BEAUTIFY: Evil Eyes and Awkward Yoga Poses

I've been fascinated by evil eyes for quite some time now; I have a nice collection hanging around my apartment and they flesh out the majority of the bracelet designs I make in my shop.  So it seemed fitting that I added them to my nail designs.

Originally inspired by this design, I took her idea and ran with it to the only place my brain seems to understand:  MORE GLITTER, MORE BLING.  I probably should have used the hole reinforcement stickers technique to get better/straighter painted moons, but... whatever.  Somehow it seemed easier to just paint a big messy half circle across the top of my entire damn finger than to get out the stickers?!?  I know, it doesn't make sense, especially when you consider that I had to spend all that time putting those glitter pieces on "just so".

Lesson learned:  stop being lazy, it usually creates more work for later.

I'll admit it was kind of strange catching these eyes looking at me all week, but I didn't mind too much until that awkward moment during my yoga practice where I close with a linga mudra (see figure #12) and it turned into an uncomfortable staring contest between me and my thumbs...

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BEAUTIFY: Maaaaaan...

 

        I waited a week for my awesome shipment of awesome to come in and this was all I got.  Poop.  Okay, this is better than poop, but only slightly because it'll prove to be just as versatile for my nail art as poop would.  "There was a mix up with inventory, yadda yadda yadda, keep what we sent you, we'll refund your money."  That's cool and all, I appreciate your prompt response, but dammit!  I wanted what I ordered!!!  Round two of internet glitter hunting has begun; this time I took my search to Ebay since Amazon is full of disappointment right now.

        Oh, and the glitter on my nails in this pic isn't even anything from this set.  It's just some random old craft store glitter I had stashed in a box!  Gold squares and black mini-rectangles over Sally Hansen's "Blue Me Away!" with lots of top coat. 

        What better blow me away are my shipments from Ebay...dammit.

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BEAUTIFY: Blue Valentine!

        Okay, so maybe that's a bad title because all I think about is that terribly sad but also very beautiful movie starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.  Haven't seen it?  Go rent it already!  (I think it's on Netflix right now too.)  But be prepared to cry your face off for the rest of the day!  (Or is that just me?)  Anyway, here is my version of the stupidly cute Valentine's day manicure that everyone loves to do!  (It's not everyone you say?  Just dorks like me?  Hey, YOU'RE the one still reading this post, so... )  I think this is the fanciest I've made my nails look yet and it was surprisingly pretty easy to do.

        First I painted my nails blue, and while they were drying I painted some scotch tape with the darker polish I was going to cut into strips for the stripes... try saying that five times fast!  I got the idea to paint tape with polish here.  Note:  I would've linked to the site it's actually on, but when clicking through on Pinterest, the picture didn't link to the post with the tutorial and the site was loading terribly slow on my computer so I gave up searching.  Sorry.  You'll just have to forgive my bad netiquette this time.  Once the polish was dry on the tape, I cut it into little slivers and stuck it to my nails.  This was probably the hardest part because I had trouble cutting them all the same width.

        I then fished around in one of the lovely new heart glitter polishes the husband gave me as a gift for V-Day and stuck those itty bitty hearts on top of the stripes with my ulta high-tech, homemade nail dotter tool!  (It's really just a mechanical pencil with a pin stuck in the end... STAY CLASSY!)  The extra glitter on my ring finger is from the polish I'm holding:  Rainbow in the S-Kylie by Nicole.  Pro tip:  Ulta makes a glitter polish that is almost identical to this one and it's cheaper!  I very rarely buy nail polish that costs more than about $3, but when I do it's because I either have a coupon or I just absolutely, positively NEED that specific color.  A lot of the nail art blogs I come across all use the super-cool, custom blended stuff they find online, but I honestly just don't have and can't justify spending as much money as they do on polish.  So if you're looking to make your nails pretty for cheap, you've found the right blog!  But if you're too fancy to use dollar store polish, well... can you send me money?  Hahahah

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BEAUTIFY: The NAIL FAIL Files!

        Yucky yuck yuck ew!  I decided to try out the nail marbling trend at home which resulted in very mild success.  At least I was a source of entertainment for my hubby who watched as I unceremoniously stuck my fingers into strange, swirly liquids, hoping for the best.  I think I did a decent job not turning my hands into a globbly nail polish mess thanks to the tips from others who have tried this (put tape your fingers or use vaseline, etc.), but it seems almost inevitable that you WILL make some kind of a mess during this process...

Like this!  (from http://www.emybloom.com)

        Thankfully the polish is only a very thin layer, so it's not that hard to clean off.  The designs came out pretty cool on my nails but I had some problems with bubbles and wrinkling on the edges where my nails meet my skin.  Overall it was fun but slightly tedious and I feel like I was using a lot of nail polish for just one nail at a time.  I think I might be happier if I practice this and experiment with proper color combinations because the white base looked really bad with the colors I chose.  (I picked a white base because most of the tutorials suggested that.)  I will totally attempt this again at some point.

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BEAUTIFY: Playing With Glitter or How to Go Cross-Eyed and Love It

        So for the first time in my entire life, I HAVE NAILS!  I've never really been a nail biter, I just tend to pick at them when I'm nervous which causes them to weaken and flake, causing breakage.  But I've been taking my vitamins regularly and learned not to be such a stress-mess!  The results?  I have pretty, adult-looking hands.  Okay, I admit they're still not up to par with what most would consider to be "long" nails, but there is no way I could do anything if I had talons of doom!

There was a woman who worked at my old bank with nails like these.

        Here is my first attempt at artfully placing individual pieces of glitter on my nail polish!  This isn't as [technically] difficult as it may seem, but I only had the patience to do this for two of my nails at the time.  The result was a pretty and not too over-the-top manicure.  I bet this would look really cool with a silver base coat... it would be like a mirror ball effect!  The awesome blog at Polish All the Nails has been a great source of inspiration; I highly recommend checking out some of her amazingly intricate manicures!  Maybe soon I'll be able to do full mermaid nails like hers without going cross-eyed before it's done!  Maybe.

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