Sunday, June 15, 2014

Nail Fails

I've never addressed this on the blog before, but today... we're going to talk about nail fails! That's right, all the nail art attempts that aren't quite good enough to make it on the blog. I feel slightly bad about the huge amounts of time that passes between each post, so I want to discuss all my nail fails, which are (usually) the reasons behind my slow posting. Enjoy this collection, working backwards in time, of all my "brilliant ideas" that turned out to be less brilliant once on my nails.

The Boring Picnic Blankets
Okay, I guess I'm not totally dissatisfied with these. I don't know. For some reason they just bore me- I think there needs to be more to them. I tried to paint some ants on the thumb nail, and failed, so I gave up on any creative idea for the rest of the nails.


The Smudgy Ice Cream Cones
Eh. I tried. They look kind of ice-cream-y, I guess. I loved how the cones came out, but the actual ice cream just kind turned into smudgy blobs. Woops.


The Sloppy Gradient
I actually adore this gradient. I just forgot the cleanup before taking photos. Oh well.


The "Damn You Seche Vite" Nails
It's a short story: my Seche Vite started shrinking. Now I'm a happy user of HK Girl.


The Chubby Smiley Face
See, I was all pumped up for the Sherlock season 3 premiere, and I attempted to replicate the wallpaper design on my nails. It resulted in this mess. 



The Office Finale Nails
I forgot the yellow polish I used wasn't opaque. I hate visible nail lines. 


The Horrendous Nail Break
Of course my nail had to break before I could take my photos. Eh, the nail art wasn't that cute anyway (Also. Ick. The photo quality here. *shudders*). 


 Those are the only ones I could find for now- I think I may have deleted some of the worst offenders. I'll let you all know if I ever find the penis-gingerbread-men pictures, though (... don't ask).

I won't be seeing you all for a little bit- I'm heading off to Italy (Eee!) tomorrow, and I'll be back a week from Tuesday. I'm hoping to take plenty of pictures of my nails while travelling, so I'll put those all together in a post when I get back. Catch you all later!

Monday, June 2, 2014

I'm backkk!

Yeah, wow. Two months. I won't get into it all too much, but life in these past couple weeks has been crazy, stressful, and really not all that fun. This resulted in me feeling so exhausted by the end of every day that I couldn't find it in me to sit down for an hour or two to just paint my nails and pull together a post.

However, it's finally SUMMER! I survived the torture that is finals, and I'm done with the stress of social interaction for a whole three months. Don't get me wrong, I love (most of) my classmates, but I go to a tiny school with 60 kids per grade, and by the end of the year I'm honestly just sick of everybody. Now I get to chill at home, sleep in until twelve every morning, wear my pajamas all day, and sit around like the lazy couch potato I always dreamed of becoming. Huzzah! All of this relaxing has lowered the amount of stress I've been going through a TON, and so now I've (finally) got the motivation to whip up a post again.

Okay, a lot has happened in the past few months, so I'm just going to to quick little summaries of everything, plus the pictures that go with them. Enjoy!

Minecraft Creepers
These actually started out as a suggestion from my school's college counselor (long story... and yeah, guess who's starting to plan for college? This girl!). Y'all already know I'm a hugeee Minecraft addict, so of course I followed the suggestion!


The only reason I chose Creepers over anything else Minecraft-related was because they ended up being the least complicated design I could figure out. I might try something a bit more difficult in the future if I'm feeling motivated, but square shapes and nail art don't quite go together all that well. These are my second attempt at the design- the first time I used black polish and a dotting tool, and was left with a bunch of smudgy oval shapes on my nails. For these I used a fine-point Sharpie instead, and they came out ten times better. The base color is Essie - Mojito Madness (one of my favorite greens!). 


Pastel Polka Dots
Fast forward to Easter, with a different nail shape and a happy little holiday design. Yes, I can never decide what shape I want my nails to be. Square's so much better for nail art, but I gotta admit, stiletto nails make me feel just a bit bad-ass. Heh. 


I'm really satisfied with these! I'm not a pastel fan at all, but I had fun trying something bright and spring-y. These bring back memories of my Easter nails two years ago- my very first attempt at nail art! I tried to do cute little chicks, but I didn't have as steady of a hand back then as I do today, and they all ended up with really creepy misshapen eyes and messed up feet. Ah, well, we all have to start somewhere.



From left to right (including the thumb) I used: Sally Hansen - Lightening, China Glaze - For Audrey, Essie - Play Date, OPI - Sparrow Me the Drama, and Essie - Navigate Her. The polka dots were made with China Glaze - White on White and a dotting tool. 

Prom Nails
Oh, yeah, I went to prom this year! Hooray! Not only did I get to spend a fun night dancing, though- a bunch of my friends let me paint their nails for the occasion. I somehow never got a picture of my own nails (the color I used was LynBDesigns - Purple Polish of Sex, if anyone is curious), but I took plenty of everyone else's. 


Here are Sally's nails. She just wanted something nice and simple to match her dress, so we just did two coats of China Glaze - For Audrey (okay, it might have been Aquadelic... I can never remember which one I used. Those two are pretty much identical anyway) with a coat of HK Girl on top. 


Up next are Alice's. We used LynBDesigns - So Changeable for her because her dress had both the blue and purple shades found in the duochrome polish. 


Donna originally wanted this same design but with silver instead of gold, but turns out I don't own a silver polish (gasp! There's actually a shade of polish that Allie doesn't own?), so we improvised a bit with the gold instead. This is Orly - Luxe with ELF - Smokin Hot on the tips (with a black line from a striper in between).


Here are the nails I'm most proud of! The prom's theme was the Great Gatsby, so Adina found some Gatsby-themed nail art for us to work off of. I couldn't find the reference we used for these, but I don't take credit for the design- the inspiration for the accent nails was found through a Google search. 

[Update: Found the source!]




Here's a closeup of the thumb, which I was super proud of. I hate how time consuming it can be to use striping tape, but that always makes it feel worth the effort when the design comes out perfectly!


Can you figure out which nails go with each girl? Hehe! 

Conclusion
Whew, it's nice getting back to blogging. I'm leaving in about two weeks for a trip to Italy (Eee!), so that will be another short break from the blog for me, but other than that I'm hoping to get back to a weekly post schedule. And speaking of Italy, let me know if you have any ideas on what I should do with my nails for the trip. I want to do a fun little "travelling nails" post where I take pictures of my nails in front of all the different places I'm visiting there, so of course my nails have to look extra cute for everything! 

Annnd that's all for now! I shall be back soon with a new tutorial- catch you all later!