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

Spider and Web nails

The McRib is back. Since I found out three days ago I have been thinking about that delicious meat-like-substance nonstop. I have a complicated relationship with the McRib, as soon as it comes out every year I essentially drool over the thought of shoving it in my face until I finally break down and actually buy it. After I get to live out the ‘shove it in my face’ fantasy I immediately regret my decision and feel like I’m going to vomit McRib bits everywhere. Even though I know how this adventure will end, I’m desperate to get a McRib and taste the sweet mechanically formed meat. It’s like a question mark wrapped in barbeque sauce.

The McRib has nothing to do with this manicure, but I’m pretty sure a McRib manicure would be awesome. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Anenome Of Mine, Orly Liquid Vinyl and White Tips, and China Glaze Riveting. Riveting has to be the best Halloween orange ever, it is so sparkly and fun, I almost forgot how much I liked it!

Spider and Web nails

I know I did a similar design last Halloween but I liked it so much I really wanted to do them again. At least this year I got more legs on my spider, still not the correct number, but I’m two legs closer. I decided to put black rhinestones on the webs and really like how it ended up looking, almost like there are little spiders on the web.

Sunlight is this orange’s friend

I really like how these nails turned out, just simple Halloween fun. It’s kind of funny how much I like spider nail art when I hate real spiders, but then again spiders are evil creatures, hell bent on my destruction, so it makes sense that I don’t like them in person.

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

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

Purple Rhinestone nails

Thad is a huge Vikings fan, huge. The movie Fever Pitch really resonated with me, except that Thad is not exceptionally annoying like Jimmy Fallon. This last weekend the Vikings had a fan appreciation day at the Metrodome, obviously we went. I like football, but mostly I watch it because Thad loves it so much. His excitement at fan day was infectious. We got to take a tour of the Metrodome and when we went into the locker room I thought Thad was going to lose it. He has wanted to be in the Vikings locker room since he was about 5 so it didn’t really matter that the locker room was kinda crappy or that this is going to be the last season that they are even in that building. I love that he can be so passionate about something.

Of course my nails had to dress appropriately for Vikings day, for this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Anenome of Mine (I would like to point out that is how the polish name is printed on the bottle, I didn’t just spell it wrong for fun) and a crap ton of gold rhinestones. These nails took for freakin forever and I hated these nails, they were not at all what I intended.

Purple rhinestone nails

At first my plan was to do matte finish tips with the gold rhinestones, the Vikings just unveiled their new uniforms which include matte finish helmets, so I thought it would be a cool touch. I have never had any issues with essie Matte About You before, but it really didn’t work right on the purple. It left a bunch of white spots and just got the purple kinda chunky. To make matters worse, I use topcoat to adhere my rhinestones and it made little glossy streaks in the matte finish, so that is why you are not looking at badass purple matte tips.

I don’t even know what to say about my pointer finger

The topcoat went on like a bitch and just made the whole thing look weird and horrible. What I hated most about these nails was also the weirdest thing about them. You know how some sounds or the feeling of something can make your teeth hurt? Well, these nails made my teeth hurt. Every time the rhinestones rubbed against something it made my teeth hurt and was beyond annoying. It doesn’t make any sense though because my rhinestone holly manicure didn’t do that. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to get these nails off and I avoided showing them to anyone. I’m going to have to redeem myself with my next Vikings nails.

Purple Ombre nails

Spring is finally here! After snowing for the last three weeks I think we are finally done with the snow and spring is here. I missed green so much, and being warm. I wore a dress yesterday, I love wearing dresses when it’s warm since I hate wearing shorts. I think it was just about the perfect Minnesota weekend. We cleared off the leaves from the patio and I spent a fair amount of time outside today, soaking up vitamin D and remembering that Minnesota does in fact have other seasons besides winter. I hope everyone else had as wonderful of a weekend as I did, it was worth the wait J

For this manicure I felt the urge to do something different so I tried my hand at ombre again. I have done a manicure like this once before and I wouldn’t say it was a success, this time turned out much better. For these nails I used OPI You’re Such a Budapest, China Glaze Gothic Lolita, and Sally Hansen CSM Anenome of Mine.

Purple Ombre

These nails are also sometimes called gradients but I like the word ombre more, even though my Microsoft Word isn’t putting the fun accent mark on the e and I don’t know how to put it on myself. To create the faded look I put the colors on a makeup sponge in three lines and then dabbed it on my nail, then I put on top coat pretty quickly so it smeared it a bit. The smearing didn’t work out so well on my pinkie but the other nails turned out pretty good.

The sponging method didn’t provide for good tip wear

I don’t know what happened to my middle finger, perhaps I was drinking too much, I’m going to guess that the sponge had it out for my middle finger and just decided to deposit a ton of dark purple right at the end. These nails were annoying because I immediately chipped one of them on my right hand and I had no way to really touch it up since the color was mixed and not just out of the bottle. They also annoyed me because they looked so much better from far away than up close but no one looks at your nails from far away (not my nails anyway).

Picture from further away, disregard the filthy windowsill

These nails were far from perfect, but they were lots of fun to do. Next time I want to try to transition from two different colors (like yellow to orange) instead of doing shades of the same color. I imagine it will be tricky to not make it vomit colored in the middle but I think it would be worth a shot.

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.