Disney Princess nails

Every once in a while I do nails that I simultaneously love and hate; these are some of those nails. As soon as I did them I thought they were so cute and I was very happy with how they turned out. A day later, however, I started to think that they were staring at me, and by the day after that I had to take them off because they were creeping me out too much. They kept staring at me while I was typing at work, like ten creepy little kids, always watching, always judging. For some reason, I’m don’t like it when my nails could be the subject of a scary movie.

General creepiness aside, these nails are super cute and they really turned out just like I pictured them. For this manicure I used a ton of different polishes: Orly Prelude to a Kiss and Liquid Vinyl, OPI Alpine Snow, Ulta Sun-Sational, Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up, China Glaze Turned up Turquoise, Zoya Louise, and various stripers.

Disney Princess nails

I think these nails would be better on shorter nails; some of my princess (especially on my right hand) didn’t have the right face proportions because my nails are so long. To be honest, my right hand looked like a bunch of jacked up step sisters and not the real princess at all. I always seem to have issues getting my edges right when I use that Orly, it isn’t a forgiving color at all.

Let’s just pretend there aren’t a bunch of technical issues with these nails

These are definitely the kind of nails that look better from far away; the closer you get to them the creepier they are. I think Jasmine turned out the best and I bet that is partly because she is the smallest one. I want to try this art out on someone with shorter nails and nail beds, perhaps in two years when I can paint my god daughter’s nails I will try it out on her, but perhaps it is way too early to be planning such things. Hope you are enjoying my Disney nails while I’m enjoying Disney J

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.

Little Mermaid nails

It is getting to be my favorite nail time of the year but I’m starting to think I may not have enough time to do all the nails that I want to do. Between Halloween, fall, and Disney nails, I have a lot of plans and I’m simply running out of time (68 days till Disney!). Oh, so many plans, so little time. I guess I just need to paint my nails more J

I want to do different nails for all the Disney Princesses, so I figured I should start with my favorite. I have always loved The Little Mermaid; I had a huge poster of it on the back of my bedroom door when I was a little kid. For this manicure I used Orly Prelude to a Kiss, Liquid Vinyl, and White Tips, China Glaze Gothic Lolita, Turned Up Turquoise, and Mahogany Magic, and Sally Hansen CSM All Fired Up and Mermaid’s Tale. I didn’t realize how many colors I used until I just wrote them all out, wow.

Little Mermaid nails

I found some loose glitter pieces that worked perfect as a mermaid tail on my pinky, they were super annoying to have on though, my hair got all caught up in it while I was washing my hair, not a pleasant experience. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do for all my nails and after I did the shell bra it occurred to me that it was a little weird that I focused on Ariel’s chest, I’m sure she will forgive me.

I’m not even sure how I bent my thumb like that

My favorite nail is the Ariel on my thumb, I think she turned out really cute and it makes me want to do a nail like that for all the princesses. I’m going to have to come up with other things to add to them to make them all look different; otherwise all the blondes will look pretty similar.

Not only is today 68 days till Disney, it’s also my 5^th anniversary. I’m super lucky to be married to Thad, he is an awesome husband, and I’m pretty sure I could be married to him forever J Happy anniversary honey!

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

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

Nail Tragedy

Tragedy struck today, not real tragedy but rather nail related tragedy struck today. It’s super rainy today, which means that it is super icy today. As I went to open the side door on the garage, I slipped and broke my nails. Left pointer got it the worst; she is broken to a sad little nub. Left middle and ring also were harmed. I have to cut all my nails off. It’s a sad but true fact. In case you were wondering, it hurt really badly and I cursed so loudly that Thad could hear me in the running car with the radio on. It’s my first major break in a year, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

For this manicure I had no idea what I was going to do before I started. I just got out all my green polish and just stared at them until I thought of something. I used Sally Hansen CSM Parrot as the base color, it is my favorite green that I have, I really dig the color and the formula is my favorite of any Sally Hansen. For the dots I used Zoya Ray and China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. The China Glaze ended up looking really blue, it’s a neon so the color isn’t usually very true to bottle when I layer it but I promise it looks green in the bottle. I didn’t take pictures of my nails before the ‘incident’ so if you have a weak stomach for totally damaged nails I would look away.

I don’t always break my nails, but when I do I break the shit out of them

 

I’m still not sure what the design is supposed to be, but I like it. I almost think they look like fish eggs, or peas. I guess you now know that I have never seen fish eggs, or peas apparently. I could have easily made them into shamrocks or four leaf clovers if I had thought about it more, but instead they are just some random dots, cute, but random.

I’m not sure how I messed my cuticles up that much

I kinda feel silly about being so bummed about my nails, I always tell people that complain that their nails don’t grow like mine that short nails can be really cute too, I guess I get to try that theory out. I feel like I can do even tackier nails with them being short, although I wonder how I could make my nails tackier. Well, I’m off to paint my nails; they need a little TLC after the day they’ve had.