Butter - The Black Knight and Rosie Lee

We were in a winter weather advisory for most of the last 24 hours where I live. If you are unfamiliar, a winter weather advisory means that it was snowing and driving was less than fun (sometimes it means the heavens are opening up and it is somehow raining ice).  I’m not a wuss when it comes to driving in the snow, but I do respect inclement weather and I make sure to drive extra safe when the weather outside is frightful. This being said, on the way to work today I witnessed something just downright ridiculous. While driving down a residential street the car in front of me stopped, put their car in reverse, and then proceeded to parallel park on the side of the snowy street (while it was snowing more mind you). I mean really? I haven’t parallel parked since my driver’s test and we do not live in some big city that requires parallel parking. I think that person in the SUV was just showing off this morning, and I want to let them know it was completely unnecessary.

Now that I’ve lost the respect of everyone that parallel parks frequently I’ll get to my nails. These nails are totally and completely the type of nails that will make me say “they are way better in person”. I wanted to do glitter overload nails, and in person they are so sparkly that they distracted my friend while we were out drinking (apparently bar lighting is good for glitter). For these nails I used Orly Liquid Vinyl as the base and Butter The Black Knight and Rosie Lee for the sparkle. I would like to take a moment to express just how much I love that my name is in the name of that color, I’m going to pretend they named it after me when I’m all alone and no one can judge.

Kitchen lighting just isn’t as good as outside lighting, please come back sun

Every time I paint my nails with a black base I’m reminded what a poor job I do around my cuticles, black is not a forgiving color. The glitter on the other hand (no pun intended, but it was appreciated) went on like butter (yes that one was totally on purpose). I love Butter. It is amazing. The glitter was so dense and went on so well that I really want to try it on its own without a base color. TheBlack Knight looks black overall but has a confetti of micro glitter. I’m convinced that if I ever man up and do a galaxy manicure it will make the perfect base.

No picture can do this glitter justice

 Rosie Lee is the kind of glitter that makes you want to use it every day. I bet it will look amazing over pink in a super girly manicure, or as classy pink tips on nude nails. Oh the possibilities are endless. I put on two coats of top coat because I wanted the nails to be very shiny, in person my ring fingers are distractingly shiny and sparkly, and it is awesome.

If only I didn’t work during all daylight hours

So overall, Butter=amazing (thank you Gayle!).So, you know how I said my nails are too long and I’ve been hurting myself? Well right after I did these nails I cut my right hand with my left thumb (and yes I did cry out in pain). I took a picture of it to include in my blog to show you how dangerous my claws are but after taking the picture I realized how pitifully small the cut was and couldn’t bring myself to include it and risk everyone thinking that I exaggerated the sharpness of my nails. Perhaps by telling that story I did anyway though, oops. Well, I’m off to start the horrible process known as baked potato nails, goodnight!

Christmas nails

It’s Christmas Eve! I hope everyone is having a super delightful Christmas. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday so Thad let me open my gifts from the girls. Jules got me a nerdy Deathly Hallows keychain and Millie got me a Harry Potter 20 questions game. It is crazy how well it can guess what I’m thinking, it must be magic. I guess this means my dogs know I’m a bit of a dork, oh well; they seem to still love me.

Recently I’ve noticed that my nails are getting out of control long, I have a fear of using nail clippers so I decided to try to just file them shorter. This process takes way longer, but as I have a job that requires me to sit on the phones all day, I tend to have the time necessary to file. An unexpected side effect of all this nail filing (aside from the nail shrapnel that I’m covered with daily) is that my nails are like little razor blades now. They are so sharp that I’ve managed to cut myself and draw blood (the cuts are just like paper cuts in size and level of annoyance). I think they are still a little too long but I’m not going to risk anymore filing, my nails are too dangerous as it is.

Unless I paint my nails tomorrow (and as I work tomorrow I don’t think that is very likely) these nails will be my Christmas nails. Since I’m going over to my in-law’s house tonight I wanted them to look classy. For this manicure I used OPI Alpine Snow and Last Minute Shopper, China Glaze Running in Circles, and Butter Fairy Cake.

It looks like I was a little messy with my top coat on my middle finger

On my ring finger I used holographic dots that I put on individually and on my thumb I did dots of Fairy Cake. The holographic dots are part of the gift I wrote about a few blogs ago, they are super cool but most of them were stuck together so getting individual dots was too hard for me to do on both fingers.

The snowflake on my thumb looks straight crazy

The white design is supposed to look like snowflakes, like classy minimal snowflakes, I will admit that a few of them look like deformed flowers instead. But hey, every snowflake is different, right? Overall these nails turned out the way I wanted them. They are festive without being over the top cutesy (like my reindeer). I usually regret my last minute adds but I’m happy with the black lines to make the overall look more mature (if you can call rhinestone nails mature).

Harry Potter 20 Questions, thanks Millie!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone had as much painting their Christmas nails as I did.  

Christmas Light nails

Some days require drinks after work, today was one of those days. There is something about the Christmas season that makes some people completely unreasonable. Any unpleasantness at work quickly fades away with the appearance of vodka. Tonight I spent my after work hours watching Coming to America and drinking Kinky and Sierra Mist. Kinky is this bright pink, super girly vodka that is flavored with grapefruit. It’s one of those drinks that you regret right away because you just know it’s too sweet. Coming to America on the other hand is hilarious and I forgot what funny Eddie Murphy was like. With that kind of excitement it is surprising I managed to blog.

For this manicure I tried to do Christmas lights, tried is a good word for how these nails turned out. It’s a shame nail blog pictures are taken so up close, these nails actually look pretty cool when you see them from a distance, but alas, their up close shots are not all that I would want them to be.

It was a solid attempt

As you can see I used quite a few colors here, Ulta Sun-Sational, China Glaze Splish Splash and Running in Circles, OPI Last Minute Shopper and Alpine Snow, and Butter Fairy Cake. Oh yes, you read that right, I now own Butter. I got a set of three super fun glitters for an early Christmas gift from a friend. The application with the manicure didn’t turn out so hot though, I wanted the glitter to be a light layer on top (to cover up the insane number of bubbles I had) but it ended up being too dense of a glitter so my pinkie just looks crazy instead.

The glitter is cool, but this was a bad use for it

This manicure had issues from the start, but the worst of it was air bubbles, damn you air bubbles. Air bubbles have a few major causes, shaking polish before you use it, and too think of layers are the biggest culprits. In my case I got so many bubbles because I’m almost out of base coat and the process of getting it out put way too much air in the polish. I’m going to take this as a really good reason to buy new base coat, any suggestions?

I want to be able to take pictures outside again

I wouldn’t say I hate these nails but I would say that I’m really looking forward to repainting them. They seem like a waste since I don’t have much Christmas nail time left.

Reindeer nails

I can’t believe Christmas is a week from tomorrow. I have always loved Christmas; I’m the type of person that wakes up at four in the morning to open presents Christmas morning. My parents had the rule that we couldn’t open presents until coffee was made, that didn’t really slow us down, our presents were usually open before the sun came up. One of my favorite Christmas gifts ever was the year Santa brought me a Barbie and the Rockers Barbie. She was amazing, with bright blue eye shadow and a silver mini skirt. That year we lost power due to an ice storm and our brand new puppy (also a Christmas gift) found Barbie and chewed her hand off in the darkness of the power outage. I was not super pleased with Mollie, but she was so cute I forgave her pretty quickly.

I have wanted to do these nails for a while but wanted to wait to do them closer to Christmas. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance?, OPI Alpine Snow, Brisbane Bronze, and Last Minute Shopper, China Glaze Mahogany Magic and Luxe and Lush, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. 

Rudolph says hi

After I did one reindeer I knew that doing ten would take way too long so I decided to do different designs on the other nail. I’m really pleased with how the dots turned out on my pinkie, it is the most evenly spaced I have been able to do dots. The middle finger ended up red because my red stripes were so bad I had to paint the whole nails red to cover it up, oops. I absolutely love my thumbs; I painted them pale pink and then used the Luxe and Lush on top. No picture can capture how awesome that glitter is, they are huge irregular flat glitter pieces that look holographic when the light hits them.  It was kind of a pain to put on but I think that was mostly due to the fact that this bottle has the most messed up brush ever.

I have never had a glitter like it before

I’m really happy with these nails; if I were to do reindeer again I would make the black outline thinner and leave more room for his antlers. I enjoy the variety of this manicure; they are entertaining to look at.

The polish in the bottle is Last Minute Shopper

Hope you enjoyed them as much as I did! I’m running out of time to fit all my Christmas ideas in, I need to paint my nails more J.

Caviar nails

For Christmas my super awesome friend Patty got me a super awesome gift. She told me that she wanted to give me my gift before Christmas because she thought I would “get good use out of it”, I was immediately excited. Patty found forty little bottles of all sorts of different nail swag; everything from loose glitter to foil. I gazed upon my bounty all day at work and will admit that it distracted me from my work more than once (oops).

Gaze upon how amazing this gift is

I had all day to plan what nails I wanted to do and as soon as I saw the bottles with beads I knew I was going to do my first caviar nails. A caviar manicure, for those that don’t know, is a manicure where you cover one or more nails with micro beads so that it looks like caviar. As I have never had caviar I’m not sure how much it actually looks like fish eggs, but you get the general idea. For these nails I used OPI DS Radiance and some blue micro beads.

I can’t stop running my caviar nails against things, they feel cool

I made a lot of mistakes with these nails due to poor planning. For some reason I decided that I should paint all he silver nails first and then do the ring fingers, that was a stupid decision. While I was attempting to dip the ring fingers in my vat of micro beads I ended up hitting the silver nails on just about everything. It was at this point I realized that very metallic polishes are not forgiving at all. Every mistake and bump shows up glaringly, even after top coat.

You can see the mistake in my thumb and pinkie L

My favorite thing about this whole manicure is the texture, the silver nails and very soft and smooth because of the high quality polish and top coat and then the caviar nails are really bumpy even with three coats of top coat. When I put the top coat on the beads it pulled off some of the blue color which made some beads look more silver, the overall effect turned out well though.

So fun

I’m a little worried about taking the beads off but I’m hoping the glitter/foil method works out for it. Thank you Patty for the awesome gift, I’m super excited to come up with more ways to use it!

Snowflake nails

It was such a lazy, snowy weekend that I didn’t manage to take pictures of my nails until tonight. That being said, the pictures I have are of a manicure I did three days ago (I say this so you do not judge my tip wear). I’m pretty impressed with how well they did wear considering that I did dishes without gloves with these nails (upon typing that sentence I realized that I forgot to buy gloves while I was at Hy-Vee, drat).

For these nails I used OPI Alpine Snow and Last MinuteShopper, the red is a special holiday color that you can get for the awesome price of free with purchase of two other OPI colors at Ulta. It is possible that I didn’t need two other OPI colors, but I’m not totally sure.

Let it snow!

I love how shiny the red turned out, this is after three coats but it looked pretty good after two. For the snowflake I used a really small brush and my smallest dotter to get the little lines. I went back through at the end and put dots of silver glitter when I was done.

Thad helped me out with the super up close shot

These nails remind me of the first time I got nail art done. It was right after Thanksgiving four year ago and I got my nails painted red with a classy snowflake; after I got them done I showed them off to everyone at work and made sure I gestured wildly. These snowflakes turned out a bit larger than I wanted but I’m still a fan.

I was pretty sure you wanted another picture

Well, I’m off to paint my nails. I got an amazing early Christmas gift from a fellow nail addict and I just can’t wait to use it. Hopefully this will put you in frenzied anticipation of my next post J

Gift Wrapped nails

I got my rental car yesterday and I have decided to call her Not Mittens, let me explain. I used to play World of Warcraft, and like all games that I have played, I played in nonstop in an obsessive sort of way (much like I play Pocket Frogs now). When I played WOW I was a hunter, this was due almost completely to the fact that hunters get pets, so when my Tauren hunter got to a high enough level to get her first pet I had my brother help me tame a tiger (what are big brothers for if not to help their sister tame video game tigers?). I named this tiger Mittens and I loved her as much as one can love a virtual pet. One day a system glitch caused Mittens to disappear and be replaced with a random tiger that didn’t have the allegiance to me that Mittens had always displayed, by that I mean she attacked me. I had to contact the game administrators so that they could recover my Mittens for me; in the mean time I named this imposter Not Mittens. Well, that totally necessary story helped clear  up why I’m calling my rental call Not Mittens.

At this point it would be pretty awesome if I had some tiger manicure planned so that I could tie in how I started, but I don’t have that. I did these nails after picking up the rental car if that helps you put it all together in your head and justify why you now know the name of my WOW pet that I had four year ago. For this manicure I used OPI DS Radiance (I’m starting a love affair with this color) and China Glaze Running In Circles from their new Cirque du Soleil collection.

I’m going to call this hand pose the claw hand

The green is so much fun in person; I wish it was daylight longer so I could have taken an outdoor shot of it. The color is a really deep green that looks like it is made up of multiple layers of green polish and green glitter. It looked horrible after the first coat and I was really worried that it was going to be way too light but it looks great after three coats. Application was pretty easy but watch that you don’t put the first layer on too think trying to get the color right because it makes the next layers a bit draggy.

The green almost looks like moss

I tried to take a super up close one like Thad did from me on my ornament nails but it turned out terribly, lets blame it on the super shiny nails and not my below average photography skills. I wanted the design to look like wrapped presents. If I did it again though I think I would do the bow in a different color and make it a bit larger so it stands out from the rest of the ribbon. I can’t believe how soon Christmas is! I need to decide what nails I’ll have for the big day still J.

Dot Gradient nails

Our Christmas decorations are up which means that the living room no longer has room from my nail table. It wasn’t until my table was moved into the guest room that I realized just how much I have come to love that little table. I’ve been rolling the table into the living room to do my nails because I just can’t manage to do them without also watching TV.

I wanted to try a polka dot gradient for my nails but they didn’t really turn out as a gradient. I think I should have used a smaller dotting tool and had more of a plan before I started. For this manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl, China Glaze For Audrey, and OPI DS Radiance. I love how the matte finish base coats turned out, essie Matte About You is simply amazing.

They kind of look like snow

I’m usually a fan of China Glaze and I haven’t had any issues with the colors separating or anything, but this bottle of For Audrey is aging poorly. In the bottle the color looks all separated and it isn’t going on the same as it did before. I think I’m going to have to invest in some thinner, I really like the color so I’m hoping for a way to get it back to the way it was before. Aside from the color issues and the fact that my dots are far too large the manicure was pretty quick and easy.

Metallic on matte is just fun

Oh, and in case you were wondering about rhinestone removal from my last nails. I got really frustrated at work on Saturday and picked most of them off while there. The ones that were stuck on hard enough to make it past my anger picking came off super easy with polish remover (so much better than glitter). I’m pretty sure these nails will not last nearly as long as the last ones, I’m tired of them now and I just painted them last night (oops).

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.

Frankenstein’s monster nails

My mom is awesome. She is my favorite shopping buddy, makes the world’s best pumpkin chocolate chip mini muffins, and is in general a super cool lady. Her birthday is even on Halloween, that’s how cool she is. I feel like if I told my mom everyday how much I appreciate her I wouldn’t tell her enough. I love being an adult and being able to do things for my mom that I couldn’t when I was a kid, like paying for lunch or driving her places. Today mom let me paint her birthday nails. I have been thinking about these nails for a while, I mean not only are they for her kitchen witch costume (which will be judged) but they are for her birthday, these are big deal nails. Mom was smitten with the nails I did in my last blog, so for her nails I did the base the same way; I used China Glaze Riveting and Orly Liquid Vinyl. For the design I used OPI Alpine Snow, more of the Orly, and a variety of striper polishes. I had to take a picture of her nails before she left so they are not cleaned up yet (I’m messy whether I paint my nails or someone else’s).    

Mom’s nails

Close up, don’t mind the mess

Mom told me that this was the first French tip she has ever gotten, leave it to my mom to have her first French be Halloween themed. I really liked how her nails turned out; I thought the addition of the rhinestone on the spider webs was fun. Most importantly she liked how they turned out; now let’s just hope they help her win the costume contest at work.

I had a bunch of plans for what my Halloween nails would be and it ended up that I am going to rock the nails I painted on Sunday. I just sort of ran out of time to do new nails for tomorrow, mom’s nails were a clear priority. I should mention that I totally stole this design from my fellow nail addict Patty, thanks for the great idea Patty! For mine I used Sally Hansen CSM Parrot with some striper polishes and my good old Orly. I decided that it would be an awesome idea to make Frankenstein’s monster to have a matte finish face and then have glossy features/stitches. Perhaps I decided this because I’m still so in love with essie Matte About You, the world may never know.

Admit it, you are terrified

You know I love them when I do two pictures

Overall I’m please with both sets of nails going into the big day. On Monday, I rocked these nails at the dentist's office and the hygienist asked where I got them done, I don’t think that will ever get old. Happy Birthday mom!!! I hope your day is super fantastic (like you)! Oh, and I should let you know I’ve already eaten half the bag of pumpkin chocolate chip mini muffins you gave me, oops.

 

Halloween nail decals

This week went by so fast, not the working parts but all the time off parts. Between me trying to get back to working out (it has been three months) and a mid week football game, I feel like my nails have been neglected. They did get some compliments this week, which always helps their sense of well being. At the grocery store the cashier asked where I got them done and when I said I painted them myself her eyes got really big and she did a double take, as you can imagine this pleased me to no end. The Ulta ladies also commented, but I’m starting to think that it is a requirement of their job. Perhaps I will befriend one of them and covertly ask. Halloween is so soon! I still don’t know what nails I’m going to do for the big day but that isn’t stopping me from doing other Halloween themed nails. I got these super cool Halloween nail decals from Sally’s and have been waiting for a manicure to work with them. I’m not super good with putting nail decals on, the directions always say to use tweezers but either the makers of the decals have way better tweezers than me or the directions were written by someone that never actually tried to remove a tiny sticker with tweezers. The tweezer issues coupled with the fact that my nails were wet while attempting the sticker removal resulted in some very necessary touchups. For this manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl and China Glaze Riveting (aka the best orange ever).

Simple but fun

Even my thumb got in on the fun

I put a different decal on each finger which I thought made the whole manicure a lot more fun. My right hand has different decals too but for some reason I didn’t take a picture of it and now they are far too sad to photograph. I’m thinking I have time to do two manicures between now and Halloween, and I’m doing my mom’s happy birthday-Halloween nails on Tuesday. So many nail decisions to make!

Mummy nails

I have something shameful to admit; I did another matte finish manicure with Matte About You but forgot to take pictures. I know, its disgraceful, appalling, and other words that Microsoft Word says are synonyms of shameful. I’ll blame it on my busy weekend. On Saturday Thad and I (with the help of his dad and his dad’s truck) picked up the china hutch that my Grandpa gave me. It was so much fun putting it in the house and unpacking my fancy glassware to put in it. My Grandma had excellent taste in china and since the hutch was also once hers, it was a perfect fit. The whole process of getting and setting up the hutch pretty much took my whole day, and today was filled with football and some very unsuccessful jeans shopping. I quickly discovered that although I once loved shopping for clothes, I now hate it; I keep hoping that someone is going to jump out from behind a rack of clothing and tell me what will look good on me. On the plus side, I did manage to find my first crackle polish (it was $0.99) so I’m interested to see how that will work out.

That’s quite enough about my weekend, now it’s time to get down to this sweet manicure. I decided to do another Halloween manicure as Halloween is only 10 days away. These nails were so much easier than I thought they would be and faster. I did three coats of OPI Alpine Snow before adding a coat of China Glaze Ghoulish Glaze and then the bandages and the ghost face. As you can probably tell from the picture I had a little bit of trouble with bubbles on a couple of nails and should have done thinner coats on my middle finger (white polish is so difficult!). I used my dotters and striper polishes for the detail work and they worked like a charm. These were really fun to do, I tried to get the bandages to all look different but I think they mostly ended up looking the same.

Spooky mummies and a ghost!

My plan was that I was going to charge my nails up and then take a photo of the glow in the dark looking awesome. This really didn’t go as planned, only one of my nails (left pinkie) had enough glow to be photographed (and I photographed it very poorly). I thought I had really put it on thick but apparently I didn’t, next time I’m going to do multiple coats of the glow in the dark. I will say though the one that did turn out looks pretty cool since the face is still black as I put on the glow in the dark before painting bandages/faces.

After painting them Thad and I were discussing mummies and determined that they are really just zombies with a different wardrobe. I’m not a zombie/mummy expert but this did lead me to wonder if mummies were all also after brains, or if that was more of a regional taste left to zombies in non desert areas.