Vegas nails

I have such a good excuse for not blogging recently, I was in Vegas!! (and I was lazy after I got back) I got to go to Vegas with my sister-in-law for my best friend’s wedding. It was such a beautiful wedding, Jackie looked amazing and the whole trip was a blast. I’m so happy my sister was able to come with me too, we have never been on a trip together so it could have turned out very poorly but we ended up being really compatible travel partners. At least I think we did, maybe she is telling everyone how annoying I am. I burned my back so bad in Vegas, I have never burned myself that bad before, it was horrible. My back still looks like a lizard L

I’m going to skip one manicure because I really want to post my Vegas nails; I had these all planned out for weeks before we left and they turned out almost exactly how I wanted. For this manicure I used Color Club Status Update, essie Matte About You, China Glaze Prism and Luxe and Lush, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light, and Butter Fairy Cake and The Black Knight. So much glitter! These nails were crazy sparkly under the bar lights in Vegas and I loved them.

 

Vegas nails

I took these pictures after I got back from my trip, which means that they were on their 6^th day when I took them. I’m really impressed with how well they held up, I did do a little touch ups on the tips while in Vegas but really not that much. By the end of our trip I was so tired of these nails I couldn’t wait to take them off. I can’t remember the last time I had my nails painted one way for this long!

So sparkly!

To get the glitter bomb effect I did thin layers of a bunch of different glitters. I started with the Butter glitters because they had the finest and densest glitter and ended with the polish that had the largest glitter pieces. I’m really happy with the overall look of the glitter but I think if I were going to do it again I would have made it come down a little bit further on my nails.

 

I’m pleased with how these photographed

I think these nails were perfect for Vegas; they were just the glitter bombs I needed to have while paying too much for booze. J

Nail Striper Overload nails

One side effect of having a nail blog is that people love to send me pictures of nails they find online that they want me to try. Quite often the nails they show me are so far beyond anything I could ever hope to do, but sometimes I’m able to try the design. I never like to do nails just like in the picture; it just doesn’t seem as much fun to do them exactly the same. I got the idea for these nails from a picture my sister in law found on Pinterest. I have a Pinterest account but I don’t allow myself to use it, I feel like as soon as I started it would suck hours of my life and I already have enough activities that keep me lazy and on the couch.

I love these nails, I kept them on for far longer than I normally do, I just didn’t want to take them off! For this manicure I used OPI You’re Such a Budapest, essie Matte About You, and a crap ton of stripers. At first I was just going to do my ring finger as an accent nail but I ended up loving the design so much I wanted it on all my nails.

Nail Striper Overload nails

I had no idea what to call these nails; I almost think they look like feathers. These were so easy to do, it’s the type of nail art that you just can’t mess up. I used about 10 different stripers and just randomly put lines in, to make the design look fuller, I used all the stripers twice each so the end result was very layered.

Love the matte on You’re Such a Budapest

My planed Vegas nails are similar to these and after I saw how much I loved these, it makes me even more excited to Vegas my nails up. I can’t get over how much I love matte finish manicures combined with glossy elements, it’s like nail heaven.

Of course you get three pictures of these!

I hope you like these nails as much as I do. I don’t have the source picture anymore to post it, but it is from nailsaurus (who is amazing by the way). My trip to Vegas is coming so quickly, I hope my nails live up to all the hype J

Glitter Wedding nails

I love weddings; I guess you could say I’m a romantic. I just think it is awesome to be part of someone’s best day. I had an amazing wedding, it wasn’t fancy but it was the best day of my life. For my wedding I got my first French manicure, my nails looked wonderful and for the first time I had a bunch of people ask me if they were fake (for some strange reason I love when people think my nails are fake). I did a very classic (read boring) French manicure for my wedding, but really there are a bunch of different options for classy wedding day nails. Since wedding season is in full swing I thought it would be fun to do some wedding nails. Hope you enjoy J

For my first wedding manicure I decided to do a twist on the classic French, let me just say right now that I love these nails. This manicure used Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance?, essie Matte About You,  Butter Fairy Cake, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light, and China Glaze Luxe and Lush and Glitter Goblin. Holy sparkles Batman, that’s a lot of glitter!

These nails say “I do”

I love how the matte looks on the light pink and how well it goes with all the glitter, it created such a cool texture and overall feeling. If I were to do these nail again I wouldn’t use the glitter that has the orange in it (Glitter Goblin) it doesn’t look bad but I think it takes away from all the other sparkly glitter.

Perhaps they are too fancy for work

I love doing glitter gradients, they look so cool and they don’t require the same precision that a regular French does. I also really like having the glitter on the back ends instead of the tips; it makes these nails very different while also looking very pretty. So, what do you think? Do you think these nails are good enough for a wedding?

Matte Black Tiger nails

I’m a huge fan of Sally’s, I’ll pause a moment for you to recover from what I’m sure is great shock and surprise. I had to go to Sally’s this weekend because I was running low on SV base coat and I had a $5 coupon burning a hole in my purse. While at Sally’s I was perusing the nail polish when I couldn’t help but over hear another customer ask the sales lady for advice on water marbling. The sales lady didn’t really seem too excited about water marbling and I couldn’t help but completely butt into their conversation and offer my unasked for advice. It makes it a little better that I happened to work with the other customer, a fact that I wasn’t aware of until after I jumped in like an interrupting goat. I get way too excited about nail art; I think I may have frightened them with my enthusiasm, oops.

This is the manicure that has been on OPI’s main site for what seems like months now, ironically I didn’t use any OPI polish when I did it, sorry OPI. For this manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl and essie Matte About You. I’m so happy I got a new bottle of Liquid Vinyl I didn’t realize how bad mine had gotten until I used new polish.

Matte Black Tiger nails

These nails are much more subtle than my normal nails; a couple people even thought that I just had plain black nails until they saw them up close. I had a really hard time taking pictures of them without the stripes completely disappearing. To do these nails I used a striper to put glossy black lines on a matte black base. I went to bed too soon after I was done and since I didn’t have topcoat to protect my nails I ended up with the lovely sheet marks you see in the picture.

It’s really hard to stay up long enough for nails to fully dry

I thought these nails were just ok, they aren’t the type that I’m desperate to do again or anything. I did like having nails that weren’t so gaudy for once, but I’m starting to think that gaudy nails are more me. 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

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