Snow White nails

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

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

Snow White nails

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

I keep finding myself singing to woodland creatures with these nails

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

Disney Princess nails

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

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

Disney Princess nails

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

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

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

Day of the Dead nails

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

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

Day of the Dead nails

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

Cute and Creepy

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

OPI - Minnie Style nails

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

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

OPI Minnie Style nails

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

They are just fun

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

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

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

Little Mermaid nails

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

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

Little Mermaid nails

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

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

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

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

Wizard of Oz nails

I don’t have a fun way to start this blog so I’m just going to talk about my nails. I have a post it that I keep a list of nail ideas on and chose this one off the list to do. Without thinking about it I ended up doing two movie themed nails in a row, perhaps I can think of more and do a whole series of them. I feel like I should mention that I don’t actually like the movie Wizard of Oz, the monkeys scared me as a kid (that’s a lie the monkeys still scare the shit out of me). Despite the terrifying monkeys I thought the movie would make for a good muse for my nails and I was right.

These nails are distractingly gaudy, they may even be ugly. For this manicure I used quite a few colors, Orly Skinny Dip, Liquid Vinyl, and White Tips, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired UP, Gilty Pleasure, and Butterscotch, China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Paper Chasing, and OPI DS Radiance.

Wizard of Oz nails

My pinkie is supposed to be the Emerald City but I think it looks more like a pineapple, I guess this means if I ever do Spongebob nails I know how to make his pineapple under the sea. The red nail is supposed to be for Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, I was so happy when I found the red for it and then saw the name was Ruby Pumps so I’m pretty sure that was meant to be.

I’m not sure where the tiny divots on my Tin Man came from

My other nails are for the Tin Man, Dorothy’s dress, and the yellow brick road. I bought Butterscotch for Winnie the Pooh nails, but I thought it made for a good road.I was really happy with how the Tin Man nails turned out, since he was my favorite I had to include something for him.

I liked three pictures, so you get three pictures of these

These nails are fun but not very flattering; they are a bit too bold even for me. I think if I were going to do them again I would choose just two designs and not five different ones (I’d keep the pineapple of course). Now let’s see if I can come up with another movie theme, perhaps one that doesn’t distract me so much J

 

Firework nails

I knew before the fourth of July that Millie was scared of fireworks; I didn’t truly appreciate how scared she was though. The evening of the fourth was easily the hardest night I have ever had; I think that I got a small taste of what it is like to be a parent of an infant. Millie was beside herself with fear from the fireworks; she kept pacing and drooling like one of those sad polar bears at the zoo. At about midnight I went to Wall-Greens to get some Benadryl, after checking the interwebs to make sure she could have some but the drugs did nothing to stop her pacing. In total, I got a little less than three hours of sleep that night, stupid fireworks at four am. The next day at work I was straight up stupid, I’m not saying that normally I’m a Rhodes Scholar, but I was dumb on Friday. To give you an example, I accidently dumped half a box of Cheerios on the floor because I didn’t realize the box was upside down.  

Despite how horrible fireworks make my home, I actually really like fireworks (as long as they are not shot off after 2am when I have to work the next day). For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, Zoya Nidhi, and OPI Alpine Snow. I also used stripers in white, blue, silver glitter, and blue glitter. These nails were really fun to do; the fireworks were made up of just a bunch of layered lines so you don’t have to worry about being super precise.

Firework nails

I don’t use the Zoya very much because the color is very thin and transparent, it worked great on top of the other red though to make it a nice glittery red. The red totally stained my nails even though I used two base coats, red can be tricky like that. The red was also pretty hard to clean off my fingers, I’m a messy painter and I always clean up my nails in the shower the next day, it took two showers to get these cleaned up enough.

Ugh, these totally got Katy Perry in my head

I have a bit of a hangnail by my pointer finger right now, it annoys me so much but I need to be an adult and not fuss with it and make it worse. At least these fireworks didn’t scare Millie like the real ones did J. I hope you had an awesome fourth and happy Ringo Starr’s birthday!!!

Tuxedo Wedding nails

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but whipped vodka is delicious. My brilliant friend Jackie introduced this delicious beverage to me last year and I’ve taken care of my fair share of bottle of it since then. Recently Jackie came through with another dazzling idea and suggested I mix my whipped vodka with cranberry juice. It tastes just like cheesecake! I don’t know how the combination of cranberries and whipped cream make cheesecake but it does and it is amazing. This might be my new favorite drink and I have Jackie to thank for it, thank you Jackie!!!

I wanted to end my wedding themed nails with a fun design and I think I accomplished that goal. For this manicure I used Orly White Tips and Liquid Vinyl, and Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up and Wine Not. I think these nails would be perfect if you were the best lady in a wedding (as in a lady best man). They are super cute aren’t they?

Tuxedo Wedding nails

When I was starting these nails Jackie suggested that I do boutonnieres and I’m very happy she suggested that because they really set off the overall look. Not surprisingly, the tuxedos took quite a while to do so I’m happy I decided to only do them as accent nails. The other nails also make the overall look a little classier than they would be with all little tuxes.

And of course there is a dog hair, sigh

These nails are just fun, they are not technically the best nails I have done (I made a lot of mistakes) but they are some of the most fun. I had these nails on when I went to Ulta today and I had two different sales ladies grab my hand to look at them closer. One of the ladies actually recognized me when I came in and asked to see my nails right away because she knew ‘they would be cool’. I’m starting to feel like a celebrity there J

Striped nails

I’ve never been a huge fan of baseball. When I was a kid all my brothers were in little league and I remember being super bored at the games. My dad loved baseball so he would have us all go out to the ballpark on weekends and play as a team. Dad always gave me special rules so that I wouldn’t suck too bad, for instance I got five strikes and if after that I still didn’t hit the ball, he would throw the ball as if I had hit it and let me run to base. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure that I never hit the ball. What can I say? Sports aren’t in my blood, but nails are J

I did these nails for a Twins game this weekend. I didn’t want them to be too basebally (since as previously stated I’m not a huge fan) but I did still want them to be somewhat Twins themed. I found this idea online (cutepolish is amazing) and just had to do it right away. For this manicure I used OPI DS Radiance, China Glaze Splish Splash, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, and Orly White Tips. I’ve talked before about how much I hate white polish so I got this Orly to replace my OPI and it is so much better. I think it is most noticeable when you look at the coverage around my cuticles.

Striped nails

These nails were easy but required a lot of work. To do the stripes I used those dental flossers that you get from the drugstore. In order for the paint to stick to them you have to make sure to get the kind that are not ‘glide’, I of course only had that kind so I walked to Wallgreens, they were out, so I walked to CSV and there I found the flossers I needed. At this point I had already put in a lot of work and I hadn’t even started painting my nails!

I always seem to have dog hairs in my pictures

These nails made a much bigger mess than I thought they would, paint got on the plastic edges of the flosser so the paint then got all over the sides of my fingers. They also took a really long time, new paint had to be put on for each stripe and I did each color twice. I didn’t mind how long they took though because I was watching Wreck-it-Ralph and it was a really cute movie.

This makes them look more basebally

I really liked how these turned out and they make me want to do them in different colors, like all different shades of blue would be cool. Hope you liked them too J

Pride nails :)

I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day yesterday! I was able to spend the day with my mom (shocking) and we had a blast. My mom is fun to hang out with in general and by adding drinking into the equation it only gets more fun! I was a little nervous though because Mom wanted me to help with gardening and I had just done my nails that morning, I powered through though like a good daughter. J We even managed to find time for me to paint Mom’s nails!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

I try not to be too political, despite the fact that I’m super loud and talk pretty much consistently I tend to shy away from talking about politically charged subjects. I just hate it so much when you find out someone you thought was cool is actually a total douche. That being said, when I did these nails I didn’t intend for them to be political at all, I actually did these nails at my Dad’s suggestion. Regardless of why I did them though, I do want to say that they are very fitting for such an awesome day - Minnesota voted for marriage equality today and I think that is pretty rad. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up and Anenome of Mine, China Glaze Riveting, Splish Splash, and Paper Chasing, Orly Prelude to a Kiss, and Ulta Sun-Sational.

My unintentional pride nails

I really like how these nails turned out, they were a huge pain in the ass so I’m happy that the end result is so much fun. To create this look I painted a base coat of the Orly and then sponged on the colors in rainbow order. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I had to write down the order so I didn’t have to say ROYGBIV over and over again.

I love that I have a big white dog hair next to my middle finger, I’m classy

These nails are the type that look way better from far away than they do up close. I think that is common with sponge painted nails, or maybe I’m just saying that because I jacked up my cuticles and I don’t want you to notice. I hope you like my pride nails as much as I do J

Ladybug nails

I love myself a good lazy Saturday. Today we didn’t really mange to get much done but I did make time to watch two movie classics from the 90s. I watched My Cousin Vinny this afternoon and followed it up with Pretty Woman. My phone and IMDB application have ruined me to just watching a movie, I have to look it up on IMDB and read all the trivia, then annoy Thad with useless things like “did you know they offered the role of Vivian to Sarah Jessica Parker?” I find some irony in the fact that most men (at least the men I know) don’t find Sarah Jessica Parker or Julia Roberts very pretty, and they were both looked at for the role. I won’t lie, I love Pretty Woman, it is one of my favorite movies and I always watch it when it’s on even though I own it, surprisingly the only other two movies I do that with are Rudy and Shawshank Redemption, they would make an interesting boxed set.

For this manicure I wanted to do something fun but tame it down a little bit. I used Orly Liquid Vinyl, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, and China Glaze Sea Spray. I got the China Glaze on clearance at Sally’s and I love it. It’s this super cool blue-gray, it needed three coats to look right, but I think it was totally worth it.

Ladybug nails

I sometimes try to be modest about my nails, but the grass is awesome on these, I’m beyond happy with how it turned out. It makes me want to come up with more ideas just so I can reuse the grass (dragonfly nails?). I wish I would have made my ladybugs a little bigger so they stood out more, but I like the overall subtle ladybug effect.

Don’t mind me, I’m just a ladybug

I was asked what the dots on my other fingers are for, I really don’t have a good answer to it, I just like dots and since ladybugs have spots I figured I could use them. I do want to take time and say that these nails are ladybugs and not those horrible Japanese lady beetles, I hate those things, they are evil imposter ladybugs. Hope you enjoyed my nail foray into bugs J

Leopard Heart Print nails

Thad and I don’t do a whole lot for Valentine’s Day, we like to keep it low key. This year (and last year) I asked for nail polish instead of flowers or chocolates. As I my collection of polish is growing, Thad is having a harder time finding colors to get me, so this year he got me a gift card to Sally’s. Getting a gift card for nail polish is like getting two gifts in one; I love shopping for polish. I didn’t get quite as good of a deal as the last time I had a gift card to Sally’s but I did manage to add three colors to my collection and get more polish remover and cotton rounds.  None of those colors are in this manicure though since these are the nails I had on Valentine’s Day.

For this manicure I used China Glaze Rich & Famous, Fast Track, and Mahogany Magic, Orly Liquid Vinyl, and Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance? and All Fired Up. I think they look like mobster wife nails, like I’m married to Ray Liotta from Goodfellas.

Leopard Heart Print tips

There is a little tip wear in the pictures and I think this is mostly because I only put one coat of FastTrack on the tips. Normally it wears super well, but one coat just wasn’t enough. I’m very pleased with these nails, I free handed all the hearts and some of them came out downright awesome. The one on my ring finger was the first one I did and it turned out amazing. J

I impressed myself

I’ve never been good at drawing hearts so I was a bit surprised that these came out as well as they did. I should have done less of the regular spots so they tips weren’t quite as crowded and perhaps more of the hearts so that it looked more Valentiney.

Sad short thumb nail

I have so many ideas for my new polish, I hope everyone had a great Valentine’s Day!

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.