Paw Print nails

I’m so very hot and tired. I spent eight hours outside in the sun today running an obstacle course to help benefit the local animal shelter. It was really fun, and it always feels good knowing you helped raise money for puppies, but OMG am I tired. I don’t think I have ever spent that much time outside without beer to help me through. I also forgot to put sun block on my face so now I have a lovely stiff lobster face (joy). The sun burnt face is a small price to pay for my fun weekend so far. I played hooky from work yesterday and met my brand new niece. She is super cute (I’m sure I’m not bias at all). My plan when I got there was to take a picture of my nails that also included my adorable niece; I wanted to show how amazing the tip wear on Fast Track is. This plan did not go as planned. It took me a few hours to build up the courage to actually hold her, and the moment she was put in my arms she screamed bloody murder. I’m sure my family got pictures of me looking terrified and my poor little niece begging for someone else to hold her, but I’m not really in the mood to put one of those on my blog. I swear all babies can tell that I’m broken inside and don’t carry the gene that causes other women to flock to infants and coo about them. Oh well, she will like me more when she realizes that I want to spoil her.

Picture of the amazing tip wear (day four with no touchups) in my baby free backyard

I followed up my fun filled niece meeting experience with the shelter event today. I wanted to do a paw print nail in honor of the four legged benefactors. I’m really pleased with how the paws turned out but I wouldn’t use the same color combination again. This manicure used Orly Liquid Vinyl, Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance?, and Zoya Daul. I usually use Shell We Dance? as the back end of a French manicure, this is the first time I’ve done a whole nail in it, and I’m not thrilled. The color is so similar to my skin tone that it makes me feel like my hands look a bit undead, are zombie nails going to be the next big thing? One of my favorite things about this manicure is that it was really quick. I was able to go from my cherry blossoms to these in right at an hour, including dry time and removing the old paint.

Have I mentioned that I love my dotters?

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do for tomorrow’s nails, but I’m pretty sure it will include some of the awesome new loose nail glitter my mom got me from Avon. You can always count on your mom to support your habit J

Cherry Blossom nails

It has been so long since I wrote on my blog! I assume everyone was checking back daily and sighing deep regretful sighs every day when a new blog didn’t appear for your reading pleasure. I truly apologize for all the mental anguish my not maintaining my blog has caused. This weekend was busy and fun. I actually paid to get my nails done on Friday. We went to Liv Aveda and got a mani and pedi. The pedicure was amazing as always (I chose OPI I’m Not Really a Waitress), my feet are still so soft. My manicure on the other hand was disappointing. I loved the color (OPI Brisbane Bronze) but she simply didn’t do a very good job painting or shaping them. I don’t mean to sound full of myself, but I totally could have done a better job. She missed spots on the second coat (mostly around the tips) that ticked me off each time I looked at them.

Pretty color, but overall boring manicure

I saw a cherry blossom manicure online a few months ago and since then I thought it would be fun to try. For this manicure I used China Glaze Fast Track for the base and then stripers for the design. I forget how much I love Fast Track until I use it again. It's like a nude but better, in person it is a light sand color filled with gold micro-glitter so it sparkles in the sun. I used a dotter and mixed colors together to make the flowers.  I added the rhinestones at the end because I thought it would be cute, I still haven’t decided if I think it is too much. I want to get a nice gray and try the cherry blossoms on a gray background at some point.

I think they turned out really nice

I’m volunteering at the ArfWalk on Saturday to help raise money for the local animal shelter, I think I’m going to try to do paw print nails for the event so my nails can show their support too. On a side note, Thad and I just got iPhone 4s phones today (I know I’m behind) and we are having a blast having Siri send inappropriate text messages. I apparently have the sense of humor of a five year old.

Flowers: take two

I’m so excited about this weekend! My friend Gayle is getting married on Saturday so we are getting our nails done tomorrow, two things I love. Weddings have to be one of my all time favorite things; I love everything from the flowers to the excuse to wear a pretty dress. I haven’t gotten my nails professionally done since this last March so I’m also excited about the opportunity to get a mani and pedi (OMG my feet need it). My last manicure was chipping a little last night and I couldn’t bear the thought that the nice ladies at Liv Aveda would think I allowed my nails to be chipped on a regular basis so I painted them. I didn’t want to get rid of my flowers so I did more flowers. Practice does really make perfect (or at least better) because these flowers are much more successful than the last ones. For this manicure I used OPI Aphrodite’s PinkNightie and Y’all Come Back Ya Hear, China Glaze Splish Splash, Gothic Lolita, and For Audrey, and Sally Hansen CSM Parrot (so, just a few colors).

The rhinestones took forever to put on

I really like how these turned out, they aren’t fancy at all but they are super cute and just fun. I need to take time to express just how disappointed I am in Y’all Come Back Ya Hear. First, the word ‘now’ should be in the name, the phrase is “y’all come back NOW, ya hear”. Second, the formula sucks. It is super runny and thin, maybe I have been spoiled by better OPI in the past, but this color is just terrible. It is almost see through when you put it on, like a sheer but not sheer enough to layer with it. Perhaps I shouldn’t be upset since I got the color on clearance at Ulta, but I was really looking forward to a good beak orange and although this one appears to fit the bill (I’m so funny) it really just falls short.

Let’s forget my anger with another pretty picture

Well, I need to be off to watch Parks and Rec (love that show), I’ll post a picture of my paid manicure later.

First Flowers

A staple in any nail artist’s portfolio is flowers. It appears that there are as many tutorials online as there are flower types (by that I mean there are a lot). I haven’t really gone into the wonderful world of flowers yet because up until very recently I didn’t have dotters, and dotters appear to be very important when trying to do flowers. Since I just had super geeky nails (mani-nerds?) I decided to do something very girly for my nails (I did that right after my amazing R2D2 nails too). I wanted to start out with very simple flowers; I have plans for more complicated pansies and roses later. For these girl powered nails I used OPI RosyFuture and Alpine Snow, China Glaze Gothic Lolita, Ulta Sun-Sational, and Zoya Daul, in case you were wondering, Daul is freaking amazing and I’m already in love with it. It is a light purple that is so jam packed with gold and pink micro-glitter that it is almost hard to see the base color. I can’t wait to use it again and cover more of my nail so I can see how it looks in a larger swatch.

French tipped flowers

I’m going to have to put anymore white French tips on hold for a while. The ‘bad’ part of my nails is still not grown all the way out and it is really obvious that my nails are not smooth when I paint the tips white. I haven’t had gel polish on my nails since January and they still aren’t all the way grown out, it’s crazy how long it is taking. The line I used by the tip is a periwinkle striper polish; it is much more purple in person than it is photographing as.

I figured you wanted another picture

I think next time I’m going to try putting a rhinestone in the middle instead of using yellow paint, rhinestones make everything better after all. Believe it or not, I’m going to pay someone to paint my nails on Friday, crazy I know. Hope you enjoy the girl nails!

Harry Potter nails

I love Harry Potter; I read the series about once a year (right now I’m on Half Blood Prince). I read an interview with Alan Rickman one time where he said that when he is reading Harry Potter when he is 70 and someone asks him ‘still, after all this time?’ his response will be ‘always’. I couldn’t agree more, I will always love Harry Potter. I wanted to do Harry Potter themed nails for a while and you wouldn’t believe how many times I have practiced drawing Hedwig (you really won’t believe it once you see her sad little face). For my first set of HP nails (there will be more, oh yes, there will be more) I used a ridiculous number of polishes.

I figured a picture would be easier than writing them all out

I wanted to go for that classy HP look, so I did a French tip on four of the fingers and then made my thumbs fun. The order I did the tips was not by accident, I decided to do them in order of my likelihood that I would be in that house.

The sorting hat would have an easy job with me

Ravenclaw is my pointer finger, because Ravenclaw is clearly where the sorting hat would put me, then Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and last Slytherin. It turned out well that my ring fingers were Gryffindor so I could put lightning bolts on them. My thumb is supposed to be Hedwig, she ended up looking a little mean, but it is my first try after all. I was reminded after this how much I hate painting a whole nail white; it always looks so streaky and uneven.

A rare picture of my right hand

I don’t normally take pictures of my right hand for obvious reasons but I wanted to show off my other thumb. At first I did a white deathly hallows on a black background. I used a paint pen for the first time with disastrous results. To make it at least bearable I filled the invisibility cloak in and then drew on the death stick and resurrection stone (which was the hardest by far to draw) with dark blue striper polish.

Hope you enjoy my first attempt at Harry Potter nails! Do all the other Harry Potter fans out there wonder why Sirius didn’t use Polyjuice Potion so that he didn’t get cabin fever in Order of the Phoenix?

Owl nails

I used to think that when people complained about migraines they were exaggerating, I mean they are just headaches and everyone gets headaches, right? This holier than though take on migraines quickly changed after I started getting them. I’m not sure on the cause of mine, but I do imagine that winning the lottery would fix them right up. Not surprisingly, given the start to my blog, I have been dealing with a brain melting migraine for three days now. I usually like to refer to my migraines as ‘fight club’ and say super witty things like ‘don’t talk about fight club’ as I find talking about them makes the demon taking up residency in my brain frolic with sadistic bloodlust. For the first time in a long time I had to force myself to paint my nails today, the thought of using very smelly paint and focusing on my nails under police interview style lighting, didn’t really appeal to me. What did appeal to me, and ultimately convinced me I had to do something with my nails, was my super awesome set of dotters I had yet to use (and a big chip out of my left pinkie nail, thanks left pinkie nail).

As I’m not feeling 100% I decided to be a bit lazy and just touch my tip wear up and keep the base color the same, it is so pretty after all. To complete my owls I used Zoya Song (I told you I was in love with it) and Ulta Sun-Sational, Ulta clearly doesn’t have the same color naming people working for them that OPI does. I’m pretty happy with one of my owls, the other owl looks like it got hit up side the face with a baseball bat, I’ll let you decide which owl is which.

Owls outside, I have one of the dotters in my hand

Owls inside after topcoat, notice their beaks are rhinestones

Today my brother texted me an excellent owl joke. What do you call an owl that wears armor? Wait for it . . .  A knight owl!!!!! Good stuff Rick.

OPI Deutsch You Want Me Baby?

I’ve said before that I’m not artistic at all, this is still very true. My lack of artistic ability rears its head in many situations; the most recent is my complete lack of a photographic eye. Since starting my blog I’ve heard the phrase “your nails look so much better in person” more than I care to keep track of. The thing is, everyone that said that is totally right. I was taking pictures on my iPhone and then emailing them to myself, which works great in theory but really does limit the quality of the photograph. I’m sure a real photographer could take a picture with my iPhone and make it look glorious; I’m not a real photographer. Because of this, I have decided to now take pictures with our digital camera and upload said pictures to hopefully improve my photo quality. This seems like a lot of background info to get to the sentence: I took like 50 pictures of my nails in the last two days. My poor husband tried to help me take better pictures but I think it was like trying to teach Coco the gorilla how to take pictures, except that I’m sure Coco has more artistic talent (with a name like Coco how can’t you be artsy?).

For my manicure, yes I did actually paint my nails I didn’t just take pictures, I used one of my new colors I got from the OPI Germany Collection Deutsch You Want Me Baby?. It’s a really pretty dark orange with red and gold micro-glitter. I love the color, it went on really easily (disregard all the paint on my fingers) and it looks so pretty in the sunlight. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved an orange so much.

This is an attempt at taking a picture inside before I cleaned up my messy fingers

Picture taken outside, I was hoping the glitter would show up

 

Even though I really like the solid color, I just got my dotters in the mail today so I’m pretty sure that I’m going to try to put something over this orange. Are the pictures any better?

Leopard Nails

I went to Ulta today and spent the birthday gift card Gayle gave me and I must say I have never had so much fun spending a gift card. If I was pushed to make a guess, I would say that I probably spent about an hour in Ulta.

I found the beak color I was looking for and a Hufflepuff yellow!

As if wandering around Ulta spending free money wasn’t fun enough, when I went to check out the cashier asked me where I got my nails done. I told her I did them myself and at that point she literally grabbed my hand and pulled it to her face to get a better look. She then questioned what brand nail stickers they were and I had the sheer pleasure of informing her that they are not stickers and I had hand painted them. I loved this moment, thank you Ulta cashier. To create these cashier approved nails I used China Glaze For Audrey and Gothic Lolita along with black striper polish. After my last free hand catastrophe I really took my time with these so they took way too long, but I’m still pleased.

My nails say grrrrrrrrr

After today’s shopping spree I have acquired a total of 10 new polish colors in the last week, hopefully I will be good for a while. :)

Nautical nails

Every now and then while doing my nails, I’m reminded that I am not artistic at all. This especially happens when I decide to try to free hand something. Since I have that lovely set of new brushes, I thought I would give nautical nails a try. Maybe I can blame the fact that I am in no way nautical as the reason that these nails turned out like a let a child paint them. I’m not quite sure what traits I would need to possess for me to consider myself nautical, maybe if I didn’t get seasick and if I liked being in the sun. Alas, my pale, tender-tummy self will have to keep both feet on the ground. One bright spot in this nail fiasco was the absolutely amazing blue that I used.

It’s so freakin pretty, the picture is from the Zoya website that's linked below

I got Zoya Song as a birthday present from my sister-in-law (I won’t pretend my brother had any part in selecting nail polish for me). The color is simply gorgeous; it’s a super deep, rich blue that has silver micro-glitter throughout it. After the first coat I knew that I would love this polish forever. The color is a thing of beauty; the formula however, is not. This is my first Zoya so I don’t know if this is normal for the formula, but I found Song to be very runny and difficult to apply. I got paint all over my fingers because the polish would pool up on the sides and spill over. The color was quite opaque after one coat so I think next time I’m going to try to put it on in very thin layers and see if that helps with the pooling. This is going to be a perfect Ravenclaw color for when I try my hand at Harry Potter nails.

I think I’ve stalled long enough on showing my sad nautical nails. Aside from Song the other polish I used was all stripers.

It is supposed to be an anchor on my pinkie

I still need a good Hufflepuff yellow if anyone has any suggestions.

Needle Marbling

My birthday is over and I had to go back to work today. On my last day off yesterday I managed to find time to paint my nails and to get Jules’ nails done. Yes, I paint my own nails but I pay to have my dog’s nails painted (and cut, I’m not a weirdo). Petco painted her nails a really pretty pink called Rose Foil, and I could tell right away that she felt like a princess. She also felt like a princess when the lady at the Wells Fargo drive through included a dog treat with my receipt, very classy Wells Fargo. After getting Jules home I tried to get a picture of her pretty feet like I did for Millie, but she looked so sad in every picture. It appears that she managed to already get dirt all over her toes, it’s like she is a dog or something.

 

I couldn’t put a picture of her on my blog looking sad so I just didn’t include her face.

Thad continued my awesome nail art birthday theme by getting me an insane number of rhinestones, they are a little overwhelming. I’m pretty sure that I will have rhinestones on my nails from here on out.

 

Holy rhinestones Batman!

Jules was very generous and she got me a fantastic nail color for my birthday (featured in this manicure). She gave me my very first polish from OPI’s designer series; needless to say I was excited. For this manicure I used OPI Indulgence, and Sally Hansen CSM in Shiny Penny and Gilty Pleasure. I had seen swatches of Indulgence online before but they didn’t do the color justice. Not only does it have a great formula, the color looks like fire in a bottle. It is the perfect Christmas red but could also easily go vampy if need be, in short, I love it. For the accent nails I did a technique called needle marbling, while the paint was wet I pulled a needle through it to create the cool striped effect.

I think the black rhinestones look like caviar.

Even though I just painted my nails yesterday, I’m so excited to paint them again. I got four new colors from my sister-in-law that I’m itching to make into owls.

Cupcake nails

My birthday is tomorrow! I’m so excited and today I got birthday gifts from Thad and my friend Gayle. It seems that Thad’s birthday theme this year is ‘nail art’ and I’m totally cool with that. He got me this sweet nail brush set that comes in its own case. It snaps closed and then you roll out the brushes, I look like a total professional! I am going to have to Google YouTube videos to find out how some of the brushes work, but I still feel pretty slick.

Nail brushes!

Gayle got me a gift card to Ulta (among other things, you gave me too much Gayle) and I plan to use every penny on colors from the OPI Germany collection, pictures of nails to follow :). I have known that I wanted to try cupcake nails for my birthday for a while, so armed with my new bushes I set to make my nails look delicious. I used so many colors I decided to just take a picture instead of listing them all out.

I used all these, two base polishes, and nine different stripers

I decided to use off brand white because I wanted the frosting to look lumpy like frosting, wait, is my frosting not supposed to be lumpy? Anyway, I had a lot of fun with these nails and I’m already looking forward to doing them again. I think I’m going to use more glitter next time, glitter always seems like a good idea when you aren’t taking it off.

Happy Birthday cupcake nails!

I hope everyone enjoys their Labor Day!

Penguins!

My birthday is so soon! It is so soon in fact that last night I got my first birthday gift from my husband. Thad bought (and assembled) a nail tech table for me for my birthday. It is technically a crafting table, but I’m going to call it my nail tech table because that makes me feel fancy. He told me that it was sad watching me try to paint my nails on a TV trayJ.

Me at my new nail tech table, as you can see beer is a necessary tool.

Since I got a new toy I had to paint my nails last night. I decided to try something fun since I know they will only last until tomorrow (I have big birthday nail plans). When I was little I was borderline obsessed with penguins, I had penguin everything in my bedroom and would randomly tell people penguin related facts that they didn’t request. My best friend growing up (and my best friend now for that matter) loved killer whales; we didn’t really discuss the irony that her favorite animal ate my favorite animal, although she has admitted later that my love of penguins was a stumbling block in the formation of our friendship. My love of penguins has subsided quite a bit, I’m now much more interested in owls or hippos, I bet they would make cute nails too! For these penguins I used Orly LiquidVinyl (of course), China Glaze SplishSplash, OPI Alpine Snow, and Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up. The orange is just a striper polish; I still haven’t found the orange-yellow beak color of my dreams.

I didn’t clean them up at all before the picture, I’m ok with that

The horrible red blob thing was supposed to be a bowtie; I really need a dotting tool. My penguins are a bit lumpy and I wish I would have given them arms/fins/wings, but all in all they are kinda cute. An old lady selling peppers at the famers market seemed to like them, she might have just been hoping for improved pepper sales, but I’ll take it. I’m pretty jazzed about my table, it makes me seem legit, thank you honeyJ.

Aerial view of my new table, notice there is a new beer. . . perhaps that why my penguins were lumpy