Monday, December 2, 2013

And She's Holding On My Heart Like a Hand Grenade

So tomorrow night I'm going to see American Idiot the Musical and I'm FREAKING EXCITED about it!! American Idiot was one of the albums I grew up with. It's one of those albums that I listened to so many times, that now if I hear a song from it on the radio, I can hear the next song on the album. I love it, and I love the musical adaption. EXCITED.

So excited, I had to do my nails for the event. Duh.

 Chalkboard Nails did a distressed nail tutorial that I thought would be perfect for the feel of this show, so I tried it. I'm pretty happy with it, but I definitely want to try this look again with more colors.

Do you see that? That heart-grenade? FREEHAND BABY. Haha, I'm really excited with how it turned out, cause I usually super suck at freehand designs. It helps that the whole look is grungy, so perfect lines aren't necessary.


Colors were all Zoya: Purity (white), Carmen (red), Raven (black). I need to get some more of Purity; mine is starting to get really gloopy and I'm nearly out of it anyway, but it's such a good white. Two coats and it's opaque.

Anywhozle, thanks for looking! If anyone is still looking... Someday I will have a consistent schedule for updates...

Someday...

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Dreaming of the Beach!

It's getting so cold here!! Frost on car windows, clouds of breath floating in the air. Winter is definitely coming. So let's think of the beach! 

No, my nails did not just magically grow like 5 mm and change shape. Yes, I still have the claws. I'm finding them... difficult. I can't decide what looks good with the stiletto shape. So I'm gonna post some older manicures while these puppies grow out. 


I LOVED this mani. It's vaguely representative of a beach scene and I thought it turned out perfectly. 

Tutorial! 

Colors used were Zoya Shay for the base,  Zoya Robyn, Essie Bouncer it's me, and Zoya Blu. 

Alrighty yall! I hope you like this mani as much as I did! 

Thanks for reading! 

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Trying a different shape!

I've had square or "squoval" nails pretty much since I started getting into nail art. I like the shape a lot, but I wanted a change. I'm not a huge fan of just rounded nails on myself, so that pretty much leaves stiletto. I figure, what better month to have claw-like nails than October? 

So here's what I came up with: 


I... like it? The stiletto shape is a strange one for me. I can remember the first time I saw it and I thought it was crazy. Like, how do you NOT stab yourself? And I guess I still think that for the long stilettos. But these are short! And maybe cute? 



I do really like this color combination, for sure. It's Zoya Blaze and Manglaze Matte is Murder. The contrast between the glossy sparkle and matte black looks really awesome in person. 




Bonus shot of just Blaze. Such a gorgeous color:

Well, what do you think? Have I been too exposed to the nail art world and these stilettos are crazy? Are they cute?  I need opinions!! 

Thanks for reading!! 

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Last Year's Rocky Horror Nails

So last year (and the year before) I was in a local production of The Rocky Horror Show. I was Magenta. It was insanely fun and an incredible experience for me.

I was pretty into nail art at this point and I decided I was going to do a different red and black design for each week of the production (the whole month of October). And these are those designs. Keep in mind, this was before I even had this blog, so the pictures (and clean up job) are not the best quality.

Onward!

Week one:

These were great because they looked like claws on stage. I remember I actually had a lady come up to me after the show and ask to see my nails.

Week Two:

think this was my first time doing a tape mani! right before I took this one off, I decided to see how it would look mattified: 


I LOVED it mattified, but I've found that if you don't add the matte top coat the same day you do the rest of the manicure, it will pull up the edges of the polish. You can kind of see it in this picture.

Week 3:

Mmmm, sparkly coagulated blood.

And Week 4:



Probably my favorite of the month, and definitely the most time consuming of the 4.

I miss my Rocky family!! This year, a different theater group is doing RHS and we're trying to get a big group of us together to go see it and yell callbacks. I'm very excited for it.

Thanks for reading!!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Pam's Wedding Nails!

My wonderful friends Pam and Jason are getting married on Saturday, so she asked me do to her nails for her! More specifically, she got acrylic french tips and then I decorated them. Her colors are purple and forest green, so here's what we came up with!




I think they turned out pretty well. I tried out a few different designs on some swatch sticks to give her some ideas.  Some are better than others...


Can you tell I like dots? And that I suck at freehand? Yeah...

Bonus: I repainted Pam's mother's nails as well.

Yay! Thanks for reading. I have a huge backlog of manicures from the last couple months that I need to edit and post. Here's hoping that happens soon. We're in the process of selling/buying a house and it's been stressful. By the time I get a chance to sit down, I'd rather watch netflix and paint nails than edit pictures to post. But I'll try to get back on track!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, June 14, 2013

Pride Nails!

Remember how I love rainbows? And stripes? And going cross-eyed? And the LGBTQ community?

Yeah.


Boom. 
Tomorrow is Pride here, so of course I have to have awesome nails. It's a requirement.



I'm not sure if I like the black stripes or white stripes more. Either way, love them. I'm very happy, if not cross-eyed. Actually, maybe they look so awesome to me BECAUSE I'm cross-eyed. Oh well. Still happy.


Tutorial! Definitely embiggen.



Also for a fun bonus, I was playing around with my new awesome eye shadows and I came up with this look:


Okay. Yay Rainbows! Yay Pride! Yay Love!

Thanks for reading as always :)

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Fly, Dragon, Fly!

I like dragonflies.


They ride that thin line between completely fascinating me and completely freaking me out. A lot of different insects/arachnids/bugs ride this line for me. They're complex and beautiful, but if one flies in my face I'm gonna scream like a prepubescent boy and run.


Anywho, this mani started out as a "palate cleanser." I was staring at my collection and I didn't really want to wear any of the colors. So I picked out my lone nude (Zoya Shay for anyone wondering. It matches my lily-white skin perfectly) and slapped it on. Then I watched some Fringe, and decided I couldn't just leave it. So I came up with dragonflies.

Short Tutorial:



I hope you like it! Loves to you all!


Thursday, May 16, 2013

Rainbow Stripes (boyfriend approved!)

When I showed these nails to my boyfriend he said they were his favorite design so far. So that's cool :)


I don't know if you know this... But I love rainbows. Like, a lot. 


When I was in kindergarten I wanted to change my name to Rainbow, because I thought they were so awesome. So now you have fodder to embarrass me with. But I refuse to be embarrassed! Rainbows are RAD! 

Here are the polishes I used for the gradient: 
Zoya Ali and Robyn, and ORLY Glowstick and Purple Crush
TUTORIAL TIME! 


I'm now realizing that the sponge in this picture is a little misleading. I really did only use those four colors above, but I took the sponge picture after I had used it on a couple fingers so the colors started to blend together to create orange, green, and indigo. 

Anywho, I hope you're all having a loverly day! I went to the Orthodontist today for the first time in a billion years and I think they were honestly surprised to see me. 

Thanks for reading! 


Saturday, May 11, 2013

"Why's it called 'Puzzles?'" THAT'S the puzzle!

It's probably too late for me to be making a blog, since I can't come up with anything witty to say, but here we go anyway!


Yay puzzles! I've seen these around the interwebs for a while but I wanted to do some with black outlines, so I decided tape would be the best method.

Colors used are all Zoya: Blu, Robyn, Mira and Marley. 

Here be the tutorial! 



There we go! I hope you like it!

Thanks for reading as always!

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Face It Check Check Nail Kit (Aka: first thing I've ever ordered from Korea) Picture Heavy!

(All pictures embiggen)

STORY TIME!

So about a month ago, I came across this very cool nail polish kit.

In this kit, came 3 jelly polishes:


This kit also came with instructions on the back, which may have been more useful if I could read Korean: 


But thanks to graduating Kindergarten, I was able to follow the pictures! 



And I lived happily ever after! 
____________________________

So yeah. This is a fun kit. I ended up using striping tape for the white line, which I think was a good and bad decision. Good: the white line is straight and awesome. Bad: it makes it more painfully obvious how bad I am at free handing straight lines.

Here be a tutorial: 



By the time I had figured out how I was going to accomplish this mani and taken all the pictures along the way, it was late and I was tired. So I thought, "What if I use a sponge for the lines, like I would a gradient, only don't mix the colors?"

You can say it. I'm a genius. 
Quite a different look, but significantly faster. I think it looks... vaguely watercolored? I like it a lot. Possibly more than the original, but that might be because it looks neater. The sponge looked like this:


Both of these looks could very likely be done with any jelly polishes, but this kit was only ten bucks, $13 with shipping, and I didn't have any jelly polishes in these colors. 

If you're interested in buying the kit, I got mine here. They also sent me a whole bunch of beauty samples AND a personalized thank you note, which was unexpected and pretty rad. 

Anywho, I hope you are all doing well! It's finally getting warm here and I'm excited! 

Thanks for reading! 

Thursday, May 2, 2013

There's No Place Like Home!

I'm super proud of these nails, guys. It was actually quite easy and I love how they turned out.
Dorothy Nails! I've been wanting to try Gingham print for a while but all of the ones I looked at weren't neat enough for me (it bugs me when the lines aren't straight. Does that make me anal retentive?). So I used tape and sponge!


By sponging on one layer of the blue color, it makes it a little less opaque than just the pure color from the brush. Then when you sponge on the next layer after applying the perpendicular tape, it makes the perfect gingham squares!

The red I used is China Glaze Ruby Pumps (because, duh. You have to). The white is Zoya Purity and the blue is Zoya Jo.

Tutorial!


Yay! I hope you like these as much as I do. Like I said, super easy!! Even if you just did the gingham it would be adorable in any color.

Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

She Wear the Chuck Chuck Taylors...

...Just like her feet been tailored? Not exactly imaginative.

So I searched for songs that talked about Chuck Taylors and each song was equally ridiculous. Or awful. Oh well.

Anywho, NEW POST! YAY! I'm still alive! I have no excuses, I just haven't posted. I'm sorry. I did go to Seattle for a weekend which was a ton of fun. The weather could not have been more perfect.

So I've had at least 4 people show me this picture and tell me I should try it. And because I'm a people pleaser, I did. Here's the result:
I can't free hand to save my life
Not TERRIBLE, and it's fun for a couple days. I think it looks better in person. Here are some close ups, click to embiggen as always:


I actually have a nail stamp of laces, but I wanted to do a tutorial that everyone could do even if they didn't have stamping equipment. Sorry I'm terrible at straight lines. FYI, you could use a black sharpie for the black line. It would probably be easier than using nail polish. I didn't think of it until I was done.

Tutorial!


I hope this was worth the wait. I'm not positive it was... but I hope so!

Thanks for reading, as always!!

Saturday, April 6, 2013

I'm bad at this game.

This whole "regularly updating" thing is haaaarrrdddd. I have a mani done and pictures taken, I just need to edit them. I hope there are still a couple people that visit me!

Maybe?

anyone??

Hello... hello...hello...

Aw, nuts.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

What an Ordeal.

Oh, this manicure. So I did this about an hour before I had to leave for a bridesmaid dress fitting. I threw on some seche vite and thought all would be fine.


Aw, it's so pretty. 
Surely, nothing can go wrong! 

Turns out, even Seche Vite couldn't help me. The ends were just too thick. By the end of the fitting my nails were a MESS. I had to go to work right after, so there was nothing I could do, but the polish was still wet enough that I could kind of scrape it off. Which, because I'm one of those people that can't leave things alone, I of course did.

The cherry on top was I broke two of my nails at work, so now I've filed them all down super short. But hey! I redid this mani on my new little shorties.


At least it still looks cute on short nails. Even if the shape is all messed up on my middle finger. How appropriate that I was gonna call this the "silver lining manicure."

Anywho, Tutorial! I made this when I was clearly too tired to be making things and forgot to place the 2. in the corner of the picture before I saved it. So, ya know.. Good Job, Coralee.

Oh, btw: Colors are Zoya Blu, a-england excalibur, and Zoya Purity.

Thanks for reading as always :)
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