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.

Disney's Up nails

It isn’t very often that my family all gets together. We had the opportunity to all get together this weekend though to celebrate my parents’ 35^th anniversary and had a blast. In good Minnesota fashion there was way too much food, including an entire table of desserts. I parked myself right next to that table of deliciousness with my beer in hand and had myself a grand time. I have seven nieces and nephews on that side of the family; they are almost their own baseball team, although I’m not sure how well a 3 month old would be able to handle a baseball. It’s awesome to see all my brothers as dads, growing up they had the unspoken rule that they could tease me all they wanted but no one else better try it, and it is just cool to see them protecting their kids now.

I thought it would be cool to do nails for a love story since these were the nails I had at the anniversary party. I love the movie Up, it has such a cute love story (and yes it always makes me cry). For this manicure I used a crap ton of colors, Orly Lemonade, Mayhem Mentality, White Tips, and Skinny Dip, OPI You’re Such a Budapest, China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise, Mahogany Magic, and Pool Party, and Sally Hansen CSM Barracuda.

Disney's Up nails

I was very pleased with how these nails turned out. I wish I would have made the balloon strings a little darker, but besides that I’m very happy. These are the first nails I’ve ever done that I modified the design for my right hand, I just put clouds on my right thumb since the house was so hard to do in the first place.

The house is far from perfect but still pretty cute

I was really bummed when people didn’t immediately recognize what the design was supposed to be, but it was pretty cool when someone did. The nails were a big hit at the party and I got a lot of “you do that yourself?!?!” which I love. Overall I would say these were a success 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

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