Dandelion nails

I love these nails so much I can’t think of any other way to start this but to talk about them, that’s a whole lotta nail love. I had no idea what to do and since my ideas recently haven’t been turning out the way I envisioned them I decided to ask for nail suggestions from a friend. She suggested I do dandelion nails, and again, I love them (thanks for the suggestion Gayle). For these nails I used OPI Rosy Future, Brisbane Bronze, and Alpine Snow and Orly Liquid Vinyl. As I may have mentioned before, I’m kinda a fan of these nails, so I wanted to take a picture of them in daylight since I think that usually looks better.

This is my ‘daylight’ picture, after all that waiting it is the worst one

The hours that I work are not contusive to taking pictures at home in daylight hours so although I painted these nails on Sunday I didn’t photograph them until Wednesday. I’m impressed with how good these still look after three days, there is a little wear on the tips but with this color it is really hard to tell unless you are looking really closely. I wanted the dandelion seeds to look like they were almost blowing off the flowers and I think the overall look of the nails is just what I was going for.

In the kitchen light

The purple background is one of Thad’s many Vikings shirts, I love wearing his shirts as pajama shirts and I steal them often, oops. For the dots on the seeds I actually mixed the Orly with the bronze to get kind of a color in the middle, it ended up more black than I had hoped but that’s ok.

I can’t help it, I think they are so cool

These are my first pink nails for Valentines (I’m aware that it isn’t quite February yet). My plan is to do pink nails between now and Valentine’s Day, not because I really love Valentine’s Day, but rather because I really love pink. I have some fun ideas so here is hoping they come out as well as these did.

Half Moon nails

I’ve been sick recently, which simply means I’ve been extremely lazy and perhaps I slept 12 hours last night and 13 the night before (perhaps). All this laziness has been very nice; except for all the work I didn’t get done. So today I decided to be productive, so far today I ate delicious biscuits and gravy, did the dishes, watched Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, attempted to do my taxes, and paid bills. The attempted to do my taxes part really ticked me off. I spent an hour on turbo tax (swearing to myself that I will be more organized this year) and then still didn’t get my stupid taxes done because I’m missing a form from my bank, I may have cursed after all of that and the girls may have not appreciated that.

It seems like I painted these nails forever ago, mostly because I did paint them forever ago and have just been far too lazy to blog about them. For this manicure I used China Glaze Jamaican Out, this color was described to me as the perfect vacation toe color and I couldn’t’ agree more. I can’t decide if it is orange or pink, but I do know that it will be on my toes quite a bit this summer (don’t worry, I won’t post pictures of my toes, no one really wants to see toe pictures).

My very first half moon

This type of manicure is called a half moon and from what I gather from other nail blogs these nails became popular in the 40s because it was considered indecent for women to paint their whole nail. I don’t know how true this tale is but it is pretty fun so I’ll believe it blindly like I believe most things I read online (all nail blogs are totally well researched, right?). To get the half moon look I used paper reinforcements, it took me a while to find them because most people don’t use hole punch reinforcements all that often. I ended up finding them uber cheap at Target, thank you Target.

My nails look so long with this manicure

My biggest lesson I learned from this manicure is that when I do half moons again I’m going to put all the stickers on first and then paint. This time I did one nail at a time and it resulted in very uneven half moons, I think if I put all the stickers on at once I would be more likely to pay attention to how big each moon is. Some of my moons are much closer to full than half J. Well, I’m off to continue my productive day by painting my nails.

Wallpaper nails

I get asked with some frequency how many polishes I have. This is a question I have purposely avoided finding the answer to. I guess part of me thought that if I knew the number perhaps I would be shamed into not buying more polish. Well, guilt be damned, I counted my polishes tonight. Right now I envision my throngs of avid readers guessing and waiting with baited breath to find out just how many different polishes I have. I have 25 striper polishes and (drum roll please) 74 other polishes (this includes base and top coats so I’m not crazy). I need to buy another polish and make it an even 100, don’t you think? Now, some disclaimers on my number, it includes my trial sizes too, I have five trial sizes I think, and as stated above it also includes my base and top coats, so really this number is actually very small.

My manicures lately haven’t been turning out the way that I originally set out for them to. For this one I was trying to do a vintage rose but ended up with something that looks a lot more like wallpaper with an amoeba print. For these nails I used China Glaze For Audrey, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, Parrot, and Frutti Petutie, and OPI Alpine Snow.

Who doesn’t want amoebas on their nails

I really love how the colors go together, it almost makes up for the fact that these do not even look somewhat like roses. For Audrey was a pain to mix up (as always) but went on really well; this is two coats of it. I went too fast with my SV and the pointer got a ridge in it as a result. Just a nice reminder from the top coat gods that SV is super think and needs to be put on evenly. I also got over zealous on my middle finger so there is extra SV on the side, I hate how pictures of nails are super up close so you can see every flaw.

They turned out really shiny and smooth (except for mr. pointer. . . and mr. middle)

I have so many ideas of nails I want to do, hopefully I can get them from my head to my nails a little easier than they have been going. I secretly really like these nails even though they were an epic fail, what can I say, I like ugly nails I guess. J

Tacky Gold nails

I hadn’t lifted weights in six months and for some unknown reason the evil trainers at the fitness center forced me to lift yesterday. As a result I had trouble washing my hair this morning and everything else after that was difficult too. I hate when people say ‘but it’s a good hurt’, I mean what the hell does that mean? I’m never happy to be in pain and I wouldn’t call anything about my inability to lift my arms above my head good. What I will say is good is that I painted my nails last night, getting the blue off was as hard as I remembered so it was good I had my arm strengthJ.

This is my 50^th post! I knew I wanted to do something gold and tacky for my 50^th (like a golden jubilee) and this manicure really fits that bill. Word of warning before the pictures, the red was a bitch to get off my hands so they are a little messier than usual. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Glity Pleasure and All Fired Up, OPI Goldeneye, and China Glaze Fast Track (I did also use essie Matte About You on the matte finish nails).

My pinkie is crazy

I used some gold colored foil on my pinkie and I’m not sure about it. Yes, it is super loud and tacky, which I do love, but it is also sharp and it gets snagged on everything. I put so much topcoat on trying to smooth it out but it is still pokey. If I make it through all of tomorrow with it on I will be impressed with myself. I love how the red turned out as a matte, especially in the leopard print, I wish I would have done the whole manicure as leopard after seeing how it turned out.

The leopard is just too fun

I can’t believe this is already my 50^th post, I feel like I just started doing this the other day! If I was forced to pick (and right now I’m picturing my hundreds of avid readers screaming ‘pick! Pick!’ I would say my favorite nails are my cherry blossom nails or my Vikings nails. I hope you have enjoyed my posts as I rather enjoy writing them.

Oh and on a side note, I don’t actually think my trainers are evil, but I do like to tell them that they are cold and dead inside. Also, Blogger has changed how to upload pictures and it is horrible. If any executives at Google are reading this (I assume I’m on their morning reading rotation) please change it back because the new way sucks.

China Glaze - Blue Bells Ring

For Christmas my brother-in-law got me a $15 gift card to Sally’s, I’m sure he thought he got the most boring gift ever, but to me it was magical. I was able to prolong the shopping adventure until Saturday and it was as glorious as I had imagined. For $15 (and five cents) I got six polishes as Sally’s, I should point out that I also had a coupon, a 15% off, and my Sally’s card, that’s right, I’m the shit at polish shopping.

Two of the polishes I got were Seche Vite top and base coat; so far I love the base coat as much as I love the top coat, thank you SV for being awesome. The other four are all colors so being the totally normal, rational person I am, I tried to use all four colors in one manicure, that manicure failed. That manicure failed so bad I have no pictures of it. It was a hot mess on my hands, and to make it better the blue I used wouldn’t come off so it kind of looked like I slaughtered an entire community of Smurfs (I smurfed them good in their smurf). By the time I finished cleaning up the Smurf gore I had had quite a bit to drink so I was nervous how my next attempt would go, considering the preamble, I’m pretty pleased with these nails.

They are so super shiny

For this manicure I used China Glaze Blue Bells Ring (AKA the Smurf bringer), Orly Angel Eyes, and OPI DS Radiance. The base blue is the China Glaze; I put the Orly on my ring fingers and then proceeded to put so much decoration on those nails you can hardly tell that there is a glitter overlay. Blue Bells Ring was on clearance at Sally’s, which along with the name makes me think it is part of a holiday collection. It is a great color, the coverage I crazy amazing. Believe it or not, I’m only wearing one coat in these pictures, crazy right?

One coat!

The color is much darker on than it looks in the bottle but has a great silver sparkle to it. It is a huge pain in the butt to remove though and completely stains your hands. I think it is a testament to how much I like the color that I would use it again after the first clean up. I’m pretty sure Angel Eyes is also a holiday color, it is a dense blue micro glitter with medium sized holographic glitter. I’m excited to use it again when I can get a better idea of what it looks like.

You can kind of see some of the holographic glitter

These nails are very messy, and I totally messed up on my line work, but they turned out very flashy and fun. I was informed afterwards that they are the school colors of a local high school, so my nails totally say ‘go bulldogs’.

China Glaze - Sex on the Beach

It rained yesterday in Minnesota, it was so weird. I mean really, rain in January, bananas. We now have no snow in our backyard which means that you can see all the little gifts the dogs have been depositing throughout the yard this winter. It is disgusting. I’m not a huge fan of cold weather, but I want the snow back so that I don’t have to look at frozen dog poop. Being a dog owner is so glamorous.

I did these nails on Tuesday but had a super busy week and blah, blah, blah, I’m blogging today. I really didn’t know what I wanted to paint so I left it up to my precious little angle puppies (yes the same dogs that left my yard looking like a bomb field, that is if bombs were made of poo). They decided that I needed to do paw prints and bones. I had already done paw prints before, but who was I to argue with talking dogs? For this manicure I used China Glaze Gothic Lolita and Sex on the Beach and OPI Brisbane Bronze. This is the first time I’ve really used Sex on the Beach and to be perfectly honest I had totally forgotten I owned it until I saw it in my stash.

It’s a dog party on my nails

I’m not super impressed with Sex on the Beach and I don’t think it is just because it has a terrible name. The color seems like it wants to be a dupe of OPI Cozu-melted in the Sun, but it is a little too pink to be a true dupe. For the first time I actually like the color in pictures more than I do in person. The color went on great, like most China Glaze, but definitely required three coats in order to be opaque enough.

The natural light makes the color really shimmer

After using Brisbane Bronze again, I was reminded just how much I love this color. I think it is so pretty all on its own but it also works great in nail art.

Bow-Wow

Classy nails are nice, but I really enjoy having fun/silly nails. You can’t help but smile when you look down at your hands and you see paw prints.

Shany stamping plates

Amazon is an amazing thing, it is also very dangerous. Right after Christmas I was tempted by the Amazon gods and spent $40 on nail stuff (including shipping, for some reason saying ‘including shipping’ makes me feel better about the expense). On January 2^nd I got home from work only to discover a mini Christmas in my mail box, I had four packages waiting for my arrival. I gleefully opened them up and I am now the proud owner of my very own stamping set. I got two different polishes (Konad black and white), a double ended stamper, scraper, plate holder, and a set of 25 Shany plates (numbered 1-25). Needless to say I was super crazy excited to paint my nails.

This post is going to include my first and second attempt at stamping my nails; I feel it necessary to admit at this point that stamping is way harder than I thought. I learned many lessons with my first attempt, spoiler alert: my first try turned out terribly. The plates came in a little box to keep them organized (which I loved) and they all had a blue film over the engraved side to prevent scratching during shipping. The blue film was really hard to remove and I actually have only managed to get it off about 10 of the plates. So far I’ve found one plate that was scratched under the film, it did ruin one of the designs but the design it ruined is the word ‘sexy’ so I’m not too distraught at losing that one. For the first manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Shell we Dance?, and Color Club Status Update.

Starting with my thumb: SH22, SH13, SH13, SH03, SH24

Starting with my pinkie: SH22, SH10, SH03, SH24, SH18

 As you can see from the pictures, I ran into a lot of trouble with the scrapping step of nail stamping. I found that I couldn’t get the scrapper to have even pressure so it left some extra paint in some areas. Speed is very important when doing stamping and I’m not a speedy nail artist, so I had paint drying all over the place. If you are thinking of trying nail stamping I would suggest having a lot of Q-tips handy and remover for cleanup of your tools. I would also warn against putting on your topcoat too soon, I figured I could put it on soon than normal nail art and ended up smearing a few of them pretty bad. As soon as I was done with these I wanted to try stamping again, but as I wasn’t feeling well, it took me a couple of days before I had the chance to repaint (yes I had these jacked up nails for more than one day). For my second attempt I used OPI Rosy Future and Goldeneye.

I used plate SH18 for this hand

It was hard to get the whole nail covered

The adorable squirrel lives on plate SH10

Practice makes a huge difference. For my second attempt I took my time while working quickly (if that makes sense). If I didn’t like how the stamp looked on my stamper, I took it off and started over instead of trying to make it work. I think nail stamping is a lot like everything else in nail art in that the more you do it the better it turns out. I really like the finished product of these nails, the white on Rosy Future turned out so feminine and pretty. Each plate averages 6 designs and the whole plate set was only around $12. I’m really looking forward to using at the heart designs for Valentine’s day J

Polar Bear nails

Happy New Year! Thad and I are not really party animals so our New Year plans included going grocery shopping and getting to bed at a decent hour. We did have a fun couple of days prior to New Year’s Eve though; we took a trip to the big city to hang out with family. Because I’m kinda weird, I took polish with me and did my sister in law’s nails. For her manicure I used OPI Brisbane Bronze, China Glaze Glitter Goblin, and Sally Hansen CSM Gilty Pleasure. Her nails are so much smaller than mine that it took a few tries before I picked something that worked. She seemed to like them and loved the SV topcoat because of its awesome dry time.

 

A well deserved manicure for a busy mama

I did my nails on Saturday before we left for our trip. I wanted fun going out nails but instead chose to do the opposite and did adorable cutesy nails. For my manicure I used Avon Lagoon, China Glaze For Audrey, Fast Track, and Luxe and Lush, OPI Alpine Snow and DS Radiance, and Orly Liquid Vinyl.

Nothing says party like a polar bear

I had so much fun doing these nails and I love how the bears turned out, I think Fast Track was perfect for the bear’s face. I tried a different snowflake pattern than I used last time and I’m not sold on it, I think I liked my first snowflakes better. I used matte topcoat on my pointer finger and for the first time it didn’t really make my polish look matte. I don’t know if that was as much because of the sparkly dots on top or because the blue color is a shimmer.

How can you not love this bear?

They are not party nails, but they are super fun. These nails make me want to try other animal nails. At the end of my last post I mentioned baked potato nails and was told I needed to clarify what I meant by that. An awesome way to remove glitter polish is to dip cotton into remover and then wrap your nail in tin foil with the cotton on the nail. After waiting about 10 minutes the polish comes right off with none of the normal “I hate glitter” frustration. When your nails are all wrapped up I think it looks like you have five little potatoes on your hand.

Baked potato nails and gray sweatpants

If you have never used the method I highly recommend it, not only does it work well but it also looks pretty awesome and makes your hand useless for 10 minutes which is always fun.