Red Team Captain

I am involved with a local group and last night was my first time on stage (with this group). It was nerve-wracking, exciting, sweat-inducing, and loads of fun all at the same time.
I always feel that good nails give a confidence boost, so as I was the captain of our red team fun red nails were in order.

Just please ignore my poor broken little nail. 

Cocktail Party Nails

A friend is having a nice cocktail Christmas party this Friday night, so I of course want to do my nails for the occasion. 

There are many ways I could go, but decided I wanted to do something simply, and a bit elegant, while still being a little festive. Black and glitter is always a perfect combo in these situations. 

I went with a thin coat of a sheer silvery holographic glitter, with black tips, and a little black squiggle Christmas Tree, with red glitter accents. (and threw a black snowflake on the thumb for good measure)

I've recently broken most of my nails, which is why they are all so short. And yes, my nails are a bit discolored. This is what happens when you are bad at caring for your nails and don't use a base coat...especially when wearing heavily pigmented reds & blues. I should know better, and I DO know better... I just rarely take the time. In person, the discoloration isn't very noticeable, so it'll be fine for the party. 

I did my nails so early, because lately I have been hard to please with my nails, so wanted to make sure I had enough time to redo them at least once. Luckily, I am pleased with these. 

All that Jazz

I dressed in a 20's style costume tonight, for a Halloween themed show at ComedySportz. I like dressing up, and like being realistic and authentic in my approach. Now, that doesn't mean I stick to EXACTLY was what worn in the 1920's, however, what I do wear and do is based in reality.
In the 20's, nail polish/enamel was just hitting shelves, and women could now lacquer their nails. It was all the rage to paint your nails leaving the moon & tips free of polish. And Red was THE color to use.

I wanted to pay tribute to this trend, but not do exactly this, I wanted it to coordinate more with my getup. 

My outfit is black and gold, and I was wearing a headdress with Peacock feathers. 

At the same time that nail polish was becoming en vogue, makeup was also becoming more mainstream. In previous generations, only "THOSE" type of women wore makeup, but the 20's saw women boldly wearing very thick & heavy eye makeup, typically in black or grey, but also surprisingly turquoise was a popular choice. SO... because I was using Peacock feathers, and turquoise was a popular choice in the 20's, I chose to paint my moons turquoise. 

I am a big fan of Art Deco, so painted the remaining portion of my nails in black with a geometric design in gold.  

It isn't true to what was worn int he 1920's, but it takes elements of what was popular at that time and does a modern twist with it. 

Here's my makeup that went with it... heavy black and grey around the eyes, except for the inner corners, I did a thick turquoise liner. 

And of course, a red lip. 

Official Halloween nails

Yes, I know it is a weird angle, but was feeling two lazy to take & post two pics, so I took two dozen pics before I was able to get a close-enough-to-good pic :) Yes, I realize the irony of this.
Anyways... I give you... Halloween nails!

Simple Polka Dot Lace

I've been lax lately. I have been keeping up painting my nails, but haven't been taking pics. And frankly, the paint jobs I've been doing have been rather basic, by my standards. 

So for the beginning of this week, I decided to go with a brightly colored lace like manicure. 

The color is actually a neon coral, but looks hot pink in these pics. 

I painted a diagonal of black at the inner edge of my nails. 

 Next, using my larger dotting tool I placed evenly spaced dots along the diagonal.

I then placed coral dots within the black dots, using a smaller dotting tool. I also put a couple dots in the black space.

I wanted to do a arch of dots over each dot, so on my pinky I decided to do this completely free form. As you can see, it didn't so much arc over each dot as it just sagged. So sometimes it doesn't always go as planned. 

 I decided to try a different approach, so I first placed dots in the space between the larger dots.

Then to make the arch, I placed dots over the top of the larger dots, which worked out well and gave the look I was going for. Yay!

A dot dot dot

I have been a total slacker lately. Not necessarily in regards to painting my nails, but in posting the pics of them. No reason for it either, other than I'm a slacker :) 

I had seen a manicure similar on another blog, and liked that it looked like more work than it was. So I decided it was my turn. 

I painted all nails except my ring finger with one coat of Sinful's Snow me White, and one coat of Tokyo Pearl to give the solid, pearly white color. 

My ring finer is Pure Ice's Wild thing, with a coat of Rimmel's Cocktail Colour Cutie Colada. 

All very inexpensive polishes. 

One my nails were dry, I poured out a small pool of black wet n'wild polish that I get around Halloween for $1.

Using my small dotting tool, I began to make clusters of 4 dots in rows. I started in the middle of each nail, then did the cluster above, then the cluster below, and then those on each side. Don't worry too much about spacing, it's ok if they aren't perfectly lined up. Almost all of my clusters ended up being slightly wider than they were tall.

As you can see with the closeup of my thumb, not all dots are the same size, and not all clusters are the same shape. It's ok, that won't be as noticeable with the next step.

Pick however many colors you want for the dots, and pour a small glob of each out. In reality, it is probably best to do one color at a time, otherwise your drops will start to dry, and they'll "string" as you try to leave dots. Then you'll have to pour out more polish. I did them all at the same time because it looks better for the pic. I ended up pouring out more of each color. (I believe in reusing as much as I can, so those old bills are used as my color pallet :) gotta make them useful for something!)

Randomly place dots of each color in the center of the black dots. You can keep the colors in order, or make them completely random, as I did.

This would be a lot of fun to play with variations...make the center dots in each row all one color, or make the center dots black and the base dots multi colored. 

Sparkly Lattice

Today is a fun sparkly manicure that doesn't scream "I want to be a 12 yr old girl still!". Sometimes glitter can seem like you're trying to hard to be young, and there is no reason why glitter has to be off limits to those of us who have been an official adult longer than they'd been a child. 

Layering glitter UNDER a solid color polish, with glints shining through, is a fun take on glittery nails. 

I started with a simple black polish. It doesn't need to be a well executed layer; it is OK if there are uneven spots. It is basically just a base color to give the glitter some interesting depth.You can use a color that coordinates with your top color, use your top color for a bit more of a monochromatic look, or skip it altogether. I used Wet N'Wild's Halloween black, that I got on clearance for I think 25 cents. 

Next, I added a layer of dense, holographic silver glitter. This is one coat, since it was late and I was too tired to finish the manicure. 

 To keep my nails from getting jacked up while I slept, I used a new quick dry polish that I got at CVS called OutTheDoor. I let it sit for about 2 mins, then went to bed, and there only were two tiny little nicks, that I probably got while closing the polish bottles. So it did pretty good. It is a thin polish, so it doesn't do a lot of smoothing, but it does good enough to keep your polish from getting sleep lines.

I added a second coat of glitter the next day, when I was ready to finish my manicure. I like the more solid coverage of the second coat. 

To make my lattice grid, I cut strips of scotch tape of differing widths and laid in a pattern across my nail. (You can also get striping tape, or use painters tape)
The time you are most likely to mess up the polish is when you are removing the tape strips. To help prevent this, I always lay my tape strips in the same order.
First I place the strip closest to my cuticle going from lower left to upper right (in the picture below)
Second is the strip going from lower left to upper right closest to the tip.
Third I place the strip closest to my cuticle going from lower right to upper left.
Lastly, I place the strip going from lower right to upper left closest to the tip.
The two bottom strips I usually make thicker than the top two, because I like the variation in size when I'm done.

 Now you coat the entire nail with your solid polish. This is two coats.

 Very carefully and slowly, remove your strips of tape. This is where knowing which are on top comes in handy... if you grab a strip that is under another, you're likely going to smudge the paint.
If the tape begins to pull up the base layers of paint, STOP! Try to pull up the tape from the other side, and gently pull away from the loosened edge.
Lastly, cover with a coat or two of quick dry top coat. I used the OutTheDoor to quickly set the polish and blend all of the edges, then used Seche Vite for a final coat, to smooth everything out nicely and give it a great shine.

 Here's an up close, so you can see just how sparkly the glitter polish is!