Tag: daily nail

  I haven’t done my nails in a little while, but on Friday, Manda came over, and we went on a 5 mile walk around Lake Merced, and then painted our nails and watched Coyote Ugly! I saw some mushroom nail stickers on Etsy and was inspired to try painting some toadstools on my own. Obvs, I am not the greatest nail artist in the world!! But what I did for the toadstool nails was paint the base color first (the light aqua), and then I used white acrylic paint and a tiny paint brush to paint out all the mushrooms and grass. The white background helps the colors pop on top. Then, I painted in the red toadstool tops with acrylic paint, and also some light green grass. After that layer dried (acrylic paint dries pretty quickly), I dotted on the mushroom spots and then gave the grass some dark green glitter polish to make it pop. Then the whole thing got a top coat of Seche Vite. I really like how they turned out!!! I have magical forest fingers!    

  Here’s a few shots of my current mani!! I was trying to have more control over my polka dots, and I think I am sorta getting better at them   Sorry about my really dry hands and horrible cuticles! I keep hand lotion everywhere and in my purse, too, but nothing really seems to help that much. I should try cuticle oil or rubbing Vitamin E on them or something, but…yeah, I’m probably not prioritizing that right now! Countdown to Renegade Craft Fair! EEEP!

I repeat: I am probably the sloppiest, laziest, lamest nail-painter ever, but I enjoy it so much!!! I did these nails really super quick for Manda’s MFA graduation last week. I have been craving a black polish for a while, but then lightened it up by alternating it with a creamy white. I am always overzealous with the polka dots, which kind of ruins everything, but oh well, they are fun!! Then I decided to break up the dots with some random faces painted on with a tooth pick.I think this mani says: I am a complex woman. I am a play in contrasts. I am darkness. I am light. I am life. I am death. I am happiness. I am sadness. I am deep.JUST KIDDING. I’m just random.

Inspired by the next Michaels.com crochet pattern I’m working on … I decided to use rainbow sherbet colors for my nails. I also decided to try using washi tape for the first time to create stripes and hearts. I really do not have great skills or patience with nail art, but I think it’s fun anyway, so sorry if it looks totally sloppy! To create stripes, all I did was paint the base of my nail orange, and then I trimmed some washi tape to the width I wanted my center stripe. After placing the tape on your dried, p0lished nail, you can then paint the other two colors on the side. I found that taking the tape up right after polishing was better than waiting for it to dry even a little.  Washi tape is great because it is not as sticky as Scotch tape, and is less likely to ruin your base color. To create the heart, I took a piece of washi tape and folded it in half. I then cut out a very small half heart, carefully opened it back up, and stuck it on my nail to use as a template. I wasn’t very good at cutting out the shapes, but they turned out ok! I learned this trick from The Dainty Squid, and she learned it from Danny Brito. Here are the polishes  I used:

I just finished giving myself my vacation mani! We are off to New Zealand and Australia for the next two weeks. I loaded up my Kindle with a kabillion books. I’ll try to blog a little here and there with photos. Have you guys ever been to either of those countries? Any favorite spots? See you soon!  

I got some tiny nail polish brushes from Daiso a few months ago and never tried them out. I have finally concluded that my problem is not lack of tools, just lack of skill! I am terrible at nail art! I’m messy, sloppy, have no control over what I’m doing. It’s just not in my blood. It’s a good thing I never tried to be a surgeon. I may try acrylic paint instead of nail polish for my next nail doodles, but I dunno, I am not gonna assume that anything can save me! Also, I forgot that I shouldn’t paint my nails a light color right after getting my hair dyed. Now I have the dreaded PINK STAIN.  

I wanted to take a photo of a hand holding something for the Yummy You shop, so I figured I better get rid of my chipped crack-ho nail polish and do something cute. They remind me of cupcakes without getting too literal. Here are the polishes I used. Not pictured is the Seche Vite top coat I used to smooth out the glitter and to speed up the drying time since I decided to do this at 5am. When you work with your hands, your nail polish tends to chip off easily, I think. Especially if you do anything glue-related. That glue will pull your mani right off your finger. However, while crocheting, I think having cute nails really enhances the experience! There you are, crocheting a cute thing, seeing your cute mani flash by. I dunno. It’s the dumb little things!

In my search to find a readymade, awesome looking Jawbreaker nail polish, I came across Hard Candy by PrettyPolishnThings.  I know there is also a polish actually called Jawbreaker by Pretty & Polished (these company names are a bit similar eh…?), but from looking at swatches, I wanted my glitter to come out a bit brighter and less milky. If you click on the Etsy listing for Hard Candy, I would say that the first/main photo is a bit misleading and the other photos are more realistic, as far as how milky the glitter goes underneath the white polish. This was about 3 coats. I liked the result, and it reminded me of marshmallow cereal in milk, but it seemed a bit difficult for me catch the bigger glitter on my brush. Perhaps more aggressive shaking is necessary! The blue and pink polishes (also 3 coats) are GLITTER PACKED. They are both by Rainbow Honey from the Equestria collection. Blue = 20% Cooler. Pink = Pinkie Promise.  I was really impressed with the density of glitter in both bottles, plus I really like that Rainbow Honey offers mini bottles if you just want to try a color. I wish the site would show swatches on nails, though. That would be cool! The blue in 20% Cooler isn’t quite as BLUE as I’d hoped from the photo on their site, but I guess that’s what keeps the glitter so … glittery. Next time I might do a base layer of blue or white underneath first. All in all, I am feeling very glitter-tastic, and I do not look forward to having to remove the glitter crust from my nails!

After giving Bibi a bath, I decided to paint my nailz! I’d been wanting to try a jawbreaker-inspired mani. If I did this again, I would use fewer flecks of color and leave out the pink. Sorry these are horrible phone cam pics, and sorry I didn’t clean up the messy nail polish yet! I am going to L.A. tomorrow for 24 hours just to see the Sweet Tooth show, and I haven’t really packed or prepared yet and it’s 2am!  I also JUST realized that I accidentally booked a SMOKING room and they are already out of non-smoking! Crossing my fingers that when I arrive there, there might be a cancelation or something… Okay back to the nails! This mani is super duper easy peasy. A couple coats of white for the background. Red, yellow, and blue polish. A couple toothpicks. And you’re set! Just dip your toothpick into a color and then tap and drag it in dots all over your nails, some big, some small. The messier the better, I think!  You don’t even have to wait for the first color to dry because even if the colors mix a little, it’s ok! As easy as this is, my right hand still looks a thousand times crappier than my left hand. Oh well! Enjoy! I do know there are glitter polishes out there that are meant to resemble jawbreakers as well. After picking through some images online, I ordered two! We’ll see how it compares! Don’t forget to come say hi at Backside in Echo Park tomorrow for the Sweet Tooth show 🙂 8pm! Please forgive me if I smell like a thousand cigarettes :(.

    It’s been a while since I’ve been able to give myself a mani! Our internet has been really awful the past few days, so I decided to take a break and get some paint on these nails. A few of you may know that I used to be extremely faithful to Orly’s “Blue Collar” as my go-to candy blue nail polish. But I feel like the formula has changed, and the polish dries too dark now to be my favorite. It has been a long journey to find something to replace it, but that journey is over! Meet Barry M‘s “Turquoise!” In sunlight, the polish is much lighter in the bottle, and I was afraid it would be TOO light, but it’s actually perfect and covers in 2 coats.       I’ve also been wanting to try gluing googly eyes on my nails for a little while, but I’ve never gotten the chance…UNTIL NOW!   I never paid much attention to googly eyes before, but I was surprised by how many different sizes there are available at Michael’s! I decided to go with the 5mm. On Twitter, I asked if I could just super glue these suckers on to my nails, but then I was told about NAIL GLUE. OF COURSE THERE IS NAIL GLUE. I used 2 coats of Barry M Turquoise and then dabbed some nail glue on my nail. The bottle says you’re supposed to glue directly to the nail, so I don’t know how well this will work on top of polish.  Then I carefully placed the googly eyes. You actually have some time to move around and arrange the eyeballs, so don’t freak out too much. Then I busted out some nail art pens to draw the mouth and some polka dots and hearts. The Sally Hansen nail art pens are more spendy than I’d like, but they make drawing on your nails so darn easy! I finished off my other nails with some Deborah Lippmann “Happy Birthday” and this other glitter from an indie nail polish company that I didn’t really end up liking. Pardon my strange Jimmy Dean E.T. fingers and horrible cuticles. I have come to terms with not being a hand model for some time now. Also, I am really the complete opposite of ambidextrous, so the heart on my right hand appears to have a leak on the bottom, plus my polka dots have shadows that I could chalk  up to camera blur but I won’t. If you decide to glue eyes onto your nails, may I suggest making sure that BOTH thumbs get a face, because it’s really fun to watch the googly eyes google when you type on your smart phone. Here’s a short stupid video I made of the googly eyes in action. Happy Friday!