I'm Back!

For almost three weeks now, I have been incredibly sick. So sick that not only has my nail art slowed down to a crawl, but that it's been excruciating to even think about staring at the computer screen long enough to write a blog. I am happily finally doing MUCH better (I developed a cold which turned into a bad sinus infection along with laryngitis). I'll be back to posting normally, or maybe a little less from now on, and I hope that I didn't dishearten anyone for being gone for so long.

Anyways, I'm sure you'd like to see some nail art!

This is a scalloped slanted french tip design that I came up with. I am quite fond of these nails and I'll surely be doing them again. They were quick, easy, and visually pleasing. I hope you enjoy! And I'll see you all back here tomorrow!

More Animal Print

I might be addicted to animal print right now. I liked these but after I took the photo I added a thin brown line separating the white tip with the animal print and they looked way better.  I wore these for much longer than I typically wear any given nail art, they made me feel elegant and trashy at the same time. Hope you enjoy!

Swirls

These are some swirls. That is all because 1. I'm in a huge rush and 2. I don't really have a lot to say about swirls.

Lacey French Tip

This is some kind of lacey looking french tip. I like it a lot, but you might notice how insanely yellow my nails are underneath haha! Such is life for an addicted nail artist!

Scalloped Half Moons

These are some scalloped half moons that I painted with flowers in mind. I finished the look off with a french tip. These were looking totally gorgeous but when I top coated (with a matte top coat) they pulled a little bit which sort of ruined the mani (you can see this a lot on the middle finger and thumb). I still love the design though! I think next time I'll try this in some neon colors because it looks a little too subdued for my tastes! 

French Tips

After getting engaged, the last thing that I wanted was for my nail art to overshadow my new shiny ring, so i went with a very simple french tip. I didn't have time to take pictures for a few days so you can see there is some tip wear on these. I used an acrylic paint to get the nude color and a white Wet N' Wild polish. Then I used Kleancolor's matte top coat, which I absolutely love. I also put on two little jewels that Ron's mom gave me to accent my ring fingers. I hadn't ever used 3D nail art stuff before and I loved it! To attach them I simply put them on my nail while my top coat was still wet. I didn't top coat over them (I read that this makes the facets less obvious) and they stayed on perfectly for about 4 days (and probably would have stayed longer if I hadn't got bored and took them off). 

Big Smile Lines

These have to be so of my least favorite nails ever. I was experimenting with some really big smile lines and it just ended up looking crazy. I tried adding the half moons and it started looking like really creepy eyeballs. The only thing I like about these is the color, which is beautiful =) <=== The only smile in this post that doesn't look stupid 

The Most Feminine Nails I've Ever Worn

I'm gonna go ahead and believe that these don't need any more information along with them in addition to the title.
(Oh, except I did see this design somewhere but don't have the name to give credit)

Slanted French Tip

These nails were inspired by an acrylic set that I saw somewhere and unfortunately didn't record where. I decided to paint them for a family weekend that I go on every year. For it I needed something a bit understated and presentable, but of course I always like a bit of fun.

Crazy french tip

This was a spiky, crazy french tip that was inspired by Floss Gloss Boss, I'll try to find the link to where she does the design later today. For now, I'm off to hang upside down by my ankles covered in blood. Have a nice day!

Edit: This is Floss Gloss Boss's original design

Dolphins

Silhouette of a dolphin at sunset

Two dolphins splashing around

These dolphin nails were inspired by Ron's mom, Susan. She said that I should do some pretty ocean nails so I decided on doing waves and dolphins. As you can see, I also did a whale on my right ring finger, but it turned out so blahhh that I don't even like to talk about it. The dolphin thumbs and ring finger turned out just as I wanted them to and these nails have definitely been a source of pride for me over the months.

Venturing Into the Third Dimension

This wasn't my first time piercing my nails. I think the first time I did it was probably in early high school. I'm not really sure what made me decide that it was something that might be cool, but I pierced one nail and wore an earring in it for a while. This time around I decided to get a bit fancier than that. I painted on a simple french tip and decided to pierce three nails! I then fed a chain through the three piercings and was ready to go! Or... rather, I was ready to be immobile. But they lasted a surprisingly long time. I think I left this in for about 4 days, wearing the chain almost the entire time. I snagged a few times and somehow didn't manage to rip my entire nail off (phew!).

I think there are a bunch of ways to pierce your nails, but I take a fairly simple approach. First and foremost, you do need somewhat long nails for this. The longer, the safer. But all I do is get a bunch of different sized needles and start by using the smallest one to make a hole in the nail. I start from the back of the nail with the nail flat on a surface (basically palm up, so that I don't accidentally pierce my finger). After getting the smallest needle all the way through the nail (I pull it through the front of the nail so that the threading end passes through the hole, since it's the biggest part of the needle), I move up a size and use the next biggest needle. I do this with about 4 needles and then I finally have a big enough hole to put a ring through it! The entire process takes about 5 minutes, the most difficult part is getting the first needle through.

Apples

Apple french tips. I saw these somewhere, but I forget where. I thought they were really cute though. I decided to put green apples on my ring fingers (I think the design I saw had red jeweled apples on the ring fingers).

I always love how "french tip" designs look on my nails. When I use the term french tip, I obviously use it in a slightly ambiguous way: I mean that there is a design on the tips of my nails and near the cuticle is completely plain. I do these a lot with animals, but I always think that the french tip designs are BY FAR the best design for me!

Cupcakes

Oh cupcake nail art, how you've invaded the internet. I don't think these are anything too special, but they were my version of the infamous cupcake nails. I don't really understand why I put a cherry on top of the cupcakes or why the cherry looks like a red ball, but that's what happened. These were really fun to wear around because non-nail art people always think they're really cute and unique (nail art people know that they are rarely unique).

Raccoons

I always see the most adorable animal nails but I've never seen raccoons. I tried to find some but I haven't seen anyone else do them! I found an image of a raccoon's face and then I decided to do tails on my ring fingers and thumbs. I have always thought that these are some of the cutest nails I've ever done.

Tetris

I somehow skipped over these, but on the day that I first played with acrylic paint, these were the nails that I ended up wearing around. I hadn't really liked any of the other designs I was trying out, and I had seen tetris nails somewhere and had wanted to try them. With polish, I didn't have a fine enough brush to paint the black lines. So when I got my acrylic paints and smaller brushes this was one of the first things I wanted to try. I think these were one of the first nails I was really proud of.

South Park

Kenny, Cartman, Kyle, and Stan. The right hand just had the boys again, but I was trying to show off the fact that I wrote South Park across my two thumbs so that when I put them together it completed the words. They all look kind of stoned... oops.

MST3K!

For our first date ever, Ron and I went to a 12 hour movie marathon. Not only that, but it was in Boston (a six hour drive away). We had only spoken about 5 words to each other before spending those 24 straight hours together. When we got back in Rochester, expecting to be exhausted and part ways, we realized that we wanted nothing more than to watch more movies together! We watched a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode (Ron thinks it was Zombie Nightmare) and probably another few movies. Now we have a friend who is working with Rifftrax (the creators of MST3K's new baby). So these nails were for him and for memories of how awesome the show was! The left hand (bottom) is the silhouette of Tom Servo, Mike Nelson, and Crow as the peanut gallery. And the right hand just simply says MST3K.

Acrylic Paint

After reading about a million nail art blogs, I found out that you could use acrylic paint instead of nail polish. As far as I can tell, the advantages are almost endless: First, it's WAY cheaper - you can get a huge container of paint for what one tiny nail polish costs. Second, you can mix your own colors much easier than with polish. If you've ever tried to mix polishes, you know it can sometimes be hard to get them to mesh. Some other reasons that paint is great are that it dries quickly (which means no wait time between coats), if you get it on your skin it comes right off with soap and water, and it can be much more manageable than polish.
During these first attempts, I just  did some ladybug french tips (above) and an ant carrying an apple (below). It took me a while to get used to the paint because I never painted before. When I use polish, I just dot on the color, but with the paint I had to get used to the feeling of holding a brush and how that reacts.
I didn't really start embracing the paint until recently because it was still confusing to me, but I am so glad I stuck with it, now I could hardly live without it.

St. Patrick's Day

Unfortunately, since this was before I got better at taking pictures, you can't tell that these are a mint and white french tip with polka dots. I must have been feeling somewhat plain during this week, because both these and the Mardi Gras nails are pretty... dull (in the sense that they aren't all that funky). I really liked how the clover turned out on my thumbs though. These were early (I get excited sometimes), so they were probably done around the 10th or so.