Happy Thanksgivukkah!

I would like to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgivukkah (Thanksgiving + Hanukkah). Did you know such a term exists? I didn't, but I like it. Another one to add to my vocabulary for today is menurkey (menorah that looks like a turkey). I'm looking forward to a relaxing day off and a yummy dinner with my family. Hopefully you are having a wonderful day too!

My manicure today was inspired by this very image that I found online. I had been trying to decide how to combine the two holidays in one manicure and thought it would be fun to either paint a menurkey or a turkey lighting a menorah. Once I saw this image, I knew it had to be the later...

Welcoming My Baby Nephew...

Yesterday evening my brother and his wife welcomed into this world a little baby boy. I am beyond excited to go meet him today so I can cover him in hugs and kisses. Of course I had to have a manicure for the occasion (even though in hindsight it probably would have been wiser not to be doing this at 3am). I would have preferred to create something a bit more colorful, but I opted to go with a subtle manicure since I'll be going to work later in the afternoon....

Presenting Dazzle Dry Arctic Sunset by Wacky Laki!

I'm so excited today to present to you Arctic Sunset, my collaboration shade with Dazzle Dry. I was so thrilled when they offered me the chance to dream up a shade for the Blogger's Mystery Collection for this Winter. As you can imagine, I jumped up and down with excitement and gave a resounding 'yes!' at the chance to collaborate on this venture. I promise to show you the rest of the gorgeous shades in the collection in my next post, but for now a little bit about this beauty...

Pipe Dream Polish Eternal Summer Slacking

Hi Everyone! Today I would like to show you my manicure with the beautiful Pipe Dream Polish Eternal Summer Slacking. It is another wonderful handmade creation by April, the mastermind behind the lacquer. The fun mix of colors in this polish quickly perked up my mood and gave me a bit of a summer flash back. Forget the gray and rainy weather outside, I'm going to be doing some Eternal Summer Slacking...

31DC2013 Day 7 - Black and White

As this post goes live, I'm heading on vacation, but have no fear, I worked my little tushy off to keep up with the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge and have scheduled posts to entertain you. The theme for challenge Day 7 is Black & White. I have been wanting to try the water spotted technique for a while now and finally got an excuse to make time...

Happy 4th of July!!!

Water marble continues to be one of my biggest challenges so I rarely take the time to do it, although the outcome is often worth the frustration. I decided to take on the water marble for this Independence Day manicure since I'm heading out for a long weekend and wanted something special to celebrate...

Textured Stars and Stripes...

I have another attempt at a 4th of July manicure to show you today. This one features some sparkly Zoya PixieDust and striping tape. I will let the photos do most of the talking today...

Tutorial: Faded Glitter Flag

I am pretty pathetic when it comes to following through on creating tutorials. This is one was requested a year ago, after this 4th of July manicure. I actually made the tutorial a few months later, but it seemed out of place to post it with the holiday so far behind. Now with 4th of July just a couple of days away, it is the perfect opportunity to share this with you...

Supplies:

• White base polished (Wet 'n Wild French White Cream used here)
• Red glitter (OPI Gettin' Miss Piggy With It)
• Blue glitter (OPI Gone Gonzo!)
• White nail art polish or striping brush to use with any white polish

Steps:

Instructions:

1. Apply desired number of coats of white polish
2. As shown above, cover approximately two thirds of the nail at a diagonal with red glitter
3. Apply the blue glitter to the remainder of the nail, toward the base
4. Using a striping brush and white polish paint a stripe where the two glitters meet
5. Paint additional lines over the red glitter, parallel to the first line
6. Add a top coat and you are done!

That's all there is to it! Hopefully you can see how easy it can be and will give this a try yourself!

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

Shimmer Nichole for 4th of July!

The count down to 4th of July has begun and I hope to fill the next few days with themed posts, assuming my brain doesn't melt from the heat wave that has hit Seattle. Today's post featured the gorgeous Shimmer Nichole which is truly a 4th of July glitter bomb in a bottle. It was sent to me for review quite a while ago, but I was saving it just for this special occasion...

Sunday Stamping: 4th of July

Happy Sunday everyone! Today is another Sunday Stamping challenge in Adventures in Stamping and the theme today is Independence Day/Canada Day. I always get excited for the 4th of July because it means going on a weekend getaway with my closest friends. Every year we go out of town for a few days just to spend time together, catch up and recharge. Working on this manicure reminded me of the quickly approaching trip and my building excitement...

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful moms out there!!!

I would love to say that I have prepared a special manicure for the occasion, but I simply ran out of time. Rather than spend this morning trying to create a manicure for myself, I am heading over to visit my wonderful mom and give her a much deserved manicure! To compensate for my lack preparedness, I would like to show you a manicure I wore a little bit ago....

Shimmer Maria Scalloped...

I've had a wonderful two days off work enjoying the sunshine and catching up on swatching. I'll even deny that at some point on Tuesday I was so frustrated with my cameras (yes, multiple cameras) that I was ready to toss them out the window. Luckily, we worked out our disagreement on Wednesday and I was able to get more swatching done. In the process of all that swatching, I got to play with the lovely Shimmer Maria and I couldn't help the urge to dress her up a bit with stamping...

JENsations Custom Blended Nail Polish...

Today I would like to show you three fun and unique glitter blends from Jen of JENsations. These glitter mixes come packaged in equally unique and absolutely adorable star shaped bottles. The bottles are flat so they are super easy and compact for storage, but I'm sure you don't care to hear me ramble about bottles so let's get onto the swatches...

OPI Bond Girls Swatches and Review...

I am so excited to be showing you the beautiful OPI Bond Girls collection today. I fell in love with textured polish the moment that I tried my first Liquid Sand and OPI continues to impress me with more gorgeous shades. This collection features six Liquid Sand lacquers and offers a lot of variety of colors from light to dark, pearly, glittery and metallic. A bit of everything in addition to the fun textured matte finish...

Sunday Stamping: St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

This week's theme in Sunday Stamping is quite appropriately a manicure to celebrate the occasion or just create something with an Irish theme. I didn't have anything specific in mind when I started on this manicure, but somehow ended up using everything and the kitchen sink for it. The end result turned out being sweet and subtle and matches my mood perfectly...

Sunday Stamping: Crazy Neons

It is not often that I reach for a neon shade when creating a manicure. Today I picked three of them thanks to another challenge in Adventures in Stamping. The Sunday Stamping manicure theme this week is crazy neons. My initial idea for the manicure was very different than the results, but as soon as I created the gradient it insisted on being citrus fruit and who was I to argue...

Sunday Stamping: Colors of My Holiday Decorations

The holidays can get kind of hectic and I have been struggling to find the time to blog. That is partly why I am showing you the Sunday Stamping manicure on a Monday. This week the challenge was to create a manicure with the colors of the holiday tree decorations. I took that quite literally and went looking through my ornaments for inspiration. I wanted something that wasn't a "typical" bright color so I chose for a gorgeous matte white ornament with gold glitter and rhinestones...

Sunday Stamping: Over Blue Base

It is definitely that time of the year when I get the urge to add snowflakes in some shape or form to every manicure. Luckily it worked out really well with this week's Sunday Stamping challenge of stamping over a blue blase. I have been dreaming of this particular manicure since last year. Sadly the only snowflake stamp I had at the time was really stubborn and refused to work for me, so I was beyond excited to see this pattern in the 3rd Bundle Monster set. Hopefully you share my enthusiasm for snowflakes. I'm pretty sure mine is tied to childhood memories of cutting them out of paper and gluing them to windows with soap..

KBShimmer Oh Splat! Gets Splattered

It was only a few months ago that I saw this adorable Oh Splat! manicure created by Marta of ChitChatNails and it has been on my must try list ever since. It is no surprise then, that as soon as KBShimmer Oh Splat! was on my nails, I knew what I had to do. I didn't have the exact stamp and colors that Marta used so I improvised, but I love how it turned out. I feel like a little kid whose been painting and getting messy all day...

KBShimmer Oh Splat! and Quantum Leaf

Last Friday, I showed you two glitter top coats from the KBShimmer Bath and Body Winter collection. Today I'm excited to show you two more KBShimmer polishes, this time from the Fall release. I fell for both of these polishes when I first saw swatches of them popping up on my favorite blogs. Both of them were on my wish list and I'm so grateful to Christy, the mastermind and tallent behind KBShimmer, for giving me the opportunity to play with them. Take a look at these gorgeous glitter beauties...