Black

Many of you may be surprised about the pic I am about to post. My nails have been trashed as I have been working in the warehouse by myself for about a week. I've had some serious breaks and have cut them all down.


My nails are the shortest they have been in a very long time. It feels very uncomfortable and texting is difficult. I'm posting this anyway because I want to talk about how i painted my nails today. Normally, I am not one of those girls who waits til the last minute to do her nails. I rather leave the house without any make up on then with no nail polish on. Usually, I plan my nail colour and/or art in advance. Not today. 15 minutes before my ride came today I decided to put essie's good to go rapid dry top coat to the test.


I didn't have anytime for art or anything remotely complicated. I choose basic black. It's simple and kinda suits short nails. I did one quick thick coat in LA Girl's Blackout (NL 395) (on the left) waited a minute or two and put on essie's new top coat (packaging in the middle and bottle on the right). I was a bit disappointed. it did not set nearly as quickly as seche vite. when my ride did show up, i was only really good to go because i used seche vite on top of everything. so in a real world test, when you're pressed to get your nails done quickly, this top coat just doesn't beat seche vite. i think i may never find anything as good as it. that being said, i think the essie product did dry the colour underneath quickly. normally when i use seche vite over polish that is still damp, it smudges. This time it did not. as soon as the seche vite was dry, all the polish was set. didn't even hurt the polish when i put on my coat. so right now, i don't think i'd recommend this top coat over seche vite. but since i paid for it, and it's not the cheapest, i'll probably give it another try.

happy valentine's day!

i'm not normally a hearts kinda girl. but for some reason i couldn't resist the temptation to have valentine's day themed nails this year. i saw cutepolish's new video and decided it wasn't too too challenging. it's the first time i have attempted to sponge polish onto to my nails. i don't think i have the technique down quite yet, so i'm not totally happy with the results, but i'm not completely discouraged from trying it later on. i saw a video a while back on creating a gradient using a sponging technique and i might try that this weekend. if i dont decide to try harry potter nails, that is. we'll see!


these are all the polishes i used on my nails today. i didn't realize before how much sally hanson products i had. it's really a good quality yet affordable product. i've had the pink bottle so long that the cover had dried on and i had to get my roommate to take off the top for me! but it's still good!

Here's what i did:


and, yes! that is a piper's ad in the background.

here's how i did it:

new design

when i started painting my nails this evening i had a completely different idea for the design altogether. origanially i attempted to have a v shaped french manicure centred on the tip. fortunately, i soon gave up the notion of perfectly even polish and, instead, got a wonderfully asymmetrical design!


to get this look i freehanded the black tips, using more polish on one side of the nail than the other. then i took my purple striper polish and traced the edge of the black polish. i had to do this a couple of times to make the purple polish stand out a bit more. (although it still doesnt stand out as much as i'd like it to.) to create the flowers i used a toothpick dipped in polish to make small black dots in a circle. then i dotted the purple in the centre. for a little bit more interest, i added a small black dot to the centre of the purple. here's a closer look:



i find freehanding tips so much easier then trying to use those stupid french manicure stickers. all it takes is a bit of patience and a lot of practise! i'm still getting better at it... look at the mess i made on my cuticles! luckily nail polish doesn't stick to skin very well so those mistakes with wear away pretty quickly.