Flowers, flowers, flowers!

I love flowers as it is, and with it being spring and all, I've been loving painting roses onto my nails! It's so easy and I love the look of them. Last week I did these roses over OPI's "Planks A Lot" (from their Pirates of the Caribbean collection!) and I think they turned out nicely.

Then yesterday I painted the roses over newspaper nails! The newsprint transfers over to nails like a temporary tattoo would, all you have to do is press it on with rubbing alcohol for about 10 seconds. :)

Expect to see a lot more paint jobs like this in the near future!

This one was named "Pink Merengue" by my friend Matt. I started by doing a makeup sponge gradient with three different shades of pink (from lightest to darkest; Essie's "Baby's Breath", Wet n' Wild's "Tickled Pink", and Sally Hansen's "Bubblegum Pink"), and after that dried, I stamped the lines on top. I liked the look of this one, but I have a hard time doing so much without messing it up at least once. :(

Having not updated this in quite some time, I feel the need to apologize. So...I apologize.

Here's a few pictures of recent manicures I've done:

These are my Dexter nails! If you're a fan, you'll know that these are based on a victim of the infamous Ice Truck Killer:

These are more subtle than the Dexter nails, but no less cool. I love this color. It's Nubar's "Absolute", and I highly recommend it (I think I'm going to use this color for future Cinderella-themed nails!):

These next ones I am very proud of. I think this is one of the nicest-looking marbles I've ever done. I love pastels!

And these I call my Dinosaur Nails! I used a dark green base and put two coats of Nubar 2010 on top:

I just today did a gradient, but I'll wait until tomorrow to post it because it still needs some cleaning up!

Yesterday I did Beauty and the Beast nails! Seeing as it's my favorite Disney movie (and I've been obsessed with Disney for the past few days), I felt it was appropriate.

I initially painted my nails with a couple coats with China Glaze's "Lighthouse", which is a bright, sparkly gold-yellow.

I felt it wasn't enough princess-y sparkle for me, so I added a coat of China Glaze's "Ultamate Holiday" (and yes, "ultimate" is spelled that way for some reason), which I cannot find a picture of. It's fine, gold, prismatic glitter and it's just beautiful!

So I think I'm gonna do nails based on another Disney movie next, any suggestions?

Move over, raindrops on roses.

Gradients are my new favorite thing. Honestly, I don't think I have ever tried something for the first time with a result that came out as nicely as my first-ever two-color gradient did.

Look at that. I was in awe of how well I did. I'm surprised I didn't jump up and start belting out Tiny Tim's "Living in the Sunlight". Incredible. And all I used was a makeup sponge. Click here to see the tutorial I used.

I ended up doing it again a couple days later, except I used pink and blue to make my nails look like cotton candy (my apologies for the bad picture quality, it's a cell phone picture again). :)

Bonus picture of the dot gradient I did last night! It looks both like confetti and speckled Easter eggs, which was perfect because Easter's right around the corner and my boyfriend Taylor turned 20 today!

I had a very difficult time deciding what to do with my nails yesterday. Like, a heart-wrenching, frustrating, skin-peelingly difficult time. It was bad.

I finally decided to stamp. It's easy and almost always comes out nicely. This is all I use to stamp:



Note the credit card; I use that instead of the scraper that came with my Konad kit. It works just as well and doesn't scratch up the plates.

I ended up stamping Sally Hansen's "Fuchsia Power" onto a nude color from Forever 21. I think it went well.



UNTIL IT GOT A BUNCH OF CHIPS IN IT.

MAN.

So I haven't updated in a while. Sue me.

My ultra-sassiness is part of my mystique.

Over the past week, I've only done a few manicures (listen to me, only a few. I have an addiction, I know), and all were quite tame, nothing out of the ordinary. The white-shatter-over-coral manicure I did after the marbling I did turned out nicely, but I think I could have left the coral without the shatter. I got the shatter from 5 Below for 2 or 3 dollars, and it shatters nicely, better than Sally Hansen, I find, but still not as well as OPI. I wish OPI shatters weren't nine dollars. And I wish I wasn't broke and jobless.

Sorry for the poor picture quality, this is from my phone.

The next manicure I did was Galaxy Nails. I decided against the typical "giant white stripe in the middle" variation and went for something more subtle. Using a napkin instead of a makeup sponge works better for the two shimmers used to create the "galaxy" aspect. This was too easy to do, and it took no time at all!

Now, on Friday I had a consultation with a nail school (the Salon Professional Academy in Elgin) because I want to attend their nail tech program in the fall. I did light blue with a marbled accent nail. I didn't want to look too desperate.

And I currently put OPI's Black Shatter over OPI's "Warm and Fozzie" for today. I think it looks like a giraffe!


Next time I won't wait so long to update. That was exhausting.

"I need to stop painting my nails every day" is something I WOULD say if I actually agreed with my mother. Or father. Or all my friends. So until I agree with them and/or my nails fall completely off, I will continue to paint my nails as often as I darn well please.

Last night, we had about 11 people over at our house for a get-together (after going out for some celebratory St. Patrick's Day Lou Malnati's). I ended up doing four people's nails last night! I wish I had more pictures of my fabulous work, but the only one I have is this crappy one from my phone:

They totally loved their manicures. Lydia's are the silver with roses, and Samantha's are the blue ones. I also marbled Chris' ring fingernails and I stamped white leaves onto seafoam green on Paige's nails. Then I did mine, which were marbled purple and very, very, very (almost dangerously) light pink (the purple being OPI's "Planks A Lot" and the pink being Essie's "Baby's Breath"). I then put China Glaze's "Fairy Dust" over them.

I wish I could say that this lasted longer than 24 hours, but alas, it did not. I did my mom's nails earlier today and ended up re-doing my own as well. I currently have on my nails a white shatter over a pink coral color. I will likely upload pictures of this tomorrow.

On another note, I am SO happy that St. Patrick's Day is over so I can use colors other than green. HOORAY FOR AN EARLY SPRING!

Oh, trusty Nubar 2010.

My other mani chipped. Within a day, of course. So, rather than re-doing it, I decided to try something else.



Thank the lord for flakies. One could put this one (Nubar's "2010") over any color, literally ANY COLOR, and it would make it look awesome. I was originally going to put China Glaze's "Fairy Dust" over this, but 2010 caught my eye and I immediately thought, "This may be the greatest idea anyone has ever had in the history of the world."



The green underneath the flakie is Zoya's "Gemma", which is beautiful on its own, too. It's a pretty sage green with light purple undertones.



So I did another St. Patrick's Day manicure that actually lasted more than 24 hours. Go me!

A Fun Collage of Past Water Marbling.

Enjoy, my friends.

St. Patrick's Day Nails!

It took me a while to settle on a St. Paddy's manicure. I tried three different designs before I started throwing things and screaming "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"

Okay, that didn't really happen, but in my head it did. Frustration is a powerful emotion.

I decided to do this green and gold glitter on white. The white is a nameless color by Missme, which I'm assuming is an Asian company, judging by the fact that there is writing that looks quite Asian on the bottle (It doesn't look Chinese or Japanese though. Korean?). There is also pictures of fire and a rabbit on the bottle. I know that fire means it's flammable, but I'm having issues deciding whether the rabbit means it's vegan/animal friendly, or that the polish is, in fact, made out of rabbits.

Anyway, the green glitter is Sinful Colors' "Call You Later", and I love the tiny gold glitter that is incorporated in this as well. I am sad and ashamed to admit that while I bought it months ago, I had never used this polish until yesterday. And boy, am I happy with it. It's perfect for St. Patrick's Day and goes on nicely. My only suggestion is that if you're going to use it, put it over another color, because it's pretty thin. I have on 2 coats in the picture, so I can imagine that it takes at least 2 more coats to completely cover the nail.

Simple success!

Also, I'm not going to put up pictures of my failed attempts because I am just so ashamed of myself.