Snow White nails

Right after we booked our Disney vacation I decided I wanted to try to see all the Disney animated movies that I had either only seen once or I hadn’t ever seen. This ended up being a much harder task than I originally thought. I’m still about 10 movies shy of seeing all of them (and by all of them I mean the main theatrical releases). Some of them are so obscure and no one seem to have them; however, this is a quest I will finish, you will not best me Disney animated classics. I really want to see the newest movie Frozen, it looks so cute and I just know after I watch it I will think of fun Frozen nails to do.

For this manicure I’m going to focus on the first Disney princess. I haven’t seen Snow White since I was a kid, but I remember it being kinda scary, especially when the wicked queen dresses as the old lady, sorry for the spoiler. For this manicure I used China Glaze Splish Splash, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, and Orly Liquid Vinyl.

Snow White nails

These nails looked way cooler in my head and I think part of the problem was that my red sucks. I really need to invest in a more saturated red, the Sally Hansen is a great color but it is very thin so it doesn’t work the way I want it to for nail art. The same can be said of my yellow striper but I don’t use yellow stripers enough for it to bother me like the red situation does. My problem is whenever I go to the store to buy a new solid red I end up buying some glittery fun red, and although that color is fun, it doesn’t replace the solid red like I need it to. Maybe I should put that on my Christmas list.

I keep finding myself singing to woodland creatures with these nails

This is the first time I’ve tried to do a French manicure with the curved line instead of a line that goes straight across, I used hole punch reinforcements as my guide instead of regular scotch tape. The reinforcements worked fine except they didn’t go all the way across on a few of my nails so I had to free hand the edges. Doing the curved line makes them look more feminine I think, I’m going to have to play around with these reinforcements more.

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

Peacock Feather nails

I had ever intention to blog the other night but my DVR had other plans. Without me knowing, my beautiful DVR quietly recorded three episodes of I Used to be Fat, don’t worry, I feel the appropriate amount of shame for being excited about a show on MTV. I love bad TV and this show is right up my alley, if you are unfamiliar with the show, it is about teens during the summer between high school and college. For the most part they have always been fat and this is their one chance to not be fat when they go off to college, I get way too into this show. I find myself cheering them on and when they try to give up I yell at them for squandering this amazing opportunity. So, yeah, basically what I’m saying is I watched three straight hours of a teenage-weight-loss-docudrama; I’m a very exciting lady.

My plan was for these nails to look like peacock nails, and I feel like I should mention that they looked way more like feathers in person than in pictures. For this manicure I used China Glaze Splish Splash and Turned up Turquoise, Sally Hansen CSM Gilty Pleasure, and Zoya Ray. Overall I think these turned out ok, but they certainly are far from my favorite.

Peacock Feather nails

I almost feel like the dark green was too shiny and that’s why the pictures didn’t turn out right, it’s super dark and shiny in person. This design would be way better on shorter nails and if I would have added a purple to it.

More exciting than peahen nails

I think it’s kinda funny that I don’t really like birds but I love bird motifs. I guess I think their looks are the best part of them. As soon as I painted these I wanted to repaint, it was only sheer laziness that caused them to not be changed immediately. Oh well, can’t win them all J

Striped nails

I’ve never been a huge fan of baseball. When I was a kid all my brothers were in little league and I remember being super bored at the games. My dad loved baseball so he would have us all go out to the ballpark on weekends and play as a team. Dad always gave me special rules so that I wouldn’t suck too bad, for instance I got five strikes and if after that I still didn’t hit the ball, he would throw the ball as if I had hit it and let me run to base. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure that I never hit the ball. What can I say? Sports aren’t in my blood, but nails are J

I did these nails for a Twins game this weekend. I didn’t want them to be too basebally (since as previously stated I’m not a huge fan) but I did still want them to be somewhat Twins themed. I found this idea online (cutepolish is amazing) and just had to do it right away. For this manicure I used OPI DS Radiance, China Glaze Splish Splash, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, and Orly White Tips. I’ve talked before about how much I hate white polish so I got this Orly to replace my OPI and it is so much better. I think it is most noticeable when you look at the coverage around my cuticles.

Striped nails

These nails were easy but required a lot of work. To do the stripes I used those dental flossers that you get from the drugstore. In order for the paint to stick to them you have to make sure to get the kind that are not ‘glide’, I of course only had that kind so I walked to Wallgreens, they were out, so I walked to CSV and there I found the flossers I needed. At this point I had already put in a lot of work and I hadn’t even started painting my nails!

I always seem to have dog hairs in my pictures

These nails made a much bigger mess than I thought they would, paint got on the plastic edges of the flosser so the paint then got all over the sides of my fingers. They also took a really long time, new paint had to be put on for each stripe and I did each color twice. I didn’t mind how long they took though because I was watching Wreck-it-Ralph and it was a really cute movie.

This makes them look more basebally

I really liked how these turned out and they make me want to do them in different colors, like all different shades of blue would be cool. Hope you liked them too 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

Galaxy nails

I’m not a fan of running - I’m the kind of girl that is built for comfort and not for speed. That being said, I’m also not a fan of my pants not fitting so I have been running at the gym. I may be in the minority on this, but I actually prefer to run on a treadmill to running outside. I’m not responsible enough to maintain a running pace when I’m outside; I require the treadmill to force me. I try to avoid running outside at all costs but my work hosted a 5k recently and I found myself in a situation where I was going to be running outside. I managed to survive the experience but I also burnt my forehead and got a heat rash in the process, oh well, at least my nails looked good.

I love these nails. I wanted to do galaxy nails for a while but I was worried that they would be too difficult or that I would mess them up and they would look like galactic vomit on my hands. The manicure ended up being super easy; they only took me about 30 minutes to do! For these nails I used China Glaze Splish Splash and Gothic Lolita, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light, OPI Alpine Snow, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. I’m not quite sure what happened to my Liquid Vinyl but it was like putting tar on my nails, it’s a good thing I covered it up almost completely.



Galaxy nails

I love when nails look really difficult to do when they are actually super easy (like my plaid nails). These were crazy easy to do, I started with my tar like black base, then used a normal makeup sponge to lightly sponge on blue, purple, then white. After some dots for stars and a light coat of glitter I had galaxy nails. If you are going to try these out (which you should) make sure to put your glitter coat on before your nails fully dry so that it can blend some of the paint together.



Do they remind you of a starry night?

I love these nails so much that as soon as I was done I was thinking of reasons I could do them again. It makes me want to try other sponge painting nails, and you thought sponge painting was just for the guest bathroom.  :)

Christmas Light nails

Some days require drinks after work, today was one of those days. There is something about the Christmas season that makes some people completely unreasonable. Any unpleasantness at work quickly fades away with the appearance of vodka. Tonight I spent my after work hours watching Coming to America and drinking Kinky and Sierra Mist. Kinky is this bright pink, super girly vodka that is flavored with grapefruit. It’s one of those drinks that you regret right away because you just know it’s too sweet. Coming to America on the other hand is hilarious and I forgot what funny Eddie Murphy was like. With that kind of excitement it is surprising I managed to blog.

For this manicure I tried to do Christmas lights, tried is a good word for how these nails turned out. It’s a shame nail blog pictures are taken so up close, these nails actually look pretty cool when you see them from a distance, but alas, their up close shots are not all that I would want them to be.

It was a solid attempt

As you can see I used quite a few colors here, Ulta Sun-Sational, China Glaze Splish Splash and Running in Circles, OPI Last Minute Shopper and Alpine Snow, and Butter Fairy Cake. Oh yes, you read that right, I now own Butter. I got a set of three super fun glitters for an early Christmas gift from a friend. The application with the manicure didn’t turn out so hot though, I wanted the glitter to be a light layer on top (to cover up the insane number of bubbles I had) but it ended up being too dense of a glitter so my pinkie just looks crazy instead.

The glitter is cool, but this was a bad use for it

This manicure had issues from the start, but the worst of it was air bubbles, damn you air bubbles. Air bubbles have a few major causes, shaking polish before you use it, and too think of layers are the biggest culprits. In my case I got so many bubbles because I’m almost out of base coat and the process of getting it out put way too much air in the polish. I’m going to take this as a really good reason to buy new base coat, any suggestions?

I want to be able to take pictures outside again

I wouldn’t say I hate these nails but I would say that I’m really looking forward to repainting them. They seem like a waste since I don’t have much Christmas nail time left.