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.

Blue Gradient nails

It’s my birthday! But these are not my birthday nails, I know it’s confusing. I write blogs ahead of time and at the time of writing this I haven’t actually even painted my birthday nails, it’s a crazy world we live in and I hope this revelation doesn’t make your mind explode. These are actually the nails I had for my friend’s baby shower, she is having a boy so I figured that blue nails were appropriate. I get so nervous at baby showers, everyone was super nice but I feel like I’m wearing a giant neon sign that says “I don’t like children”. Babies can sense fear, this is a well established fact, and there are always babies at baby showers, they just glare at me with a knowing look. Well, at least my nails looked cute.

This manicure slightly redeemed the sponging disaster that was my last sponging attempt. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Barracuda, Orly Skinny Dip, and China Glaze Splish Splash. I did a base of the lightest blue (Barracuda) and then sponged the two darker blues on top of that.

Blue Gradient nails

I’m not sure what the mysterious black dots on my index finger are from, if I were forced to guess I would say it is probably mascara. I guess that’s how I roll. I really liked how these turned out, doing a base coat of the lightest color worked out really well, it made the other blues stand out and made it so I had more overall nail coverage than I usually do with gradients.

In case you were wondering this is my favorite hoodie

I’m kinda surprised with how well the pictures turned out, while I was taking them I thought they would be too shiny and not show the color change but I guess camera magic helped me out.

It’s a boy!

These nails ended up being great for the baby shower, much better than the last ones. Congrats on your future baby boy Gayle J

Wizard of Oz nails

I don’t have a fun way to start this blog so I’m just going to talk about my nails. I have a post it that I keep a list of nail ideas on and chose this one off the list to do. Without thinking about it I ended up doing two movie themed nails in a row, perhaps I can think of more and do a whole series of them. I feel like I should mention that I don’t actually like the movie Wizard of Oz, the monkeys scared me as a kid (that’s a lie the monkeys still scare the shit out of me). Despite the terrifying monkeys I thought the movie would make for a good muse for my nails and I was right.

These nails are distractingly gaudy, they may even be ugly. For this manicure I used quite a few colors, Orly Skinny Dip, Liquid Vinyl, and White Tips, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired UP, Gilty Pleasure, and Butterscotch, China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Paper Chasing, and OPI DS Radiance.

Wizard of Oz nails

My pinkie is supposed to be the Emerald City but I think it looks more like a pineapple, I guess this means if I ever do Spongebob nails I know how to make his pineapple under the sea. The red nail is supposed to be for Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, I was so happy when I found the red for it and then saw the name was Ruby Pumps so I’m pretty sure that was meant to be.

I’m not sure where the tiny divots on my Tin Man came from

My other nails are for the Tin Man, Dorothy’s dress, and the yellow brick road. I bought Butterscotch for Winnie the Pooh nails, but I thought it made for a good road.I was really happy with how the Tin Man nails turned out, since he was my favorite I had to include something for him.

I liked three pictures, so you get three pictures of these

These nails are fun but not very flattering; they are a bit too bold even for me. I think if I were going to do them again I would choose just two designs and not five different ones (I’d keep the pineapple of course). Now let’s see if I can come up with another movie theme, perhaps one that doesn’t distract me so much J

 

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

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

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