Fishies

Last week there was a summit in town for my field: water.  I painted my nails a nice soft blue that just so happened to match the same color of blue that Lake Michigan appeared on the cover of the program.  For this manicure I used Zoya Jo.

After the summit concluded I added fish to my ring finger as an accent nail because I simply didn't have time to change my polish or stamp anything more than two fingers.  For the fish I used M.A.S.H. plate m27 and Konad Special Polish in White.

Party Like a Rockstar

Now that I know that manicures resembling cupcakes are to too "out there" for work, I must be careful in what I decide to create for Facebook's Polish-aholics Anonymous group nail art Mondays.  That patchwork manicure from last week?  Super glad I took that off Sunday night.  This week's theme is Rockstar; lots of opportunity to create something that is too extreme for work.  I quickly nixed ideas of guitars, drums, microphones off my ideas list, and finally settled on something I found via Pinterest.  

I used Sinful Colors All About You for the star color and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out as the sky color.  I used two different top coats also; Seche Vite over the gold and Essie Matte About You over the black.  I wanted the starts to really sparkle as compared to the sky.

Sadly, I had no star stickers anywhere in my apartment and wound up making all my stars by hand.  This made the manicure take a lot longer and I'm not an adept tape star maker.  I would also like to add that this manicure is really not worth creating if one doesn't have star stickers.

Cupcakes

For my birthday today I decided to paint myself some cupcake nails.  They turned out all right, definitely not perfect but all right.

Personally, I think they look like cupcakes only if you tell yourself they should look like cupcakes.  If you don't know what they are I think it's a little hard to tell.  I'll try to do cupcakes again sometime to see if I can come up with something more realistic.

For this manicure I used China Glaze For Audrey as the base of the cupcake, Zoya Snow White for the frosting, and Zoya America for the giant red dot (it was supposed to be a cherry). For the colored dots (a.k.a. sprinkles) I used Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow, Zoya Robyn, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure I Pink I Can, and Zoya Mira.  Finally, for the cupcake holder lines I used So Easy Stripe Rite White.

Some of my dots are smudged.  They took a ridiculously long time to dry and I kept smudging them (sigh).  I need to practice dotting more so that I keep down the amount of nail polish I have on my dotting tool.

I also learned that this manicure is a little too risqué for work.  Evident ally engineers are supposed to be creative, but conservative.  Who knew?

Adventures In Acetone 150 Follower Giveaway

Jacki at Adventures in Acetone is having a 150 follower giveaway.  This giveaway is open internationally, ends September 30th, and has a lovely prize of the Essence Nail Art Twins Bella and Edward.  For details on the contest, including entry form, please visit: http://adventuresinacetone.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-150-follower-giveaway.html

Coach Patchwork

This week's nail art theme from Facebook's Polish-aholics Anonymous group was patchwork nails.  Ehhh, originally I was not too thrilled for this topic but I love the way the design looks on my nails.

The inspiration for this design comes from a Coach patchwork handbag.  I love the way the colors for this purse go together.  It's bright, cheerful, and makes me smile whenever I look at it.

For this manicure I started by painting my nails with a basecoat (Sally Hansen Continuous Treatment Base & Top Coat), followed by one coat of Zoya Snow White and then one coat of Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow.  I used a layer of white below the yellow because it makes this color 'pop' more than if I'd just painted the yellow over my basecoat.

Using tape to section off the area I wanted to keep yellow, I painted Zoya Jancyn over the rest of the nail.  Following the same procedure, I next used Zoya Areej and finally Zoya America.  I wanted to use Zoya Tamsen (one of my untrieds) instead of America but the color difference wasn't noticeable over Areej.  


Since these colors are all so...warm I wanted to distinguish them from one another.  To do this I added black "stitching" with a Kiss Nail Artist Fine Art Pen in Black.  Here's a before and after:

Before "Stitching"

After "Stitching"

My boyfriend said that my nails reminded him of the movie A Nightmare Before Christmas but I think my nails are much too colorful to be compared to such a dark film. 

I swear I moisturize more than it looks like in this photo!

I'm pretty bummed that I have to take it off after only a day and a half of wear but I must look "business professional" for a big meeting and these nails don't fit that look.

An Updated Look

There is no better way to extend the life of a manicure than to stamp a pretty design over it.  That's what I did to my Sinful Colors Savage manicure - stamped M.A.S.H. plate m64 on top of it using Konad Special Polish in Black.

Yeesh, I thought I put on plenty of cuticle moisturizer before I took this photo, apparently not.  Sorry about that.

Love

I'm in love with the color Savage from Sinful Colors! I'm also totally bummed that I can't capture the true color of it with my camera.  I've taken a picture outdoors, indoors (in every room of my apartment) and still nothing comes close to truly capturing the dark teal color.

A quick internet search revealed that I'm not the only one with troubles, there are plenty of Google image results that look just like the blue my camera thinks this polish is.  I'm surprised that most of the people out there say that this color is matte - mine is definitely not.  Perhaps the label on my bottle is wrong.

Thats SO Fresh's picture of Savage isn't as dark as mine:

Creative and Polished's picture is probably the closest to how mine appears:

I didn't realize it till after I'd done my nails that I've used Savage before as a base for a paisley manicure.  That however, was before I became acquainted with the art of cleaning up (or moisturizing) after a manicure so please ignore the polish everywhere.  The color here isn't accurate either.

Not Wednesday Anymore But...

Apparently I wasn't meant to wear pink on Wednesday but I tried, I really did.  The plan was to come home from work, polish my nails while doing laundry, and then walk to a class lab.  My plan was perfect, foil-proof.

And then I found my self in my car making an unexpected drive just minutes after painstakingly adorning the tips of my digits with the delightful pink Zoya Portia.  Seven of my ten tiny canvasses had gouges or dents in the polish.  Declaring this polish ruined beyond repair I headed to Walgreens to grab more cotton balls (I would need them, drenched with acetone to remove this calamity).  I snapped a quick picture of my three undamaged nails before heading into the store...where I managed to wreck the polish on those nails too.

I've never had a bottle of Zoya polish like this before - this one stunk to high heavens and gave me an instant headache.  Some people joke that environmental engineers have the worst sense of smell because we're used to smelling sewage all day.  I don't know if that's true or not but my boyfriend can always tell when I've been doing my nails in our apartment even hours afterwards...and I never smell a thing.  Other than the smell, Zoya Portia was a nice polish, applying smoothly with some streaks and was very shiny even without a top coat.

I want candy!

This week's theme from the Polish-aholics Anonymous group on Facebook is candy inspired nails.  I'm not big on candy right now; I'm supposed to be on a diet!  Who am I kidding, I'm always big on candy yum yum yum.

When I looked for inspiration for this manicure I looked on Google, where I got many hits for candy corn.  Candy corn, while delicious, I think is better suited for a manicure in October.

I next looked for inspiration on the lovely website Pinterest.  While browsing through Pinterest I ran across these two gems: M&M manicure and M&M nails.M&Ms! - Perfect.

By painting M&Ms on my nails it gave me an opportunity to use some polishes in my collection that I haven't used before, such as Zoya Jancyn, Zoya Sookie, and the Finger Paints polishes.  I've never used Finger Paint polishes before but they applied very nicely.

The colors I used for this were (base) Zoya Snow White, (blue) Zoya Robyn, (red) Zoya Sooki, (green) Finger Paints Chrysanthe-Mum's the Word, (orange) Zoya Jancyn, (brown) Sinful Colors Nirvana, (yellow) Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow, (iconic M) Stripe Rite White.

Business Appropriate

I'm back from China as of last week (read more about my China adventure here) and have been super busy catching up with work and graduate school.  I haven't had a lot of time to pull out my nail polish from much less think about painting my nails.

This is essie's Eternal Optimist.  I love this color because it feels very professional to me.  Most nudes end up making me look like I have mannequin hands but this is darker without being over the top.  Before I went to China this is the color I painted my nails - foolish me I thought it would last.  The polish chipped off within two weeks and I wound up biting my nails, ugh.  All that hard work down the drain.

Lovely shade perfect for formal business situations.