones for other fingers, and just one small one on my pinkie nails.



Then I made a line (freehand!) with an L.A. Colour Art Deco Pen. It looks almost dark copper or brown shimmer in the bottle, but on my nails it is black. Funny how that happens huh...

Unfortunately I did not use a Konad Top Coat, and left some streaks through my mani.

I thought since I was not using Konad nail polish I did not need the top coat...

What top coat do you use to not smudge your Konad?

Mommy's Flowered Mani

This is about as crazy of a manicure as I can get Mommy to wear. This one is a pink base (any old french one would do) and stamped with Insta-Dri in Instant Iris, which I still think does not look like Iris.

I stamped using White On first, and layered it with the colour, just to give it a different effect.

It is image plate m3, a really cute one full of tiny designs.

This was before the colour, I am almost tempted to say I like this one better.

What do you think, better before or after the colour on top?

Wow Wow Nails, My Story of Becomming a Nail Junkie

This is the reason I became a Nail Junkie. Here is my story...

A few years ago I saw Konad stamping at a craft fair. There were booths all over but this one caught my eye. It was amazing, to see nail polish in teeny tiny dents in metal plates, squished into your nail. I could not believe it and immediately was hooked.

So I told my mother about the amazing stamping nail polish thing I saw. She did not understand what I was talking about, so I did not get any Konad for my birthday that year. I went to the craft fair again the next year, and saw the Konad stand again. I tried once more explaining to Mommy. Christmas of the next year rolled around, and low and behold she had figured it out.

I received a Konad Kit from a store my Mom had found, called Wow Wow Nails. Wow Wow Nails has quickly become one of my favourite places to shop, online or in person. It is a relatively far drive from where I live, but it is so worth it.

The first time I went in there were really kind ladies who gave me and my mother demonstrations of the products, They showed us new stamping plates and helped me try to do designs on my own.

More recently I have gone back to the store with a friend from overseas. She saw my nails one day, and as many other people are, was amazed at the designs I had stamped on. We explained it to her entire family and everyone was impressed. So we took her to my go-to nail place, to Wow Wow Nails.

Unfortunately with living far and my friend only visiting, we were not going to make it to the store on time. My mother called Wow Wow Nails, and they agreed to stay open later just for us to come in. That is what I call incredible customer service. And they only get better.

The lady who helped us at the counter was so friendly and warm, and I will never forget what she did. She took me step by step through the process of using the french tip plate, which I had been struggling with for so long. She did a few for me and then watched and guided me until I could do my own, probable spending at least twenty minutes of her own time (keep in mind that they had held the store open for my visit). She was so patient and kind, and even though she was very far more advanced she spent all that time and effort just to help me.

Recently I had another experience with the wonderful staff of Wow Wow Nails. This just reinforces my belief in how amazing and friendly their staff and store really is. Nina, a wonderful woman who I was emailing with, explained it best. In her words she said "We try our best to give great customer service because we are customers ourselves". That is an understatement by far. Wow Wow Nails goes above and beyond "great" customer service.

With everything I have experienced through customer service, and the friendly in store visits, I would recommend to anyone Wow Wow Nails. I have already sent links to their website to many many friends, family, and even other bloggers.

I also have brought friends with me on trips to the store and even my mother has been passing on the word to her work colleagues and friends for their children.

I have never come across such kind and helpful staff, and I appreciate everything I have learned from the people at Wow Wow Nails. It will continue to be my number one nail art place, and I don't think I will ever get enough!

Here is the fun part for you Konad lovers:

In only about a year, this is what I have accumulated from Wow Wow Nails.

14 Image Plates

14 Polishes

2 Sparkle Stripers

3 Stamper/Scraper sets (Metal and Plastic)

1 Nail Polish Remover Pump (which both my mother and I believe is one of our best investments)

Overall, my addiction to nail art came from seeing the nails of the girls who worked at Wow Wow Nails. I remember specifically feeling so insprired and creative after watching a staff member create a ladybug out of the paint splatter design on m21. Mixing colours, stamping with white and then a colour, and all my other techniques came from in store demonstrations from the lovely staff of Wow Wow Nails.

The Wow Wow Nails store offers free demonstrations and help when you walk in.

They also offer a Free Nail Session with the purchase of any Kit.

They have a blog that offers video and photo tutorials on how to do nail designs, which I have found really helpful and inspiring.

The online website and gallery are here, to view and shop for all the products. If you live in Canada, I highly recommend shopping in store, as it is a wonderful and friendly experience.

Thanks to Wow Wow Nails for inspiring me and being the best customer service staff I have ever come into contact with.

Twitter!

I finally got a Twitter account. Do I know why? Not really..

But I did it. So please follow me on Twitter, I am nailjunkie100.

There is a link on the side of my blog ----->

Thanks guys!

Nailene Big Giveaway

Here is my post about my favourite Nailene Product.

These are So Natural Short Square Length Fake Nails, by Nailene. They were love at first try for me, and I will be wearing them many more times. I love them and was shocked at how pretty they made my hands look. I felt so glamorous in them.

They were long wear and very chip resistant, and looked beautiful after a quick and easy application. No hassle, no mess, and easy to remove too.

I would recommend them to anyone.

I have another post on the application and wear of these nail here.

Check out the Nailene Website to see these and other great Nailene Products at http://www.nailene.com/.

From Boring to Bam!

This is incredible! I got this for my birthday last year, before my obsession became this big. It was all the way from Alaska. It is Del Sol Nail Polish in Peek-A-Boo.


It starts off basically clear, with a tiny hint of pink (or maybe thats just me). But then it turns to bright blood red! So amazing!

It is not like mood polishes, as it does not activate by heat. It is the sun. Inside is one colour, outside is another.

I am so amazed by this polish, I walk in and out all day long just admiring it. There are many many colour combos on the website, and I have another I will show you later on.

It is really like magic to me, I think it is awesome! What do you think?

Big Plate Giveaway

This is from Painted Lady Fingers and her huge giveaway! Check it out here.

Looks really neat, I checked out the plates and they are awesome!!

My Water Marble Mess

This is pretty bad. Especially compared to the really great bloggers I see out there.

Hopefully I will get better.


These are my three favourite nails. It reminds me of sherbert ice cream, you know the neon colours. It is flavoured like orange and lime and some pink one. Yeah that is basically what I get from this mess of a manicure.


They didn't really marble so well. They just overlapped and mixed up. I clearly need practice!

For this I used OPI In My Back Pocket, Just Groovy, and Log On To Love.

The colours are good on their own, but maybe not so much together.

Go Green Giveaway

This giveaway by Dainty Darling Digits is to find a home for her unused polishes. Giveaways are a great way to do that, helping the environment and helping you clean out your stash!

Swap? Please

Since I am fairly new at this whole nail art blog thing, I am wondering if anyone would be interested in a swap.

I live in such a tiny town, which means that I never in my whole life even seen a bottle of China Glaze, never heard of Orly, only own two OPI and was just introduced to Zoya a few days ago.

I live a very sheltered polish life, and I live off Konad and Sally Hansen.

That being said, I am looking for a swap of anyone interested in some Konad plates (m54, 57, etc) and polishes (white or other colours), and almost any Sally Hansen you could ask for.

I also have a lot of L.A. Colour around where I live so I could pick that up easy, along with stripers from L.A. Colour. I also can easily get nail stickers of many kinds and fake nail as well.


Also I have Claire's and things like that so I can get you novelty polishes (scented, mood changing, etc). Pretty much anything you want.

Anything in my area I could get for you if you want something, including Essie Matte About you and some other things I know are popular lately.

So if anyone is interested please leave me a comment here and/or email me at nailjunkie@live.ca.

I am in Canada but would be up for a swap anywhere you live, hopefully North America just because shipping is easier.

Thanks! I hope to hear from somebody soon ...

Red, Black, & White Splatter

This is a design I had been wanting to try for a while now, and with PHDs Challenge this week I was inspired and thought I would give it a shot.

I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure, which was one coat of perfection. Vibrant blue-red, with a hint of orange to it. Really great formula and quickly becoming one of my favourites.

Then I stamped on image plate m21 with Black Out and White On (both Sally Hansen). I used the multi-colour Konad technique to mix the colours and get grey in there too.

This is the image plate with the two polishes.

And here is the design after being scraped. You can see how the two colours blended to make grey in the middle. Ignore the extra, I cleaned that off before I stamped.

These are my three favourite nails because they had lots of splatter on them and had all the colours involved with the mixed image stamps.

Bright Floral Konad

This cute summer design came from Konad image plate m57. I used two coats of Revlon Lasting Finish in Magnolia Pearl. The colour itself is really nice, a creamy champagne beige white colour tone. It was a great base for the bright colours I used to stamp. I used the three different sized flowers on the side of the image plate.

These three fingers were my favourites, they had all three colours and the flowers were randomly positioned.

The colours I used included Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Pronto Purple.

Essence Show Your Feet in Caribbean Sea.

And also the Konad Special Polish in Orange.

I finished with a Konad Top Coat and voila - cute and bright summer nails!

My New Favourite Pink! Wow!

I am so excited! Beyond excited! This came out of nowhere.

I was wandering the mall one lazy day, came into Claire's for its buy one get one half off. So I bought this little kit of Bubble Yum Scented polishes. I thought they were a cute novelty thing to try, see if they really smell like bubblegum. it had a few shades of pale pink, a blue and a purple.

Well, when I got home, a miracle happened. The boring pale bubblegum pink that I was trying solely for the purpose of scent, has taken over. I am so in love with this polish it is incredible I have the urge to run out and buy a hundred more. It actually looks so different than in the bottle it is amazing! I cannot stop staring at it!

The pictures do not do it justice to the amazing beauty and girly perfect pink of this polish!

It has the perfect amount of shine and sparkle and glimmer and everything girly! It looks dark pink and gummy in some lights, it looks light and shimmery in others, it sparkles and is just amazing! And it does smell like bubblegum haha.

I even risked ruining the beautiful colour and put Essie Matte About You on top. But it still looked amazing!

Anyways I could go on for years about this polish. I adore it! Yum yum yum for everything about it. So happy about my impulse purchase! I am so sad it came in a mini and I wish I could keep it on forever. I have yet to try the others yet, but I will keep you posted (haha nice little play on words bloggers).

Here is a video to try to capture the colour and the wonderful shimmer in action!

I keep smelling it and staring at it - oh wow I really love this polish! Love love love love love it!

Would you ever try this? I highly recommend it!

Dress Up Your Konad

This little Konad is from plate m21. The base was two coats of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Ice Coffee. The image was stamped in Sally Hansen White On. That seems to be a staple of mine for Konading.. The little dots were done with a Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen.

The idea is cute, taking a regular Konad and dressing it up with a Nail Art Pen. This can be applied to many different Konad designs, so get creative.

I will have more coming soon.

Have you ever used a Nail Art Pen to jazz up a Konad?

Zebra Konad Finally

I recently got a whole whack of Konad supplies for my birthday. 5 new plates and four mini polishes. I am happy as can be, and super impatient/excited to try them all out.

Here was the one I have been waiting so very long for, animal print plate m57! I just could not bring myself (physically and price wise) to get this plate on my own. I have been waiting for an event or occasion to ask for it for about two years now. Finally it came to me!

I had no idea where to start, but this funky little zebra print was screaming my name.




Away I went, with two coats of Sally Hansen White On, and stamped in some no name no idea where I got it sparkly silver black.

I am so happy I got this plate, I already have amazing ideas spilling out my head.

What do you do with m57? Please leave comments with links so I can see your great ideas!

P.S. I tried to be artsy with the flowers and garden in the back, you know...zebras, animals, jungle, in the wild...

Covergirl Exact Eyelights Mascara

Alright, so I bought this thinking "I need a new mascara". And that is all. I didn't think it would brighten or lighten or do any sort of magic on my boring brown eyes. It was on sale and I figured why not?

Well now I completely changed my mind. Sure it doesn't make me look like Rihanna...but its getting me pretty close! My mascara had practically NO CLUMPS for the first time in basically my entire makeup history. The brush worked exactly as they said, smooth, even application, thin, no clumping. And hello - look at this!




This lovely little tube is said to deliver no clumps along with making my brown eyes pop. I'm not sure if I am popping or I just like to look at my unclumpy mascara, but I have been staring at my eyelashes all morning every time I pass a shiny surface, and I don't normally do that so that must mean they look pretty good.




They don't exactly pop, but they have a little bit of shimmery gold sparkles if you look closely. No I'm sure nobody really is going to get this close to my mascara, but I bet in some lights they may reflect a tiny bit.. who knows...but its nice to know I have sparkly mascara.



Can you see the little glimmers? I'm kind of proud of them.



For being on sale for 7$ Canadian, and getting my normally very unruly lashes almost completely clump-free, I would already say this is worth it.

It doesn't quite make my boring old brown eyes stand out, but it worked like a charm for being a basic mascara. I really liked the application, it was clean and crisp, and I know there is a little sparkle.

So this gets a surprising Love It.

What do you guys think?