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!

It's a Manicure Miracle!

You guys, something huge has just happened. My manicure has lasted an entire week without any noticeable chips!!! This has never happened before. I always pick at my nails, and my polish almost always chips significantly by the 4th day since I use my nails a lot for work and they sometimes get beat up when I play music. But besides the small dent that was basically there to begin with, they look stellar!

I probably should have taken better pictures so you could marvel (okay, I'm the only marveling, but still) at how great these still look. But, here's what they looked like right after painting them a week ago:

And here's what they look like now:

So, what did I do differently? Well, I tried out a new product - Chip Skip from OPI. I was skeptical at first, but goodness, it really works! I have a tiny bottle that came in a sample pack, but I would definitely consider coughing up the money to buy a full bottle of this stuff. It would be especially good for giving other people manicures, since I change my nails rather frequently anyhow.

In other news, I finally bought some striping tape. I tried it out for my pedicure and it turned out pretty well for my first time using the stuff, although I don't have a picture to show you. It's a bit tedious and certainly time consuming, but I know I'm going to have a lot of fun with striping designs in the next few weeks.

Okay, last point of business. This floral design was inspired by pinterest, and that got me thinking of creating a nail art challenge inspired by pinterest designs. Would anyone be interested in doing a challenge like this?

Happy Painting!

January Nails

So, as you may have noticed, I am not the greatest at updating this blog regularly. I am, however, still painting my nails fairly often, so today I have two of my recent manicures to share with you.

For the first time in a long time I decided to do a splatter manicure. Those can be a bit exhausting, but it looks pretty awesome when you're done. These pictures aren't the greatest since I just randomly took them on my phone, but you can get a pretty good feel of what they looked like.

My roommate got me Essie's Lilacism for christmas, and I love it! I saw a design similar to this next one on pinterest and wanted to give it a try. You'll notice some weird striping/smudging which was unfortunate, but I really liked them overall. They were also a hit among friends.

Not too shabby, eh? Right now I have a random manicure with the new OPI polishes I got. They were half off at TJ Maxx! I couldn't pass up a deal that good. Apparently they look like some classic rock album cover. I don't know. I may end up taking a quick picture of them, but they're pretty chipped at this point.

Anyhow, I shall try to post more often! I pinky promise.

Happy Painting!

Happy New Year! 2014 Nails.

Last night I decided to do an impromptu manicure to celebrate the new year. I don't know about you, but I am quite glad that 2013 is over. Here's to 2014!

Happy Painting!

I'm a bad blogger/fall flowers

Okay, I have no excuse. I did this design quickly a few weeks ago, took pictures 4 days later, and am just now finally posting them. Sorry!
I haven't been doing as much painting lately since I've been busier, plus my new job destroys my fingernails so manis are pretty much out for the foreseeable future (at least, nice looking ones).
Anyway, I did a quick dotting design with some nice fall colors. I was quite pleased with these overall.

Happy Painting!