Nail Art: Valentine's Day

Happy belated Valentine's Day!  In celebration, I sported an ombre mani with glitter tips.  Awesomely over the top, just like the holiday itself.

Nail Art: Gold Tips

So here's the mani I teased in my last post.  I'm loving it so much!  This was my first time doing tips - I honestly just did it because I was bored, and there was a roll of scotch tape and a bottle of polish in the vicinity.  But I really ended up liking the color combo - that's Essie Fiji as the base, and Orly Rage on the tips.  Plus Rage is a duochrome, so sometimes it ends up looking like this:

Which works equally well with the base color.  This is making me very excited to wear Rage on its own!

Next up: Zoya Izzy.  Finally!

Belated Holiday Nails

We're now firmly out of the holiday season, but I'm still playing catch-up.  While I immensely enjoyed my time at home, eating home-cooked meals and baking cookies and catching up with old friends, it put somewhat of a damper on the trip when I arrived in Chicago, unpacked my bag, and discovered that my laptop absolutely refuses to turn on.  This is extremely frustrating given that basically my entire life is on that thing, including Chromatic Consumption content.  Luckily I still have a desktop that performs...well, adequately at best, but it's better than nothing.  So, before they become even more irrelevant than they already are a week into January, here were my Christmas nails!

Colors used: Ulta 14 Carat, Milani Jewel FX Gold, e.l.f. Light Red, Color Club Art Club White

Cheesy and over-the-top for sure, but oh god I loved it.  I got numerous compliments, even with the smearing and uneven lines - first time using a striper brush.  But I really liked it, so much easier than taping off my nails like I had been originally planning.  I think that's still the easiest for thicker stripes, but for little ones like this a striper is the way to go.  Plus it made it easier to have some variety, so not every nail looked the same.  This was my left hand, which is my dominant hand; the ones on my right hand looked a bit more uniform.

Happy Belated Halloween!

Colors used: OPI Alpine Snow, Sally Hansen X-Treme Wear Sun Kissed and Mellow Yellow

Promised you a treat, didn't I? :)

I've received so many compliments in the 2 days I've been wearing these, from men and women alike.  And the best part is that they're so simple!  I painted the entire nail white, then covered the bottom half with yellow, just eyeballing it.  After giving that ample time to dry, I taped off the top and bottom portion of my nails with scotch tape and added the orange stripe across the middle.  And voila!  They're not razor-edge perfect if you inspect them close-up, but I'm okay with that; not many people are going to be inspecting my nails close-up besides myself anyway.

Hope you all had a fantastic Halloween, however you chose to celebrate it.  Tomorrow it's back to the grind, but this mani has been worth it for the mere 48 hours I was able to wear it.

Coming up next: Essie Fiji

Pretty and Witty and...

And so Gay Days come to a close.  Got just a small taste, didn't get to do as much as I would have liked, but lots of different things ended up coinciding on the same weekend.  Still, I managed to see the Disney-themed show on Friday, which was a complete blast - we thought our friend Sandy was going to pop a vein laughing so hard - and hit the parks on Saturday.  Next year I'm hoping to be free for the big bash at Typhoon Lagoon, and not too sick to enjoy the grand finale that was going on tonight!  In honor of the weekend, I wore the following:

The execution could have been much better, and I need a better green and purple - I used Zoya Caitlin, which obviously isn't supposed to be a bright color, and my Skin Food green, which was surprisingly weakly pigmented, compared to all of my other Skin Food colors.  The original plan was to do one rainbow nail and leave all the rest white, but six stripes ended up being too much effort for me, and in the end I did this pattern in about five minutes before rushing out the door.  Still, I liked the effect.  (The other colors are e.l.f. Light Red, then Sally Hansen Sun Kissed, Mellow Yellow, and Blue Me Away!  The white is OPI Alpine Snow.)

C-ya Real Soon!

Been getting tons of compliments about my nails - I'm really not looking forward to taking them off when I go back to work!

Sam let me do her nails, which unfortunately didn't come out like I had hoped.  For starters, she only wanted one coat of red, and I think she could have used another.  Secondly, the combination of my shaky hands and old, thickened polish did NOT make for very nice dots.  Sam didn't want the bow on an accent nail, and we didn't have time for topcoat.  So by the time we snapped a picture the next day, they looked like this:

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Finally free of the company rulebook for the week, so I decided to go all out!

By far, this is my favorite manicure that I've ever had.  (Close runner-up was the red nails/black tips combo my sister did for me for prom.)  And it's even cooler because I did it myself!  I used Chloe's Nails' scotch tape method, and it worked like a charm!  I need to get better about getting the lines straight and the proportions even from one nail to another, however.

Yellow: Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Mello Yellow
Orange: Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Sunrise, Sunset
Pink: Skin Food PK202
Topcoat: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails

The color combo may not be for everyone; I just spoke with a co-worker who was expressing disdain for these very three colors paired together.  But personally, I love them.  To me, pink/orange/yellow says FUN, HAPPY, BRIGHT, SMILE!  And, even more, to me they say summer!

Practice Makes Perfect

My Tart Deco mani was finally so terribly chipped that I had to take it off completely, it would not stay on - on one of my nails the polish even popped right off, like the entire nail at once!  Definitely need to use a topcoat next time I try Matte About You, but I'm also wondering if I was using the Orly Bonder properly.  Are there any tips or tricks for that?

In any case, I know that I won't be able to do my fun-color vacation mani for a few more days, and I was getting bored of bare nails in the meantime, so I decided to do a test run for Sam's Minnie-Mani.  I'm thinking red nails, white polka-dots on the fingers then a yellow bow on the thumbs.  Dots are easy, but I've never done a bow before, so here was my attempt.

No clean-up, because I'm just going to have to take this off before work tomorrow morning.

Hmmm.  Needs work, clearly.  Plus the wide brush in the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear color I'm using wasn't really made for fine-tuned designs.  I'll have to keep experimenting.

Tart Deco update

Survived work with my nails - even training under what's supposedly a stricter department than ours, but based on the people that I met today I'm beginning to question that; they were very cool and laid-back.  In any case, one of my bosses had a shimmery reddish color, and another girl had a purple holo, so I guess my worries were unfounded.  I'll just stay away from really bright eye-catching colors like white.

Tart Deco never really grew on me, I'm just not a fan of the color.  I'm considering putting a layer of white underneath it sometime to see if that will help lighten it up.  Next time, I'm also going to wear a topcoat!  I was under the mistaken impression that Matte About You was a topcoat, not just an effect to be added over a topcoat.  The result?  Quite a bit of chipping the first day alone.  Go ahead, laugh it up - I'm sure it's not the only rookie mistake I'll make.

In the meantime, I added an orange stripe (Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed) on my thumbnails just for fun.  My first time using the Scotch tape method (as displayed so masterfully by Chloe's Nails) - it'll definitely need perfecting.  Not too easily noticeable, and I like the contrast of the shine and the matte (that you can't really see in the picture).  Plus, having a bit of fun makes me feel like I'm sticking it to the man.  Kinda.  Buckle up people, this is about as rebellious as I get.

In other beauty news, finally got mah hair did.  Hooray!  I didn't do anything fancy - just reshaped my bangs and added some layers - but oh man do I love the smooth feel of freshly-cut ends with no splits. 

Additionally, I let my friends who will be vacationing with me later this month know that I'm doing their nails.  Yay!  Something fun for me, and more content I can post for you guys without getting spoken to again.  Win-win!  Sam is getting a Minnie Mouse manicure - we found several pictures online that look absolutely adorable.  Ashley is really intrigued by the OPI Shatter topcoat, and if I can't find it at Ulta before they arrive she thinks her mother may have a bottle we can borrow and experiment with.  Their mani styles are so them - bright and cute vs dark and funky.  I'm looking forward to it!

Damn the Man

Predictably, I got spoken to both days that I worked this week.  Also accused of White-Out use no less than 4 times.  *Sigh*.  In my defense, white technically is a neutral color, and is close to my skin tone...heck it practically is my skin tone.  Not to mention I wore it last summer.  But my bosses weren't having it, so I promised to take it off before I work next.  Luckily, however, I have several days off before then, so I decided to add some embellishment just because I can.

That's purely freehand, I don't have any stencils or anything.  So maybe not the neatest it could possibly be, but I love the look of it, both alone and as part of the full manicure.  I love doing just one accent nail.

Also found another new OPI collection that I would give my firstborn child for:

Pirates of the Caribbean Collection

Thanks to @AllLacqueredUp for the info - I think I'm still drooling.  Damn I need a better-paying job so I can afford all of these!  Looked up the nearest beauty supply store, and there's an Ulta in the shopping center down the road, so I'll definitely be heading that way soon.  Let's hope my bank account survives.