Frustrated Mani

So last night my little booger just would NOT go to bed, and I got frustrated. So once he finally did go bed, I decided to do my nails to calm down.

It did not work.

I just got more and more frustrated, because my nails and my brain just weren't working with me.

First, there was a design change. I had originally thought of doing something simple, then I saw something on Pinterest and decided to try that. Which lead to a color change. Which meant I had to completely undo everything I had already done. Then, I didn't let the nail polish dry long enough before adding the nail glue, and the foil stuck to the wet nail, and I had to restart that nail.

It took me two hours to do a mani that I was completely unsatisfied with.

And then, once I woke up, I found that I had chipped a few of them in my sleep. WHO DOES THAT?!

Me, apparently. Ugh.

So this is what I woke up to this morning:

Basically on the pointer, pinkie, and thumb nails, I dotted some adhesive and then used a fanTABULOUS foil called "Fiber Optics" from the Dollar Nail Art store. On the middle finger, I just did a stripe of the adhesive, and on my ring finger, I covered my entire nail, and the did the rim of black. 

I used an NYC topcoat. I've been noticing that it chips fairly easily. Thankfully, I rarely wear a mani more than a couple of days, but still... I'm not putting keys on keychains in my sleep...

On my right hand, the foil rubbed completely off my pointer. I'm wondering if I even remembered to put the topcoat on it....

So yeah... Mani Therapy did NOT help last night. :/

Hopefully tonight's mani is a whole lot better, and hopefully kiddo goes to bed early enough that I can *do* a mani... I didn't get to bed until 4 a.m. this morning :(

Have you ever had a mani end up like this?

Acrylics and Owls- Guest Starring Whitney

So another one of my friends from work came over today to get her nails done :) I gave her a full set of acrylics, and I can't tell you how proud I am at how they turned out! I wish I'd have gotten a pic!

Then we did one of her favorite manis from Pinterest, this, with a few modifications.

Aren't they cute? I absolutely love how these turned out! Even the acrylics turned out amazing, though the cleanup wasn't the greatest (we were short on time).

The white half moons were foiled in Opal Swirl from Dollar Nail Art. I then used binder dots to create the half-moons, and painted the owls.
I used Superstar by Pure Ice underneath the foil and for the eyes, the Dream On by Sinful Colors, Pink by Sinful Colors, Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away, and Wet'n'Wild's Fergie Glowstick, and Black on Black by Sinful Colors.

I really can't wait to see how they look all cleaned up!

This was her favorite of the bunch.

Loot

So this month I decided that I was going to throw caution (and money) into the wind. I bought a BUNCH of new stamping plates (96, to be exact), and I bought $27 worth of stuff at the Dollar Nail Art store (it hasn't shipped yet).

I got the first shipment of stamping plates on the 15th-two days before the first day of estimated arrival.
They were from RedAngel (link here). I was so excited I took The Book to work with me to put them in! (What's that? I haven't told you about The Book? We'll get to it, all in due time.)

Fast-forward to this morning.

I get woken up by my mailman, knocking at my door. He's holding TWO packages for me! One is from amazon, and the other is a little envelope. It has a few things inside (including a belated Christmas present for my mom), but the thing I was waiting for?

This little oddity

What is that, you ask? This makes my mani's like 90% easier on my carpets. NOT that I'm constantly spilling, but I am knocking over my bottles like 85% of the time...

Maybe I shouldn't have used such a transparent color...

This little doodad keeps my polish in place. It's fairly stable, pretty hard to knock down. And it's made of silicone, so it adjusts to the shape of my bottle. It's got a fairly good grip, too. I love it! I got it from SammyDress. The shipping speed isn't great (I bought it around the 11th of December), but it's worth the wait. Mom loved her Christmas present.

In the Amazon box, were three packs of stamps. Gals Fairy set, Gals Princess set, and Mash's 26-50 set. I put them in The Book asap.

Okay there's that thing again, I guess I'd better tell you (even though you might have figured it out already. You're pretty sharp, aren't you?)
I got a binder to organize my plates!

Giant glowy tome. Can you hear the angels singing?

I looked into getting this, but it's just a little out of my price range. This binder was $6 at Walmart. It's one of those old-school scrapbooking binders with the sticky pages to keep the pictures in place, and it does a decent job of its job!

Empty pages

Full pages. 

The biggest downside is that the seal doesn't always hold, and the ones at the bottom tend to fall out. But that's okay. It just means I need to keep a close eye on things.

So I'm really stoked about all these plates. Biggest downside is that now I have so many things I want to do and not enough nails to do them on!

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OPI's Black Spotted Released in US!

LOL just kidding! Sorry to get you all excited there :(

I do have some amazing news, however! SOMEONE HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO SPOTTED MANI'S!!! And I was able to replicate it using dollar-store items (nail polish bought at Target)!!!!

Youtuber CutePolish came up with this tutorial that I found on pinterest. I already have toothpicks and plastic shot glasses from the dollar store, and all I needed was the hand sanitizer, so I went to the Dollar Tree and grabbed one. Finding the sanitizer was more difficult than I imagined, because the spray kind isn't with the normal hand sanitizer, it's in the cosmetics, buried amongst the chapsticks.

 I then invited Heaven back over to test it out (I'm still wearing my Saran Wrap nails) and we came up with this. I really hope you like, this is so cheap and sooo easy!!!

For the accent nail, we used a crackle.

The top coat messed up her middle finger :( She still loved it, though!

Up close and personal with her favorite. Darn I missed this nail with the acetone. Oops :/

For these, we did pink, purple, and white stripes with a black spot. In hindsight, it might have been really cute to do white with pink and purple spots. I'll have to try that next!

All you do is drip the polish on the surface of water-just as if you were doing a watermarble. Then spray it with hand sanitizer. The spots will appear and then you dip your finger in it just like you would for a watermarble.

What does this inspire in you?

Lightning Nails!

So my best friend from elementary school and her sister-in-law (who I am becoming friends with) came over to get their nails done, and I did their nails! Jayla couldn't get anything fancy, but Katina did!

This was my first attempt/practice. I think it turned out pretty good!

The full set :) She really liked them!

And her favorite from the bunch!

I really liked how these turned out. I used this tutorial, which Katina found on wishwall.me. I found the tutorial a bit lacking, but I'm really proud of how these turned out!

What do you think?

Saran Wrap Nails

I've got a mani marathon happening tonight, so I'll be quick. I'll take pics if the others let me to post on here.

I did these last night, so they're a tiny bit chipped. I couldn't get my cuticles clean enough last night, so I decided to wait and... yeah.

These were my first-ever attempts at Saran Wrap Nails, and OH MY GOSH they were so easy!! Whenever I see a professional blogger say "This mani was quick and easy!" I'm always like, "Yeah. right. that's going to take me an hour... Not including all the waiting to dry..."

These took me HALF an hour, and that includes dry time!

You can see slight chipping on my pointer and middle fingers :(

My accent nail was a black crackle by Pure Ice

Closeup of the cutest one, IMHO

 Aren't these cute? I'm not usually one to go for pink, but my pink is a really shiny color by Avon. I always feel really dirty when I use Avon products (I got a LOT for my 21st birthday) because I sell MaryKay. (Link to my page here. I can sell ONLY to the US, sorry)

Besides a one-color mani, what's the fastest mani you've ever done? What's your favorite way to dry you nails faster?

Geometric Gradient

I'm usually not a huge fan of Geometric patterns, but I figured one of the reasons I made a blog was to expand my horizons and push my comfort zone a little bit, so I decided to just go with it. And I'm glad that I did!

I decided to do the accent in B&W, but once I'd finished my nails, I realized that I liked the accent nails best. Don't you hate it when that happens? 

See? Isn't the accent nail just the cutest?

I *do* like the other nails, but I wish I'd switched them lol

What do you think? What colors would you have chosen? I used Sinful Colors for the white, black, and purple, Sally Henson's XtremeWear for the blue, and Wet'n'Wild with Fergie for the green.

I achieved the gradient on the stamp by laying the colors down where I wanted them, and then scraping. Pretty darn simple.

Happy New Year's!

And auld acquainted be forgot! Something-something hang sign!

...Yeah I dunno the words.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Ah a fresh, new, clean slate! ...Or another day, whatever.

I've been planning these nails for a while now. It's funny, I get so excited about doing my nails for a holiday and then I never actually do the designs I had planned... Okay not so funny I guess. More kinda pathetic, really....

ANYWAYS!

Silver and Gold

I couldn't get a good pic for the life of me :( But this is a great pic of the color in the light, so yay?

These were really cute and really fun to wear :)

Hope you had a great New Year's Eve, and that your New Year's Day wasn't too hungover! I got the best New Year's Kiss ever from the sweetest little boy in the world ♥

May your new year be full of luck, health, and happiness!