Fox nails

I know I’ve been posting Disney nails while I’ve been gone, but I ran out of Disney nails to post so now you are finally going to see the nails I had for Thanksgiving. I loved these nails and I got a ton of compliments on them. Some of my favorite questions I got about these nails were “so how do you put those on, cause I mean there is no way you painted all those lines?” and “that’s a sticker, right?”. Oh, the joy I find when people think my nails are fake or that I used a nail sticker, I’m such an odd duck. Needless to say, these nails were a pretty big hit at Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Like many of my nail art choices, these nails got a terrible song stuck in my head for the duration I had them on. If you haven’t seen What Does the Fox Say? I highly recommend you leave my blog for a few minutes and bask in the strange glory that only YouTube can bring. Finished watching it? Great, for this manicure I used Zoya Channing, Orly Liquid Vinyl, OPI Alpine Snow, and Maybelline Dotty. For those of you keeping track, this is the first time I’ve used Maybelline, and yes, that does make me sound pretentious.

Fox nails

I’m pretty sure this fox is saying “I’m super cute”. I was worried at first that the fox looked too much like a cat but when my 2 ½ year old nephew looked at them and said “fox” I knew that they must have turned out pretty well. (Yes I squealed like a small child when he was able to correctly guess the animal without prompting). I did a fox on my thumb too but none of the pictures turned out very well.

Ringa-ding-ding-ding-doo

I had a few people tell me these were their favorite nails yet, and I totally agree that these are some of my favorites. They were so cute but not so cartoony that I felt weird having them on. One of my good friends from high school and college married a Mr. Fox so now whenever I see a fox I think of her, hopefully she approves of his foxiness J

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

Disney's Tangled nails

I’m not a fan of kids but I love many of the things that they love, Disney is no exception. I first went to Disney World when I was a senior in college and my super amazing coach took me to the Magic Kingdom when we were in Florida for a tournament. I was hooked from my very first glimpse of Cinderella’s castle. Thad’s first trip was on our honeymoon, aka the best honeymoon destination ever. This December marks our third trip together and also our third trip in just over five years, we can’t stay away! So while I’m enjoying the sights and sounds of the most magical place on Earth, I decided to have a couple of blog posts for you to entertain you with Disney nails while I’m at Disney.  

Tangled is such a great movie, if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend that you put it on your list to watch. Also, if you haven’t seen it, these nails won’t be as fantastic for you. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Anenome of Mine, OPI You’re Such a Budapest, I Saw. . .U Saw. . .We Saw. . .Warsaw, Alpine Snow, and Pussy Galore, Ulta Sun-Sational, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. These nails turned out even better than I had imagined, they are quite possibly some of my favorites I have done.

Disney’s Tangled nails

If you have seen the movie the nails are pretty self explanatory. In case you missed the instant Disney classic, my pinkie and ring finger are parts of her dress, middle finger is her hair (she is Rapunzel after all), my index finger is for the lanterns they light for her birthday every year, and my thumb is the royal symbol. I’m impressed with how well the thumb turned out, I figured I’d try to do something like the sun symbol and it would fail miserably so I would just hide my thumb, I guess when you set your expectations so low you are more likely to impress yourself.  

Seriously, watch the movie

I got Tangled for my birthday from a friend at work and I totally watched it while I was painting these. Hope these nails brought you some Disney joy J

China Glaze - Creative Fantasy nails

I can’t believe how close it is till our Vacation! We leave in just a few days and I’ve been running around like a crazy person these last couple of weeks trying to get everything ready for our trip. Today on my list of things to do: wash all the blankets in the living room, vacuum the couch and chair, and give the dogs a bath. I didn’t think everything through and definitely didn’t do these tasks in the right order. I had two wet dog just rub their wet puppy fur all over the furniture that had been thoroughly vacuumed and just cleaned blankets. Oh well, at least everything ended up a bit cleaner than it was to start the day.

Also on my list of things to do is getting caught up on my nails that need to be blogged. I did these nails for the Vikings game we went to in October; they just kept slipping through the cracks. For this manicure I used China Glaze Creative Fantasy, Sally Girl Matte Top Coat, Ulta Sun-Sational, and OPI Alpine Snow. I decided to do the matte finish tips because the Vikings have a matte finish on their helmets this year.

China Glaze Creative Fantasy nails

This China Glaze is just about the perfect Vikings purple ever. If you are a Vikings fan and want to paint your nails, you really just need to buy this color. It worked perfect with the matte topcoat and ended up looking just like their helmets, the color did anyway.

Skol!

I did the pink line because this was for a game in October and the NFL has their Crucial Catch campaign in October for breast cancer. These nails weren’t super football-ly but I liked the way they turned out. I feel like I’m running out of ideas for Vikings nails, but since we only go to about one game a year I have plenty of time to plan out my next nails J

Pink Argyle Stripe nails

I’m not usually one to complain about my phone unless it really pisses me off, perhaps this comes from the fact that I work for a cell phone company. I have an iPhone, it’s not the fanciest phone available but it works for what I need it to, that is except for the horrible maps. As you could probably guess, I had to use the GPS recently and it didn’t go so well. I had a baby shower to go to in the cities last weekend, I don’t like diving in the cities to begin with and I like it even less when I’m alone and totally reliant on my phone for guidance. Stupid Apple maps took me to the wrong place and I drove around for 45 minutes before I finally found the place I needed to be at. That, coupled with the inevitable Minnesota road constructed, resulted in me needing to take a few minutes in my car to calm down so that I didn’t show up to a baby shower as a rage monster (rage monsters are not welcome at baby showers).

I had two baby showers to go to in August, one for a boy and one for a girl. My original plan was that I was going to do the same design for both showers and just change the colors (pinks for the baby girl shower and blues for the baby boy shower). I am so underwhelmed by these nails though that there is nothing about them that I want to revisit for the baby boy shower at the end of the month. For this manicure I used OPI Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie and Alpine Snow and a pink striper polish.

Pink Argyle Stripe nails

I wanted the accent nail to look like argyle and I think they fell just short. It’s not that they are bad; they just aren’t quite what they could have been. At first I just had solid pink nails with the one accent but I thought they looked so boring I wanted to add something to the other nails. I think in the end the dots are my favorite part of this manicure.

Nails that say ‘meh’

I can’t believe these nails are my 100^th post nails! I started blogging a year ago this month, crazy I know. I hope everyone enjoys reading my blog as much as I enjoy it. I love having an excuse to paint my nails far too often 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!!!

Orly - Mayhem Mentality nails

I think Millie has learned how to count. This isn’t as dangerous as her growing wings or thumbs, but it is rather problematic. I first started to notice her counting skills when I tried to sneak her sister an extra treat and she calmly said in basset hound “excuse me mom, but I feel like you only gave me one when my sister got two” (basset hounds can say a lot with one look). Her counting skills moved into full fledged mathematician status we started going for walks more frequently. No matter how many bags I bring, she finds a way to poop more than I’m prepared for. I’m not sure where she learned how to count, but I’m finding it very inconvenient.

For this manicure I used Orly Mayhem Mentality and OPI Alpine Snow. I got the Orly a few weeks ago but couldn’t come up with any designs to use it with. The design I ended up doing (on the ring and thumb) is called cartoon nails. They are supposed to look like a nail would if you drew it on a cartoon character, the idea is kind of farfetched but I think they ended up kind of fun.

Mayhem Mentality nails

These nails might be the most distracting nails I have ever done. They were so bright I thought that they were going to glow in the dark. The neon went on so much easier than most neons I have used. Usually I use a white base coat so the neon is more saturated but I didn’t need to with this one, it only took two coats and was as bright on my nails as it was in the bottle.

Nails so bright you could read by them

The more I use Orly polish the more I like it, it’s a great deal and the formula rarely disappoints me. If you are looking for a crazy bright orange then look no further. Now I just need to come up with other reasons to use it J

Rubber Duckie nails

When I moved into my first apartment I really wanted to have a rubber duckie bathroom, nothing says independent adult like a bathroom fully of yellow ducks. I got rubber duckie everything, shower curtain, trash can, soap dispenser, even wall art, that bathroom was so full of ducks you couldn’t walk into it without having hundreds of beady black duck eyes watching your every move. I feel like I’m somehow making my bathroom sound sinister but it was quite cute actually. I finally ditched the ducks when I moved into my house, although I do still have bride and groom ducks hidden in the closet.

I would say I did these nails to celebrate my duck bathroom of apartments past, but I really just did them because they were cute. J For this manicure I used China Glaze For Audrey and Sea Spray, Orly Skinny Dip and Liquid Vinyl, OPI Alpine Snow, Ulta Sun-Sational, and Sally Hansen Strobe Light. I’m very happy with how these nails turned out, I especially like the marbleized soap bubbles.  

Rubber Duckie nails

To do the bubbles I dipped my dotter in three different colors, the dotter made the color mix in some places but also have separate colors in one dot. This is similar to the technique used in water color nails and it really makes me want to try that (what don’t I want to try though?). I was surprised with how easy the ducks were to do, the ducks on my right hand aren’t bad but the left ring finger duck is definitely the best one.

Rubber Duckie you’re the one

These nails were really fun to do and they didn’t take long at all, start to finish I had these done in less than an hour (which is pretty good for me). They do cause me to sing the rubber duckie song from Sesame Street but that is a price I’m willing to pay J

Butterfly nails

I’ve had the theme song from Reading Rainbow stuck in my head for the last three days because of my nails. I’m a truly terrible singer so it is really bad when I have a song I love stuck in my head because I want to sing it and my singing causes inner ear bleeding. I was shocked to find that a large number of my co –workers didn’t know the song from Reading Rainbow, it was such a huge part of my childhood I can’t believe that anyone close to my age wouldn’t have also loved that amazing show. Butterfly in the sky. . . ahhhh memories.

For these nails I used Orly Prelude to a Kiss and Liquid Vinyl, Ulta Sun-Sational, OPI Alpine Snow, and China Glaze Riveting. These nails were a pain in the butt to do, they took for freaking forever, and I’m not super pleased with how my line work turned out.

Butterfly nails

Although they are far from perfect, they are pretty cool. They look much better from further away (something I say about every manicure that uses sponging). I was so excited to start them that I sponged my thumb before I put on my base color which is why it is much lighter than the other nails. I would have taken it off and started over but instead I was too lazy, I can justify it though by saying that I wanted you to be able to see what it looks like without a nude base color.

I can fly twice as high. . .

I really liked how the gradient turned out on these; I did the same colors in gradient for my pride nails so I knew I liked them together ahead of time. The glitter in the orange is just downright fun and it works so nice with the bright yellow.

Just take a look . . .

I wonder if Reading Rainbow is on Netflix, I bet it is like Milo and Otis though and it will lose it magic now that I’m an adult. Hope you like my butterflies J

Pansy nails

I’m pretty sure I was just about the most annoying child ever. I’m super loud and still have yet to master to art of being silent, so I would say it is a fair assumption that I was the kind of child that makes me cringe. My parents had to love me, they are my parents after all, but my friend’s parents did not have any such obligation. I’ve been friends with my best friend since we were eleven which means that for the last 18 years I have had a second mom, a woman who had no responsibility to like me and my super annoying self but somehow did. Jackie’s mom (yes I still call her Jackie’s mom even though I’m an adult) has really been a second mom, and I’m not using that term lightly. She is awesome, she let me tag along to family functions so often that I really felt like a part of her family. I was reminded of how thoughtful she is the other day, when  for no reason she sent me a present, a hoodie from the zoo I used to work at. How nice is she?

I wanted to do nails for Jackie’s mom so I decided to do her favorite flower. For this manicure I used OPI You’re Such a Budapest and Alpine Snow, Sally Hansen CSM Anenome Of Mine, and Orly Lemonade. These nails ended up reminding me of wallpaper Jackie’s mom had in her kitchen because of the purple background.

Pansy nails

Some of the pansies look like space aliens and not flowers, but overall I was happy with how these nails turned out. If I were to do them again I think I would do sponging or saran wrap backgrounds and more than one pansy on top of it. I like that idea so much it makes me want to do them now.

I don’t know why the one edge is so jacked up

These nails were super simple but fun none the less. They reminded me how much I love flower nails and that I should do them more often, it is spring after all. I hope you liked my pansy nails and thank you Jackie’s mom for the super cool hoodie. J

Neon Water Marble nails

Like most rational humans, I hate going to the doctor (any doctor) but sometimes you just can’t avoid it and you have to go. In the last few weeks I’ve had to endure the dentist and the eye doctor. Going to the dentist is one of my least favorite things, no, that’s too nice let me try again. Going to the dentist sucks and I hate it with the red hot fiery passion of a thousand Thursdays. This last time I went they decided that instead of using the evil pick thing to clean my teeth they would use high powered water, this sounds good in theory since it went way faster and didn’t make the horrible scratchy sound, but in practice it just misted my entire face with a stank fog of crusty tooth shrapnel, joy. The eye doctor went better than the dentist, I just got my eyes dilated so I looked like a space alien, I looked terrifying but it was pretty funny.

I debated whether or not to post these nails, I think they are an epic fail but other people seemed to like them so I guess they are worth a post. For this manicure I used OPI Alpine Snow, China Glaze Splish Splash, Turned up Turquoise, and Pool Party, essie Braziliant, Sally Hansen CSM Anenome of Mine, Ulta Sun-Sational, and e.l.f 2F01AS.

Neon Water Marble nails

These were another by request manicure. My boss suggested that I try a neon water marble and I thought it had been a while since I tried water marbling and I should give it another go. I made a few mistakes with this manicure, one is that I painted them on a white base (neon usually looks so good on a white base!) the white just ended up making some of the colors lighter and that totally threw off the whole neon look. If I did this again I would paint them with one of the neons and then do fewer total colors as part of the water marbling, I think I used too many colors of polish and they ended up getting a bit muddled.

They look like I just threw paint on my nails

As with any water marble, these nails were super messy and took forever. I just don’t think they look cool enough for the amount of work that goes into them. I put glitter on my pointer finger hoping that the glitter would help the overall look, it didn’t. Oh well, I can’t love them all J

Galaxy nails

I’m not a fan of running - I’m the kind of girl that is built for comfort and not for speed. That being said, I’m also not a fan of my pants not fitting so I have been running at the gym. I may be in the minority on this, but I actually prefer to run on a treadmill to running outside. I’m not responsible enough to maintain a running pace when I’m outside; I require the treadmill to force me. I try to avoid running outside at all costs but my work hosted a 5k recently and I found myself in a situation where I was going to be running outside. I managed to survive the experience but I also burnt my forehead and got a heat rash in the process, oh well, at least my nails looked good.

I love these nails. I wanted to do galaxy nails for a while but I was worried that they would be too difficult or that I would mess them up and they would look like galactic vomit on my hands. The manicure ended up being super easy; they only took me about 30 minutes to do! For these nails I used China Glaze Splish Splash and Gothic Lolita, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light, OPI Alpine Snow, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. I’m not quite sure what happened to my Liquid Vinyl but it was like putting tar on my nails, it’s a good thing I covered it up almost completely.



Galaxy nails

I love when nails look really difficult to do when they are actually super easy (like my plaid nails). These were crazy easy to do, I started with my tar like black base, then used a normal makeup sponge to lightly sponge on blue, purple, then white. After some dots for stars and a light coat of glitter I had galaxy nails. If you are going to try these out (which you should) make sure to put your glitter coat on before your nails fully dry so that it can blend some of the paint together.



Do they remind you of a starry night?

I love these nails so much that as soon as I was done I was thinking of reasons I could do them again. It makes me want to try other sponge painting nails, and you thought sponge painting was just for the guest bathroom.  :)

Easter nails

Hoppy Easter everyone! It was a chilly Easter but Spring is in the air and the Easter Bunny left my favorite Easter candy for me (mini Cadbury eggs). I always loved Easter when I was a kid, my parents did a great job making sure that all holidays were done up right and Easter was no exception. Mom had color coded plastic eggs so my brothers and I got the same amount of eggs even though they were way better at the egg hunting process. I wish I could still get a brightly colored Easter dress and hat to wear, but I think people might look at me funny if I was wearing a polka doted Easter dress with petticoats, although I do have bunnies on my nails right now so I guess I’m not really fooling anyone.

For this manicure I used a crap ton of colors, that is a very technical term in case you were wondering. I used OPI Alpine Snow, You’re Such a Budapest, and Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie, Orly Liquid Vinyl, Lemonade, and Prelude to a Kiss, China Glaze For Audrey and Rich & Famous, Ulta Sun-Sational and Oh!, and Sally Hansen CSM Parrot. I also used three stripers so in total that is 14 (plus top and base coat so 17), and that is a crap ton. Nothing says Easter like an overwhelming number of polishes J.

Hoppy Easter nails

My boss requested that I do tie-die egg nails but I was resistant because I hate water marbling. The last time I attempted water marble nails it resulted in me drinking too much and making a huge mess on my patio table. I’m not going to pretend that this attempt didn’t involve alcohol, but overall it was much more successful. I actually like how the pointer on my right hand turned out better than the left so you are about to be treated with a rare right hand shot.

Tie-Die egg success!

I was a bit disappointed at Easter when my nails failed to impress an 8 year old girl, I don’t think that was fully my manicure’s fault but more the fact that children are like bees and they can smell my fear. I’m not really sure if bees can truly smell fear but I heard it somewhere and have decided it must be a fact.

They may not impress an 8 year old, but they make me smile J

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and enjoyed my cutesy Easter nails. I mostly write this blog for my very good friend Gayle and she recently announced that she and her super awesome husband are expecting. I hope her baby can’t smell my baby related fear because I’m sure their kid will be pretty cool. Congrats Gayle and Ben!

Short nails

It’s been hard getting used to these short nails. For the first few days my fingertips were super sensitive since they hadn’t touched anything in a long time. I was happy when that wore off. You know when you get your hair cut short and the first time you shower you use way too much shampoo? I had the same issue with painting my nails, I had way too much polish the first time so there was polish pooling along both sides; these nails are going to take some practice. I have found that I’m much faster at typing at work with the short nails, further proof that my nails are indeed for form and not function. I just keep having to tell myself that they will grow back, they will grow back.

This post will be two manicures because I totally jacked up the first ones. For the first manicure I used Zoya Ray, Sally Hansen CSM Parrot, and OPI Alpine Snow. They looked really nice before I made the rookie mistake of doing dishes too soon after finishing my manicure, I wear gloves and they gloves left a wear imprint on my nails.

I really like dark colors on short nails

I was bummed when I messed these up because they were really cute, but it did give me an excuse to paint my nails again so I was ok with that. For my second short nail attempt I used Orly Prelude to a Kiss, Zoya Ray, Sally Hansen Parrot, and China Glaze Running in Circles, Deviantly Daring, Turned upTurquoise, and Paper Chasing. I think I was much more impressed with how these turned out than anyone else. I thought they looked like fish scales and I loved all the different colors together.

Layered polka dots

I just bought the Orly and Paper Chasing the other day at Ulta. I really wanted a nude since I didn’t have one and I think the Orly is going to work very well for that. It is a little on the pink side, but so am I. My nails looked really weird with just the nude on them but I’ve seen so many nude nail designs recently I just had to buy it. The China Glaze is the green I’ve been looking for; it’s a great Kelly green shade and has just enough shimmer to keep it interesting. When I bought it the lady that checked me out told me like five times that it stained her nails really bad and it looked like she had nail fungus. She then told me how important base coat is, duh Ulta lady, base coat is important.

Do you like the nude as a base?

I got tired of green nails super fast. I didn’t even do a special St. Patrick’s Day manicure. I could paint my nails pink for a whole month but I only made it like four manicures in with green nails before I was so tired of green I just stopped painting them. I’m really looking forward to Easter nails though so hopefully I’ll start painting more soon J.

Mario nails

I think the Girl Scouts are stalking me. They are everywhere, calling to me from their tables laden with sweet delicious cookies. It doesn’t seem to matter where I am going, they are there waiting for me. At the grocery store, the mall, even the bowling alley, they are always there. I think I’m confusing most of them though, being innocent little girls they don’t understand the torture they are inflicting on my chubby self. When they ask if I want to buy Girl Scout cookies my mouth says ‘no’ but my eyes say ‘yes, I would like to buy six boxes and spend my weekend on the couch in my sweatpants while I eat all of them and watch Bridesmaids’. Please stop mavens of packaged baked goods, I’m losing resolve and I really don’t want to stuff my face with Tagalongs.

I’m not a huge gamer, but I will always have a soft spot for Mario. I remember playing it on the original NES, you remember the one that the other person had to die before it was your turn so you would play with your older brother that never died because they were way better at it than you so you just didn’t get to play, yeah that one. I thought it would be fun to do Mario themed nails and I was right, they are fun :). For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Parrot and OPI Alpine Snow.



Will these nails make me live longer?

The whole time I was painting these nails I had the music from castle levels stuck in my head (dun dun dun dun dun dun) and perhaps I said it out loud to everyone I showed at work, perhaps I also said it out loud to my doctor after she commented on them, perhaps. I’m not super pleased with the shape of my mushrooms, I feel like I could have made them rounder. I also don’t like that I wasn’t able to get a straight line to separate the green and white, I was having issues with my brush choices.



I’ll admit he is a little wonky

I’m very happy with how the polka dot tips turned out, I think they are a really fun contrast to the mushroom nails; they make me want to do more polka dot tips. These ended up being my first March nails so that’s why I went with green instead of red. I haven’t decided what my next ones will be but I imagine that they will also be green.

Orly Love Each Other

I love it when my alcoholic beverages taste like candy, I thought for so long that I didn’t like my booze to taste sweet but I was wrong. My new favorite love (thanks to my best friend) is Whipped Vodka, it is vodka that is flavored like whipped cream, how can you go wrong? The stuff is delicious in everything I put it in; it makes any diet pop taste wonderful (my favorites are mixing it with Sunkist and Dr. Pepper). The only problem with this delicious stuff is that it has way more calories in it than other vodka because of all that pesky sugar, don’t worry though, I find ways to fit it in my diet. Unfortunately, for as sweet as my delicious drink was, this manicure is not so sweet.

 

For this manicure I used Orly Love Each Other Sally Hansen CSM Anemone of Mine, OPI Alpine Snow, and China Glaze Pool Party. The Orly looked so cool in the bottle and I’m a little disappointed with how it turned out on my nails, it is more subtle than I had hoped. The color is almost completely translucent with a ton of light purple micro-glitter (I have three coats on).

 

 

Orly Love Each Other

 

These nails had one of those “oh crap, now what do I do?” moments, for some reason when I pulled the tape off my pointer finger it decided to take a strip of all the paint down to the nail with it. I was very displeased with this. I had to put a bunch of base coat in the missing strip to try to build it back up so my nail would look even, it you look close you can still see the divot. Thank goodness for accent nails or I would have had to start all the way over on that whole finger.

 

 

These are ‘oops’ flowers

 

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my new accent nail so I decided to try very small flowers, they ended up being my favorite part of the whole manicure. I don’t know when I will learn my lesson that I don’t like French manicures as much as I like colorful/crazy/gaudy manicures, perhaps someday. I think the thing I don’t like about them is that they are always just ok, they never distract me or cause me to show them off to everyone (a few French manicures are excluded from this). I want to follow these up with something very fun but I haven’t decided what yet, hopefully I don’t have another tape malfunction.

Think Spring nails

February is the snowiest month in Minnesota (I’m not sure if that is true, but I sure feel like it is), I think I prefer the snow to the bitter cold of January, but we would all agree that this winter can be over anytime now. I know that hedgehog said it was going to be an early spring and I am so holding him to it (watch our Punxsutawney, I’m watching you). Winter makes me super lazy, that coupled with the fact that I started a new book (and finished said new book) meant that I didn’t get much done this weekend, including my blog. I feel like you will forgive me and understand the depths of my winter laziness.

For this manicure I used Orly Skinny Dip, OPI Alpine Snow, China Glaze Pool Party, and some stripers. I was so excited as soon as I saw Skinny Dip at Sally’s, it was destined to come home with me. I was not as excited when I started actually using it; it had a slight purple sheen to it (kinda like Avon Lagoon but with an obviously darker base color). The color almost has a matte finish too, which I was totally not expecting or wanting from this color.

 

 

Think Spring nails

 

With the help of my amazing top coat I was able to get shiny nails despite the weird semi-matte blue. I mixed the China Glaze with white to tone down its crazy pinkness. I also painted my toes this color and they are hard to look at; the color is so bright I can see my toes through my socks.

 

 

The white really toned the pink down believe it or not

 

These nails were downright distracting to have; the colors were so bright that I kept looking at them. It was fun to have such Springy nails when we got a bunch of snow; I liked how much they didn’t match the weather. Hopefully if I keep doing Spring nails then Spring will actually come, fingers crossed. J

Pins for Paws Bowling nails

On Sunday I got to volunteer for the local animal shelter in one of the most fun ways possible; my work had two teams at the Pins for Paws event so I got to bowl for puppies. I’m a terrible bowler, like really bad, I bowled a 68 my first game and a 79 during the second game (I got a strike!). I always have fun bowling even though I’m horrible at it (no offense to anyone reading this and thinking that I bowl better than them). I was very worried about breaking a nail while I was bowling and my fears were not helped when someone said “how can you wear those? You are going to break them all off!” This comment was met with my standard “they are real” and “OMG why would you say that?!?!?!” I’m at bit ashamed to say that I actually said the letters O, M, and G. Somehow I managed to not break any of my nails and I’m going to say that is why my game suffered.

For this manicure I decided to do paws (again) but to give them a bowling theme so they matched the event. I used China Glaze Rich & Famous and Gothic Lolita, OPI Alpine Snow, DS Radiance, and Deutsch You Want Me Baby? and Orly Liquid Vinyl.

Pins for Paws nails

I’m terrible at painting nails all white, I don’t know if I put on the coats too thick or don’t do enough of them, but they always look terrible, like chunky streaky messes. I also hate how all white nails look on me, but this might be because I can’t seem to paint them right. Despite all my thoughts on white nails, I really wanted to have some of my nails look like bowling pins, so I went with this design. My thumb is supposed to look like a bowling ball but I’m not so sure how well that really turned out.

Bowling ball thumb?

These nails aren’t my favorite but they worked well for the event. I think it is odd that I have found a reason to do paw print nails three times since starting my blog. I must really like puppies J.

Avon Nail Stencil nails

Bacon is amazing and I love it. We bought half a pig, I named him Kubie, and he is the most delicious pig that had ever lived. Truth be told, I actually have no idea if Kubie was a boy pig or a girl pig (that’s city girl talk), what is important is that he didn’t die in vain; he died for his delicious bacon. Tonight for dinner Thad made me a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and fried in bacon grease. Let me say it again, I love bacon (and Thad). My fingers were all shiny with the bacon deliciousness and it was glorious.

I’m not really a fan of these nails, not that I want to sway you but just as a statement of fact. For this manicure I used OPI Alpine Snow and Rosy Future and China Glaze Rich & Famous (told you it was my new favorite). I also used Avon nail stencils that my mother in law gave me last weekend.

Oh how I hate you nail stencils

I hadn’t heard of the nails stencils before so being a 21^st century girl I Googled them right away. All the reviews said pretty much the same thing, they tear, and oh did they tear. I found them to be a great size and they were very easy to peel off the plastic sheet but as soon as you started pushing them onto your nail they tear like crazy. The directions say to leave the stencils on for 5-10 minutes before removing them; I didn’t listen to that direction but none of my issues seemed to be as a result.

Notice the red on my pointer finger

As if the tearing wasn’t annoying enough, part of the stencil got stuck in my polish and I couldn’t get it off (it’s the red smear). I yelled at the stencils so much so that my puppies were concerned for their mom’s sanity. I’m going to try more of them just to make sure, but right now I would give these nail stencils a big 0/5. I’m really disappointed in these nails because they could have been so cute, my right hand looks terrible because I tried to reuse the stencils and it was an epic fail. I wanted to repaint these nails right away but I’m forcing myself to wait until tomorrow so I can do my Valentine’s Day nails, hopefully I like them more. J

Dandelion nails

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

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

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

In the kitchen light

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

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

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