Wedding Season Nails

Hey there, nail enthusiasts of the net! I have some fun ones today. It's wedding season, and with that it meant it was time to get a new dress. Of course whenever I go shopping for a dress I take into consideration the kind of nail art I can do to accessorize, and I found such a fun dress to inspire my art.
My cousin got married this past Sunday and I did a mani-pedi to go along with my dress:

(I'm the one on the right)

I snapped some pictures quickly while waiting for the ceremony to start, so these are not the best of pictures (and I proceeded to pick of the paint the next day- bad habit, I know), but they turned out pretty great!

Pretty fun, right?

It's a good thing I like my pedicure, since I'm probably going to be keeping it for quite some time.

I have bad news.

I dislocated my right shoulder yesterday and the doctor I saw thinks I tore a ligament or cartilage. I'll find out in a few days when I see the orthopedic specialist. Either way, My dominant arm is down for the count for at least a few weeks. I guess I can work on using my non-dominant hand in the meantime, but unfortunately I won't be able to do any nail art (or anything else I like to do for that matter) for quite some time. You have no idea how frustrated I am about that. But I will try to post sometime in the next month.

Until then-

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 5: Grayscale

Today's challenge was quick and simple. I like this simple pointillism design by Quite Polished, so I did a literal interpretation as it was already in grayscale. Here is the original pin:

And here is my version that I did on the fly:

(sorry for the blurriness, I was in a rush)

Simple, easy, fun - I love them!

Happy Painting!

An earnest attempt at striping

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought some striping tape. This weekend I decided to try it out for a manicure. It took a LOT of patience and I learned a thing or two along the way.

It's a bit tricky to tell with this lighting, but I used black, charcoal gray, light gray, peach, and white. I'm actually quite pleased with the way this turned out considering how difficult it was to apply the tape with one hand. 

Yeah, I think I ended up prepping, painting, and cleaning up for about three hours. Ridiculous, right? Well, part of that time was me being distracted by Netflix, but I've realized that in general it just takes me forever to paint. Is that true for you guys as well? Any tips to speed up the process?

Stay tuned for an exciting announcement next week! Until then...

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Black and White and snowflake fingers

Back on track with the challenge this week with black and white nails.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. It's a little hard to see but I used my China Glaze Catwalk for the grey in the gradient, which looks really great in person. I didn't think I would like this day of the challenge very much, but it ended up being one of my favorites. 

I was really sick last week so I didn't do my nails. I felt like I was sort of in withdrawal! So because of that and also because I received two lovely new polishes from my secret santa at work, I decided to paint my fingernails.

I have to say, I totally love these colors from Essie (I did the opposite colors on my left hand) and think they make a great base for snowflakes. I've never done snowflake nails, and the tutorials make it look a lot easier than it actually is. It wouldn't be so difficult, perhaps, if you used a needle for the small lines. With some practice and different tools, I think I could make these pretty clean looking. Nonetheless, I'm happy with how they turned out. And it was good to practice painting my fingernails again since next week I'll be painting them with the Urbana 12 logo for the conference (more info at urbana.org).