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.