Stuff I've Done Lately

I know I haven't been updating much (or at all) recently, and the amount of photos I have piled up was starting to get to me, so I'm doing a dump. This is most of the stuff I did over the month of October and I hope you enjoy seeing what I was up to! Also, if you want to know what's been going on in my life, there's a kind of long but informative post on my tumblr HERE. Read it if you want. Things have been rough lately, so I'm getting back on my feet. Just bear with me and enjoy the pretty photos. Also you should like my Facebook page! That's HERE. Thanks, lovelies. You're great and patient and beautiful and wonderful.

Halloween nails and costume! I was envy, and a bunch of my friends and I were the seven deadly sins. (that's my lovely friend Gabi, who was a toddler in a tiara. Literally hysterical. I decided envy would have a stink face on all the time, so I think there's only one photo of me smiling all night. Oops lol.)

Unplanned and surprisingly summery flowers! The base of this is Sally Hansen CSM Ion. GORGEOUS.

Nails I wore the day of Halloween. The closest I got to a Halloween themed manicure just about ever.

More brocade nails and a tutorial I made! The lighting is literally terrible, but you'll get the idea of how to do these nails at the very least!

Nails I wore for my senior day for volleyball. That's my college's symbol, a sheild (we're diplomats... very cool, I know) and the manicure worked out pretty well for me. I got a lot of aces. (also these counted as my inspired by a color day of the 31 day nail art challenge because of school colors and all that)

And last but definitely not least, POKEYMANZ!!! These were my "inspired by a song" day of the challenge, aka the pokemon theme song! I wanted to go classic generation one with these nails, and I think they turned out pretty well considering how much trouble they were giving me at the time haha. 

Monochrome Half Moons

I'm not even sure if anything I'm doing is in order anymore, but to be honest I'm not really concerned with it. Also I'm not gonna do the water marbling day of the challenge anymore. I'm determined to finish all the inspired days (working on the song right now, you guys will LOVE) but I'm still gonna be super late and blah blah blah with all that. These are the half moon nails, and I really love how they turned out. I was going to try to do this as a tape manicure, but I couldn't find any of the french tip guide things that I thought I had, so this is totally freehanded. Yay for teeny tiny brushes!

On of my guy friends was checking out my nails while I had these on. He could not and would not believe me when I told him they weren't nail stickers. My right hand (that was chipped and white) was the only thing that would convince him. That's pretty much the best compliment you can get!

The base of these is Urban Outfitters Virgin, and going from light to dark the colors are Sally Hansen CSM Ion, American Apparel Echo Park (with about a drop of Essie Power Clutch), and then Essie Power Clutch.

Glitter! Also I Swear I'm Not Dead

Yeah, I've been slacking off lately. Things have been super busy and also I've just been kind of lazy. I have senioritis in pretty much every aspect of my life. WHOOPS. But here's the glitter day of the 31 day challenge! I have no idea what this polish is called (it's from Urban Outfitters and I got it for Christmas last year and the label fell off WHOOPS AGAIN)

I tried out the peel-off glue method of base coat for this manicure and it was AMAZING. I'll be honest, it was almost too amazing for me. It's my own fault though. I did these about 30 minutes before volleyball practice and when I was putting my shoes on, one nail smudged. I hadn't really let the layers of polish dry and I always start painting my nails WAYY too soon before I have places to be and also I'm dumb. But anyways, once the nail smudged, I peeled it off, because HEY, that's what the glue base is for! And it was so easy! Wow! Essentially, by the time practice was over, my nails were bare the the gym was littered with these beautiful little pieces of polish. I actually found one yesterday during my warmup, four days later. WHOOPS NUMBER 3.

This polish was super hard to photograph, but I think I got it alright. None of these polishes can accurately capture how freakin' SPARKLY this guy is, but you have an idea of it! It's super dense microglitters, a mix of silver holographic and then some deep pink ones. Really gorgeous, but it is a total hungry polish. It needed at least two layers of top coat to smooth it out, and could probably use more.

To do the peel-off base coat, I just used some regular white Elmer's glue painted on with a really old fluffly paint brush. It was that easy!

Sooooo pretttyyyyyy : )

 

Tribal Galaxies

I've been going sooooo slowly at this whole challenge thing (and to be honest, this manicure and blog post are desperate attempts to put off the 10 page scene I'm supposed to be writing) so I decided to put two of the days together. Here's my take on days 16 and 19--tribal and galaxy nails-- combined! These two are designs that have been done and done and done, and I wanted to find an interesting way to do each of them, but after some inspiration (from society6 AGAIN) I thought this was the perfect way to add a twist to each design!

I swear, society6 is my new go-to source for inspiration! There are so many different and interesting prints and patterns that I'm always bound to come away with an idea. Also it makes me want to spend ludicrous amounts of money, but that's another issue altogether. I haven't caved yet which is good!

Here's the design I was inspired by:

The colors I used in this manicure were China Glaze Man Hunt (seriously, if you like dark blue polishes, you should get this one. Incredible formula and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites.), Flyin' High and Something Sweet, American Apparel The Valley, Essie Playdate, a Forever 21 holo glitter, and my old favorite, UO Virgin. (I NEED AT LEAST 8 MORE BOTTLES OF THIS)

Going Baroque

I think the "delicate print" day of the nail art challenge is one that pretty much everybody struggles with, but I'm actually super happy with how these nails ended up! If you follow my tumblr or instagram, you saw these about a week ago, but I've been super busy and unable to get a blog post up until now. Also, sorry about the shoddy photos here. I don't know what it was, but I had a really difficult time photographing these nails. Also it didn't help that I had had this manicure on for a few days (and through a few volleyball games) by the time I took these pictures.... WHOOPS. Oh well. Still love these nails!

I really love the baroque trend that's happening right now, but it doesn't really fit my personal style, so I am so happy with the way these nails turned out. They're incredibly elegant and I just feel like they made my fingers look incredible.

I think I want to do these again sometime soon (maybe on the inspired by fashion day?) but on all my fingers. Maybe a royal blue base with black pattern on top? Also how would you guys feel about a tutorial for these? I haven't made one in awhile, and I feel like it's about time that happens!

Floral Print? Maybe? Kind of?

You guys know how I feel about floral print. In that I am obsessed with it and I think it's awesome and yeah. However, I don't like doing the same florals that I do all the time (at least not for challenges) so I felt the need to mix it up. I did a lot of searching on the web for inspiration, and here's what I came up with.

I got the inspiration for this design off of an iPhone case on society6.com (here it is) and I seriously want to own this case. Actually, I want about 94% of the cases on this website. They're all so pretty!

Here's a photo of the case for those of you too lazy to click the link (I don't blame or judge you, don't worry). I hope these are flowery enough! They're definitely abstract and crap and I really loved wearing them and got sooo many compliments on them which is always a plus. I also think they look kinda like camo or watercolor, and one of my friends say they look like perler beads, which made me want perler beads again. It's a hard life sometimes.

Animal Print! Kind Of...

Hey guys! I'm going pretty slowly on the nail art challenge right now, but I'm pretty happy that way. Things are hectic as ever, and I'm trying to catch up on my schoolwork right now so you know that's a really great time haha. However, this challenge was to do an animal print, and I wanted to go a different direction than nails that feature actual animal print. Instead, I googled "bird print" and this is what I found.

It's a silkscreen from the Etsy shop TrackandFieldDesigns that I LOVE, and thought would be perfect for nail art, so here's what I came up with!

It's literally a print of a bird, but I'm so enamored with these. I actually just took them off because I played four ROUGH matches of volleyball this weekend and they got completely destroyed but I'm really happy I got some photos of them before that happened! What do you think?