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 :)

weddin' bells

Believe it or not, I have a passion greater than nails, and that is photography. I've been dabbling in it for about four years now, and am now the editor of photography for my college's newspaper. I've also photographed four weddings, which are my favorite because FREE FOOD! Love! Flowers! (...but mostly free food.)

I did these nails for a wedding I photographed in mid-July. I thought the bride would be impressed with them, but alas, she was a rad hippie gal who didn't bother much with makeup.

These are wedding nails because the base color is Essie Something Borrowed, and it's the perfect bridal light blue creme. I love it on my toes especially cus it makes me look tan. Is it weird to have tan toes? Oh well.

The gold is Maybelline Bold Gold, from their new line of Color Show polishes. The formula was awesome--if you're into stamping, this one would work great. For some reason it's ridiculously hard to find a good, clean-toned gold foil for cheap, so if you're in need go pick this up at any drugstore for under $5!

Side note: holy bajeesus my nails are long in these photos. It's a little gross. I currently have them filed down to fingertip length and it feels 100% better. From now on imma leave the talons for the eagles.

That was a really bad joke. Sorry not sorry.

OH! I'm going to get my very first pedicure (!!!) and my first manicure in 4 years in a couple days. I don't know how I'm gonna be able to deal with someone else doing my nails...not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous. Any tips for making a salon manicure go smoothly? Like, am I supposed to remove my polish first? Can I boss them around if they use a weird top coat? Which trashy gossip mag should I pick up from the magazine stand? HALP!

california floral

Sometimes I can be a bit of a misanthrope, but sometimes an angel comes along and reminds me that humankind is essentially good. I was in American Apparel and was inevitably drawn to the nail polish display (surprise, surprise!) I was about to buy this shade for its full price ($6), but then the extremely kind cashier directed me to a table behind me, where the exact same shade was on sale for $3 because a bit of the label was scratched off. That cashier is now my new hero and possibly future husband, though I'm pretty sure he is also into dudes.

Even though my last manicure also used a nude base, it was quite loud, so I was in the mood for something light and soft. Hence...floral print! Normally when I do floral prints, I do roses, like this, so I decided to mix it up this time and go for more daisy-looking flowers. (Don't you love my highly accurate botanical vocabulary?)

This is one coat (!!!) of American Apparel California Trooper. I don't own enough one coat polishes. They are so lovely. The blue flower petals are American Apparel American Denim with a dark center thing (more highly accurate botanical vocabulary for y'all) in OPI Dating a Royal. The purple flower petals are OPI Do You Lilac It? with centers of NYC 006. 

It looked a bit plain with just the flowers, so I filled a bit of the empty space with dots of Zoya Wednesday to create the effect of leaves.

I really like this manicure. It's fresh and simple. Other things I like: Channing Tatum's moves in Magic Mike (yes, I saw it; yes, I loved it), eating tapioca pudding for breakfast, this stupid Lana del Rey song, and the fact that today is FREE SLURPEE DAY AT 7-11! What silly simple things have been making you smile lately?

¡viva los estados unidos!

Just a short & sweet post today, cus I have veggie burgers and mayonnaise-free potato salad to stuff my face with, y'all. It might be hard to believe, but food takes precedence over nails in my life.

I've been informed that today is a bit of a holiday in the United States. I'm from California, and everyone knows we aren't real Americans (too many electric cars and vegans out here), so once a year I like to break out the red, white, and blue and pretend I like trombone music and sweet pickle relish.

Of course, I had to break out the red, white, and blue on my nails as well. This is three coats of Essie Marshmallow for the white base with American Apparel American Denim for the blue field, H&M Berry Love for the red stripes, and Wet n Wild Stars & Stripes for the stars.

These were inspired by the fabulous Azealia Banks' nails in her music video for Liquorice (nsfw!) I realize these flags are actually backwards. I got them right on my left hand, and my left hand for once looks as good as my right, but I didn't think about that when I was taking pictures and now it's too late so OOPS HERE YOU GO, TOTALLY UNPATRIOTIC BACKWARDS FLAGS.

Don't sick HUAC Mitt Romney on me, please?

HAVE A FABBBB FOURTH, ERRBODY!

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.)

sacre bleu!

...get it? Cus this is a french manicure, and it's blue? I am so good at making puns in French, guys. So good at it.

This is three coats of Essie Borrowed & Blue with tips freehanded in Essie Lilacism. The formula of Borrowed & Blue was typical of a light pastel, rather streaky, though it did eventually settle nicely. This shade is from Essie's 2010 wedding collection, and I have to say this is definitely going to be the "something blue" when I get married to Ryan Gosling someday.

Not a lot to say about this one since it's so simple, but I hope you're not sick of these all-Essie manicures because I have one more coming up for you tomorrow ;)

stick 'em up!

You all are probably familiar with the accent nail manicure, if not from me then from the nails tag on Instagram, because it's gotten mad popular. Painting just one or two of your nails something different from the rest is a quick and easy way to spice up a simple manicure. Traditionally, the accent finger is just your ring finger, or ring and thumb. But lately I've been seeing variations of this around the interwebz, and my new favorite is the pistol manicure: just your index and thumb, your trigger fingers, are painted somethin' special.

I painted my pinky, ring, and middle fingers with three coats of Essence You Belong to Me, which is a gorgeous minty blue that I would love more if a) it weren't so sheer and b) if it didn't make me get that dumb Taylor Swift song stuck in my head, even though those aren't even the exact lyrics. Essence is a faaaabulous German brand they sell all over Europe so I picked up a ton of bottles there, but it is now carried at Ulta, so get yer butt over there and buy all of them cus they are great (and only 99 cents a bottle, though the bottles are .5 oz).

For my accent fingers, I used a base of Essence Got A Secret?, then painted on leopard spots in China Glaze White on White and Wet n Wild Black Creme using a dotting tool.

After I completed this, that T. Swift song was replaced by Paper Planes by MIA (a vast improvement, in my opinion, and not just cus I'm nostalgic for 2007.) All I wanna do is *bang* *bang* *bang*...


In slightly unrelated news, I have jury duty today. I'd been on standby the last two days and I guess today they decided that because it's going to be 76 degrees and sunny out, I would really prefer sitting inside a courtroom. I really hope neon yellow nail polish isn't in violation of court dress code and...if it is...well, all I have to say is:

(Yes, that is M. Ward. Yes, the internet is an increasingly strange and marvelous place.)

columbia inspired

Who's got two thumbs and is the worst nail blogger ever? (Hint: it's not my cat, because she has zero thumbs. She would be a really dreadful blogger though.) It's ME, because I haven't posted in ages even though I'm on summer vacation. Also, I haven't been crazy about any of the manicures I've done.

Anyway...I'll stop complaining about my silly creative slump and get to the nails, mmk?

My little brother graduates from high school on Thursday and he'll be going to Columbia University in the fall. This manicure was inspired by Columbia's colors--powder blue, black, and white. I used two coats of American Apparel American Denim as the base. I almost got away with just one coat, which was amazing for a pastel. This polish is a little chalky and seems like it will separate over time but for now it looks pretty damn nice. I'm a sucker for any blue nail polish.

I freehanded the stripes using China Glaze White on White and Wet n Wild Black Creme. As you can see, some nails turned out better than others...oh well.

American Denim was one of the four AA polishes I bought in Massachusetts and holy cow, their colors are so lovely and almost all cremes, so uh, naturally I'm hooked.

Sorry, not a lot of silly commentary on this. I've been working a ton lately and I use up all my witty banter there/in my conversations with my cat. So until next time...happy painting!

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.

what would YOU do if your mother asked you?

Tomorrow is a magical day here at Vassar College. It's Founder's Day, an annual event that celebrates the birthday of the college's founder, Matthew Vassar. He was a really short British dude with a penchant for top hats. Here is a photo of Meryl Streep dressed up as Matty Vass:

Total goddess, amirite?

Anyway, the coolest thing about Matthew Vassar (other than the fact he started a college for women) is that he was a brewer. Yep, that dude made beer for a living. Although most schools would argue that they have beer instead of blood in their veins, at Vassar that's actually quite true. So to continue the legacy of Matthew Vassar, the original party monster, every April we spend a whole day outside riding carnival rides, eating cotton candy, dancing to live music, and getting very sunburned. It is the best day, and every year Founder's Day has a specific theme. This year the theme is Dr. Seuss.

You all know of my unabashed love for Dr. Seuss (I mean, how could I not, with an elementary school educator for a mother?), so naturally I was THRILLED about the theme. I could go on for ages about how excited I am about all this, but you came here for nails and not rants about college histories and German authors with cool pen names, so onto my fingers:

I had grand plans for full-on nail art on every nail, but my grandma-like qualities were in full-force today and I was shaking too badly to do anything fancy, so I settled on a Cat in the Hat accent nail. The blue is OPI Dating a Royal, which is so so pretty but has a tendency towards bald spots, as you can see on my middle and pinky fingers. Booooo.

Then I put H&M Confetti kisses, a mix of large silver hex glitter and silver microglitter, on the tips of my nails. Apparently my flash hates silver glitter because you can barely see it in these photos. Oh well; just imagine all the sparkly goodness, okay?

To make the hat on my ring finger and thumb (and I'm not going to show you my thumb because a corner of the nail ripped yesterday and now it looks awful), I started with a base of Sinful Colors Snow Me White. Then I topped it with Seche Vite because I am impatient, waited a few minutes, then used tape to create the red stripes with H&M Berry Love. I used a small paintbrush for the black outlines and my attempt at Dr. Seuss-esque shading, which on my nail kind of just looks like I suck at nail art. Don't worry about it.

Sorry that this post was 99% me blathering about how much I love my school and 1% nails. But hey, it's my blog, right? I DO WHAT I WANT!

"Then he said, 'That is that.' And then he was gone, with the tip of his hat. Then our mother came in and said said to us two, 'Did you have any fun? Tell me. What did you do?' And Sally and I did not know what to say. Should we tell her the things that went on there that day? She we tell her about it? Now, what SHOULD we do? Well...what would YOU do if your mother asked YOU?"

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.

friday night moon

STORY TIME: I was in Baltimore a couple weeks ago needed cash but couldn't find a Chase ATM anywhere so I came up with the best plan ever: go to Rite Aid, buy some nail polish, and get cash back. I'm totally fine with convenience fees in the form of nail polish :) Wet n Wild polishes were on sale for 69¢ each and I picked up a few I didn't already have, including the gorgeous Blue Moon. It's a midnight blue with flashes of teal.

I'm usually not a fan of shimmer polishes, but this one is more duochromey than frosty. (Yes, duochromey is now a word. Don't question it.) The formula on this polish was great--two easy coats that dried quickly.

Look at that teal! Loveeeee. Of course, since I'm incapable of leaving my nails painted a single color, I added one coat of OPI Last Friday Night from the Katy Perry collection.

Pros of this polish: it's beauuuuutiful (blue, green, pink, and iridescent glitter in a sheer blue base)
Cons: you get Katy Perry stuck in your head for the next eight hours after looking at the bottle

...but I'll put up with the cons. This polish is far too sheer to wear on its own, but it makes a lovely layering polish.

The combination of Blue Moon's teal shimmer with Last Friday Night's round microglitter reminded me of bioluminescent bacteria in the ocean. Normally bacteria is the last thing I want my nails to look like, but I promise, bioluminescence is pretty damn beautiful.

So there you have it! Katy Perry and bacteria-inspired nails. Proof that inspiration can be found in the very strangest places.

swedish lace

I did this manicure a couple months ago after buying my favorite blue, OPI Dating a Royal. I wore Dating a Royal by itself for a day until I caved and had to add something. I freehanded the lace pattern using Sinful Colors Snow Me White and a dotting tool.

As you can see, it's a little uneven, because this was my first attempt. I'm thinking of recreating this soon with different colors--maybe I'll even make a tutorial! Stay tuned...

stars & stripes

I stole borrowed some paper hole reinforcements from work the other day, so I knew I wanted to do a half-moon manicure. (For those of you who couldn't tell from the photo, a half-moon manicure is when the crescent-shaped base of your nails--where some people naturally have a white arch--is painted a different color from the rest of your nail.) But I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it, so I did something I've never done before: just started painting without a clear plan in mind.

The first full-coverage polish I grabbed was Sinful Colors Snow Me White. When doing a half-moon mani, it's smart to choose a polish that gives good coverage in just one (thick) coat. I didn't feel like waiting for a base color to dry, so I put on my reinforcement stickers and applied Snow Me White. After that was done, I decided pretty quickly I was going to make this nauseatingly American-themed, because why not? So using a small paintbrush I added stripes of OPI Dating a Royal (one of my favorite polishes ever, it's just so gorgeous) over the white, and stars of H&M Berry Love on my bare half-moons.

I'm really happy with how this turned out, and I think it looks cute with my newly rounded nails--I'm usually a square nail type of girl, but they were breaking too easily like that, so...here we are.

Some tips for doing a half-moon manicure:

• Cut your reinforcement stickers in half. They're much more flexible this way; otherwise you might not be able to get it thoroughly pressed down at the edges of your nail.
• Go one finger at a time. I actually used the same two halves of a sticker for all my fingers. Place the sticker, put on a thick layer of polish, and then IMMEDIATELY remove the sticker. If you wait too long, the polish will drag and smear when you take off the sticker.
• Use tweezers to apply and take off the stickers. As you get more nails wet, the more you risk smearing wet polish as you deal with the stickers. An easy solution to this problem is using tweezers--no risk of smudging or denting!

mattified midnight

Ever since buying Essie Matte About You top coat last week, I've been searching for the perfect matte mani. I tried mattifying a shimmer--baaaad idea. I tried matte base with gloss leopard spots--too subtle. I did rainbow skittles with tape zig-zags, which actually looked cute, but I didn't realize that matte polish attracts dirt, and the light yellow I used looked horrible after just one day. So then I finally decided to try mattifying some glitter, and I love the result!

For the base, I used Borghese Mezzanotte Blue which after two coats looks pretty much black. I was a little disappointed, but I do think it's subtly softer/more velvety than if I had used just black. The glitter is two coats of Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters. I love the colors in it, but its formula is so difficult to spread evenly. And for the matte top coat, I used two coats of Matte About You. I did get some cracks/shrinkage, so I would suggest using a quick-dry top coat like Seche Vite before applying the matte top coat.

Since I'm new to the nail game, this was the first time I actually remembered to wrap my tips. It's been a whole day since I finished this mani and I have zero tip wear! Wooooohoooo.