Happy Birthday Flowers!!

My birthday was back in July, and I absolutely adored the birthday card that my co-workers gave me. So much so that I did a manicure based on it that very weekend!

Isn't that pretty?! So many colors went into this manicure: the base white was Sinful Shine Wisp, but the rest of the polishes are in no particular order: Sinful Colors Happy Ending, Sinful Shine Bananappeal, Avon Absinthe, Orly What's the Password, Above the Curve Wisteria, and I used both Girly Bits Street Magic and a little bitty Bon Bons clear glitter polish (no name on the bottle) to mimic the sparkle-shine on the card. Here's a blurry pic to show off that glitter:

And here's the rest of the nails!

Polka Bows

Man, it's been a whole month since I posted...again! As usual, I've still been doing my nails and taking pictures, but I just haven't seemed to have the time or words to write these blog posts.

This mani is a Monkey-See, Monkey-Do based on Radi D.'s gorgeous manicure which you can find here. Even after more than two years, I still cannot copy the tiny, crisp lines that my favorite nail artists manage. I am so in awe of their abilities!! But I was still pretty darned happy about my results, even on my winter-short nails.

I started with a base of Pure Ice Home Run, followed by a angled tip with OPI Jade is the New Black. The dark lines are done in Orly Buried Alive, and Sinful Shine Wisp was used for the white detail work. I think Sinful Shine is too thick of a polish to work for detailed lines, though, but I'm running out of my standard Milani Whitest White. I need to pick up some more plain white and black polish next time I'm at Walgreens.

Skittles and Swirls

I think the primary excuse for this manicure was that I felt like using Orly Buried Alive in something. It's a gorgeous earthy brown with a deep rich gold shimmer that I just absolutely adore

So I looked through my Pinterest Nail Art board, as I regularly do for inspiration (I'm good at execution, not design - people argue with me all the time, but I know the inside of my brain, and I am not a creative person)  and found this pretty from FingerFood's entry to June's Tri-Polish challenge using red, purple, and pink.

Not doing this manicure for any of my ever-present challenges, I just pulled out my swatch sticks and picked two colors I thought would go well with Buried Alive. I ended up with China Glaze Tree Hugger and Desert Sun, and came up with this:

I used Milani Whitest White under the two middle fingers, and then added the swirls of color, followed by outlining them with Sally Hansen Celeb City, my standard silver. I felt I did a poor job on the thickness of the outlines, which is the only reason I wasn't 100% happy with the results. I've been practicing doing thinner lines since I did this manicure!

Still, it was a pretty and earthy summer manicure that made me feel like I had the outdoors on my nails all day. I really liked it. Of course, I like any excuse to wear something as beautiful as Buried Alive. :)

Purple Stripes

There have been a lot of times over the past few weeks when, for one reason or another, I didn't get around to doing my nails in the evening as I usually do. This has led to me looking at my stash shelf in the morning, trying to think of something I can do to my nails in a half-hour to an hour that still qualifies as "nail art". A few times I've packed a few polishes and tools into a bag and done my nails over my lunch hour!

I don't remember if I did this one before I went to work or at lunch, but this manicure was definitely one of those decided and designed quickly.

The base color is Avon Mirror Shine Polish, followed by a stripe down the middle of Orly Fowl Play. A manicure that only needed clean-up where my non-dominant hand shook too much! I've actually reached the point where I hardly have to do clean-up on the base color polish. After a year at this nail art stuff, it's about time my hands got steady enough to do that!

I really liked the effect I got from the stripe of Fowl Play over the bright lavender chrome! Please ignore the piece of missing polish on my left hand index finger. I work in an office, and while I love having nail art as my hobby, I consider my nails to be just as much of a tool as my feet, hands, ears, and teeth. It's not unusual for my fingers to be peppered with paper cuts and I'm never going to be one of those people who opens cabinets with their knuckles to avoid breaking a nail. Nail art is fun, but my nails will never be my obsession. Which isn't to say I think badly of those who are that careful of their nails, of course, but it's not and never will be my priority. (Now, if you want to see me get touchy about one non-practical, strictly decorative, portion of my body? Tell me I should cut my hair and watch how fast I growl. ^_~)

January Polish Days - Something New!

So our theme this month is, obviously, something new, and we're supposed to use a technique we've never used before, or an untried polish (except that I don't actually have any untrieds - I tend to incorporate each new polish into a manicure within weeks, if not days, of getting it!) The first thing that popped into my head when I read the theme was the little jars of powder I have sitting in my stash, that were purchased waaaaay back when V and I went to Hobby Lobby and wandered around for an hour going, "What can we put on our nails?"

I started with one coat of China Glaze Mahogany Magic and topped it with one coat of Orly Buried Alive. I don't know why I started with Mahogany Magic given how opaque Buried Alive is. I blame it on painting my nails at 6:30 in the morning - I'm a night owl and my fingers usually get painted closer to 10 P.M. than anything A.M.!

I headed off to work that way, but I took my supplies with me...so lunchtime found me adding a layer of topcoat and dipping a few of my fingers into little jars of embossing powder. Obviously, I used brown embossing powder on two fingers, and green embossing powder on my thumbs.

I can't decide whether I like this or not, honestly. One of my co-workers said it looks like mud and grass, which wasn't an insult. It's kind of cool. I like texture, and it's like sandpaper on my fingernails. Which sounds bad, I know, but it doesn't feel bad. I just don't feel like it's very nail art-ish, maybe. Meh. I'm ambivalent. I didn't take them off the minute I got home, so clearly I don't hate them. I think when I do take this off, I need to do a fish egg manicure next. :)

Oooh Shiny!

First, you can blame the post title on the fact that my hubby and I had a Firefly marathon on Sunday, and then watched the 10th anniversary special for the short-lived and MUCH loved show. You can tell how much it was loved by everyone except the network honchos, because as they mentioned during the special - what other concept ever went from a *failed* TV show to a major motion picture? Fourteen episodes of Firefly, and a very successful movie, Serenity. I highly recommend them to anyone who has even a slight enjoyment of sci-fi, action, or westerns. Trust me. Of course, now that he's gone on to direct what they referred to as "the third biggest movie of all time", Avengers, maybe they'll trust Joss Whedon the next time he floats a story concept they don't think can work, like Buffy (seven awesome seasons and a few awards!) or Firefly.

Now, on to the actual shinies! As you can see, my friend V's hands are gracing our pages again this week. I started with two coats of Orly Buried Alive, topped it with one coat of Essie Shine of the Times, and then used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and a detail brush to draw the design.

This beauty was inspired by Olmi, from Pieni Kynsiblogi, or A Tiny Nail Blog. Obviously I modified it to go on much shorter nails. :) We are all very sad to hear Olmi has developed an allergy to formaldehyde resin, and if she wants to continue doing her nails, will have to replace most of her stash, as they are not 5-free (or 3-free-plus, because the main three include formaldehyde, but not formaldehyde resin, so she'll need 5-free or 3-free-plus-FR, which some brands do.)

Click on the picture to go to her blog post on this mani:

Plaid and Polka Dots

I love plaid manicures. I really do. But previously I've failed at creating a plaid manicure that I actually liked. I decided to try painting on scotch tape, cutting the tape into thin strips, and then putting those on my nails. Well, I love the way it looked, but it was sooooo time consuming to put down each little strip of tape, and very finicky at getting them positioned, that I realized that it would take me twice as long to position them on my dominant hand. So instead, I used the same colors to make polka dots!!

I am happy to say that I won Girls Night In's first ever giveaway recently (that makes three I've won in the past few months! My husband is wondering about the influx of packages! ;) and check out what she sent me!

From left to right, Ulta Eye Popping Poppy, China Glaze For Audrey, and Orly Fowl Play. Also a buffing block and a tube of foot scrub. (And a couple of pieces of candy that had my son complaining because he didn't get any. :P Mine!)

So I started this mani by painting all my nails with two nice coats of my favorite pale blue - Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau. I used Fowl Play, For Audrey, and China Glaze Frostbite to paint a few inches on Scotch Tape. After that was dry, I cut it into strips, put them onto my nails in a woven pattern, and top-coated the whole thing!

It was very tedious and took a lot longer than I expected it to. Much of it was spent with fiddling with the tape trying to get it into the right place, and straight, and weave it in with the other strips while not making it move again... I decided that it would probably take twice as long using my non-dominant hand to finagle the tape on my right hand, so I took the easy way out and used a dotting tool. Same colors: Orly Fowl Play, China Glaze For Audrey and Frostbite, and voila! (My Grammar!Bitch side is showing - doesn't "voila" have an accent on it somewhere? Harrumph.)

See my poor little index finger nubbin?? I am in dire need of more of the Haken Nail Magic base coat I used with such good results for months. I picked up the wrong one (still Haken, but not the same variety) last time I bought new base coat, and the original problem I had with flaking hasn't come back, I have had several side-breaks right at the edge of the nail bed that I've had to use the tea bag repair method on, and a few of them have broken off when they got a few millimeters past the end of the nail bed. That's why I trimmed down all the rest of them to a shorter length, so the nubbins wouldn't stand out so terribly badly! 

Yet another French tip

All those interview manicures we did over the last few months on V's nails were worth it - she started her new job this week! She wanted to start her first day with nails that were professional, but pretty. A French tip is always on track. We started with a single coat of China Glaze Fast Track and added tips in Orly Buried Alive. Then I used China Glaze I Herd That to draw a line between the base color and the tips, as well as draw a few subtle arcs.

I included a few more pictures just so you could see how amazing the shine and multi-colored sparkle of the holographic glitter in I Herd That. Just beautiful!