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.

essie Matte About You

Right after I was done writing my blog on Monday I decided to check to see if the mailman had brought me anything good. I knew he had stopped by while I was in the office because my guard dogs barked at him in their menacing ‘stay away from my mom’ kind of way. My basset hound actually has quite a ferocious bark when she wants to, she uses it to scare other dogs (like my friend’s wussy Doberman), alert me to possible neighborhood dangers, and entice her big sister into a crazy wrestlemania style romps.

It’s tough being a guard dog

Usually my mail consists of bills, credit card applications, and advertisements to refinance my student loans, but Monday was special. Monday’s mail included a small padded envelope addressed to me. I tore it open to discover my recently ordered matte finish top coat. I had just painted my kitty nails and here I was with new polish, whatever was I going to do? I started taking the cats off about 20 minutes after opening the top coat, I feel like I showed great restraint. I love my normal top coat, I use Seche Vite and it is absolutely crazy town amazing. Since discovering it I have bought three bottles, I love that top coat (if you do want to buy it I would suggest Sally’s, if you have the club card (which you should) it’s only like $6 compared to $11 at salons). My love for SV aside I decided to buy this new top coat, it is my first foray into matte finishes and after reading a ton of reviews online I couldn’t help my Amazon clicking fingers. I got essie Matte AboutYou and holy freaking goodness the reviews do not do it justice. It is incredible, I’ve only used it the once now but the reviews say that it will turn any nail polish into a matte finish and based on the amazing job it did with Color Club Status Update I fully believe the claims. The top coat went on even better than most essie polishes I have used, it does a pretty good job self leveling but I would caution to make sure you have the whole nail covered, the shiny really stands out if most of your nail is matte.  For this manicure I also used China Glaze Electrify on the tips.

I thought it kind of looked like fall leaves on pavement

Love these so much you get two pictures

I’m so excited to paint my nails again, as soon as I was done with these I started looking at other matte finish manicure ideas. I love the texture the matte polish gave my nails, they look like chalk boards and are smooth but not slick. In general, I’m a huge fan.

Cat nails

With my new schedule I have Sundays and Mondays off, since I’m a party animal I manage to get into all sorts of crazy trouble on my days off. This weekend I went grocery shopping and ran errands that included Sally’s and the liquor store (different days of course since Minnesota is awesome and the liquor stores are all closed on Sundays). I also made sand candles with my dad; it was like a chemistry project that mixed recycling, beer, and melted wax, I’m pretty sure we had entirely too much fun. See? Party animal. I did my nails on Sunday while watching ‘Once Upon a Time’, the only non football related show that appears on our TV on Sundays. I took my polish off much earlier in the day; I’m so please with how well they are growing out, they are not all the way grown out yet but very close.

Naked nails, scandalous

For my manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl and Sally Hansen CSM Parrot, I wouldn’t say these nails are puurrrrfect, but I like them all the same. I freehanded my cat heads so that is why they are a bit uneven, but hey, not all cats are symmetrical. I really liked the combination of the cat nails and the regular French tips, I didn’t want to be overrun with feline tips after all, it could have been a catastrophe (I’m so funny).

The dogs did not approve of these nails

As you can probably see on my middle finger, I have had some trouble with tip wear even though I painted these less than 24 hours ago. I’m thinking the tip wear was caused by the fact that I only did one coat of black on my tips (it has such great coverage that you only really need one to coat the nail) and I’ve been using cheaper base coat than normal. I don’t like how my normal base coat looks on the back end of French manicures so I tried a cheaper one and discovered you really do get what you pay for when it comes to base coat. I guess that means I will be forced to go nail polish shopping again and find a new base coat, darn.

Pumpkin nails

The other day I was feeling kind of blah after work and decided that I needed a pick me up, this involved going to Ulta shockingly enough. I had a $5 off a $10 purchase coupon and it was burning a hole in my purse (not really but I think you get the idea, I was excited to spend it). I went into the store with the plan to replace that shameful orange I hate so much. I spent such a ridiculous amount of time looking at the polishes I had several store associates come up to me to see how I was doing, and make sure I wasn’t stealing. At this point in time I was still sporting my shameful blue and green manicure (I’d link it in here if I was blog-smart enough to do that) and I felt unwarrantedly embarrassed of my nails even though the lovely ladies at Ulta were saying nice things about them.  After over 45 minutes in the store I managed to find three colors to get and a new magnet for my magnetic polish (yes I only have one magnetic polish and it already had a magnet, and I’ve only used it once, but I still feel like I needed another magnet).

Magnet polish is cool, how couldn’t I get another magnet?

China Glaze was on special so it was buy two get one free, as a result three came home with me. I found the orange of my dreams (finally) it is China Glaze Riveting, it’s a nice deep but not too dark orange that is filled with orange and gold micro glitter. The color goes on super easy and is opaque in two coats (although I used three). Great Halloween orange all around, I would totally recommend it, it is on clearance right now though so if you want it you better hurry. I also got China Glaze Ghoulish Glow, I’d been looking for this color for a while, I saw it in a Halloween boxed set but I wanted it on its own so when I saw one bottle left for sale at Ulta I jumped on it. It’s a glow in the dark semi matte finish top coat, I’ll let just how awesome that is sink in for little bit. I used it on my pinkies just to test it out, the glow in the darkness of it worked way better on one nail that the other so I think you have to put it on a bit thick. I’m still working out how I’m going to take a picture of it glowing but I’m super excited to paint some glow in the dark ghosts. My last buy was Sexon the Beach, despite having a terrible name the color is pretty neat, it’s a light purple with gold shimmer, I used it in this manicure as the accent in the candy wrappers.

I need to work on my pumpkin teeth

I can’t tell you how happy I am with the orange, I feel like I have a whole world of orange related nails opened up for me now.

China Glaze Deviantly Daring and Avon Lagoon

I have the immune system of a goldfish, and by that I am making an assumption that goldfish do not posses strong immune systems. I figure that is a pretty safe bet, they don’t seem to be all that sturdy, koi fish on the other hand look quite resilient. By a start like that my nails should probably be fish themed, but alas, they are not nearly that cool. They have a boring ‘I feel like the bottom of a shoe’ feel, I pinkie swear the next set is better (I know this for a fact because I’ve already repainted my nails).

For these nails I decided to do swatches of two new colors I recently acquired. China Glaze DeviantlyDaring is my first chameleon color. In the bottle it was love at first site. The color is an amazing color shifting shade that goes from gold to green to blue to pink. Under the fancy lighting on my nail tech table the color looked amazing when it was wet, but as it dried and when I got it away from the spot light like lighting it just looked green (a cool green, but just green). The other color I used is Avon Lagoon, if you are keeping track this is my first Avon polish. This one is also a color changer, in the bottle it goes from a pretty light blue to pink, it looks like it is full of pink micro glitter and when the light hits it the entire color changes to pink. This amazing color change is only evident in the bottle, on my nails it looked blue, maybe periwinkle, but certainly not stunning.  

These nails say ‘minimum effort’

Ooooo, my right hand, the hang nail looks awful sorry

The formula on these colors was pretty good, the China Glaze covered like a champ and I didn’t really need more than two coats (I did three anyway) the Avon was a bit on the thin side and irked me with its lack of self leveling ability so it pooled a little on the sides. After having these nails for about a day I was beyond tired of them but I didn’t have the energy to totally repaint them so I did what any polish loving girl would do, I covered them in glitter. I picked up some uber cheap glitter polish at Target a few weeks ago ($2 and according to the website this is a price increase?!?!) it is e.l.f. 2F01AS, that’s right polish so cheap they didn’t even give it a name. The glitter immediately caught my eye for both the crazy cheap price and the fact that it has more than one size glitter in it. The polish has a ton of gold micro glitter and then some large round holographic pieces that are pretty rad.

Better, but still not anything to blog about

Another right hand pic! Don’t get used to it

I would have loved to have more of the holographic glitter pieces in the bottle, there were so few that each nail only got a couple pieces which makes it look more like a mistake than anything else (I’m totally using this color when I try my glitter sandwich though). I also was not down with the look of the gold glitter on the green polish, as a result these nails only made it through the night. I’m going to go to bed now, my cold needs it’s beauty sleep.

Vikings nails

My nails kicked so much ass this weekend (much like the Vikings I painted them for). I was so excited when I thought of this design idea that I actually had trouble sleeping Friday night, that makes me a loser in at least four different ways but I’m ok with that. I actually did my manicure on Saturday (I know that means this blog is way overdue) because we went to the Vikings game on Sunday. My husband loves the Vikings, I like to joke that they are his mistress but the fact is they are kinda like his mistress. Some days he would rather spend time with them than me, when we go out he checks back with them on his phone, and he spends way more money on them. Over the years I’ve grown to not only accept his love of the Vikings but also appreciate football as a sport, I had to learn the rules so that I could understand what was going on during the 12 hours of football on Sundays and now I love the look of pride on his face when I say something intelligent about football in front of people.

This is what an $11 beer looks like

We had pretty nice tickets

I’ve done Vikings nails in the past so I knew that I had to step up my game for the nails I would have while at the game. I used China Glaze Gothic Lolita and Ulta Sun-Sational for the Vikings tips and then chose a pink striper polish since October is breast cancer awareness month and the NFL has it’s ‘a crucial catch’ campaign. The actual Viking logo is a nail tattoo that I got from The Vikings’ Locker Room (which is a store, I didn’t actually sneak in the Vikings’ locker room, and if I did sneak in their locker room I wouldn’t be after nail tattoos as much as I would be after Adrian Peterson, he has such a pretty smile). The manicure required lots of waiting; I had to wait for my topcoat to dry three different times because of the taping I did. The nail tattoos were actually super easy to apply and take off (yes I’ve already taken this manicure off; I told you this blog was late).

Skol

Thad was actually so please with these nails that he took pictures of them with his super fancy camera, as he is editing wedding/baby/engagement pictures right now my nail pictures are at the bottom of his list, I’ll add a fancy picture once he has them edited. Right now my nails are clean and blank, so many possibilities.

Spiders!

I’m so jazzed about these nails. I had planned out my first Halloween nails for a while before I started painting last night and these look nothing like all my plans. I wanted to do orange and black tips but forgot how much I hate my orange. I was quickly reminded how useless Y’all Come Back, Ya Hear? is when I put the first coat on my pinkie and it was essentially see through. I put on two more coats and it was still very much see through so I decided to take it off and start over. Since it took me about an hour to remove my last manicure (I was under the delusion that loose glitter would remove easier than glitter polish, so this came as quite the shock) I didn’t have a ton of time to do my nails. By ‘ton of time’ I mean more time as I just admitted to taking an hour before I even started painting, so I clearly had already taken too much time by this point. I decided to go with green tips (Sally Hansen CSM Parrot) because I’m a firm believer that lime green is a Halloween color. What do you think? Is lime green a Halloween color? Maybe I just think lime green is a Halloween color because my mom loves funny green colors and her birthday is Halloween.

Spooky

In case it isn’t clear, the little black guys are supposed to be spiders. I was informed after painting my nails that spiders have eight legs. I guess I’ve never really looked that close at a real spider (they are evil and are all plotting to kill me). I’ll pretend I knew the leg situation ahead of time and I chose to give them four legs so that they looked cute and not terrifying.  

My thumb had a spider too

Overall I’m a huge fan of these. They ended up being super easy and I loved the color combination. I have so many plans for more Halloween themed nails this month; I hope I have enough time to get them all in. Saturday I’m doing a Vikings manicure for the game on Sunday and I’m using nail tattoos for the first time, I’m a little nervous about how they will come off my nails but as evidence by the horrible glitter experience last night, I don’t let a lengthy removal process stop me.

Avon Nail Glitter in Iridescent

I’ve always been a fan of glitter, when I was a teenager I would cover my eyelids in copious amounts of loose glitter and thought it looked particularly fetching when the glitter would get in my eyelashes and stick to my mascara. Poor makeup choice of my youth aside, my love for glitter has remained steady. This being said, when my lovely mom showed me the iridescent nail glitter in her most recent Avon catalog, I was all for her ordering it and buying it for me. The glitter doesn’t have a fancy name, it’s just called nail glitter, and comes in two colors Iridescent and Chrome, I chose the more colorful of the two (very shocking). When I got my glitter it actually looked a lot like the loose eye glitter I had years ago and if you were in a pinch and really wanted to have crazy ass glitter eyes, I bet it would work for that.

Picture from Avon’s website

I feel it is a good time for me to remind all my lovely readers of two glitter related facts: 1) glitter is super pretty and 2) glitter will make the prettiest mess you have ever made so you better get used to the idea of having glitter on your hands, forehead, arms, desk, couch, and basset hound. The application for this glitter was actually pretty easy. After my base coat dried I painted the tip with my cheap top coat and while it was wet dipped my finger in the pot of glitter. I then used my fan brush to get rid of the excess on my finger tip and brush on a thin layer of glitter across the rest of my nail. Putting the glitter over the rest of my nail started out as an accident, since I didn’t tape my nail off some of the glitter static clinged (apparently Word is telling me that ‘clinged’ isn’t a word) to my nail but I liked it so much I decided to put it there on purpose. The glitter ended up looking very blue over Orly Liquid Vinyl but in the container it looks mostly white with a bunch of fun colors, the sparkle factor is awesome. I forgot just how unforgiving a black base is when you don’t do a stellar job near your cuticles so please just don’t look at the hot mess around my cuticles.

These nails make me want to do galaxy nails so bad

If you demand that your manicure be smooth, you may not like this glitter. After three top coats I still have rough patches, and I have amazing topcoat (it makes my nails so shiny that you can see a reflection of the back of my house in the picture above). These nails were actually the second set I painted yesterday, my parents came over earlier in the day and I did some flower nails for my mom (like my flower take two nails). They turned out pretty cute and I think she was a fan of the flower shaped rhinestones I put on. We decided yesterday that I get to do her Halloween birthday nails so I’m going to start Halloween themed nails soon to practice. They should prove to be spooktacular!