Springy Flowers

Did you all have a good weekend?  I was non-stop and I'm paying for it this morning.  A service organization I'm a member of had a work day and we dug holes for a retaining wall, scraped and painted a porch, removed debris and tons of yard waste all for an 80 year old woman that just couldn't do it anymore.  It waas so satisfying although I could only help for a few hours.  Worst part? The news station interviewed me. It was like my worst nightmare came to life.

Anyways,  I have a ome floral nails for you today.  I tend to gravitate towards purples and lavenders, so that's what I grabbed here. This is probably one of my top favorite polishes, OPI Do You Lilac It? and OPI My Vampire is Buff.  I just freehanded on some dots and stripes,  and topped with the flowers on two nails. It was really kind of boring and flat, so I added a topcoat of Essie's Pure Pearlfection to give it a light shimmer.

Sunday was great until about 4 pm hit. Then the skies opened up, the wind kicked up into overdrive and now it is supposed to rain for the next like 10 days. Good thing I snapped this while I still had some sunshine!

Have a great Monday!
April

Christmas Plaid

Hello and happy Friday!!! Apologies for my absence in fall. Not sure why I didn't create posts... I still of course did my nails and took pictures,  so I will probably do a SPAM post of a ton of older pics.


Today I want to share my first Christmas mani. I was inspired by the Polishaholic,  which is the first nail blog I ever followed and still look up her swatches when I think about purchasing a color. I was thumbing through Instagram and saw a snippet of a red plaid thumbnail- she was actually posting a pic of a trio of mini polishes from Zoya,  but I was blinded by the plaid.  I say to myself, self- I think this is fantastic and you need to do it.


So then I had to figure out how to get a layered look with the plaid stripes. I tested it out, and this is what I came up with.

I die. I love this so frigging much that I might cry when it chips or when I take it off. All of the nails feature a base of OPI MY Boyfriend Scales Walls,  and the ones that are still that grey-white have a top voat of Essie's Pure Pearlfection . Now for the plaid.



Base is the same white, and then I used a tan color for the medium toned stripes, dark green for the darker ones, and a red on the green nail. Then taking a jelly-ish red and a jelly green, swiped that on top over the stripes. I finished them off with a thin white stripe on top.

I'm officially obsessed.  I'm so pleased how well these turned out. I can't wait to do more.

Also, I almost completely snapped off a nail the other day (thankfully on my non-swatching hand). It was bad. Prepare yourself for this pic.

I used the tea bag method to repair it. Glue the nail back in place, cut a piece of the bag to fit the break, glue that on. Buff, glue, repeat.  Add clear coat,  buff. Repeat.  I basically made a fiberglass patch. Its still hanging in there and seems pretty sturdy!  I can't believe it worked. Here's the after:

Be back soon with the spam I promised.   =)
April

Ahoy, it's Dark Outside!

Boo.  Thank you Daylight Savings Time,  I now feel like I need to stay home every night and bake millions of cookies.  It's time for hibernation and hot chocolate. I'm not quite ready for this yet,  so I wanted to reminisce about the days of sunshine and sailboats.


I love nautical looks.  I'll say that again.  I love nautical!  I wanted to do a slightly different color scheme than your typical red white and blue. Navy and lime green,  ok!

You have to have an anchor and stripes.  Anything else I think is free game.  I wanted to do some polka dots but meh,  I'm OK without them.

Here's a close up of the anchor

Alas,  as I write this my damn cat is curled up on me,  I have on my warm pj's, and my fingers are frozen. How much longer until spring?

April

On the 12th day, stripes!

You know, for someone that doesn't care for white nails, I am sure doing that a lot during this challenge.

Day 12 is stripes. I had seen a technique similar to this not too long ago, but wanted to make it fresh. I free hand painted horizontal stripes using 4 different colors that were bright and fun. Wait for that to fully dry, and then added striping tape in various patterns.  I then topped it off with a coat of white.

So bright and sunny! 

Here's what I liked about this one... it was fresh, bright,  perfect for a fun warm day. The bad? There are two coats of white polish on here, and the green color peeked through.  Yuck. Maybe white was a bad choice.  This would have looked great with black as the top color, but then it would have looked like the example I saw so long ago. And no one likes a copycat. 

I definitely need some more practice with striping tape.  It's best to remove the tape quickly after applying the overcoat, but with using white I needed two coats. And that's why you see some wobbly parts. 

Whatcha think? Are you an expert striper? 

April