Trendy Tuesday - Polkadot Dragonfly

Hi readers! I hope that you are all doing well.  The weather has been miserable but I'm hoping that May will bring sun and warmth.  I was fortunate enough to travel to Toronto yesterday where I was able to make progress in my enrolment into a post-graduate certificate program.  Hopefully that this extra qualifications will mean a career.  Anyways, this trip also meant that I was able to pick up some new polishes.  As a result, I'll be bringing new colours such as Nubar's elegant indigo and OPI's Spiderman collection.  Keep your eyes peeled for these polishes in the coming days!

Today, I was in the mood for a sunny summer nail art mani. I have been such a fan of the polkadot trend that I decided to do this dragonfly using polkadots.  I repeated the dragonfly design on both of my thumbs and used the same colours for repeating polkadots on my other fingers.

For a base colour, I used Essie's turquoise & caicos.  As I have said before, this colour is absolutely amazing.  It reminds me of the colour of the Caribbean Seas so I thought it was fitting to use it as the background of my dragonfly.  For the body of the dragonfly, I used Essie's e-nuf is e-nuf. I have always been fascinated by the colours of dragonflies so I thought this colour would be fitting.  Because  dragonflies always seem so have shimmery wings, I thought it would be great to use China Glaze's Prism.  This purply silver really catches the light and almost seems to dance in the sun.  For the eyes, I used my new Nubar elegant indigo.  This black polish with a blue-purple duo-chrome shimmer.  I'll be talking about this polish tomorrow so stay tuned!


In order to do the polkadots, I used the end of a bobby pin. I still haven't found a set of dotting tools in Canada which is so disappointing.  If you guys know of anywhere in the states where I can pick them up, let me know because I'll be visiting the Lake Placid region next week.  Anyways, I really like how bobby pins do polkadots.  In order to even out the surface, I used two coats of Essie's good to go.  Not only does this topcoat dry very quickly, it also leave a super high-gloss finish.

Have you caught on to the polkadot trend? Show me your best polkadot art by tweeting me a picture @ChippedNailBlog.

Keep on polishing!

Essie Resort Collection 2012 - She's Picture Perfect

Hi Readers! I hope your Thursday is going well.  This is my last day off before I have to work for two days.  Though I would like to work more, it has been slow at work so they don't need the help.  Hopefully the summer will either bring me more hours or the start of a real career.  Anyways, I'm excited to talk about the second colour from Essie's resort collection 2012.

As I talked about in this post , I will be bringing you guys a new colour from the resort 2012 collection for four days.  Well, today I'm bringing you my official first true purple polish.  Yes that's right, she's picture perfect is the first true light purple that I own.  I do own some pinky-purples but no light purples.

She's picture perfect is a gorgeous iridescent lilac.  The shimmer is a blue-pink and it just grabs your eye.  Glitter and shimmer is hard to do justice in pictures but trust me it's just stunning in person.  The polish applied beautifully and was a perfect consistency.  She's picture perfect really surprised me because it dried with a high gloss finish even prior to Essie's good to go topcoat.  For this picture, I used two coats.  I feel that she's picture perfect is a softer, more shimmery version of Essie's playdate.  Though I don't own this polish, I would love to see them compared side by side.

Overall, I haven't always been the biggest fan of purples on nails but this one is definitely a keeper.  It'll be one of those colours that I'll use when I want to spice things up.

Is this a colour you've added to your collection? Does it remind you of other polishes? If so, let me know which ones.

Keep on polishing!

Trendy Tuesday - Favourite Essie Colours

Hi Readers! First of all, I would like to thank A Polish Problem for adding my blog to the Blog Round Up.  I hope that I can share my passion of nail polish with more people everyday! Okay, so today I thought I would write about my absolute favourite Essie polishes out there.  But if I featured them individually, this post would be a mile long (kind of like yesterdays).  Anyways, I got creative and decided to feature all of my favourites using polkadots! This way, you get a taste of each colour in a creative and fun way.

As I wrote yesterday, the weather here has been dreadful.  If it isn't raining, it's snowing (in APRIL!).  It has put me into a bit of a funk.  As a result, I thought I would brighten up an awesome platinum colour with these bright polkadots.  But I ran into a bit of a problem. For the past three weeks I've been on the hunt for a set of dotting tools. In the end, I never did find any.  I've tried Sally Beauty, Trade Secrets, Shoppers, and even Michaels.  If anyone knows of somewhere  to buy dotting tools in Canada, please let me know! Anyways in the end I got creative and used the plastic end of a bobby pin and I think they turned out quite nicely.  


As a base colour, I used two coats of Essie's Playa Del Platinum.  It's from the Resort 2010 collection.   It's a grey-beige blend rather than a pure grey.  The uniqueness of this colour is what originally brought me to buy it.  It truly is a warmer grey.  Then I used four colours for the polkadots. Firstly, I used Essie's E-nuf is E-nuf.  This creamy coral is a great punch of colour. Then I used Essie's Turquoise and Caicos.  This Tiffany box turquoise colour was also released as part of the Resort Collection in 2010.  For the third set of polkadots, I used Essie's Splash of Grenadine.  Again, this colour was a part of the Resort Collection in 2010.  As you can see, this was one of my favourite collections that has been released so far.  Splash of Grenadine is a wonderful mix of lavender and pink.  Alone, this colour almost makes me look like I've got some colour (which is far from the case).  I can't get enough of how it's not quite a true purple nor is it a true pink.  Splash of Grenadine is truly lovely.  The final colour used for the polkadots was Essie's Over the Edge.  This gunmetal grey has a nice hint of sparkle.  As described by Essie, it's "a dramatic metallic midnight silver".  I couldn't have described it any better.  I like how it's not just a flat black, rather it's quite a dramatic grey.

Overall, I love how this manicure turned out.  This was my first attempt at polkadots and I'm sure I'll get better.  Are any of these colours staples on your nails?  Do you use any other home-made tools to polkadot? If so, which ones?

Keep those fingers pretty!

Mani Monday - China Glaze Prism

Hi readers! Hope this brightens up your Monday morning.  This weekend I made a trip to my local Sally Beauty and picked up some neat polishes that I'll bring showing you this week.  First off, I just wanted to let you guys know that they are still having their buy two get one free sale so it's a perfect time to pick up a few new polishes.

So this weekend, I picked up China Glaze's Prism.  Prism is from the Prismatic Chroma Glitter collection (Spring 2012). As a glitter addict, this was a must have.  I thought that it had the greatest variety of colours compared to the other polishes in this collection.   This polish is a solid mix of ultra-fine purple-pink glitters along with larger hexagonal multi-coloured glitter pieces.  I was truly impressed with how densely packed this glitter polish is.  For the pictures, I used two coats of Zoya's Sadie and then two coats of China Glaze's Prism.

Throughout the application I was impressed with how it went on.  It naturally dispersed the glitter evenly and it only took two coats to get superb coverage.  Prism does require two good coats of top coat to get a nice smooth finish (I'm really finicky with finishes so I always use two coats of top coat on top of my glitters).  In order to make removal easier, soak a cotton ball in acetone, place it on top of the nail, and wrap the nail with tin foil.  Let this sit for a good 5 minutes and it will make removal a breeze.

Honestly, I really like now this polish turned out though it is hard to capture the duo-chromatic properties of this polish through pictures.

Let me know what you think! Have you fallen in love with glitter polishes? What is your favourite glitter>

Keep on polishing!