Matte Magenta Moons

  All the nail blogs say the easy way to do a moon manicure is to mask off the moon area with one of those round-sticker-binder-ring-protector-thingies to make the moon shape.  They're easy to find anywhere, and they're not so sticky they'll peel up your base coat, which I suppose makes them fairly ideal.  I've always been a bit skeptical about it - are the circles the right size?  Will they stick well enough to prevent leakage?

  So I decided to find out.    

  I thought the overall effect was...okay.  I'm not thrilled, and I think I could do a nicer job by hand after three glasses of wine, even.  Hey, sometimes I get better at this shit when I'm drinking!

  Anyhoo, there was minor seeping, especially at the corners!  In fact, the binder rings are rather thick for a sticker, and they kept trying to pop off the edges of my nails!  I have very curved nails, so if you have a flatter nail plane you may have more luck.  This was a total pain-in-the-ass for me.

  To conclude this experiment, but not this post, I would say that I prefer not to use a masking method for the moon manicure, or at least not with binder rings.  However!  This method is useful if you want a 'moon' that is a lighter or sheerer shade that won't work as a top layer.  For this mani I used Sally Hansen Smooth Perfect in Dune as the moon color, which is a lovely sheer nude that would never show up over anything!  The top is Revlon Plum Seduction, which is a really lovely magenta.

 Finally, I decided this would be a good look to try with the new matte top coat I just got!  Inspired by a shiny-black on matte-black french manicure I saw, I have been dying to play with matte colors!  It's about time a matte top-coat was made readily available!  I've always hated how the oh-so-necessary protective top-coat always ruined the finish of a matte polish.  BUT NO MORE!  Behold!  The matte-ness!

Regular polish on top; with matte top coat on bottom.

 Yeahhh!  I think it turned out puh-retty sweet!  It's a bit less drastic a difference due to my camera's overactive flash, but I think it's a pretty good representation of what we're working with, here.  I paid like, ten bucks for this matte top coat, goddamnit, so it better work!
  Oh yeah,  it's Sephora by OPI brand, if you are interested.  It was the only one I could just walk to a store and buy, because no drugstores seem to have caught on yet, but I work a block away from Sephora.  (Danger ranger!)

  You can really see on the thumb in the bottom image, how the light diffuses much more softly on the matte finish.
  The only downside to the matte is that it tends to highlight any imperfections in your base.  I felt like uneven spots or brush streaks were more apparent after I applied the matte, so that's something to think about if you're gonna try it!  Nonetheless, I'm excited to try some new looks with this stuff!  One day I'll make the black-on-black look as good as the pros...my attempts so far have been too embarrassing to share - I'm sure you understand.

So, THIS happened...

 Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to a rousing adventure in WTF-land!

 So, I keep my vast collection of nail polish in a plastic bin with a lid that barely stays on anymore.  It's about as deep as it is wide (approx 1.5 feet square), so when you have as many nail colors as I do, you have to dump out the whole stupid bin every time you want a color that isn't on the uppermost layer.  One day, I'll buy myself one of those classy-as-fuck clear acrylic racks that salons use to display their laquers.   I'll mount it on my goddamn living room wall, and forever after enjoy manicure convenience.  Until then, though, I have this shitty bin. 

 Now, despite how much pressure the bottom layer is surely always under, I've never had any issues.  I mean, shit, any polish you buy is like 50% super thick glass bottle!  Those things are indestructible!!

Right?

....

......

Ahem.  So, with this line of thinking, you can imagine my surprise when I dumped out the box and found this.

Shit, and it's an OPI color, too!  I usually only get those as gifts, since I don't like spending more than six dollars on a bottle of polish.  RIP Yes I Can-Can, you were a great color.  Now I need a new sexy dark red, STAT!

70's Beach House Manicure

  "I'm gonna call this manicure House of Sand and Fog, cuz it's beachy as fuck!"

 I am RRREEEAALLLYY excited about this manicure!  A fabulous geometric look starring my favorite color palette, and featuring my debut use of skinny nail tape!

 This lovely harlequin pattern was lifted right from Chalkboard Nails, and all I did was flip it 'round and change up the colors a bit.

  I'm really into this muted, faded-70s-basement palette.  I just cannot get enough peach!  Colors used here are my beloved Savina White Lavender as the base color, accented with Sally Hansen's Commander in Chic (slate brown), and First Kiss (that's the light coral).  And, of course, lovely Revlon in Jaded, and Minted, (both of which I am LOVINGGGG!) as well as Make Mine Mango (dark coral.)  Jaded is that oh-so-totally-not-Jade-colored chartreuse, and it is pretty much the shit.  Almost neon without going whole hog, but still totally jarring and flashy.  I needed one color to take my palette out of the safety zone!  I think having one clashing color can really make the whole palette pop a bit more.  Nothing worse than a mani design that ends up being a washout!

  You can see the chartreuse at work here, totally punching up that minty green and playing off the blue tones, and brightening that darker coral, too.

  I'm really into this design and this color palette, and I'm gonna have to just come out and say it - I think this one my be my favorite.  Maybe my favorite ever.  Basically I love this mani so much I want to marry it.  MAYBE I WILL!

Aztec Manicure

  Finalmente! Más uñas pintadas!

  Ok, we're excited to be back after so much blog silence.  Now, I was calling this my tribal manicure, but in an effort to be less casually racist*, I am changing its name to Aztec manicure because I think it looks a lot like traditional Aztec textiles in color and pattern.  I was inspired by a Southwestern look done by the inimitable Pierre, I just decided to top him and do a whole damn manicure in this style.  I'm really pleased with how these turned out!
 


 In case you are wondering, yes, this did take me for-fucking-ever.  I spread this one out over three days, doing three or four nails per day.  Each session was probably a couple hours long.  So we're gonna clock this mani in at 6 hours of work.  (Wow!  Writing that out makes it sound infinitely more insane!)

  If you look closely, you can tell that each nail has a base color, which shows up in most (if not all) of the stripes.  In retrospect, I think I would not start with a base color, because in the event that you don't want that color in every stripe, you end up doing a lot of unnecessary layering, which we all know leads to manicure doom.  Less is more.
  

Yowza! What a fucking mess!

  You might also notice how messy these nails are around the edges...allow me to explain. 

  I find that doing decorative manicures by hand can get pretty messy, especially when you want a nice, clean edge that's flush with the edge of your nail.  No gaps, please!  Sometimes if I know I'm going to get really messy, like with a moon manicure, I will use scotch tape to mask off the "danger zone" of my nail.  Otherwise I just go ahead and paint it right off the nail and onto the skin, like I'm sure everyone does.  My difference is that I don't go back and clean up with a cotton swab and some remover - what a stupid fucking waste of time that is!  Whenever I make the mistake to do this, I end up scrubbing off part of my design!


  Pro-tip of the day is this: Do your manicure at the end of your day.  Let it dry, sleep in it, and your morning shower will soften all those excess bits of polish on your hand and slough them right off without nary a scratch or stain! I took these photos as soon as I finished, in order to get the best preserved shot of the design as I could and well, I paid for it in cleanliness.



*I highly recommend following this link if you have the time to read an approx. two-page paper.  It explains things a lot more eloquently than I dare attempt to summarize.

THIS IS AMERICA!!

We take dress-up themes very seriously.

  If you know me at all, you know I have precious little civic pride, but that isn't going to stop me from enjoying a thematic dress-up opportunity or the chance to paint my nails the appropriate holiday theme!  Hence, AMERICA! The Manicure was born.  I really wanted to paint a few little flags, unfortunately the US flag looks like about a hundred other flags in the world (have you seen Liberia's flag?  Seriously it looks exactly like what I'd paint a "simplified" US flag as) and I really didn't want to have some Texas-ass-lookin' flag, either, so I had to get crafty.
  I recently ordered some nail striping tape as part of an Amazon nail-accoutrements binge.  They came as a set of ten colors for only a couple bucks, but the tape is so so thin (only about 1/10 cm) that it's really kind of hard to work with.  I found that it was better to firmly adhere the tape to my nails before trimming the edges to length.
  I generally prefer to use the tape just as masking, because tape on nails never really stays put, no matter how many layers of top-coat you apply.  But I had to make an exception because I just didn't want to get into the nightmare of masking off all the stripes of the flag.  So, there's a bit of both going on here, though the flags were made much easier with the help of super-skinny white tape!

  As per usual, not a great picture but you get the idea.  It's always an epic battle to balance sharpness with accurate color on my stupid little digital camera, but I do try.  This red is a newsie from Revlon (my love!) called Fearless, it's a totally gorge slightly orangey-red, and it's just perfect.  It's almost a poppy red, great for the summer.  I currently have it on my toes and it's giving me another reason to just stare at my feet when I walk!

Deep Thoughts

Ever notice how in any public restroom, people act like EVERYTHING is dirty?  Everything except the toilet paper that's been sitting in the stall near the toilet all day, that is...

Double Nail Extravaganza!

  Oh my god!  My nail is finally healed and I've been varnishing with a vengeance, I tell you!  Remember back here when I hurt my stupid thumb?  Well I swear this nail has been growing extra-fast to cover the exposed under-thumb territory.  Anyhoo, aside from a little bit of weird, sad discoloration, it's back in business!

  Let's kick off today's double header with the mutha'fuckin NEON YELLOW manicure that I went on a drugstore odyssey in order to achieve.  Would you believe I went to three stores before I found the damn stuff?  And naturally I went for the one everyone had mentioned on teh blogz, which was, sadly, Neon Melon  by Sinful Colors, which sucks.  It's awful, streaky, gloppy stuff, and I left it on my hands for barely half a day.  The next day I went to Sally's Beauty Supply like a good girl and bought some China Glaze Celtic Sun which, true to form, goes on fabulously - smooth thin layers, just the way I like 'em.   This level of opacity took three coats.

Just ignore my janky thumb on the right, there.  It's just the aftermath of the thumb-trauma - don't judge me.

  Ahh, and viola!  What light from yonder fingertip breaks?  It is the east, and Neon Yellow is the sun.  Call me a trend whore all you want, but god damnit, I love me some neon yellow right now!  It just looks so good!  And in a June marked by grey skies and wet shoes, it's really cheering me up.

  I can't resist getting all artsy on my nails, so these lovelies are accented with a couple of blues - an unremarkable medium-blue I bought from Urban Outfitters that barely deserves a mention, and Revlon Royal, which is a glorious and delightful polish.  I also used another unimpressive UO polish, a grey that's a nice color, but a real shit polish, if you ask me.  I covered it with Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Glitz Gal, which I will talk more about in a minute.  I even added a few blue heart-shaped gems, which, while a little blurry in the photos, actually turned out pretty cute and far less tacky than my maiden voyage into nail gems.

That slight touch of rainbow!  Ah!  It's beautiful!!

  Now, I find that neons don't tend to last very long before they start to show signs of the various tiny traumas of my day, and get all opaque and cracked.  So once the neon went the way of the buffalo, I decided to run with that grey glitter on grey nails that I'd done on just a few accents above, and do something kinda classy for a change. 




  Oh my god, I have to say, this Sally Hansen Gem Crush line of glitter topcoats is fucking awesome.  I'm totally back into glitter, especially if it's a nice dense glitter with varying sizes.  It's got to have varying sizes of glitter in there, and lots of it.  The grey is awesome because it has just a touch of iridescence, which is a nice subtle color effect on the muted-for-glitter-nails grey.   Doesn't this manicure just look so effing glamorous!?  I spent the whole week just admiring my nails everywhere I went!