Tip Top Nails Night Rider

This polish was sent to me as a gift from Tip Top Nails.

I hope everyone is having a good Thursday 🙂  I have to write my exam for my online course tomorrow, so I’m a bit nervous about that because I feel like the second half of the course went right over my head 😦  Ah well!  It’s almost over, lol!

Today’s polish is another Tip Top Nails polish that Joan sent me for participating in the Cupcakes 4 Kids nail art week on the Facebook page last summer.  This is Night Rider!  I chose this one because the COTW for my nail group is Silver/Gold.

This is 3 really easy coats of Night Rider, I did find the formula kind of thin and watery.  At first it was really brush stroke-y, but when I put my top coat (Julep Freedom – which I’m still not 100% sold on) on it evened out quite a bit, though brush strokes are still slightly visible.

I’m not sure if I like the colour on my own skin tone, but it is a nice colour.  I did want to “stud it up” with some black studs and nail art because it seemed like a very biker-chick-ish silver colour, but I don’t have any black studs/rhinestones, lol!

I also just realized that this polish goes great with my current blog colours!  I did that on purpose of course 😉

If you want your own bottle of Night Rider, you have to be in Africa/South Africa as Tip Top Nails does not ship internationally.  Either that or you will have to have someone in Africa/South Africa who can order it and ship it to you 🙂  But, if you head on over to their Facebook page, you can keep up with some cool tip and useful nail care information!  They also have weekly nail art competitions you can join in on (which I really should get my butt in gear for!).

Julep Claudette and Tip Top Nails Smashed

All polishes are purchased with my own money unless stated otherwise.

HAPPY FRIDAY!  The weekend is finally here!  I was supposed to write my final exam this morning, but due to in-climate weather and hydro outages, the place I was writing it was closed.  So I have to reschedule for next week.

Yesterday I posted Julep Claudette and told you to come back to see what I did with it!  Check it out!

I topped Julep Claudette with Tip Top Nails Smashed, which is a gold crackle polish.  I know, I know, everyone is over the crackle phase (see, I toldja I don’t follow trends!), but I have never had crackles until I got the ones from the October Julep Box, and this one from completing my cupcake nails for Tip Top Nails South Africa’s Cupcakes 4 Kids nail art challenge.  The lovely Joan sent me a package of goodies, and Shattered was one of them!  It came in a 2-sided polish tube with a top coat in one end and the gold crackle polish in the other.  I also got 3 other polishes and their Miraculous Results base coat!

One thing I did find with this crackle polish, and I haven’t used a lot of crackles (obviously) but when I was using it, the formula seemed to turn into an icing-like consistency around the top/mouth of the bottle.  It looked grainy and was gathering, and reminded me of a grainy icing.  Maybe I was just hungry, but I do know that it did thicken as I used it, so if you do get a crackle polish from Tip Top, make sure to be careful of that.

That being said, I really love the look this created, and I will definitely have to revisit this at Christmas time!  Claudette and Shattered really compliment each other 😀  I think that Shattered crackled really nicely and there is enough red showing through that it gives the mani some character!

The only thing with Tip Top Nails is that they are located in South Africa, and as far as I know, they do not ship internationally (unless you participate in a nail art challenge, or something 🙂 ).  But, if you are there, or have a connection, I’m guessing, anywhere in Africa, you can probably get some Tip Top Nails polishes 😀  If you are international, make sure to check out the Facebook page, and participate in their weekly nail art challenges and maybe you can win some polishes!!

Purple Water Marble

Good morning and HAPPY FRIDAY!!!  What do you have planned for the weekend?  I am going to be working on/finishing my nail swatch stick display board!  Wanna check it out so far?  Here is the link to my Facebook photo album!

Today I have for you a purple water marble that I did earlier this week.  COTW for this week in my Facebook group was purple.  I have been obsessed with purple polishes this week, so be prepared to see some in the next few posts 🙂

For this design, I first painted 2 coats of Avon Loving Lavender for my base colour.  Then, using Avon Loving Lavender and Vivid Violet, and Tip Top Nails Complete Chaos, I created the marble.  The Tip Top Nails polish didn’t work the greatest for water marbling, it’s not thin enough.  I like the way this turned out, but wish that the darker purple (Complete Chaos) would have spread easier so that my marbles looked more uniform 🙂

Sorry for the short post.  I will try to have another one up later today (I have a few ready to go, so we will see what the day brings 🙂 )

Tip Top Nails I Love Nails

Happy Sunday everyone!  I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.  It didn’t snow anymore this weekend, and it’s actually kinda warm out; overcast and rainy but warm 😦

I have pulled another design from the archives.  For the next little while, if I’m not doing a Challenge design (Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge, Go Pink Wednesday, etc.) I will be pulling from the archives, I hope you guys don’t mind.  I have so many that it’s starting to cause a little anxiety for me, so I want to use as many up as I can 🙂

I have for you today a design I did for Tip Top Nails South Africa a while ago, it was due September 15.  The theme for that week was “Inspired by Insects” so I decided to do some Monarch Butterfly Nails.  I had attempted this earlier in the week (when I did my Julep Daisy and Parker Gradient) and it didn’t turn out the best.  I showed Tyler and he thought they were pencils… So I redid them for this theme 🙂

I was pretty proud of these 😀  With the submission of your design to Tip Top Nails, you have to include all your polishes and tools as well, so here is my entry with all my polishes and tools.

This is how I do all my entries, I think it’s much easier than trying to get a good picture of your nails and getting all your tools and polishes in the picture too 🙂

Doing these themes for Tip Top Nails are so much fun.  Unfortunately I ran out of time this past week to do the Nautical theme 😦  I really want to try it, so I have added it to my list of things to do so that I do them in the future 🙂

I also won’t be doing the Back to School theme this coming week, but I’m hoping that the next week I will be able to come up with something 😀

If you want to participate in the themes for Tip Top Nails South Africa, make sure to check out their Facebook page, and I have also included basic information and links on my Upcoming Challenges page here on the blog.  So if you’re looking for something to do on your  nails, make sure you check it out! 😀

Have you tried Monarch Butterfly nails?  Did yours look “like pencils” the first time you did them too?  If you have a picture of them, I want to see!  Post them on my Facebook page.

Tip Top Nails I Love Nails

Good morning everyone!  I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far!  The preparations for Thanksgiving dinner have begun!  Mmmmmm!  Can’t wait for dinnertime 😀

Tip Top Nails South Africa has a “Challenge”, I guess you could call it, every week.  Joan changes it up and has a different theme every week.  This week’s theme is “Inspired by Breast Cancer Awareness”.  This week, we had the option to either paint our nails a solid pink if you aren’t comfortable with nail art, or you could paint the pink ribbon in your design.

I decided to do the ribbon and some water marbling (be prepared, water marbling is going to be a common thing around here!).  This is what I came up with.

I absolutely LOVE the way this came out!  It looks so girly and makes me SO happy to look at it 😀

The colours I used are:

• L’Oréal I Will! white base colour on all nails.  I need a new white, does anyone have one they recommend?  I have seen that Milani White is really good (can’t think of the name of it right now) but I don’t know where to access it in Canada.  I live about an hour from anywhere that has a chain beauty supply store.
• Avon Cotton Candy, Viva Pink and Fuchsia for the marbling.  I was inspired for this design by this tutorial.
• Then for the Breast Cancer ribbon, I used a small paintbrush and Cotton Candy, then a toothpick and Viva Pink to create the outline.

I hope everyone likes this design, I’m pretty proud of it 😀