Category : Nails

5 posts

Painted nails and beer, girliness at its finest, isn’t it? I kid, I kid. But I will talk about both today. :p

I painted my nails pink a few weeks ago and attempted to do a gradient with pink glitter at the tips. My pink glitter is a little container of loose glitter, not the glitter nail polish type, so I experimented with making a “paste” by mixing the loose glitter with clear nail polish (aka topcoat) and painted that over the tip, lessening the amount of strokes at the far end each time to create the gradient effect. It turned out okay, but the glitter tips were extremely thick from the repeated strokes I did over the tip. I would say that method is only good for one or two strokes max.

Pink nails & glitter

If you’re going for a gradient look, it might end up too chunky and thick like mine did. Because of that, the tips bunched up and pushed up my finger throughout the day since it was too thick to dry properly…annoying. From afar, my friend said they looked really good, but up close you could see my exposed white fingernail because of the glitter bunching up from the tips. :p

So this time I tried a different method and after a fresh coat on one nail, I would pick up glitter with a dry brush and pat it into the wet nail polish. It works much better, but it was difficult to achieve the gradient look since you have to work super fast before the nail dries (and a lot of brands are great at quick dry time nowadays). It ended up looking more like some glitter french tips, but oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about the annoying chunky glitter tips & chipping off my finger within an hour of doing housework. :p I guess if you want good gradient glitter nails, your best bet would be glitter nailpolish since it’s easier to work with.

I used Sephora OPI’s “Let’s Do Lunch” color as the base. That color gives me mixed feelings. It’s kind of like an orangey-pink. Coral. On one hand, I like that it’s pinkish and cutesy and girly. On the other hand, it leans towards being between pink and orange and for some reason that color just strikes me as a little ugly. Haha, weird, I know.

Belgium Beer

As for the beer portion of this post, I tried Belgium beer the other day when my dad was drinking a bottle and offered a few sips to me. I had one from Samuel Adams brand, to be exact. Damn, it was good! And that is really saying something because I hate beer oh so much. I’ve tried “normal” beer a few times (you know, like Bud Light) and it felt like I was drinking pee (even though I’ve never tasted pee before…promise! lol). Sure, people drink beer for the effects and not the taste, but ugh! It tastes terrible! I’d rather take a shot and get it over with. Belgium beer, on the other hand, is wonderfully sweet. There is no disgusting taste to it. It is a summer beer, according to my parents, so it’s only in abundance once a year.

Of course, this is a girl who’s only had terrible and cheap beer before, so I’m sure it still wouldn’t be able to compare to other top brands for beer connoisseurs. I’m just glad to know not ALL beer out there is as terrible tasting as a can of yellowing, pee-tasting junk. :p

Hello everyone! Honestly, I wasn’t sure when my next blog update would be! I’m so glad that it’s…well, right now. I told myself I wouldn’t update until after I caught up with my word count for NaNoWriMo. Almost a week passed by and I still had not caught up yet!But here I am, finally, phew!

Candy Corn Nails

Well first of all, happy belated Halloween! I’ve been trying to keep up with my jogging a few times a week, and every time I make rounds throughout the neighborhoods, I just love looking at the houses. Decorated houses are so much fun to look at. We saw some awesome looking ones that went all out with mazes (complete with walls that indicated entrances and exits) that they set up! On Halloween night, my boyfriend drove us past the house on our way home just to see if anyone was there. It was a big hit. A lot of kids and older teens were seen congregating in front of the house. It was complete with screams and another house next door playing loud dance music and flashing lights. Now that is what I call a fun night. :p

I’m “too old” to celebrate Halloween in the form of trick-or-treating anymore – which I totally get because if I were the one giving out candy, I’m expecting to see cute little munchkins in costumes, not pimple-ridden older kids/adults begging for free candy. :D So now I’m at that age where celebrating Halloween means wearing lingerie and calling that a costume, and drinking alcohol at a party. For the record, I’ve never done either of the above…yet?

Anyway, I digress. For Halloween I attempted to continue on my quest to study for my entrance exams. To make it more fun (or as close to fun as you can get when you’re studying for stuff you don’t want to study for), I study a lot with the boyfriend. We’re never studying for the same thing (we’re on different ends of the spectrum in terms of career goals), but having the support & company there is all that you really need sometimes. Well, anyway, I say “attempt” because it’s Halloween. Ended up giving out candy instead, despite the fact that not that many kids came around to his area.

When we went back to my house, we kept the lights off and played Slender Man the game. (Which basically consisted of me watching the boyfriend play :p ) Have you ever heard of Slender Man? He’s basically a creepy, very tall (obviously slender) guy(?) in a dark suit with no face. If you look at him, you start to lose your sanity and in the game your video camera goes all wonky. Afterwards, if you can’t escape, who knows what he does to you. The game had a spooky atmosphere – everything was a little too quiet for comfort – but it wasn’t too bad at first. Your goal is to go around and find eight pages. It started picking up when Slender Man kept making his appearance more and more often! Me: “Wait, go back in the building, I think you might have missed something since you didn’t look left and right…” Him: *serious tone* “No, I can’t go back in there.” Hahaha. I think after finding like 2 pages, we took too long so our flashlight battery died. It was only time before Slender Man got us. We knew he was coming – our light source had died! And yet…still…we both screamed like little girls when he teleported in front of us & hijacked the screen, scaring the bejeebus out of us. We had a good long laugh after that. My mom asked me the next day if I was watching a scary movie because she heard us screaming downstairs. :p

And now, NaNoWriMo business! National Novel Writing Month! The goal is 50k words in 30 days. Oh Boy. Like I said, today was the first day I finally CAUGHT UP on my word count. I’m finally at 10k words and today is the end of Day 6!

I’m struggling. It takes me WAY too long to meet my daily word count because I can’t shake the habit of spending too long planning and not actually writing. Nitpicking and editing! You’re encouraged to just keep writing with complete “literary abandon” but I am struggling hard with this idea! *sweatdrop* But boy do I wanna reach the end!

This might be a really bad idea when I’m trying to study for my OAT exam but NaNoWriMo has been one of my dreams since high school (now a college graduate). And I’ve always wanted to write a completed novel ever since I was a child (published or not). So I’m gonna tackle this dream, finally! I don’t know how the consequences will be on my OAT studying, and I don’t know if I’ll even be able to finish NaNoWriMo. But I’m gonna try. Are you in? Either way, I’m gonna need the encouragement. :p

I decided to paint my nails with an easter/spring theme last week. I love painting my nails (if you don’t already know) because the process is fun for me, and the outcome makes me happy every time I look at my nails. ^_^ I went with a pastel green color with white polka dots and a little chick on my thumbs.

Spring Nails

The green color is called Mint Sorbet by Sally Hansen. It came into mind because two weeks ago I painted a friend’s nails, and at first she chose my Mint Sorbet color, but as soon as I applied it to one nail she freaked out at the bright color and decided to go for a less extreme color. :p I decided pairing the green with some white polka dots would make it look softer and tone down the green a bit. I went for the chickie on my thumbs because when else will I be wearing yellow?! The white egg shell kind of tones down the yellow as well. I’m loving this polka dot deal; I’ll probably do it more often to spice up plain nail polish if I don’t do any designs!

P.S. My camera is still M.I.A. (but probably gone forever by now), sadly. However, I put my noggin to use and realized I could use my really old camera that I first had in 7th grade (that was 8 years ago!). It’s missing some screws and has the battery life of 3 minutes max, but it gets the job done if I want to post a quick picture to my blog like this.

I don’t really have any tried and true “therapy” sessions for myself when I’m feeling down, but if I had to pick something, I think giving my hands and feet a little extra attention would be it. Other things that make me feel a little better when things could not get much worse are: eating really good food, having a cuddle with the boyfriend, or buying something nice for myself. Typical girl things, I guess!

Manicure

French Manicure

Over the summer I do the whole hands & feet routine once a week (usually on a Saturday or Sunday night). Now that it’s during the normal school year, I kind of skip a week or two. Boy does it feel gross to have long toenails, euughh! *sick* Couldn’t take it anymore, so after my midterms (yes this was a while back, the quarter is over now haha) & feeling recovered from being sick, I had the chance to pamper myself! Cleaned up my hands and feet, trimmed the nails, and painted them. My toenails are currently a vibrant blue color, but for my hands I wanted something a little easier to maintain over the next week or two (aka less visible chipping) and more professional, so I went with giving my fingers a french manicure.

I’ve never really attempted giving myself a french manicure before, so it turned out decent my first try. Painted the white tips (using the acetone/brush method to shape up the edges), put a very light pink coat over the entire nail, added a flower sticker to each thumb for a little something extra, and finished it off with a clear top coat.

Hot dang, I was lucky to have such good lighting for the picture. :D Ideally, I like my nails to be a little longer than in the picture, but when I first trim my nails I keep them somewhat short because they grow out within the 1-2 weeks that I leave my nails alone and it gets annoying if they’re too long.

I’m not a fan of super long nails with french tips. Oh no. Now those remind me of trashy or catty women who are very high maintenance and look as if they’re ready to scratch out your eyes if you dare to criticize their super long nails. I think french tips can look really elegant yet simple and clean if the nails are a good, healthy length. Not too short, not too long.

I call this, "the Spiderman"

My mom gets beauty supplies on sale, so she got the new OPI Shatter nail polish on sale! It’s pretty exciting. This type of “shatter” nail polish has been a huge trend as of late. The polish (full retail price) is freaking expensive. But I guess that’s how it is when you’re jumping on the bandwagon for a big trend.

So my mother bought black, white, and silver. I’ve tried the white one but to my dismay it looked really crappy. I was super upset because I was very excited and wasted a few hours making sure my base coat was very dry before applying it. And when I finally applied the white shatter, it looked so fugly that I had to remove it with nail polish remover; my pretty base coat went along with it T_T

That was certainly discouraging, but I REALLY wanted to see good results because the pictures and videos I’ve seen of the nail polish are so amazing. People keep ranting and raving about it. haha. I gave it another shot, but this time with the black shatter nail polish. At first I was skeptical, but it finally worked!

Red & Black

The verdict? Undecided. haha. My result didn’t come out as blocky as I was hoping for. It came out with more of a grungy look. So I guess it looks pretty cool if grungy is what you’re looking for.

I think there’s a bit of a learning curve to using this new nail polish. Yes you can slap it on and be done quick, but I think it might take me a few tries to perfect it. You see, I think how you apply it will determine how the end product looks.

How does it work? Basically you have to paint a base coat on your nail first. For me, I chose a red/hot pink. It must be completely dry before you can attempt putting on the shatter polish. When it is definitely dry, you just paint on the shatter polish. Within a minute the nail polish will shrink and shatter into that design. If you blow on it, it will dry faster and crack faster too. The polish MUST be applied quickly (and with as little coats as possible) because it dries super fast and going over the cracks again will most likely mess up the design.

I noticed that the thicker you apply the polish, the bigger the cracks are. If you apply it thinly, you will find very thin streaks. Next time I think I will go for thicker application since I want the big cracks and blocks. Overall I recommend it if you’re willing to try something new. Just be prepared for the price tag and the necessity of practice in order to get perfect shattering.

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