Outlines

Can we go over how much I absolutely love these outline nails? I think the design out the outline was popularized by Disco Nails, who is totally insanely amazing. The goal with the outline nail is to create a perfect circle or oval in the center of the nail (what I did in purple) using a minimal outline (I used black) to really make it pop. My nails are a bad shape for this design, it looks better on nails that have more rounded beds (mine are square-ish). But I LOVE this design. To spice it up a little, I added some dots and some gems. I really liked how this looked overall, but as you can see on my thumb, it isn't a great look on me. I can't wait to paint this on other people's nails though!

Lotus

When I started painting these, I was trying to mirror my engagement ring which has a long oval in the middle and two side-ways ovals framing it. The design turned out looking more like abstract lotus flowers to me, which is awesome! This was one of those really simple designs that I ended up loving! Plus it was super simple to do. I have a feeling I'll be doing this design again!

Bad Galaxies

I went a *little* over board on sponging on more colors with these galaxies and they turned out a little crazy looking. Oh well, lesson learned. Stop while you're ahead!

Today I'm wedding dress shopping for the very first time!!!

Spinal Tap 11/11/11

These go to 11! For 11/11/11, I wore This Is Spinal Tap nails! An infamous scene in the movie This Is Spinal Tap has  Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest) explaining that his amp can go one louder because it goes to 11 (where typically amps only go up to 10). On my thumb is the dial turned all the way up to 11 and the rest of my fingers have the Spinal Tap logo.

A lot of others wore Spinal Tap nails for 11/11/11 but my absolute FAVORITE are Michelle from Sonoma's Nail Art which can be seen here. Michelle is a rockin' nail artist... I mean, really rockin'. And for her Spinal Tap nails, she actually did a portrait of Nigel! 

Basketweave

Previously, I did a really complicated basketweave pattern which can be seen here that I'm really proud of, but it took forever! This time I wanted to do something simple and fast. From far away, I think the two designs looks pretty similar! I don't have a lot to say about these, so I'll tell you about my plans for the next week.

I'm leaving town tomorrow for about a week to go to sunny California! Because of this, I will be queuing up a bunch of posts, so don't worry, there will be lots of nail art over the next week! I also want to remind you that this Thursday, and every Thursday, I'll be guest posting over at Polish Art Addiction. In the mean time, as long as you're checking out my blog, why not pop over there as well?

The only unfortunate part about me going out of town is that I'll largely be MIA when it comes to responding to comments or requests. I'll hop on my computer a few times while I'm gone, and I promise that as soon as I'm home I'll catch up!

Another exciting thing that will be happening in the first week of the new year is that I'll be starting nail tech school! I know, super exciting! I'll be blogging about my progress and what I hate/love about it.

Here's the first thing I expect to hate:
They give you a break down of the hours that you do each thing so I found out that I will be learning about foot fungus for 8 hours and  nail art for ONLY 4 HOURS! What?!!! Crazy. 

Mod-ish Flowers

One way that I come up with new nail designs is by flipping through fabric patterns and this is a design that was inspired by a pattern that I saw. I didn't take a picture of the pattern, but I do remember that it was lime green and white. I decided to mess around with some possible wedding colors so I used a very light lavender (it looks more grey in these photographs), chartreuse, and black.

I loved how these nails turned out! But they didn't get much of a response on tumblr. What do you think?  I'm starting to think that my bad photography skills are affecting how awesome my nail art looks. 

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). 

Exhumed and My Engagement Story

Okay, so I know a lot of you have already heard this story, but it's so awesome I need to share it again!

When I first posted about getting engaged, I didn't show you a good picture of the nails I had on, so here they are! Ron and I (and a bunch of our friends) went to see one of my favorite death metal bands Exhumed, and of course, I had to paint their logo on my nails! What I didn't know is that by the end of the night I would have something other than awesome nail polish on my finger (how cheesy was that?!).

I think the best way to find out how Ron proposed is to watch the video, but I'll give you a mini-synopsis and warn you that THE VIDEO IS GOREY. Like I said, we were at the Exhumed concert and all of a sudden, the front-man of Exhumed, Matt Harvey, says "Where's Ron?" then he points at me and says, "You too, come up here!" As I make my way to the stage, I realize that Ron is about to propose (or if he isn't, I'm about to be mega-disappointed haha), but instead of just getting down on one knee, he quite literally gave me his heart. You can see the whole thing in this video. Which again, is a pretty awesome video.



Here is what Exhumed's logo actually looks like.

What Else Would I Be For Halloween...?

Oh man... Haven't you just been waiting for today? I know I have!!! It's totally possible that I'm more excited about this than you, but finally... I PRESENT TO YOU... My Halloween nails!

TACO BELL!!!!

I love Taco Bell (which, if you read my blog a lot, you are probably tired of hearing). It is the best. It is gooey and delicious and full of happiness. So for Halloween I was a Taco Bell Hot Border Sauce! Below is a picture of my (home made) costume. But let's be honest, the nails complete the look! I was so happy with out these turned out. I've done Taco Bell nails tons of times before (You can see a simple logo design here and a first attempt at the Border Sauce look here), but these are BY FAR my favorite!

On my nails I painted the Taco Bell logo, the bell, and the word "Hot" in the Border Sauce lettering, since I was a Hot Sauce! Yay. Total happiness.

Well... Not total happiness... It's only 8am and Taco Bell isn't open yet so I'll have to wait to quench my craving until later today.

Brainsss....

... Or intestines, maybe? I don't know, these definitely don't look like brains, but I'm not totally sure what they *do* look like! To get this look, I followed Robin Moses' tutorial which can be seen here. She is the tutorial guru and I'm sure that if you follow her instructions you'll turn out with a better set of brains than I did! A problem that I have with nail art is that I'm not really that good at art -- I mean, I can copy things just find but when it comes to doing something more free form like brains I'm not always the best at figuring out how to make it look good. I hope this gets better with practice!

Anyways, another brains related post that you should check out is Michelle aka Sonoma Bento's Hello Kitty Halloween nails.  Michelle and I are both huge fans of Robin Moses (let's be honest, who isn't), so when Michelle saw Robin's tutorial she always knew she had to turn it into something new and creative! Michelle's take on the design is AWESOME!

Also, I may not post anything tomorrow BUT there's a good reason why. The post that I was going to do tomorrow is so awesome, so incredible, so magnificent, that I hate to post it on a Sunday (which is the day I get the least traffic). The post is the nails you've all been waiting for: my ACTUAL Halloween nails. And let me tell you, they are some of my favorite nails EVER!  So, I promise if there is no post tomorrow it is well worth waiting until Monday!!!

Owls and Moons

Tony, from TonyLikesThings on tumblr is awesome because he always has tons of nail art ideas! He asked for the Joy Division nails that I did here and ever since he will randomly ask me to do other nails. When he requested owl nails around Halloween, I decided to skip the super cute cartoonish owls that a lot of people have already done and go for something slightly more realistic. I ended up with this night scene that has an owl perched on a tree under the moon. Unfortunately for Tony, the owl didn't turn out very good. But I think the moon looks great! If I were to go back and do it again, I would try to make the owl stand out more... He sort of faded into the background. Oh well!

Also, if anyone has any, I sure could use some more requests! 

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 

Trees

These are trees. Some of them look more like leaves than trees. But they are supposed to be trees. That is all. 

Spooky Candle

This was the week that I was being super un-creative and just copying other peoples beautiful designs. These were designed by Michelle aka Sonoma Bento -- One of my all time favorite nail artists. Her original set can be seen here. Can we just talk about how creative this girl is for a second here? These were part of her 31 day challenge and these were for the gradient day. UMMM that's amazing! This is such an awesome take on gradients. Everyone is so used to the typical gradients, but Michelle took it over the top.

I first discovered Michelle's work via Robin Moses, who posted Michelle's adorable tribute nails to Moses' dog Fishay, which can be seen here. Then, without knowing it, I saw more of Michelle's work in Leslie's (from Polish Art Addiction) "Good Enough to Eat" Contest. Michelle entered her awesome trout nails. I showed them to my friend who loves fishing and I think he fell in love a little bit. Then FINALLY Michelle started her own blog and now I find myself checking her blog more often than I check my email!

I hope that if you do anything today, it is to check out (and follow, and comment on) Michelle's blog. She is the best.

Gradient Swirls

These are a direct copy of Lex from Attacked Astoria, whose design can be seen here. It's a great design, which Lex executed much more skillfully than I. Lex's nails are all incredible. I would highly recommend checking her out because she has a unique flair that really sets her apart from all the rest.

Also, I think I'm becoming bored of blogging. Does anyone have any words of encouragement?  

Swatching - Chunky Holo Black

Usually I find swatching really boring -- I guess I'm too into nail art to care about solid colors. I also do you usually find glittery polishes exciting, but Kleancolor's Chunk Holo Black = love. It is so amazing, that I decided to swatch it! I suck at taking pictures, so these don't do the polish justice.

Chunky Holo Black is a "holographic" (really it's more of a duo-chrome) jelly based polish that has multiple sizes of hexagon glitter. It is beautiful. It kind of takes on the look of a flakey because of the different sizes of hexagons. Here I applied 3 coats over black nail polish. There are only two disadvantages to this polish (and all the Kleancolor polishes, really) is that it smells HORRIBLE and it takes FOREVER to dry. But it's worth both of those pitfalls! 

The Omen

Again, I share with you my insanely belated Halloween nail art. The Omen was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up. It both terrified and interested me. If you haven't seen the original, I would highly recommend it. If you aren't a horror movie fan, you might enjoy it anyway because it stars the AMAZING Gregory Peck! Without spoiling anything I'll tell you that it is about a family who discover that their son (aptly named Damien) is evil. I'm also a firm believer that all of the sequels (so The Omen I through The Omen IV) are incredible.

There are a number of horrible things that happened in conjunction with the filming of these movies that the cast and crew referred to as bad "omens." Some felt that the nature of the movies was causing these bad things to happen. So that I don't make this blog post too ominous, I'll just point you to this site which lists many of the happenings. 

Pumpkins

You may recognize these nails if you're on Tumblr, because for some reason, they circulated... A LOT.  When I first painted these, I thought that they were okay but I wasn't particularly proud of them. Now I like them a little more.  Because they received so much attention on Tumblr, I quickly made a tutorial on how to do them, which can be seen here.

I guess that the popularity these nails got made me wonder, do you think a really great nail design is easy to replicate?

Hamburglar

When I first started doing nail art, I realized that blogs existed that were completely devoted to passion for nails, nail polish, nail art, and probably about a million more nail related sub-genres. I used to (who am I kidding, I still do) scour these blogs by bookmarking them all and compulsively checking them all. Ron, my fiance, loves hamburgers like how I love nails, so when he discovered Burgers and Nails aka The Nail-Burglar on tumblr, we were both in heaven. A blog that was completely devoted to the combination of two of our greatest passions! The Nail-Burglar is pretty self explanatory: It features photographs of hamburgers being held by well manicured ladies (and presumably sometimes men as well). So, Ron and I knew that we *had* to submit some nails to this site, and it took me long enough! I finally decided to paint The Hamburglar from McDonaldland on my nails! I painted his face on my ring finger, his striped jailbird suit on my thumb and pinky, and his hamburger print tie on my index and middle fingers.

Here's the actual post on Burgers and Nails. Hope you enjoy!

Welcome to Prime Time, B****!

These are my take on Freddy Krueger nails! First of all, entire series of the Nightmare of Elm Street movies  is amazing, which I know some people would argue with me about, but more importantly, can we just talk about the awesomeness of Wes Craven, who directed the first movie. He is one of my favorite directors, mostly because of the beauty of The Last House on the Left which includes the saddest moments of reflection I've ever seen.

But I digress, Freddy Krueger is quite possibly the scariest concept ever for a child because you can't escape the horror! Not even in your sleep! And Robert Englund, who portrays Freddy, is bone-chilling. He adds just the right amount of humor to make anyone squirm!

These nails were kind of a fail... The thumb and middle fingers are meant to be Freddy's burnt skin, but instead they look kind of pretty and definitely not skin-like. I'm pretty unhappy with my line work for Freddy's trademark red and green sweater. And my blood splatter looks more like... umm... well... not splatter-y... more like a glob. Oh well, you can't win 'em all!

FUN (and personal) FACT: The Simpsons knock off of Nightmare on Elm Street in the Treehouse of Horrors VI episode scared me WAY more than the film actually did.