opposites attract

Oy. Let's just pretend I haven't blogged for an eternity and a half, why don't we? I started my senior year of college and came down with mono all in the same week, so it's been a bit of a rough several weeks for me. However, now I've got schoolwork under control (okay that's a lie buuut...) and my tonsils are no longer the size of grapefruits so I hereby swear to blog like a NORMAL PERSON. A normal blogging person. Which is to say a lot. So don't leave me, please, I LOVE YOU!

All right all right onto the nails--

I love me some serious skittle action. This one was particularly obnoxious and thus beautiful. The white is Essie Marshmallow; light purple is Essie Lilacism; medium purple is OPI Do You Lilac It?; dark purple is NYC 006; gold is Wet n Wild The Gold & The Beautiful; and orange is Sally Hansen Sun Kissed. 

These photos were a huge triumph for me because they were the first successful set taken in my new apartment! Over the summer I was using the skylight in my bathroom for some lovely diffused natural light, and was panicking over how I would take photos once I moved (because my priorities are totally in order...) Thankfully, my apartment has this weird loft thing that isn't good for much (it doesn't even have electrical outlets...seriously, 1970s architects were rull weird) but it does have three lovely windows that make nail painting a breeeeeeeeze.

I'll have posts queued up every other day for the next couple weeks, and also some reader requests to fill! Just try to contain your excitement...

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!

¡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!

really really wanna ziggy-zig ahh

I just realized I haven't posted here in...far too long. I'm a terrible blogger. But I've actually been sort of busy (shocker, right?) and then from Sunday afternoon til Monday afternoon, I was without electricity after a transformer in my neighborhood blew, and I couldn't justify driving to Starbucks just for wifi.

Anyway, this is the mani I'm currently sporting and dreading having to take off to do Fourth of July nails. These are just some of the very serious problems I have to deal with on a daily basis, guys. Feel sorry for me.

These nails are inspired by a bathing suit I bought in Spain (for only 13€!) whiiich was definitely a Missoni rip off. If you're not familiar with Missoni, it's an Italian fashion house famous for its colorful zigzag print. 

Aaand here's the bathing suit as the background for a lil comparison. Now are you ready for all the colors I used? From tip to base, they are...


Finger Paints Lemon Sour
Borghese Bellissima Rose
Essie Tart Deco
American Apparel Mannequin
China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise
China Glaze For Audrey
Confetti Green with Envy


...phew.

This pattern was a bit time-consuming, but actually quite easy--with the right equipment. I'd tried zig zags before with my old sad tiny paintbrushes, but they were disastrous. For a smooth line, you really need a sort of striper brush, so the paint can flow off the brush. This time around I used a medium striper brush that was a bit thick, and the zig zags were incredibly easy to make.

The only thing I regret is not doing the pattern on top of a white base, like Essie Marshmallow. That would have helped with the opacity of the zig zags, as well as filled in the tiny inevitable gaps in the pattern.

I'm a little bitter though, because I had a couple people ask me if these were nail wraps. Honey...I don't put no stickers on my nails. 100% hand-done, baby...and I'll have the nail polish fume brain damage someday to prove it!

I have four (!!!) more manis queued up, so brace yo'selves, and have a very merry fourth of July!

floral + pinstripes

Today I stopped at Payless on my way home from work with one simple mission: buy some of those super no-show socks to wear with flats or pumps.

I left with some of those super no-show socks to wear with flats or pumps...and a bottle of nail polish. (Be proud of me, though. They were buy one, get one 50% off and I only bought one!)

I started with three coats of Essie Marshmallow (my new fav polish, if you haven't already noticed) on my pinky, ring, and thumb, and two coats of American Apparel Mannequin on my ring and index fingers. The forumla of Mannequin, like all AA's cremes, is so, so good. Not too thick, not too thin...goes exactly where you want it and isn't remotely streaky. LOVE. Why aren't all polishes like this?

Then, using my new striping brush, I painted stripes on my pinky, ring, and thumb nails using Brash Green Machine. Here is where I will stress the importance of having a proper striper brush. Til now I was using a couple tiny paintbrushes I got at an art supply store. They worked well enough for things like flowers, but were quite hard to work with for anything else. I don't know why I put off buying legit brushes for so long, especially because this set was only $3.95 with free shipping! It comes with 15 different brushes, which is probably more than I'll ever need, but a striper brush at Sally's probably costs at least $3.95 anyway. Long story short: buy real nail art brushes. They'll make your life so much easier.

I used a dotting tool and Essie Lilacism to make the bases of my flowers, then the striper brush and NYC 006 (only found in Spain) for the dark purple shading and Brash Green Machine for the petals.

Lastly, although Green Machine is a lovely color on its own, it was too bright for the pastel vibe I was going for in this, so I added another coat of Marshmallow on my three stripey fingers to mute the green a bit. Another reason why Marshmallow is such an awesome polish: it makes any bright polish a pastel! So uh, you should buy it already. And Essie should pay me for such dedicated promotion already.

one time, i met jenny lewis at a farmer's market and she told me my nails were cute

I have an announcement to make, guys. I am retiring from the nail art scene. I'm done. Because I won it. I can't rise any higher. I might only have four followers on this blog and zero comments on any of my posts, but yesterday Jenny Lewis said my nails were cute.


Now, if you know anything about me, you know two things dominate my life: my compulsion for painting my nails and, much longer withstanding, my all-consuming love for the musician Jenny Lewis. You might know her from her now-defunct band Rilo Kiley, or her acting prowess in movies like 1989's The Wizard, as well as several Golden Girls cameos. In any case, she is a perfect human being and her music means an incredible amount to me. I even have some of her lyrics tattooed on my body, that's how much I love her. She played in my town last night so I got to see her for the fourth time. A few hours before the show, I ran into her at a farmer's market. In a fit of adrenaline-induced bravery, I went up to say hi to her. She introduced herself to me and shook my hand and said, "Oh, cute nails!"

(I really was nearly crying. Also shaking so hard it took me a good three minutes to type that status.)

The show was absolutely amazing--her vocals were the best I've ever heard--and I met her yet again after the show and got this photo with her so uhm yeah my life is now complete:

...buuuut enough of my insaneo fangirling and onto what you came here for: the nails! Or should I say...the Jennicure? Get it? Manicure...Jennicure...okay I'll stop now.

These were actually inspired by a pair of heeled saddle shoe oxfords I've seen Jenny wear before (because I am that much of a creeper). This is two coats of OPI Mod About You layered over one coat of Essie Marshmallow to help with opacity, since Mod About You is a slightly streaky, sheer creme.

The black heart shapes are Wet n Wild Black Creme, and freehanded using the bottle brush. I then used a tiny dotting tool to add dot borders of Mod About You and Black Creme.

This is a cute and easy design that would look rad with a lot of different color combinations. The pink and black is very 1950s to me--like some souped-up Cadillac or something--but I think nude and white or two pastels could look pretty too!

...aaaand that's all I have to say about nails. My head is still spinning from the day's events. Also, please tell me you got the Mean Girls reference in the title of this post...)

tart deco creamsicle

I'm gonna start this post by saying: Essie Marshmallow is a perfect polish. You need it. I use white in a lot of my designs but I think the flat, opaque look of a standard white creme can look cheap and plastic-y, or like White Out. Marshmallow fixes all these problems: it's a sliiiightly off-white jelly that's opaque in three coats and creates a lovely, soft, deep white that's much more sophisticated looking than your run-of-the-mill white creme. SO GO BUY IT RIGHT MEOW.

I started off with three coats of Marshmallow. There's some VNL (visible nail line) in these photos, but it wasn't as obvious in person. Then I freehanded some the colorblocks? wings? curtains? whateva you wanna call 'em in Essie Tart Deco, a fabulous orange-leaning coral creme that makes me look wicked tan. I read online that it needs a zillion coats to become opaque but over Marshmallow, it was opaque in just one. Awwwwwwwww yeah.

I wanted to outline the Tart Deco in gold, but my gold foil (Essence Shiny Godness) is quite dark and wouldn't have meshed well with these bright colors. What's your favorite gold foil?

So yep! There ya have it. This reminds me of one of those creamsicle 50/50 bars I used to get after school as a wee tot. I just did a google search for "creamsicle" to put a photo in this post and found a site that sells creamsicle-flavored condoms. Now I'm scarred for life...and you are too. Sorry not sorry.

Also, can I just say I LOVE having oval nails? No breaks or anything. Y'all should try it.

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 ;)

seein' stars

Stars are literally the hardest thing to paint with nail polish. Why do they have to be so pointy? Why does nail polish have to be so thick and uncooperative? Why do I think you care about my difficulties in painting stars on my fingernails?

I recently ordered a ton of Essie polishes off of Amazon, because they're too damn expensive in stores and also I LOVE the delayed gratification of ordering things off the internet, even if it means I have to walk a full 200 yards to my mailbox. I think Essie has the best color selection out of any nail polish brand (probably because it's almost entirely cremes, which are my fave), but I'm always underwhelmed with their formulas. But I put up with that because gorgeous pastel cremes. All I need in life, really.

This is Essie Lilacism sponged over two coats of China Glaze White on White. I tried using Sammy's gradient tutorial which I posted about in my last gradient mani post, but Lilacism wasn't opaque enough so I ended up painting it on the tips, then sponging a bit further down. As you can see on my ring finger, this technique was less than perfect. Oh well.

I did the stars using a dotting tool, because my striper brush has seen seriously better days. I ordered a new set of brushes off Amazon but they've been super slow in arriving. So perhaps I lied when I said I like delayed gratification.

Regardless of my sad amorphous stars, I think this is a pretty sweet manicura. That's Spanish for "manicure." Whoda thunk?!

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.

girl on fire

I finally got around to ordering a couple polishes from the China Glaze Capital Colours Collection, inspired by the Hunger Games. I wasn't the biggest fan of the collection because I tend to favor bright and light colors over dark, moody ones, but I love the Hunger Games so I had to waste some money on HG-inspired polish.

I fully acknowledge there are about eight million manicures exactly like this floating around the internet, but in my defense I only had about ten minutes to do this manicure and thus couldn't be terribly creative.

I started with two coats of China Glaze Stone Cold, an awesome shimmery matte (!!!) charcoal grey, and then applied China Glaze Electrify to the tips. It's a super bright and shiny mix of gold and red small glitter. Once Electrify dried, I put a coat of Essie Matte About You top coat over just the glitter because I wanted the glitter to match the matte base, but the effect ended up being kind of cloudy and messy-looking. Lesson learned.

So, there you have it! District 12-inspired nails. I'd like to think Cinna would be a fan :)

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.