Grumpy Cat nails

I’m sorry for the long wait to see my birthday nails, but I hope they are worth the wait J. I was thinking for a long time about what nails I wanted to do to commemorate my 30^th birthday and it wasn’t until a few days before the big day that I finally settled on the design. My fellow nail lover friend Patty is the one who suggested I do Grumpy Cat nails, and I can’t think of better nails to have when turning 30.

I surprised myself with how little flash these nails had but I ended up liking the solid brown next to the designed nails. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Barracuda, OPI Brisbane Bronze, Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie, and Pompeii Purple, and Orly Liquid Vinyl and White Tips.

Grumpy Cat nails

To create the adorable yet grumpy kitty on my middle finger I used a corner piece of makeup sponge and sponged on the white first. The triangular shape of the sponge helped define her ears. I did two layers of the white before I sponged on the brown; I always forget how much I love this brown!

Nothing says turning 30 like a disgruntled kitty on your middle finger

To get her tiny angry mouth I used my smallest dotting tool and used a stippling method to tap the color on. My original idea was to put a party hat on her but she took so long to do that I didn’t want to risk messing her up. To make it a little more birthday themed I put balloons on my thumb and pinkie. My right hand has balloons on the pinkie, middle, and thumb.

 

I can’t believe I missed her at the state fair

I had this manicure when I went to get a facial after my birthday and I got asked one of my favorite nail questions by the salon lady. She asked if I paint them before I put them on, I’m sure a loser that I love being able to say ‘no, actually they are real’. I hope my birthday nails were worth the wait and that you love Grumpy Cat as much as I do J

essie - Braziliant

I can’t call my nails short anymore. I had to buy new files so I could shorten them, they still aren’t as long as they were before the incident, but I think I might like them more now, they are a good length. Just because they grew out doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing ridiculous tacky manicures on them. I keep wanting to do nice simple nails, and then as soon as I sit down to paint I just go crazy. If I’m not distracted by my nails I feel like I didn’t really do my job.

A few months ago one of my friends gave me a color that screamed summer, I’ve been waiting to use it until it got warmer, but after how this spring has been going I decided to just cave and use it despite the cold weather. For this manicure I used essie Braziliant, Orly Prelude to a Kiss, OPI Brisbane Bronze, Sally Hansen CSM Parrot, and Ulta Oh!.

essie Braziliant

I love the base color in this manicure; Braziliant was exactly what I wanted it to be. I sometimes forget how good the formula on essie can be since I don’t own very much of it. The lighter colors seem to be runnier, but this color had the perfect formula, and looked amazing after two coats. I’m not sure what the green blob things were supposed to be, when I started painting my nails I wanted to do a pattern that wasn’t flowers but then they ended up looking like blob flowers.

Are they flowers or amoebas?

On my ring finger I used lose glitter and it looked pretty cool, in a 3D kind of way. The glitter didn’t wear well at all though and most of that glitter is now in my bed and hair. My favorite part of this manicure is the little Orly colored dots. They make the whole manicure look kind of retro, like a kitchen from the 70s.

My ring finger looks fuzzy

You can tell by looking at these nails that I didn’t really have a plan when I started. I love the color combination but the overall design isn’t one of my favorites. Pretty sure these aren’t going to last long, but that’s ok, I like painting my nails 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.

China Glaze - Sex on the Beach

It rained yesterday in Minnesota, it was so weird. I mean really, rain in January, bananas. We now have no snow in our backyard which means that you can see all the little gifts the dogs have been depositing throughout the yard this winter. It is disgusting. I’m not a huge fan of cold weather, but I want the snow back so that I don’t have to look at frozen dog poop. Being a dog owner is so glamorous.

I did these nails on Tuesday but had a super busy week and blah, blah, blah, I’m blogging today. I really didn’t know what I wanted to paint so I left it up to my precious little angle puppies (yes the same dogs that left my yard looking like a bomb field, that is if bombs were made of poo). They decided that I needed to do paw prints and bones. I had already done paw prints before, but who was I to argue with talking dogs? For this manicure I used China Glaze Gothic Lolita and Sex on the Beach and OPI Brisbane Bronze. This is the first time I’ve really used Sex on the Beach and to be perfectly honest I had totally forgotten I owned it until I saw it in my stash.

It’s a dog party on my nails

I’m not super impressed with Sex on the Beach and I don’t think it is just because it has a terrible name. The color seems like it wants to be a dupe of OPI Cozu-melted in the Sun, but it is a little too pink to be a true dupe. For the first time I actually like the color in pictures more than I do in person. The color went on great, like most China Glaze, but definitely required three coats in order to be opaque enough.

The natural light makes the color really shimmer

After using Brisbane Bronze again, I was reminded just how much I love this color. I think it is so pretty all on its own but it also works great in nail art.

Bow-Wow

Classy nails are nice, but I really enjoy having fun/silly nails. You can’t help but smile when you look down at your hands and you see paw prints.

Polar Bear nails

Happy New Year! Thad and I are not really party animals so our New Year plans included going grocery shopping and getting to bed at a decent hour. We did have a fun couple of days prior to New Year’s Eve though; we took a trip to the big city to hang out with family. Because I’m kinda weird, I took polish with me and did my sister in law’s nails. For her manicure I used OPI Brisbane Bronze, China Glaze Glitter Goblin, and Sally Hansen CSM Gilty Pleasure. Her nails are so much smaller than mine that it took a few tries before I picked something that worked. She seemed to like them and loved the SV topcoat because of its awesome dry time.

 

A well deserved manicure for a busy mama

I did my nails on Saturday before we left for our trip. I wanted fun going out nails but instead chose to do the opposite and did adorable cutesy nails. For my manicure I used Avon Lagoon, China Glaze For Audrey, Fast Track, and Luxe and Lush, OPI Alpine Snow and DS Radiance, and Orly Liquid Vinyl.

Nothing says party like a polar bear

I had so much fun doing these nails and I love how the bears turned out, I think Fast Track was perfect for the bear’s face. I tried a different snowflake pattern than I used last time and I’m not sold on it, I think I liked my first snowflakes better. I used matte topcoat on my pointer finger and for the first time it didn’t really make my polish look matte. I don’t know if that was as much because of the sparkly dots on top or because the blue color is a shimmer.

How can you not love this bear?

They are not party nails, but they are super fun. These nails make me want to try other animal nails. At the end of my last post I mentioned baked potato nails and was told I needed to clarify what I meant by that. An awesome way to remove glitter polish is to dip cotton into remover and then wrap your nail in tin foil with the cotton on the nail. After waiting about 10 minutes the polish comes right off with none of the normal “I hate glitter” frustration. When your nails are all wrapped up I think it looks like you have five little potatoes on your hand.

Baked potato nails and gray sweatpants

If you have never used the method I highly recommend it, not only does it work well but it also looks pretty awesome and makes your hand useless for 10 minutes which is always fun.

Reindeer nails

I can’t believe Christmas is a week from tomorrow. I have always loved Christmas; I’m the type of person that wakes up at four in the morning to open presents Christmas morning. My parents had the rule that we couldn’t open presents until coffee was made, that didn’t really slow us down, our presents were usually open before the sun came up. One of my favorite Christmas gifts ever was the year Santa brought me a Barbie and the Rockers Barbie. She was amazing, with bright blue eye shadow and a silver mini skirt. That year we lost power due to an ice storm and our brand new puppy (also a Christmas gift) found Barbie and chewed her hand off in the darkness of the power outage. I was not super pleased with Mollie, but she was so cute I forgave her pretty quickly.

I have wanted to do these nails for a while but wanted to wait to do them closer to Christmas. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance?, OPI Alpine Snow, Brisbane Bronze, and Last Minute Shopper, China Glaze Mahogany Magic and Luxe and Lush, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. 

Rudolph says hi

After I did one reindeer I knew that doing ten would take way too long so I decided to do different designs on the other nail. I’m really pleased with how the dots turned out on my pinkie, it is the most evenly spaced I have been able to do dots. The middle finger ended up red because my red stripes were so bad I had to paint the whole nails red to cover it up, oops. I absolutely love my thumbs; I painted them pale pink and then used the Luxe and Lush on top. No picture can capture how awesome that glitter is, they are huge irregular flat glitter pieces that look holographic when the light hits them.  It was kind of a pain to put on but I think that was mostly due to the fact that this bottle has the most messed up brush ever.

I have never had a glitter like it before

I’m really happy with these nails; if I were to do reindeer again I would make the black outline thinner and leave more room for his antlers. I enjoy the variety of this manicure; they are entertaining to look at.

The polish in the bottle is Last Minute Shopper

Hope you enjoyed them as much as I did! I’m running out of time to fit all my Christmas ideas in, I need to paint my nails more J.