Easter Nails

Here are some nails I did the other day that turned out a lot more Easter looking that I thought they would.  I think they look like little speckled Easter eggs and are adorable.  I started with two coats of OPI Kiss on the Chic and then one coat of Sephora Not Your Average Turquoise.  To acheive the matte finish I put one more coat of Kiss on the Chic on top.  That's it!

aaaand tunes...

Nail Polish Shelf

Hold on, because this post is likely going to be a doozy.

I got most of my directions from the tutorial here.
You will need:

• 3 large pieces of foam board
• ruler
• exacto knife
• hot glue gun
• some small nails
• spray paint (optional)

The first step is obviously to cut your shelves from the foam board.  My adorable cocker spaniel wanted to help, although she's not very good with a ruler.

You'll want to cut the following pieces if you are making a 7 shelf shelf like mine.

1 - 20" x 26" piece for the back

2 - 2 1/8" x 26" pieces for the sides, although i would recommend making these a little wider

7 - 1 7/8" x 20" pieces for the shelf

7 - 1" x 20" pieces for the lips of the shelf

Once all my pieces were cut, I spray painted one side of them (the side with the grid on it) with a turquoise colour, but this is entirely optional.

I started by gluing the lips to the shelves, be generous with the glue, I mean really load it in on the inside of the shelf, because no one will see that anyway.

Next, I marked with pencil on the backside of the back piece where the shelves would lie.  I don't have exact measurements because I just eyeballed it until it looked even.  I pushed some nails through the back piece along this line.

I then just flipped the back piece over and pushed down on it to get all the nails to poke through.  Watch your fingers!

This makes it really easy to just push the shelves onto the nails and then start gluing them in place.  I would place one shelf at a time, glue it, let it dry and then add the next shelf, repeat.  This way you will be able to glue all the shelves without the other shelf in the way.

Next put the side pieces on, you can see in the picture below that there are some gaps, I did my best to fill it in with glue, but this is why I say to cut your edge pieces a little wider.  Then you would be able to trim the extra off on the back side.  I also pushed some nails into the ends of the shelves just to be safe.

Finish by adding some dots of hot glue on top of the nail heads on the back of the shelves so that the nails can't loosen up. 

Stock up with your nail polish and hang it up for everyone to see.  In hindsight, I should've made a smaller shelf because I really do not have an impressive nail polish collection.  Especially because most of it is at home and not with me at school.  

Good Luck!!

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St Patricks Day Nails

I did these nails for St Patrick's Day this year. There are Irish flags, a clover and a gold pinky nail. I started by painting a white base on all nails except the gold pinky (which is OPI - GoldenEye). I taped with scotch tape down the middle for the flags and painted green (Vernis Classique - Paradise Alien) on the tips and orange (OPI - Formidably Orange) near the base of the nail.  On my pointer finger, I used a dark green (American Apparel - Hunter) for the clovers, which I made using the end of a cotton swab with the cotton pulled off. Very simple to do :)

Rachel xo

Ants Go Marching

 These are perfect summer cupcakes, and although spring just started I made these cupcakes awhile ago and was just reminded about them.  Yesterday was a beautiful day and it got me all in the mood for summer to come.  Last year I also dyed my hair a bit ombre using one of those new L'Oreal wild ombre kits and it turned out great, has me even more in the mood for nice weather, if that is even possible.

I made these cupcakes some time last year, they are just a basic chocolate cake with white icing tinted green.  I should mention that whenever I dye icing green I always add a little bit of yellow because I find that it makes it a brighter green, more of a lime green.

The ants' bodies are made from chocolate almonds and their legs and antlers are just piped chocolate icing.  If you are allergic to nuts or are making them for a party that someone there is you could use anything that looked similar, like chocolate covered ju-jubes or make smaller ants with chocolate covered raisins.

The watermelons are just fruit slice candies, they come exactly like that, I just piped on some seeds for detail.  Getting the watermelons to stand up is a challenge, I will not lie.  I used melted chocolate and pretty much stood in my fridge and held the watermelon up until the chocolate hardened.  Make sure you use enough icing that the almonds are stuck in there good, because they can roll over since they are round, which makes it even more difficult.  But I promise the frustration is always worth it!!\

I had so many more pictures, but since my laptop got stolen in December I lost them all and had to take these ones off of facebook.

nakey ants

Rachel xo.

Nail Art: Burgundy Triangles

OPI Malaga Wine and The World is Not Enough

My first nail polish post.  Unfortunately the picture is not very good, but that is because I was never planning on doing nail polish posts.  I am by no means a nail artist and do not have a crazy nail polish collection.  Although, recently I did make a nail polish shelf, so I plan on adding to the collection once I get back into my summer job and have a little extra money.

For this look I used OPI Malaga Wine and OPI The World is Not Enough from the Skyfall collection.  Make sure you let the base dry COMPLETELY.  I would even suggest wearing just that colour for a day and then adding the triangles.  All you do for the triangles is tape out what you want with scotch tape and then paint your colour in there.  If your nails are even slightly tacky, the tape will ruin your base.  This has always been my problem, because I have problems sitting still for too long, my hands always need to be busy.

I promise better pictures from now on.

Rachel xo.

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...

... Take one down and pass it around.  Or take a cupcake with a beer bottle on it?  That too.

These cupcakes are perfect for a boy's 19th birthday (or 21st if you're in the US... sorry about that).  I made these for my boyfriend and he loved them.  I put him to the text to see if he could guess all the brands, and he could!  That meant to me that they were somewhat legible, which is a good sign.
I baked chocolate cupcakes from a box, and iced them with vanilla icing tinted blue.
I made the little beer bottles myself, using a mould I got from bulk barn and melting candy wafers (in white, red, blue and green).

I used snack size ziploc bags with a tiny hole cut in them to pipe in the labels.  Remember, whatever you want to see on top you have to pipe in first.  So i started with the small details of each label first, then piped in the label and the cap and then filled up the mould with milk chocolate once the piping had dried.  The only label I added on top of was the Labatt Blue, because I wasn't confident in my ability to write Blue backwards and in such a small area.
Ended up with 6 different beer bottles.

Coors Light, Dos Equis, Budweiser, Heineken, Labatt Blue and Pabst Blue Ribbon

I added these to the tops of the cupcakes and took them to wow my boyfriend.  He was so amazed and thought the chocolate beer bottles were delicious but not as good as actual beer.  Hey, I tried my best.

Rachel xo.

Quick Birthday Cupcakes

I whipped these cute little cupcakes for two of my best friends since high school who happen to be born only 2 days apart.  Their birthday weekend usually ends up being a reunion of all our friends making the trip up to our school to hang out and celebrate.  These guys live practically around the corner from me at university and I can walk over there whenever I need a break from my roommates or just need some familiarity.
Started with white cake since they have strict "no chocolate" rules. (they're crazy)

nakey cupcakes

 I tinted some vanilla icing blue and piped simple swirls using just a ziploc bag.

Then I found these sprinkles in my box of random decorating good and threw some on there for some more colour.

I personally thought they were slightly adorable.  I didn't want to spend too much time on them as I knew they wouldn't last very long in a house full of boys and I was right.

Rachel xo.

Strawberry Golden Oreo Ice Cream

One of the things on my 20 before 21 list was to make actual ice cream, from custard.  Not just cream and sugar in a tin with ice and salt around it, I wanted to take my time and actually see what a difference it made.  Also, I wanted to use out Kitchen Aid Ice Cream Maker Attachment, seeing as I never have and we've had it for many years.  Typical.  So I used to be in love with this blizzard flavour they had for a very limited amount of time, it was a strawberry blizzard but with Golden Oreo chunks in it.  Friggen delicious let me tell you.  So my boyfriend and I decided to recreate it.
I used this recipe from Martha Stewart for the strawberry ice cream and then just added frozen crushed Golden Oreos once the ice cream was made and before putting it in the freezer to harden.

8 large egg yolks
1 cup plus 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
2 cups skim milk
2 cups heavy cream
4 cups diced strawberries


We started by making the custard.  Mixing the egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, the salt and the skim milk.  I was extremely intimidated by this, but it wasn't too scary, I just stood over the stove like a slave until it thickened.  Then you set it on ice, and stir in 2 cups of heavy cream slowly.

We let this sit until it was cool, but ended up putting it in the fridge overnight because the first time we tried to make the ice cream it never hardened.  Once we left it in the fridge over night, it worked perfectly.

We chopped up a bunch of strawberries, poured the 1/4 cup of sugar over them and mashed them up a bit and left them to sit.

When the ice cream started to thicken, we added the strawberries.  

When the ice cream was done (the attachment starts to click and get stuck a bit, time to turn it off) we added the crushed up frozen Golden Oreos (we froze them because we didn't want them to get soggy).  Pour the ice cream into a air tight container and leave it in the freezer until it gets hard.  Scoop it an enjoy :)

Also, because I didn't want to throw out 8 egg whites, I used them to make these Pretty Pink Meringues.

rachel xo