12/24/11 - Happy Holidays!!

Happy Christmas and holidays, everyone!
I'm entering my holiday manicure into a Migi Nail Art Pen holiday contest, hence the fancy image. :) But look at those nails! I did the same thing on the other hand, and it took hours! On the upside, everyone really likes them so far. :D
The polishes used are: for the background, alternating Claire's - Snowball with Klean Color - Neon Aqua. On the thumb and pinkie; Migi Nail Art Pens red and green. On the pointer finger; Migi white with an overcoat of OPI - Last Friday Night. Middle finger; Migi green and a coat of Nail Treats - Jubilee. Ring finger; the face is Love & Beauty - Taupe, the wings are Sally Hansen - Platinum, the hair is Migi yellow, the eyes Migi blue, the mouth Migi red, and the dress Migi white.
I hope you are all having a fantastic holiday season, and that you enjoy my nails inspired by the holidays. :)
P.S. You can click on the picture to see it larger. ;)

12/16/11 - I Heart Glitter

I performed in a show last Friday (the 16th). The show mentioned in the last post - a group of friends and I performed Mama Who Bore me. So in the hour and a half between when school ended and I had to be at the theatre, I did this to my nails. This was something I'd been planning for at least a week. I loved the glittery tips from the last mani, and one of the blogs I follow did etched out hearts. I was going to link to her blog, but I can't remember who it was and even though I've gone back two months in my followed archives, I can't find it. :( If anyone knows who it is, I'm more than happy to give credit where credit is due. [ETA: I found it! Copy That, Copy Cat is the main source of inspiration for this look. :)
Anyway, so it's a base layer of Sally Hansen - Diamonds, then (on every nail but the thumb), a sponged layer of Nabi - Silver, then sponged on the tips, one of my new favourites, Wet 'n' Wild - Diamond in the Rough. The ring finger has a heard drawn with Migi Nail Art Pen - white, and the thumb has a heart etched out with a tooth pick.
I actually really like these nails. The only problem is that they looked beautiful right up until I changed into my costume, at which point they weren't actually quite dry and the tips got all bunched. I did my best to smooth it out and cover it up, but you can still see some premature tip wear. Even still, I really like how it looks. :)
The accent nails:

What do you think? :)

12/2/11 - Musical Notes Mani

I've been thinking musical notes would be a good idea to try. When I was trying to decide which musical notes to use (should I use just random notes? actually follow a song? random parts of a sang?) I kept thinking of the song that I'm currently working on with a group of friends for a winter arts festival, called Mama Who Bore Me. This is a song from the musical Spring Awakening. The song is a beautiful song that I love, and the musical is a fantastic show. I highly recommend both, or at least listening to the music (it's all on YouTube).
Anyway, on to the nails!


I attempted to do the first couple notes on my left hand, and the last couple on my right hand.
The base colour is Claire's - Snow Ball. Migi Nail Art Pen - black makes up the musical notes. Then I sponged tips of newish Wet 'n' Wild - Diamond in the Rough, and covered the whole thing with Sally Hansen - Diamonds.
I think Diamond in the Rough is a really cool polish. A great silver glitter with some holographic glitter in there. In this last picture, I attempted to capture the sparkle in the sunlight.

So as a concluding note: watch Spring Awakening! :D

11/27/11 - Forest Mani

First: my apologies to Misty. She so kindly suggested forest, and I immediately thought a dark green background with things you might find in a forest, like animals and trees. Unfortunately, my brain out-thought my actual talent with a tiny paint brush, and, well, this is the result.
The green background is a new polish - Sinful Colors - Last Chance. As you can see, it's a beautiful dark green. I only used one coat here. The main downside is that it is absolutely awful to clean up. You can see it all over my fingers here, and when I actually removed it, it had stained not only my nails, but my fingers! Also, it's a little dark. Especially when I went to use black and brown over it, it's hard to see the details. But it's really a great quality dark green, so I'll use it again. :)
I also had to finally face the fact that I didn't have a brown nail polish. Brown is my least favourite colour, ever. I never ever wear anything brown. But I really wanted to do a monkey, and I've been wanting to do some things like trees and stuff, so I finally gave in an bought Revlon - Hot for Chocolate. It's a bit hard to see the colour, but it looks like a nice brown and it has a nice formula, so I guess it'll work.
The last new polish I got from Forever 21 just because it's cheap and I liked it - Love & Beauty - Periwinkle. You can see this on the snail's body.
The tree top, outline of the leaf, and grass/vine/branch that the snail and toucan are on is Love & Beauty - Neon Green. The leaf body is Sinful Colors - Irish Green (over Migi white). The snail shell is Simply Sweet yellow and with a swirl of Migi Nail Art Pen yellow. The toucan is Migi black, white, yellow, orange. The monkey belly/face/etc. is Love & Beauty - Taupe, with details of Migi black. The branch in that is underlined with Migi copper.









My personal favourite is the monkey. One of my friends got ridiculously excited about the toucan. Everybody else needed me to say, "this is a toucan" to recognise it. xD I also thought the snail was pretty cute.

What am I missing?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I follow blogs that have hundreds of followers. How did they go from 0 to 652 (or however many)? I have 6 lovely followers, and it always makes me inordinately excited when one of you comments on my posts.
But I can't help but wonder - what am I missing? Is it swatches? Nail updates every day? Give-aways? Nail designs from popular shows and books? Are my posts poorly written? My nails badly designed? My finished work sloppy and uninteresting? My blog layout uninviting? Or am I just invisible?
I'd love to hear your theories and suggestions of how to get more noticed. Thank you. :)

11/25/11 - Stash Update

Well, I finally got around to taking pictures of my updated stash. This includes some bought polishes and some ones that I found in my mom's dresser.













Here's one of the polishes from my mom's dresser. Needed a bit of polish thinner, but isn't it adorable? A really solid gold glitter, in a super-cute cat-shaped polish bottle. No brand, but definitely usable!






I also finally took some pictures of my Migi Nail Art Pens for you. I don't have swatches of them, but, the bottles are pretty colour accurate and you've seen them in action on my nails often enough. They're really great, if you have any interest in nail art you should check them out!






Lastly, I thought you might think it cool to see how I plan out my manis. You might recognize some things I've done. Some things that were rejected. Some things that ended up slightly different. And of course, the big corner where I make sure my nail art pens are working before I use them on my nails. xD I've been using this paper since a little after I started my blog, I think. It's almost time to retire it!

11/19/11 - Happy Thanksgiving!

My mom requested that I do turkeys for Thanksgiving. Initially I wasn't fond of the idea, but I decided to do turkeys on my thumbs and something fall-coloured for the rest of my nails.
These pictures are not very color-accurate, particularly for the China Glaze - Seduce Me, which is the starting colour of the fingernails. It's really much more of a lovely berry colour. To finish off the colours of the fingernails, I applied via makeup sponge after the CG: Sinful Colors - Timbleberry, then Dabble - Sand. I'll post something later with a stash update, but that last polish and a couple others I got from reviving some of my mother's ancient polishes. Fun. :) Anyway, for the thumb, it's a base of SC - Timbleberry, then Sally Hansen - Wet Cement for the tail, with lines in between of Five Star - Hot Red. The body is Loreal - Bronze. The eyes, feet, and wings are Migi Nail Art Pen white, black, orange, and copper.

I think the turkeys came out adorably. Unfortunately, my fingers don't really go with my thumbs as much as I had thought they would. Oh well.
By the way, last week I received a wonderful suggestion from Misty about doing something forest-inspired on my nails. That is still in the mental process, but I figured I'd celebrate the holiday on my nails first. By the way, if anyone has any more suggestions, I'm all ears!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

11/12/11 - Rainbow Streaks and Flowers

Okay, finally got this done! I was late doing it for a couple reasons, including being very busy, four of my nails breaking, and a huge lack of inspiration. (Anyone have ideas for me for the future?)
This was directly inspired by this Youtube video, except I did it all with nailpolish.
The white is Claire's white (except for the centre of the flowers, which is a Migi pen), and the colours are all Migi Nail Art Pens (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple). Topped it off with Sally Hansen - Diamonds for some sparkle. One hand is pictured with flash, the other with out.
I think it's fun and colourful. My mom is not fond of not doing the same design on every nail. I've gotten some compliments from my friends, though. What do you think? :)


Please feel free to post opinions and suggestions for future designs to try! (Especially the second one!!)

10/31/11 - Halloween!

Okay, this is super late. I apologize.
But anyway: Halloween! I dressed as Alice and Wonderland, and trick-or-treated with my boyfriend. :)
Here are my nails and the costume that inspired my nails.
Nailpolish: Love and Beauty Taupe as a base colour, with Santee Sky Blue on the tips and Migi Nail Art Pen black and white for the ribbon. :)
The costume is made by my mom and the hair is grown out of my head.
Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

10/28/11 - Halloween Nails

Well, I finally jumped on the Halloween bandwagon. Since my nails on the actual day will be themed after my costume, not the holiday itself, I decided to do Halloween themed nails a week in advance. And honestly, I think they came out great! I kinda grabbed various ideas from what I've seen for these. I've gotten several compliments. :) Okay, nail polishes: For the thumb, the base is Nabi yellow-green and Migi Nail Art Pen white and black. Index fingers are base of Wet 'n' Wild Ebony Hates Chris and Migi orange and yellow. Middle fingers are Wet 'n' Wild Ebony Hates Chris and Migi white. Ring fingers are NYX Moonwalk and Migi black. And finally, the pinkies are Love and Beauty (from F21) Taupe and Migi yellow, white, and orange.
I've posted a close-up of each nail on my left hand below. Do you have a favourite? I really like Frankenstein, but my friend was telling me today how much she liked the candy corn, and my boyfriend thought the spider-web came out really well. :)

10/22/11 - Neon Patterned

Okay, this is actually about a week old (from Monday). I mean, the pictures are from only two days in (I thought maybe that way it would look cleaner), but I've had a busy school week and haven't gotten around to uploading the pictures. So here it is!
I finally finished my little neon rainbow collection. Pink is Love and Beauty - Hot Pink. Orange is 5 Stars - Red Orange. Yellow is L&B - Neon Yellow. Green is L&B - Neon Green. Blue is Klean Color - Neon Aqua. And purple Ultra Pro - Punki Purple.
The idea was every other finger was an animal print, and then crackle on the remaining nails. I think my crackle is dying or something, though, because as you can see, it didn't crackle very well. The crackle is OPI Black Shatter, and the other black designs are my Migi black Nail Art Pen.
And here it is without before putting anything on top. Looks like candy to me. :D

10/12/11 - Lightning Glows

As usual, I asked my boyfriend for advice on what to do next with my nails. Usually I don't care for his suggestions. However, when he suggested to use my neon yellow to make lightning bolts over a blue background, I actually liked it. :) I decided not to go for the tap lightning bolts that are so popular these days because I didn't want to wait forever for every layer to dry, and I thought I could do well enough with my paint brush.
The base is Klean Color - Neon Aqua. The lightning bolts are L&B - Neon Yellow. The stars are from Santee - Moonlight Glitter.


But wait. I couldn't just do lightning bolts. Now that I've revived my ancient Wet 'n' Wild - Glow in the Dark polish with some polish thinner, I painted over some (not all) of the lightning bolts with glow in the dark. I also did an outline of some of them with my Claire's Glow in the Dark polish (which has some glitter in it).
Overall, this is a little different for me, but fun. It definitely glows, too, which is cool.