Rhinestone Holly nails

Today was expensive. Let me explain, I drive a VW (right now everyone with a VW is saying ooohhhh) and she had to go to the doctor today, $400 later I left the shop. I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to driving so instead of putting myself in the situation that would require me to make a left without a light I chose to drive through a strip mall parking lot. This decision didn’t work out well for me, right in front of my beloved Sally’s my car was hit by a lady that said she didn’t see me because a bush was in her way. After getting hit (this is my first accident ever while behind the wheel) I let out a string of blue words that I will never repeat in front of my mom, Sadie (my VW) cursed in German the way only my little German girl can curse. My poor baby is all busted up L.

Now that I have that sad story out of the way I have some super cute nails to show off. These nails are so super cute I couldn’t wait to blog about them, that’s why you are getting a blog two days in a row (you are so lucky). Before I show off the manicure I want to say yes, these did take forever.

So pretty!

Each rhinestone was put on individually; I probably would have given up after two nails if they didn’t look so awesome while I was doing them. The only color I used was OPI AlpineSnow, and it did the job like a champ. Aside from the incredible amount of time I spent putting on rhinestones the only issue I ran into was putting topcoat on after the rhinestones. I needed a topcoat over the white tips and didn’t really think this through until after I had meticulously placed 90 some odd rhinestone. The top coat I use is super thick so when I went to put it on over the rhinestones there was a certain amount of unwanted pooling (you can see it in the picture around the holly). If I were to do it again (which I don’t want to because it was a pain in the butt) I would put topcoat on before I did the rhinestones, although if I did that I’m not sure I would be totally confident the rhinestones would be stuck on well enough, perhaps I will need to try these again after all.

These turned out just how I wanted them

I’m pretty sure these nails were way too fancy for work, I kind of wish I would have saved them for something more fun but I guess they just classed up my expensive, kinda crudy day. I will say though, when Thad came home from work he had flowers for Sadie, he is pretty rad sometimes.

Ornament nails

A few years ago my mom and I started a tradition that the Saturday after Thanksgiving we make Christmas candy. This tradition has morphed into meaning that the Saturday after Thanksgiving we will stay in our sweatpants all day, make a minimal amount of candy, and drink a bit too much. All of this sounded like a great excuse to take a day off of work. We ended up making so many Oreo truffles that I got a blister on my finger from the spoon I used to dip them in almond bark. I don’t know if this means that I have delicate cupcake hands or if the spoon was out to get me. In either case I am now forced to wear a Band-Aid on my right middle finger (at least I very rarely photograph my right hand). I don’t know if it is just me but I hate Band-Aids, they make me feel dirty like they are teeming with filth that is just waiting to jump on whatever food I am currently conveying to my mouth, please don’t take this as a reason to not eat my Oreo truffles though, they are really quite good.

Since making Christmas candy really started getting me into the Christmas mood I decided to do wintery nails this time around. I actually have so many awesome winter/Christmas ideas for my nails that I’m a bit over excited about the whole thing. I really wanted these to look like Christmas ornaments so when I showed them to my husband and his first response was “those look like ornaments” I was beside myself excited.

Do you see ornaments too?

For these nails I used Zoya Song, OPI Radiance (another designer series polish!) and a little bit of China Glaze Running in Circles. These nails didn’t turn out how I initially pictured them, I knew they wouldn’t as soon as I started the silver lines and realized I picked way too big of a brush. Instead of starting over I decided to work with what I had and in the end I think they look pretty. After using Radiance once I’m already in love. I think this is going to end up being such a fun color to use this holiday season. It is incredible just how metallic the color is in person, it sparkles without having any big glitter pieces and seems to shine no matter what angle you look at it. The color is so sparkly that I am getting distracted by the reflection of it in my computer monitor J.

Thad showed me how to do a super up close picture

I love these nails even though they are so different from what I wanted them to look like when I first started my manicure; it helps to use such fun colors.

Turkey nails

What’s not to love about Thanksgiving? It is a day to hang out with your family and eat way too much delicious food. I love any day that encourages me to be lazy and eat for most of the day. As much as I dig Thanksgiving, I hate black Friday. Thanksgiving is a day when we are supposed to reflect on all the things that we are thankful for and then we follow that up with a day that reminds us how much greed exists. I generally like to stay off my soap box but the whole black Friday thing really bothers me. Some stores are opening up at 8pm on Thanksgiving, and I saw pictures today of people who are already camping out in front of Best Buy! Shopping on black Friday is telling those companies that they are right to put money and greed before the happiness of their employees. Whew, I’ll step off my soap box now and talk about nails.

I really wanted to do turkey nails for Thanksgiving, is there really another time of the year that I can get away with having turkeys on my nails? (I’ll pretend that I don’t roll around with random birds on my nails with some frequency.) I decided to pair my turkey nails with classy French tip nails so that the overall look was still nice and not super cheesy, not that I don’t totally love some super cheesy nails.

Gobble!

For this manicure I used a ton of colors, Orly Liquid Vinyl, OPI Alpine Snow, Deutsch You WantMe Baby?, and Brisbane Bronze, Ulta Sun-Sational, China Glaze Mahogany Magic, and finally Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up. Oh, and I used four striper polishes. I wish I would have been able to center the turkey a little better or made his feathers a little bigger so more of my nails is covered, but I still think he turned out cute.

The tips are Brisbane Bronze

The last time I paid for a manicure I picked Brisbane Bronze and after buying the color a few days ago I remembered why I picked it for my manicure. It is a beautiful color, it has sparkle but isn’t so sparkly that it feels too loud. The color goes on amazing and looks great in two coats. It is a little hard to use with tips though because one coat doesn’t cut it. I hope you enjoyed my turkeys and have a super fantastic Thanksgiving!

Fall Tree nails

I get so much satisfaction from finding a good deal. I’m not a huge fan of shopping for groceries or clothes, but I love shopping for gifts and nail polish (shocker I know). Yesterday I got such an amazing deal on some new polishes. I was on the hunt for what I was calling ‘turkey brown’ in the hopes I could find a brown that would work for me to do turkey nails for Thanksgiving. I went to Sally’s first and found a great brown for $1.50! I got one other color at Sally’s ($3.29) and headed to Ulta where I got three OPI polishes (one is even a designer series) for a total of $6. All in all I was pretty pleased with my shopping skills and by that I mean I squealed with delight all the way home and then forced my husband to stop watching football long enough to confirm what a good deal I got.

Armed with so many new colors I knew I had to paint my nails (I managed to use three of the four colors I bought and the new base coat). For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM ShellWe Dance? and All Fired Up, Ulta Sun-Sational, China Glaze Mahogany Magic and Glitter Goblin, and OPI BrisbaneBronze and Deutsch You Want Me Baby?. As you can probably tell from that list, my nails have a lot going on right now.

Fall Trees

The base color on my nails is Shell We Dance? it works really well as an almost nude base color for my skin tone. Because it is so similar to my skin tone I have some trouble cleaning it up, I didn’t realize how much they needed to be cleaned up still until I looked at the pictures (sorry). I love my new glitter, it was part of China Glaze’s Halloween collection which is why it was on clearance, but it works as a fall glitter very well. In person it is mostly orange glitter but there is a fair amount of holographic glitter in there too.

It was really bright outside today

My ring finger tree turned out way better than my pointer finger tree. For some reason when I was painting on branches I decided to put some low branches in; I promise I know what a tree looks like. I think these nails turned out pretty fun, I love how the colors all worked together so this bodes well for my turkey nails. Fingers crossed my turkeys turn out better than my penguins.

OPI Indulgence

I haven’t been good about working out in the gym since my job . . . hiatus, but none the less I went today and now I’m super tired and feel like the bottom of a shoe. My trainer is cold and dead inside and she seems to find true happiness in my despair. To celebrate working so hard at the gym, for dinner I dipped Ritz crackers into the jar of peanut butter. In case you were wondering, this does mean that I sat on my couch with a tube of crackers and an entire jar of peanut while watching The Big Bang Theory. We are trying out a new kind of peanut butter I hadn’t seen before; it’s Planters peanut butter (how could I resist his top hat and monocle?). It has a great peanut flavor but it isn’t as sweet as some others so I still have mixed feelings (in addition to the feeling that I make poor food choices).

My dinner habits may not be fancy, but my nails right now most certainly are. It had been a while since I did a classy French tip manicure and that is just what I painted last night. I used my amazing OPI Indulgence for the tips. I had almost forgotten how much I love this polish. It is the only OPI designer series polish I own and I love it, did I mention I love it? I wish I would have put two coats on the tips so that the color was denser, but it still looks amazing with the one coat.

They are just so pretty

For the design I was going for a shooting star look. I’m not sure if I think I pulled that off but I am sure that I love these nails. My black lines got a little thick on some of the nails; I really need to take more time on my lines.

Another picture, they are even better in person

It’s been a while since I’ve been this pleased with how my nails turned out. I can’t wait till its closer to Christmas so I can do these tips again with a snowflake design. I took the pictures after I ate my nutritious dinner but I think I got all the peanut butter off my nails J

Owl nails take two

So there is the slight possibility that I drank too much while crafting in my dad’s basement in the middle of the day. I knew that I was starting to make poor decisions when I chose to buy the 12 back of Sam Adams winter collection, knowing full well that that dad would also have beer at his house. We spent a lovely afternoon in his basement crafting Christmas ornaments and drinking beer, great father/daughter time. As I’ve made very clear in other posts, I’m not an artist, but I did seem to be better at painting the ornaments than I thought I would be, I will give that credit to all my hours painting my nails.

Notice the blue paint I somehow got on my forehead

I have had such dark nails lately that I decided to go with something bright this time around for my nails. I did another owl design since I really do love owls. For this manicure I used Avon Lagoon, Sally Hansen CSM FruttiPetutie, China Glaze Riveting, and OPI Alpine Snow, along with black striper. I added rhinestones to the eyes and instead of making them look whimsical it made them look crazy and a bit blood thirsty.

It’s ok if my owls scare you

Even though I painted these yesterday (after the Viking’s game obviously) the tips are already wearing, especially on the nails that have the blue over the pink. Overall I’m not a huge fan of how these turned out; they were way cuter in my head than on the nail.

Vacation nails

Apparently I don’t blog while on vacation. I got back from my trip to Tennessee yesterday but was still a little too hung over to do much more than vote. From that much information you should be able to surmise that I had a great time, Jackie and I filled my long weekend trip with terrible food/liquor decisions and it was grand. To make up for the lack of blogs you will get three manicures of the price of one in this blog (I should have warned you to sit down before I dropped such a bombshell). The first manicure is actually one I thought I hadn’t taken a picture of but after looking through drunken pictures on my phone I found it. A brief warning about the first two is that I did take the pictures with my phone so the pictures are not the best ever. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Wine Not and used my super awesome essie Matte About You on the tips. The design I did with some stripper polishes.

The effect was pretty cool

For my trip I knew I wanted a polish that wore nicely on the tips so I wouldn’t freak out about it two days in. China Glaze Fast Track has to be my favorite polish for this, it held up super nice for the whole trip, despite moments along the way when I was less than careful about my nails. I had no idea what design to do and actually got a bit frustrated when I couldn’t find anything that I thought would look cool with the base color I chose. In the end I decided to do diagonal stripes because the outfit I was going to wear when I got there had stripes. (Truth be told I ended up packing two sweaters and a sweater dress all with horizontal stripes and then bought another shirt with them, I think I have a problem). The black stripes are just a stripper polish again and the dots I did with OPI Alpine Snow and Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie. I took the picture at the airport while waiting for my flight, at first I felt a little weird taking a picture of my nails in public but then I remembered that the airport is full of weirdos and no one would notice me.

You can see my dress in the background

The last one I have for you are the nails I managed to paint yesterday while watching a marathon of Sex in the City (no matter how many times I see that show I’m always so happy with Big shows up in Paris). For these nails I used my crackle polish for the first time. The base is Orly Liquid Vinyl and then the crackle is China Glaze CrackedMedallion. I wanted the black to be matte finish so I used essie Matte About You before I put on the crackle layer not thinking about the fact that the crackle is painted all over the nail so the matte coat was kind of a waste. I like how they ended up turning out but I’m not a fan of the texture of the nail, they feel too thick like I have something stuck on them.

Some of them turned out cooler than others

Well, I hope that makes up for the lack of posts while I was on vacation. I think it is about time I find some turkey nails to try out.