anchors aweigh

I'm not even going to try to make an excuse for not updating for weeks again and instead get straight to the manicure, and hopefully you'll love me again because these nails are mad cute, if I do say so myself.

I will forever love bright-bright, Crayola-marker colors. Revlon Royal is the most gorgeous royal blue jelly that just begs to be made into something as cheesily nautical as possible.

I freehanded the tips using Sinful Colors Snow Me White and H&M Berry Love. Being able to freehand things and not use tape anymore has been one of my greatest nail art triumphs; tape can do super rad things, but the pulling and smudging that can occur makes it oftentimes not worth it for someone as impatient as I am.

In addition to primary colors, I love sparkly polishes, so I made an anchor out of GLITTER. Ed Hardy would be so proud. I used the large silver hex glitters from H&M Confetti Kisses and placed them individually using a dotting tool. Time-consuming, but worth it! (...words of a true polish addict. Sigh.)

I have about a half-dozen more manicures to be posting over the next couple weeks...and in more exciting news, MY 21ST BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW! I'm about to begin my birthday manicure...stay tuned :)

the dark side of gradients

I've been seeing (and doing) so many pastel gradients lately, and they're all incredibly lovely, but I decided to turn that on its head and do an intense, dark gradient. Cus, ya know, I'm a rebel. (I also just had Cool Whip on my strawberries with breakfast. Watch out, y'all, I'm outta control!)

I started with two coats of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise, an almost-neon polish with a slight shimmer. Like neons, it dries matte and deceptively quickly; though it might feel dry to the touch almost instantly, you do need to wait as long as you would with a non-matte polish, otherwise you risk pulling or other unfortunate impatient-nail-painters' problems.

Then I sponged on Revlon Royal, a gorgeous blue jelly, and Wet n Wild Black Creme. I used a bit of Sammy's gradient technique and a bit of my own; alternating sponging both colors to get a smooth effect (so sponging Royal over Turned Up Turquoise, then sponging more Turned Up Turquoise over Royal, etc.)

It's not my smoothest gradient, but I love the shock of the black with the neon turquoise. Also, this was a beeeeyotch to clean up--I sponged on the black, which meant it was all over my fingers. It looked kinda rad at first--like spray paint outside of a stencil--but then I was like, "Man, I have to douse my skin in acetone to clean it up now," and then I had dry, stained fingers and it was just real rough. A day in the life of a nail addict, dude. Stuff's intense.

Have you tried gradient nails? What are your fav color combos? Has this post inspired you to join...the dark side? (We have Cool Whip and strawberries. You should totes come.)

stars upon thars

GUUUUYS I'm so sorry for neglecting you all for the past two weeks. I was obscenely busy with finals, and then I was in Massachusetts for five days. I went a whole week without changing my polish, and then I painted them (gasp) one single color (China Glaze Lemon Fizz) and left that on for another week. I'm the sloppiest ever. But I was on Cape Cod with this pretty much in my front yard...so...for once I had more fun things to do than paint my nails:

Someday I will own that house.

So even though I wasn't painting my nails, that doesn't mean I wasn't buying polish, because as we've already established, I have zero self-control. Also, when I was on Cape Cod I ate nothing but marshmallows and fried eggs, so I saved a ton of money on food. Nail polish > food. (Everyone feels that way, right?)

Also, I'm now back at home and I have a CAR (aka the Ron F***ing Swansonmobile) so the other day  and picked up two of the polishes from the new Fourth of July collection by Wet n Wild ($1.99 each, seriously the best). I was most excited about Wet n Wild Stars and Stripes, which has large holographic star glitter and both large and small bar glitter.

I decided to go with a jelly sandwich for this manicure. No, I did not eat a jelly sandwich while painting my nails (I ate pesto pasta instead...mmmmmm). A jelly sandwich is when you layer a sheer or "jelly" finish polish with glitter, so the glitter is sandwiched between layers of the jelly polish.

I started with one coat of Revlon Royal on all fingers except my ring finger. For my ring finger I first used two coats of China Glaze White on White before applying two coats of American Apparel Neon Yellow. Using white as a base coat for neon polishes gives the neon that extra eye-searing factor. You should try it.

Next, I added one coat of Stars and Stripes, and like how it is with all jumbo-glitter polishes, none of the stars went onto my nail when I used the bottle brush. I fished out the star glitters and placed them on my nails using a dotting tool. Then I added another coat of Royal and another coat of Stars and Stripes, and followed it up with literally four coats of Seche Vite cus those star glitters were bumpy as hellllllll.

So blammo! There you have it. This manicure is so ridiculous and I love it. How rad is that neon yellow?! These pictures do not do it justice, it's brighter than a highlighter. Also, I totally dig the jelly sandwich look. It's so cool how muted the first layer of stars are in contrast to the super-shiny top layer of stars. And it's even more awesome-looking in person!

Now I'm going to eat salt water taffy and cry about the fact I'm not in Massachusetts anymore. Hope you all are having a beauuuutiful Tuesday!

PS--I have two more posts queued up, and also now that sk00lz out 4 summr, I have all the time on my hands (jeez I'm so PUNNY) to paint my nails and will be posting allllll the time. Brace yo'selves.

matte about whimsical

I'm gonna let you all in on some really intense nail polish world drama: for those of you unfamiliar with it, there's a brand called Deborah Lippmann that makes crazy expensive nail polish, usually $18 a bottle. Being the broke college student that I am (NY state minimum wage is a total joke, I tell you), I can't afford that, regardless of how beautiful her polishes are.

Since blue polishes and glitter polishes are two of my very favorite things, a polish that combined both seemed like a dream. And Deborah Lippman has just the thing--it's called Glitter in the Air, and it's perfect, but too damn expensive. So when Revlon came out with an exact dupe, I was inappropriately excited. I went to three different CVSes, two Rite Aids, two Targets (in two different states!) and a Walgreens, but to no avail. After a month of searching, I finally found it at Stop n Shop of all prices, for under $5. Take that, Lippmann and your ridiculous prices!

Unfortunately, once I finally got my paws on Revlon Whimsical, I was a little disappointed. It's incredibly sheer, the glitter is hard to spread, and it dries very slowly. For this I layered three coats of whimsical over two coats of a light blue polish, Essence Sure Azure, because I think it would take about three million coats of Whimsical to achieve bottle color and even I don't have the dedication for that.

After wearing Whimsical for a day, I added a coat of Essie Matte About You for some velvety matte goodness. PRO TIP: never ever ever ever use a matte top coat over a manicure that is even slightly wet. The matte will cause the polish underneath to shrink and you'll get unsightly cracks in your previously perfect manicure. To combat this, use a quick-dry top coat first, and then apply your matte top coat. I use Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat for all my manicures, and it's a godsend. You can get it for $8.99 at Sally's Beauty Supply, but I've also seen it at Target for a few dollars cheaper. Seche Vite means "dry fast" in French, and has this miracle formula that allows you to put it over tacky (but not totally wet) nail polish and within 10 minutes you'll have a super shiny and super dry manicure. The only drawback is that about halfway through the bottle, the formula will start to get really goopy and will be impossible to apply. This can be fixed by adding a few drops of nail polish thinner, which you can find at Sally's or any beauty supply store.

And because this post has had waaaay too much text and way too few pictures, here's a creepily close-up photo I took with my point-and-shoot of Whimsical before I mattified it:

**note to those who are not Facebook friends with me: I've been posting nails on Facebook since September, but only just started this blog a couple weeks ago. Thus, I have a ton of manicures from the last few months to post, but back then I wasn't really focusing on getting a lot of great pictures. Any pre-blog manicures will have fewer, crappier pictures...just a heads up.