Fox nails

I know I’ve been posting Disney nails while I’ve been gone, but I ran out of Disney nails to post so now you are finally going to see the nails I had for Thanksgiving. I loved these nails and I got a ton of compliments on them. Some of my favorite questions I got about these nails were “so how do you put those on, cause I mean there is no way you painted all those lines?” and “that’s a sticker, right?”. Oh, the joy I find when people think my nails are fake or that I used a nail sticker, I’m such an odd duck. Needless to say, these nails were a pretty big hit at Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Like many of my nail art choices, these nails got a terrible song stuck in my head for the duration I had them on. If you haven’t seen What Does the Fox Say? I highly recommend you leave my blog for a few minutes and bask in the strange glory that only YouTube can bring. Finished watching it? Great, for this manicure I used Zoya Channing, Orly Liquid Vinyl, OPI Alpine Snow, and Maybelline Dotty. For those of you keeping track, this is the first time I’ve used Maybelline, and yes, that does make me sound pretentious.

Fox nails

I’m pretty sure this fox is saying “I’m super cute”. I was worried at first that the fox looked too much like a cat but when my 2 ½ year old nephew looked at them and said “fox” I knew that they must have turned out pretty well. (Yes I squealed like a small child when he was able to correctly guess the animal without prompting). I did a fox on my thumb too but none of the pictures turned out very well.

Ringa-ding-ding-ding-doo

I had a few people tell me these were their favorite nails yet, and I totally agree that these are some of my favorites. They were so cute but not so cartoony that I felt weird having them on. One of my good friends from high school and college married a Mr. Fox so now whenever I see a fox I think of her, hopefully she approves of his foxiness J

Snow White nails

Right after we booked our Disney vacation I decided I wanted to try to see all the Disney animated movies that I had either only seen once or I hadn’t ever seen. This ended up being a much harder task than I originally thought. I’m still about 10 movies shy of seeing all of them (and by all of them I mean the main theatrical releases). Some of them are so obscure and no one seem to have them; however, this is a quest I will finish, you will not best me Disney animated classics. I really want to see the newest movie Frozen, it looks so cute and I just know after I watch it I will think of fun Frozen nails to do.

For this manicure I’m going to focus on the first Disney princess. I haven’t seen Snow White since I was a kid, but I remember it being kinda scary, especially when the wicked queen dresses as the old lady, sorry for the spoiler. For this manicure I used China Glaze Splish Splash, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, and Orly Liquid Vinyl.

Snow White nails

These nails looked way cooler in my head and I think part of the problem was that my red sucks. I really need to invest in a more saturated red, the Sally Hansen is a great color but it is very thin so it doesn’t work the way I want it to for nail art. The same can be said of my yellow striper but I don’t use yellow stripers enough for it to bother me like the red situation does. My problem is whenever I go to the store to buy a new solid red I end up buying some glittery fun red, and although that color is fun, it doesn’t replace the solid red like I need it to. Maybe I should put that on my Christmas list.

I keep finding myself singing to woodland creatures with these nails

This is the first time I’ve tried to do a French manicure with the curved line instead of a line that goes straight across, I used hole punch reinforcements as my guide instead of regular scotch tape. The reinforcements worked fine except they didn’t go all the way across on a few of my nails so I had to free hand the edges. Doing the curved line makes them look more feminine I think, I’m going to have to play around with these reinforcements more.

Disney Princess nails

Every once in a while I do nails that I simultaneously love and hate; these are some of those nails. As soon as I did them I thought they were so cute and I was very happy with how they turned out. A day later, however, I started to think that they were staring at me, and by the day after that I had to take them off because they were creeping me out too much. They kept staring at me while I was typing at work, like ten creepy little kids, always watching, always judging. For some reason, I’m don’t like it when my nails could be the subject of a scary movie.

General creepiness aside, these nails are super cute and they really turned out just like I pictured them. For this manicure I used a ton of different polishes: Orly Prelude to a Kiss and Liquid Vinyl, OPI Alpine Snow, Ulta Sun-Sational, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, China Glaze Turned up Turquoise, Zoya Louise, and various stripers.

Disney Princess nails

I think these nails would be better on shorter nails; some of my princess (especially on my right hand) didn’t have the right face proportions because my nails are so long. To be honest, my right hand looked like a bunch of jacked up step sisters and not the real princess at all. I always seem to have issues getting my edges right when I use that Orly, it isn’t a forgiving color at all.

Let’s just pretend there aren’t a bunch of technical issues with these nails

These are definitely the kind of nails that look better from far away; the closer you get to them the creepier they are. I think Jasmine turned out the best and I bet that is partly because she is the smallest one. I want to try this art out on someone with shorter nails and nail beds, perhaps in two years when I can paint my god daughter’s nails I will try it out on her, but perhaps it is way too early to be planning such things. Hope you are enjoying my Disney nails while I’m enjoying Disney J

Disney's Tangled nails

I’m not a fan of kids but I love many of the things that they love, Disney is no exception. I first went to Disney World when I was a senior in college and my super amazing coach took me to the Magic Kingdom when we were in Florida for a tournament. I was hooked from my very first glimpse of Cinderella’s castle. Thad’s first trip was on our honeymoon, aka the best honeymoon destination ever. This December marks our third trip together and also our third trip in just over five years, we can’t stay away! So while I’m enjoying the sights and sounds of the most magical place on Earth, I decided to have a couple of blog posts for you to entertain you with Disney nails while I’m at Disney.  

Tangled is such a great movie, if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend that you put it on your list to watch. Also, if you haven’t seen it, these nails won’t be as fantastic for you. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Anenome of Mine, OPI You’re Such a Budapest, I Saw. . .U Saw. . .We Saw. . .Warsaw, Alpine Snow, and Pussy Galore, Ulta Sun-Sational, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. These nails turned out even better than I had imagined, they are quite possibly some of my favorites I have done.

Disney’s Tangled nails

If you have seen the movie the nails are pretty self explanatory. In case you missed the instant Disney classic, my pinkie and ring finger are parts of her dress, middle finger is her hair (she is Rapunzel after all), my index finger is for the lanterns they light for her birthday every year, and my thumb is the royal symbol. I’m impressed with how well the thumb turned out, I figured I’d try to do something like the sun symbol and it would fail miserably so I would just hide my thumb, I guess when you set your expectations so low you are more likely to impress yourself.  

Seriously, watch the movie

I got Tangled for my birthday from a friend at work and I totally watched it while I was painting these. Hope these nails brought you some Disney joy J

China Glaze - Creative Fantasy nails

I can’t believe how close it is till our Vacation! We leave in just a few days and I’ve been running around like a crazy person these last couple of weeks trying to get everything ready for our trip. Today on my list of things to do: wash all the blankets in the living room, vacuum the couch and chair, and give the dogs a bath. I didn’t think everything through and definitely didn’t do these tasks in the right order. I had two wet dog just rub their wet puppy fur all over the furniture that had been thoroughly vacuumed and just cleaned blankets. Oh well, at least everything ended up a bit cleaner than it was to start the day.

Also on my list of things to do is getting caught up on my nails that need to be blogged. I did these nails for the Vikings game we went to in October; they just kept slipping through the cracks. For this manicure I used China Glaze Creative Fantasy, Sally Girl Matte Top Coat, Ulta Sun-Sational, and OPI Alpine Snow. I decided to do the matte finish tips because the Vikings have a matte finish on their helmets this year.

China Glaze Creative Fantasy nails

This China Glaze is just about the perfect Vikings purple ever. If you are a Vikings fan and want to paint your nails, you really just need to buy this color. It worked perfect with the matte topcoat and ended up looking just like their helmets, the color did anyway.

Skol!

I did the pink line because this was for a game in October and the NFL has their Crucial Catch campaign in October for breast cancer. These nails weren’t super football-ly but I liked the way they turned out. I feel like I’m running out of ideas for Vikings nails, but since we only go to about one game a year I have plenty of time to plan out my next nails J

Ulta - Fairy Dust nails

Every once in a while I get tired of my nails being gaudy, I know that is a shocking statement, but it is true. For the most part, I love when my nails are super distracting and crazy, but every now and then it is nice to have nails that don’t make strangers comment on them. Don’t get me wrong, strangers of the internet, I generally love it when you ask me where I got my nails done, in fact it brings me quite a bit of joy when that happens. Despite this, it came to pass that I got a free color of pretty tame polish at Ulta so I decided to paint my nails in a classy, non flashy kind of way.

These nails didn’t photograph very well, I actually really liked them in person, they were just pretty and simple. For this manicure I used my FREE Ulta Fairy Dust, and Zoya Maria Louisa and Louise. This is my first Ulta that is from their professional collection, to be honest, I didn’t notice much of a difference between the formula for this one and their regular ones. I used three coats for this manicure because I knew that I wasn’t going to put a bunch of art on top of it and I wanted to make sure the color was even. I don’t have any complaints about Ulta’s formula, they don’t have the best selection of colors but the price is amazing so that evens things out.

Ulta Fairy Dust nails

I think the two Zoya colors are from their fall collection, I got a total of three from that collection and I’m very happy with all of them. Zoya makes such nice colors, even if some of them are a bit of a pain to remove. I need to come up with other ways to use the gold color, it is so cool but it has to be layered on top of another color in order for it to look right, I’ll have to play around with it.

I had to add a little bit of bling J

I thought it was funny that these nails got attention at work simply because they were so much tamer than my normal nails. It was nice to take an ugly nail break but I’m sure it won’t last long J

Day of the Dead nails

I’m so ashamed that I’m posting my Halloween day nails almost a month after I painted them, I’m hoping that all of my dedicated readers will forgive me, I am lazy after all. We are going on vacation soon and I feel like I’m being swallowed by my endless lists of things I need to get done. We planned this trip about 10 months ago so you would think that I would have had all sorts of time to get everything done, but for some reason it feels like I crammed everything into the last few weeks. I still haven’t decided what nails I’m going to do for the trip, that’s how busy I’ve been!

But I digress; I hope these nails are worth the wait, they were pretty cool. For this manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl, Skinny Dip, and White Tips, China Glaze Pool Party and Turned Up Turquoise, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, and Ulta Sun-Sational. These nails were more appropriate for the day after Halloween than for Halloween itself, but it was still fun to have little skulls on my nails for Halloween.

Day of the Dead nails

The best part of these nails was when I took pictures of them and my camera put boxes around each nail as if they were faces, the worst part of these nails was that it was like ten creepy little skulls were staring at me while I was trying to do things like type. It is a general rule of thumb that being a little creeped out by your nails isn’t a good thing.

Cute and Creepy

I truly hate painting my nails white, I don’t know what it is with me but the cuticles always look terrible when I use a white base color. It’s like I’m incapable of painting them correctly as soon as white is added to the equation. Or perhaps I always paint them wrong but the white is just more unforgiving than other colors. Either way, I’m staying away from white for a while.

Catching Fire nails

I’m a huge fan of young adult fantasy fiction, especially when it is in a series - I simply can’t resist them. I also love going to see their movie adaptations; I don’t expect them to be just like the books so I am able to enjoy them for what they are. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for Catching Fire to come out but it finally did so we went to see it last Friday. We decided against going to the midnight show because, quite frankly, I’m too damn old to be going anywhere at midnight (getting back home after 11pm was pushing it for me). The movie was totally worth the wait and the late hour, my favorite part was when it was over and the guy in front of me said “that’s how it ends?” yes sir, that is how it ends.

As soon as I knew we were going to the movie I started thinking about what my nails should look like, obviously. For this manicure I used Ulta Sun-Sational and Orly Liquid Vinyl, as well as some stripers. I’m pretty happy with how these turned out, I thought the fire ended up looking pretty cool and you can tell what the bow and arrow are supposed to be, at least I think you can.

Catching Fire nails

To get the fire look I started with an orange striper and layered lines on my nail, I didn’t put the brush into the bottle very often so the lines ended up kinda wispy. I put red on top of the orange and did the same thing and then topped it off with gold glitter, because I thought fire should be sparkly, and really I’m going to add sparkle to my nails whenever I get the chance.

The tip wear vexes me

I’ve had a lot of trouble with tip wear lately and I’m not quite sure why. My best guess is that I’m going to bed before they are totally dry and then I’m messing the tips up by pulling up our incredibly heavy quilt. We have probably one of the heaviest blankets that has ever existed. A friend from college made it for our wedding and it is equal parts awesome and lead. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get myself to go to bed any later, so perhaps I need to just put up with the tip wear situation.

Candy Corn nails

I hate scary movies, I hate being scare in general and try to avoid it at all costs (that’s why I like the little baby roller coasters at Disney). Thad on the other hand, loves to be scared. I decided to be nice the other day and agreed to watch a scary movie with him. He waited until it was totally dark outside and turned off all the lights so we could watch The Conjuring, holy freaking balls that movie is scary. For me, the scariest kind of movies are the ones that are based on a true story and/or demon possession, spoiler alert, this movie is terrifying. To make the whole movie watching experience even worse we were streaming the movie and it decided to freeze during a super scary scene so the TV was frozen and I screamed like a little girl.

Perhaps because I was subject to a scary part of Halloween I decided to do a manicure that is pretty much the opposite of scary.  For this manicure I used China Glaze Riveting, Orly White Tips, and Ulta Sun-Sational. I wasn’t a huge fan of these nails but I got so many compliments on them that I’ve started to like them more.

Candy Corn nails

I decided to sponge on the colors instead of doing color blocking, I like that they aren’t so harsh like they would be if I did the hard lines but that you can still totally tell what it is supposed to be. If I did them again I would leave more white at the top so the colors were move even, my pinkie barely has any white left on it. Doing these reminded me of my pride nails and my butterfly nails, I need to do more gradients, they are just pretty.

I look like I have very wrinkly fingers

After my last two fairly low key Halloween designs I’m thinking I need to go out with a bang for my actual Halloween nails. Since Mom’s birthday is on Halloween you may have to wait till November first to see them, but if they turn out anywhere near as cool as they look in my head they will be worth the wait

Spider and Web nails

The McRib is back. Since I found out three days ago I have been thinking about that delicious meat-like-substance nonstop. I have a complicated relationship with the McRib, as soon as it comes out every year I essentially drool over the thought of shoving it in my face until I finally break down and actually buy it. After I get to live out the ‘shove it in my face’ fantasy I immediately regret my decision and feel like I’m going to vomit McRib bits everywhere. Even though I know how this adventure will end, I’m desperate to get a McRib and taste the sweet mechanically formed meat. It’s like a question mark wrapped in barbeque sauce.

The McRib has nothing to do with this manicure, but I’m pretty sure a McRib manicure would be awesome. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Anenome Of Mine, Orly Liquid Vinyl and White Tips, and China Glaze Riveting. Riveting has to be the best Halloween orange ever, it is so sparkly and fun, I almost forgot how much I liked it!

Spider and Web nails

I know I did a similar design last Halloween but I liked it so much I really wanted to do them again. At least this year I got more legs on my spider, still not the correct number, but I’m two legs closer. I decided to put black rhinestones on the webs and really like how it ended up looking, almost like there are little spiders on the web.

Sunlight is this orange’s friend

I really like how these nails turned out, just simple Halloween fun. It’s kind of funny how much I like spider nail art when I hate real spiders, but then again spiders are evil creatures, hell bent on my destruction, so it makes sense that I don’t like them in person.

Jack Skellington nails

I can’t believe it is so far into October and I haven’t posted any Halloween nails yet! I love Halloween nails so it feels like a waste that I haven’t done more this year. I’m hoping to end October with a bang and give you some good Halloween nails, so these will just be the first ones, unless I get lazy. . . . which is always a possibility.

I got the idea for these nails from my very best friend. She sent me a picture of them and I knew I had to try them, I mean it combines Halloween and Disney, how could I not do them? For this manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl and White Tips, which just seems like a somewhat fancy way to say that I used black and white.

Jack Skellington nails

These nails were really fun to have but I found that they were distracting to other people in a way my other nails haven’t been before. I interview people at work and while I had these nails I had like six different applicants comment on them during the course of the interview, I’m not sure why these were so much more distracting than my other nails, maybe it was because I had a big skull on my ring finger. I wish I would have been able to make his eye holes smoother on the edges, but other than that I’m actually pretty happy with the overall design.

Are you frightened?

Truth be told, I think I’ve only seen Nightmare Before Christmas once, perhaps I should look to see if it is on Netflix. . . but then again if I try to watch it on Netflix I might get sucked back into the lazy that only Netflix can cause. Hope my first Halloween nails were worth the wait!

Fall Leaf nails

At the end of September I got to go to a beautiful wedding. Two friends from work got married at their lake house, it was very rainy day but they didn’t let the foul weather spoil anything. Everything about their wedding reflected them as a couple, I had never been to a wedding in someone’s home before and it was so much fun. I love weddings; I don’t think there is anything better than getting to be a part of the best day in someone’s life. J

I really wanted to do beautiful fall nails for the fall wedding and although they turned out nice, they didn’t turn out how I pictured them in my head. For this manicure I used OPI DS Indulgence and Deutsch You Want Me Baby? and Sally Hansen CSM Gilty Pleasure. DS Indulgence has to be one of the coolest colors I own, it is so rich and fiery, I really need to find reasons to use it more.

Fall Leaf nails

To create these nails I did two coats of DS Indulgence and then sponged the other colors on top (both on my ring finger and only Deutsch on the others). I then used a striper to create the fall leaf design. To make them a little sparkly I put a little gold glitter on top of the black on my ring finger.

It appears I didn’t do a very good job cleaning up the excess polish

I love how the base color turned out but I’m not sold on the leaf design, I feel like it ended up too thick so it doesn’t look quite right. I love fall leaves and I hate that I keep getting them wrong in my nail designs. I will try them again before this fall is over, perhaps third time will be the charm here. Even though it’s about a month late, congratulations on your wedding Joe and Anika, now all you need is a puppy J

OPI - Pussy Galore nails

I’m a wuss. By that I mean I have a very low threshold for pain. By that I mean I cry like a little girl when I stub my toe. By that I mean I sometimes cry when I think about stubbing my toe. I’m fully aware of my limits but for some reason I really like tattoos, it’s a bad combination. It’s been about four years since I got my last tattoo, just long enough for me to forget how much it sucks, and I’d been toying with the idea of getting another for about a year so I finally took the plunge and got one a couple weeks ago. I’m not going to include a picture because right now it looks like a hot hairy mess, perhaps when he gets pretty again I’ll post one. I say ‘he’ because I got a pretty owl on my calf and all pretty birds are boys. It took four hours to finish, making this my biggest tattoo by about an hour. I would like to say I stoically took the pain but that would be a huge lie. By about the three and a half hour mark I started cursing like a sailor, but I didn’t cry, so at least there is that.

While I was getting my bad ass tattoo I had on some of the most girly nails imaginable, I like to be a dichotomy (I had to call my mom to spell that, I’m not sure what that makes me). For this manicure I used China Glaze Rich & Famous and OPI Pussy Galore. The OPI is my first liquid sand polish, yes, I fell victim to textured polish again.

OPI Pussy Galore nails

I pretty much hate most of the textured polish I’ve used so far, but I actually liked the liquid sand, it’s very faintly textured so it isn’t super annoying like all the other ones I’ve tried before. I also love how the texture looks compared to the shiny part of my nails (and let’s face it Rich & Famous is one of my favorite polishes).

There is nothing about these nails that says ‘it’s fall’

As soon as I got the OPI I wanted to use it right away, even though it’s about as far from fall as possible on the color wheel. Pink is my favorite color though, so I don’t really mind having pink nails any time of the year J

Zoya Nightmare nails

I’m a sucker for a good deal, even when the deal ends up not being so good. My mom and I like to compare our shopping hauls to big game, for instance if we got $300 worth of stuff at Khol’s for $20 we may say that we got a moose. In case you are wondering right now if the poor sales person looks confused by our exchange the answer is yes. When I’m shopping by myself I tend to fall victim to fake good deals more often, I guess protecting me from myself is one of my mom’s many jobs (thanks mom). I fell victim to one of these deals at Ulta the last time I went a little crazy there, they had a deal with Zoya polish that if you bought three at full price then you got a free ‘color lock kit’. For some reason I just had to have that kit, it was an all consuming need that could only be satisfied by obtaining that ‘free’ kit. In the end I left Ulta with three Zoya colors, one of which is a dupe of Deutsch You Want Me Baby?, and only one did I really want, sigh.

I was really excited to do this manicure because I used my brand new ‘color lock kit’, unfortunately the kit ended up being a huge disappointment. The kit has a really good polish remover, a basic base coat, a worthless top coat, and a serum that you are supposed to use an eye dropper thing to put drops of it over the worthless top coat. I’m not sure if my top coat is just messed up or if the top coat is really this worthless. It is so crazy thick that it was impossible to put it on and not have bubbles everywhere (you will see the bubbles shortly), I put the serum on top but that only seemed to anger it more. I went from being super excited about this design and manicure in general, to totally disillusioned. For this manicure I used a horrible ‘color lock kit’, Zoya Channing, Maria Luisa, and Louise.

I’m not going to even pretend this isn’t a nightmare of a manicure

So this manicure had a lot going wrong, although the base color was a very pretty brown (it’s Louise) it was much too dark for the design I put on it so the branches and leaves just look like a hot mess. The bubbles are horrible (that top coat should be ashamed of itself) and they make the whole manicure look lumpy.

These lasted like two days tops

All the colors were actually pretty (and super shiny, you can see the reflection of my camera in my nails) but they just didn’t work together the way I wanted them to. I love the colors Zoya has but the formula isn’t my favorite, they seem to stain my nails more than other brands and some of them are super runny. I really need to try leaves again and redeem myself for these.

Minnie Mouse nails

My goddaughter just turned one and she had a polka dot themed birthday party. As soon as I got the invite I started thinking of all the possible polka dot nails I could do. I think that dots are my favorite nail design, they were certainly my first. When my niece was first born my brother and his wife told me that I could paint her nails when she was three, so I only have two more years to go. I really hope she likes having her nails painted; I want her to think I’m cool and not some crazy woman hell bent on painting her nails.

After looking at many dot possibilities I decided to do Minnie Mouse nails, that way I could do dots and Disney. I got to say, I love these nails. I love them so much that I’ve decided that this is the design I’m going to put on my toes for Disney. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Frutti Petutie, OPI DS Radiance, Orly Liquid Vinyl and White Tips.

Minnie Mouse nails

How freakin cute are these nails? That’s a rhetorical question; I know how cute they are. The mouse design is so simple but it looks so cute, I was in love with these nails from the first Minnie head. I’m bummed only two pictures turned out of these nails, I don’t remember being drunk when I took them but based on how blurry they all were I must have been wasted, or a bad photographer, one of those.

Not sure why this one is so dark

If I were to do them again I would make the bow bigger and more rounded on the edges, I’m going to leave the bow out all together when I do this design on my toes but that is mostly because it’s almost impossible to do nail art on any toe that isn’t your big toe and I want as many Minnie heads as possible. This design would make a wonderful first nail  art design for my niece when she turns three, perhaps planning the design now would be a little too early though J

OPI - Minnie Style nails

Wow, there really isn’t much I can say to explain the fact that it has been pretty much forever since I last blogged. I caught a nasty case of lazy and Netflix. I know, I blame Netflix too often and I should just take ownership of my own lazy, but it is so much easier to blame Netflix and as previously stated, I’m lazy. To make matter worse, it is my favorite nail time of the year and I’ve only painted my nails three times in the last three weeks, pause for effect, its bananas. Hopefully you forgive me for my long lapse in writing and will find it in your heart to agree with me that it is all Netflix’s fault.

The good part of taking a long break is that I have a ton of nails to blog about. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up and OPI Minnie Style. Not surprisingly the OPI is from the Minnie Mouse collection. I’ve had my eyes on this polish for a long time and finally got it with my last birthday gift card (I went a little crazy at Ulta that day and actually haven’t bought any polish in over a month as a result).

OPI Minnie Style nails

This is the perfect glitter top coat, I absolutely love it, and not just because it is Disney themed. I put on two coats of red and then two separate coats of the glitter on top of it. Two thin coats worked out way better than my previous method of just gooping it all over and hoping for the best. Strange that a method that using the word ‘gooping’ isn’t the best course of action (Word is telling me ‘gooping’ isn’t a word. . .).

They are just fun

I think one of the reason I love this polish so much is because it’s like a glitter mated with a confetti and had a super fun polish baby. It isn’t too sparkly (as if that is possible) but it is still shiny enough to be fun. I love it over red but I think it would also be fun over pink, white, or black. I bet it would even work as a Christmas color if you put it over the right green.

My manicure was almost a week old when I took pictures, hence the tip wear

So overall: love the color, love the collection, love Disney. I’m pretty sure this color is going to be my Valentine’s Day go to color J

Little Mermaid nails

It is getting to be my favorite nail time of the year but I’m starting to think I may not have enough time to do all the nails that I want to do. Between Halloween, fall, and Disney nails, I have a lot of plans and I’m simply running out of time (68 days till Disney!). Oh, so many plans, so little time. I guess I just need to paint my nails more J

I want to do different nails for all the Disney Princesses, so I figured I should start with my favorite. I have always loved The Little Mermaid; I had a huge poster of it on the back of my bedroom door when I was a little kid. For this manicure I used Orly Prelude to a Kiss, Liquid Vinyl, and White Tips, China Glaze Gothic Lolita, Turned Up Turquoise, and Mahogany Magic, and Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up and Mermaid’s Tale. I didn’t realize how many colors I used until I just wrote them all out, wow.

Little Mermaid nails

I found some loose glitter pieces that worked perfect as a mermaid tail on my pinky, they were super annoying to have on though, my hair got all caught up in it while I was washing my hair, not a pleasant experience. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do for all my nails and after I did the shell bra it occurred to me that it was a little weird that I focused on Ariel’s chest, I’m sure she will forgive me.

I’m not even sure how I bent my thumb like that

My favorite nail is the Ariel on my thumb, I think she turned out really cute and it makes me want to do a nail like that for all the princesses. I’m going to have to come up with other things to add to them to make them all look different; otherwise all the blondes will look pretty similar.

Not only is today 68 days till Disney, it’s also my 5^th anniversary. I’m super lucky to be married to Thad, he is an awesome husband, and I’m pretty sure I could be married to him forever J Happy anniversary honey!

OPI - Pompeii Purple nails

Every once and a while you stumble on a nail color that from the first time you wear it, you know it will be one of your favorites forever. When I was a kid we had a L’Oreal color that was called Sea Violet, I still remember that color because I loved it so much. We much have bought ten bottles of that color, if I ever saw it in the store I would buy it in a heartbeat. While spending one of my super sweet Ulta gift cards I bought OPI Pompeii Purple and I fell in love. It is such an amazing color, I’m pretty sure I love everything about it. I’m also pretty sure that this whole post is going to be an ode to Pompeii Purple.

I kept these nails on for almost a full week, pause for shock and awe, almost a whole week. For this manicure I used OPI Pompeii Purple and Sally Hansen CSM Gilty Pleasure. I had no idea what kind of art I wanted to do until I had already started painting. As soon as I saw how amazing the OPI is I knew that I didn’t want to cover much of it up with a design so I ended up doing my first chevron!

Pompeii Purple nails

Can we take a minute and talk about how amazing this color is? I didn’t realize how popular this color is until I had these nails at work and two different ladies guessed the name of the color correctly. It doesn’t happen very often that someone knows the name of the color that I’m wearing, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m far from the first person to discover how amazing this color is.

Pictures can’t do this color justice

My chevrons are a bit of a miss. I didn’t center my guide dots very well so the whole design is very much off center. I also didn’t have my brushes so I did the design with a dotting tool so the lines aren’t super smooth (yes I’m blaming the tool and not the painter).

Lumpy chevrons

If you like pink/purple nail polish I highly recommend this color, it looks so awesome on that I was tempted to paint them this color again after I took these nails off. Now, if only I could find Sea Violet.

Tuxedo nail step by step

Netflix is evil. They recently changed how they play TV shows so that the next one starts 20 seconds after the last one ended. I have watched a shameful amount of How I Met Your Mother over the last few weeks but there are so many freakin episodes that I’m pretty sure I’m going to be watching this show for the next few months. Oh how TV helps me to be so lazy.

I had a first today! I was asked to do a step by step for my tuxedo nails that I did in June (as part of my wedding nails). I’ve never done a step by step before, but I hope this helps you to recreate my tuxedo nails. For this manicure I used Orly White Tips and Liquid Vinyl, Sally Hansen CSM Wine Not, and China Glaze Rich & Famous. A few disclaimers about my step by step: 1. I didn’t actually want to have tuxedo nails so I only painted two nails 2. I’m a really messy painter so please disregard all the paint that appears to not be on my nails and 3. I don’t actually have a third disclaimer, but it felt like I couldn’t just have two.

I start these nails like I start all nails, with a coat of OPI Nail Envy and SV base coat. On top of that I did two coats of Orly.

To start my tuxedos I painted a V with a black striper and then filled in the bottom of my nail with the Orly brush. To get in the ‘tight’ places I used a dotting tool. Try to get the V as centered on your nail as possible; I didn’t do so well on that front.

Ok, it looks like I did a lot in this step, but I really didn’t. To create the bow tie I did one smallish center dot and then used a dotting tool to create two small triangles off of it. I then put buttons on my tux and the dots on my black nail (I think they sorta look like buttons too). I put one larger white dot on the black tux so I could create the boutonniere.

To make the boutonniere I put a pink dot on top of the white dot and then took my wine color and made small c shapes in the pink with it. It’s ok when you are doing this if the pink swirls with the other color a little, it just makes it look more like a rose.

That’s how I did these nails! If you don’t have a striper you can use any small brush dipped in polish. If you don’t have a dotting tool that’s ok too, you can use the pointed end of a toothpick for the small stuff (like the detail on the flower) or cut the toothpick in half and file it smooth to use for a larger dot (like for the bow tie or buttons). For even larger dots you can use the end of a quilting pin, although you may want to put the pointy end in an eraser or something so you don’t injure yourself.

Hope this step by step was helpful, if you do these nails I would love to know how they turned out, be sure to let me know in the comments J

OPI - I Saw...U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw nails

I went to an awesome bachelorette party last weekend. We drove up north and she had her party on a pontoon boat on a big, beautiful lake. I hadn’t been on a boat all summer and it was just the perfect way to end the season. I was also super proud of myself that I didn’t let myself burn at all, that is a pretty big win when you are pale and you spend a whole day on a boat. I think that last weekend was the official end to my string of weekend plans; I have nothing that I have to go to this weekend, which sounds pretty good.

I really liked these nails even though they were a pain. For some reason I think that blue nail polish is the hardest to work with. It was super difficult to get all the blue off from around my nails and when I took the polish off my fingers were stained blue. For this manicure I used OPI I Saw…U Saw…We Saw…Warsaw, Sally Hansen CSM Gilty Pleasure, Sally Girl Matte Top Coat, and Orly Liquid Vinyl.  

 

OPI - I Saw…U Saw…We Saw…Warsaw nails

This is my first true navy and I really like how it looks, I especially like it as a matte, but I’m a sucker for matte so that is expected. I love using new polish, I got this one (and three others) with birthday gift cards at Ulta. I still have more birthday Ulta money and now I also have a coupon, I’m pretty sure this weekend is going to include staring at nail polish (shocking).

Please disregard the ugly hangnail

The formula for the blue was consistent with other OPI polish; I’m wearing two coats and had full coverage. Unfortunately I decided I needed to finish off my last pitcher of beer-garitas by myself before starting this manicure so I had quite a bit of clean up afterwards. The blue just didn’t want to leave my fingers once it made contact, I really feel like blue is the worst for that.

I should do animal print more often

When someone at work saw these they asked if they were moons and stars, now I really want to use this blue as a base for cute moons and stars. My post it list isn’t getting any shorter, there are just so many fun things you can paint on your nails!

China Glaze - Whirled Away nails

I get way too excited about some things, like way too excited. I would like to think this trait could be considered cute and not crazy, but I guess that is up to interpretation. I generally get excited about really small things; based on this start I bet you can guess I got excited about something small recently. I got an invitation to be part of the Nielson TV group and I’m way too excited. They sent me a postcard last week that said the survey would arrive shortly; I actually checked the mail with unbridled enthusiasm each day until the survey packet came. I thought this meant that I was in like Flyn, but apparently getting into the Nielson TV family takes more work than that. I have to fill out the survey and send it in and then they decide if I’m going to be accepted into the group. Oh! This additional anticipation is going to kill me! Want to know the best part? They paid me $2 for doing the survey! What?!?! This thing that I’ve been ridiculously excited about for days is also going to provide me crisp $1 bills? What an amazing week it has been, now fingers crossed I get in.

I’m not as excited about these nails as I am about the survey I got. Don’t get me wrong, there are some aspects of the manicure that I really like, but the overall errors are just too big for me to happily gaze upon these nails. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Butterscotch and China Glaze Whirled Away. The China Glaze is like nothing I have ever owned before, to me it looks like white and black confetti floating in a clear coat, if it was shiny at all I would call it glitter.

China Glaze – Whirled Away nails

The polish is super cool and I love the overall look of it, I just had some trouble applying it which caused a million air bubbles to straight run these nails. Lesson learned, when applying this polish use thin coats and just do a bunch of them until you get the coverage you want, if you put on thick coats in order to put all the pieces you want on your nails, you are going to end up with a crap ton of ugly bubbles.

There are so many bubbles they almost look like they were on purpose

I think these nails look like modern art and from far away I loved how they looked. I have to give this polish another try and do thin coats to see if it behaves better. These nails also make me want to do more black designs on that putrid yellow color too, for some reason I like how it looks with black.