I really wanted to show off the amazing teal glass flecked Glee from Jessie's Girl that I'm wearing today, but the weather just won't permit it. I'm also a bit under the weather today and that seasonal depression is coming on pretty strong lately. On top of all of that, I'm still trying to pursue a really fun "dream" of mine and have not been able to get started quite yet. So I'm anxious, feverish, and descending into depression all at once. It makes writing these blogs a bit difficult, tbh. But I'm trying!

Anyway, because I have no new swatches to show you, I figured I would compile a few of my favorite nail art manicures from the last year or so. Some of these you may not have seen yet.

Half moons with What's With The Cattitude as a base color.

One of my many floral designs. This one matched a dress that I bought that ended up being 3 sizes too big for me :(

Yet another floral design

Watermelon nails!

leopard print nails with hearts

You can see all of these on my Tumblr blog, which is where I store all of my nail art photos that I for one reason or another don't post here.

It's strange to see the evolution of my nails. They really have grown a ton!

I used Wet N Wild's Through The Grapevine for this. I started out by pouring a bit of it onto a piece of aluminum foil, and added a drop of white to it after every nail I painted.

I liked this so much that I tried my hand at it once more just to see what it'd look like with a different color.


This is Yoga-ta Get This Blue from OPI. I used the same technique as I did with Through The Grapevine. I love this, but it's a bit of a fail for 2 reasons. One being that I used a shimmery base color and the shimmer was diminished with every drop of white creme that I added. In hindsight I should have used a shimmery white. The other issue is the fact that by the time I got to my pinky nails the polish had begun to thicken and it applied kind of shitty because of that. I still love it though. I'll just have to tweek the technique for next time.

Look what I did to match my dress today:

I'd write more but I'm exhausted from running errands and I have an Opie and Anthony show to listen to ;) Hope you're all enjoying the unusually warm and sunny weather around America.

I'm sure that by now we've all heard the news that Steve Jobs has died. It isn't exactly a surprise, but it still sucks. I use Apple computers exclusively and became a big fan of Apple's technology over the last 5+ years. Jobs will be missed.

This mani started out as an idea that is far different than what it became. Initially I was attempting to create a small rainbow apple just like the vintage Apple logo. Well, I'm simply not that skilled with a paint brush and I had to abort the mission. I always think of how good my sister would be at doing nail art. She's very artistically gifted, and is really meticulous and able to get the tiniest little details to look perfect on whatever she makes. Sadly, I do not have the same gift as she does. But she has short stubby fingers and bites her nails to the point where her hands look deformed. So I suppose we're even ;)

But as I was saying- this mani started off with Steve Jobs memorial aspirations and ended in this faux tie-dyed situation that you see here now. Not what I originally wanted, but still kind of cool.

It's also not the cleanest mani I've ever done, but these marbley type designs are a real bitch to clean up. You should see my right hand....

Please excuse my lack of posting for the last 5 days or so. It's getting colder and I'm trying to hibernate through the wave of depression that wants to swallow me whole. (That sounds really emo, doesn't it?) I am one of those people who gets incredibly lethargic and down when summer ends, and in my head it's got nothing to do with the weather, but it must considering how often history repeats itself.

I only mention this because it's affected my desire and enthusiasm for blogging. "I'll post it tomorrow" or "I'll take pictures later" have been my attitude. But I'm determined to push through it and get back to a regular schedule. Which is why I got myself an iced coffee the second I woke up this morning and started on this blog. Feeling sorry for myself only wastes time.

Here are some (bad) photos of a design I did a few days ago. I've been wanting to do a sweet rainbowy design for a long time, but couldn't put together anything that looked presentable until now. I love this and plan to do many more renditions of it in the future. But I have to make a note to buy some more polish thinner, because the silver striping polish I used was waaaaaaay too goopy.

I told you that the photos were bad. I have some swatches lined up for later today or tomorrow, depending on what the sky looks like, and I promise that the photos of those will be decent.

 Paint your nails with your base color. And please, pardon my messy paint job.

Step three:
Add a small dollop of polish to your nail. Try to visually plan out where your poppies are going to be and add your dollops accordingly. Using your dotting tool, gently manipulate the polish to create an imperfect flower shape. These do not have to look identical to one another. In fact, the less perfect you make them, the better the outcome. And don't forget to alternate your poppy colors!

You should get something that looks like this:

Step four:
Once you have all of basic poppy shapes on your nail, start adding centers to them using your yellow polish. Honestly, I just use a light touch with the polish brush for my centers. But if you aren't feeling confident enough to to that then you can always use your dotting tool. Just make sure that the yellow centers aren't perfectly round. They should be slightly ovaled and off center, and again- imperfect.

Step five:
 Using your black striping brush, add (imperfect) black centers to the yellow and random stems.

Tips and tricks:

- Be imperfect. I know I am being redundant about this but it's worth stressing. I've done a lot of floral designs, and the reason they look good and are fun to do is because you have a lot of room to screw up. They actually don't look good if they're perfect.

- Mess around with colors. Sometimes colors that you wouldn't expect to look good together end up working well in this type of design.

- Do one nail at a time.

- Have fun. Tweak the design to your hearts content. There is no wrong way when it comes to nail art.

My first love is nail art, and I haven't been posting enough of it lately. With the steady stream of new polishes being added to my collection, I put nail art on the back burner. But yesterday I did a design that I LOVE and I plan to do more renditions of it in the very near future. Here is my poppies design:

My internet connection is FUBAR at the moment, so I haven't even attempted to make a post. But I did want to do a quick update to show you guys a tribal design that I did yesterday. Hopefully there's enough juice in my connection to upload this. If not, I'm basically writing this to myself...

The green is Jordana's Rich Green and the blue is Mesmerize from Essie.

Nail polish strips appear to be all the rage these days. Obviously Minx started this trend, but there are now tons of knock offs out there that people can do at home for a fraction of the price that Minx costs at the salon. Sally Hansen is probably the most popular option, as it's extremely accessible and relatively inexpensive. Personally, I was never very intrigued by the Sally Hansen strips because for $9 I can buy an OPI polish and keep it for years instead.

BUT...while perusing the nail polish section of Five Below yesterday, I came across these strips called "Jinx", which is obviously their attempt at a cute play on Minx. But whatever. They had some cute patterns and only cost $3. I snatched 2 packs. One houndstooth pattern and another with white stars on a baby pink base. I left the store expecting the worst.

Inside each pack (which I did not photograph because I wasn't really expecting to be writing this to begin with) is a small nail file, orange stick, the strip of decals, and a bizarre and seemingly useless strip of silver foil sticker. I still have no idea what the silver foil is for...

I tried the pink and white stars strips first and did a half assed job at applying them. I didn't bother to buff my nails first (which they instruct you to do) and didn't do a great job at evening out all of the air bubbles. Despite that, they still came out decent.

Not too bad...

Awesome.

I do have a giveaway coming up once I hit 100 followers, and I was thinking of buying a couple of packs of these for it. Would anyone be interested in getting these in a giveaway? What about Funky Fingers polish? They now have the FF crackles at my local Five Below, as well as the entire Island collection. Let me know!

It looks a little Batmanish, right? That's completely accidental, but a welcome outcome nonetheless. This took forever to finish and by the time I was done with my right hand, I had no energy or patience to do my left hand :P

I have loads and loads of nail mail coming my way. I couldn't even begin to count just how many bottles I'm expecting this week. Let's just say that this blog is going to be in swatch overload for quite some time.

I'll be 29 years old on the 23rd. That may or may not sound old to you, depending on your age. To me, it is a reminder of the fact that I'm still not married. I like to think of myself as the type of broad who doesn't really care about societal norms, but the fact is that I did always envision myself being married by now. The good news is that I can still pass for 21. At least that's something.

Anyway, I am celebrating my 29th tomorrow and wanted to do something kind of....sweet to celebrate my descent into old maid-hood. And given the fact that I have sworn off chocolate for the last 2 weeks in anticipation of birthday cake, I chose to drip my nails in chocolate. Okay it's not real chocolate. But it kind of looks like it!

I've seen a lot of these "drippy" manicures going around, and I was surprised at how easy the look is to achieve. I may even do a tutorial on it, as a few girls on tumblr have inquired about it. And speaking of tumblr, I'd love to be bff's with you on it if you have one of your own. Just let me know your url and I'll be sure to follow you. If you don't have one yet, you should consider signing up. It's proven to be an excellent tool for driving traffic to this here blog :)

I have a zillion little props to use, and I always forget to include them in my photos. I'm in the process of reorganizing (ok, more like organizing PERIOD....) my stash and will likely gather all of this up and store them right along side my polish. They may even serve as some inspiration :)

I never enter contests because I never win anything, and with that sort of defeatist attitude it's really no wonder, right? :P But I decided to enter this one because I really do want the prize. It's a $150 gift card and a set of either Hard Candy or China Glaze polishes. 

I love green nail polish and I just don't wear it enough. I also love yellow nail polish and I don't wear that enough either. So this was my excuse to combine both and use some of that striping tape that I love so much at the same time. For the green I used Who the Shrek are You? from OPI. The yellow I used is Lemon Icecream from Barry M.

It's 100 degrees here today. Luckily I got my AC unit fixed last night, or else I'd be melting. And because it's so hot, I figured I'd try something summery on my nails for the day. Here are my tie dyed nails! (Excuse the messy cuticles. These are hard to do in a neat manner).

I used the following colors: Wild Child, Port Royal and Cheshire from Funky Fingers, and Fiercely Fiona from OPI.

EDIT: I wasn't able to find the exact tutorial that I saw on this a few weeks ago but I did find a really good one that should help you girls do this on your own. Here it is! If you try it out yourself, please shoot me a link to your blog so I can see!