50/50 Nails

  Wow, slacking this week, huh?  How about another quickie about nails?  We love those.

Photographed on an LP with a picture of a leather jacket, not actual leather.  Weird!

  I love to do a little half 'n' half mani when I can't decide between two colors.  I decided to go vertical since to me horizontal halfsies looks like a french mani that didn't know when to quit.  For this I used Revlon "Jaded," which I absolutely looove!  It's a super smooth opaque that's not too streaky.  I usually need three coats, two if I'm being heavy-handed.  It's just a really great pastel and I fucking love it.  Honestly I just love all my Revlon polishes.  For a drug-store find, they are really great, and they last a while, too.  The purple is some ridiculous stuff called Island Girl, which I  naturally bought in Maui.  It's called "Waikiki Dream" in case you ever find it.  I bought this on a day-drunk afternoon, so I don't remember how much it cost, but it was cheap.  Finally, a black stripe to divide the sides!  This added a little depth to the look, and covered up my sloppy seams.  Bonus!

Here's a way clearer picture with less accurate colors.  The pale green just gets so blanched by my camera's flash!

Pebbles Flintstone Manicure

  It's been a slow week here in Blogland, and especially in Manicuria.  I can get a bit careless with my nails, since I am often working with my hands and using my nails as tools.  Just two weeks ago I was doing god-knows-what and clumsily brought my hand down with a mighty force on my coffee table.  Seriously I don't know why or even how exactly I did it - maybe my depth perception is off? - but I did, I smashed the hell out of that table with my thumbnail.  Unfortunately there was a casualty, as a long, deep shard of nail ripped off, bled a whole bunch, and then made a blood blister under the nail.  It hurt like a bitch.

  I didn't want to paint while I monitored the nail and prayed to the nail gods that the dang thing wouldn't fall all the way off.  Happily it doesn't seem like it's going to jump ship, so I went ahead and gave 'em a few coats and even glued some gems on there.  I just picked up my first nail gems, which I don't usually like because shit sticking off my nails bothers me a lot and I tend to just pick it off.  Besides, it makes your manicure more fragile and that is just not good for doing stuff with your hands.  There'll be more on that later, meanwhile I'm busy trying to figure out how to make nail rhinestones look like something other than super cheap n' tacky. 

 To tide you over, here's a little favorite I've been sitting on for a while.  For some reason I only have a right hand shot of these, and it seems I took it after a few days' wear, but oh well, you still get the idea.

Triangles. For. Days.

  I'm calling this my Pebbles Manicure because it just reminds me so much of the youngest Flintstone.  The base color is my beloved favorite, Savina "White Lavander," with some boring old Revlon black for the details.  I am definitely in a triangles phase right now, it's all I wanna paint.  Trying a few different styles here, and I'm feeling quite fond of the vertical zig-zag action on the pointer nail.  An idea to try for a full set, I think!  I'd say this look counts as party nails, too.

Neon Orange Triangle Tips

  If it wasn't already apparent, I am obsessed with neon orange nail polish right now.  It's just so...so...  I don't know, juicy?  I love it.  It's like red's sassy cousin who likes to party.  It's also got huge hipster-ugly potential, which I love.  There's just something about an especially jarring color combo.  When colors fight each other, I feel it almost gives them an enhanced richness.  Like when you see something you've never noticed before but you're sure it's always been there.  "How did I not notice that about neon orange before?"

 Today's is a nice simple manicure, a bit of a punk-rock take on the classy French tips.  The colors are the Sally's Beauty StripeRite in neon orange (the only StripeRite I will ever truly love.  It has the perfect consistency.  As I said previously, the others leave a lot to be desired.)  The base is maybe my favorite polish of all time.  The brand is Savina, which is always, always available at Nordstrom Rack for a mere four-ish dollars.  This particular color is "White Lavender," which is neither white nor lavender, but the perfect opaque peachy-pink-nude.  I really love it as a neutral base, or for a more mod-looking French.  The peach also makes a really nice base for any design just by virtue of it's opacity and color - it doesn't show through, and while it's not as brightening as white, it won't darken your top color (which I HATE!!!)

  The neon orange against the softy-lingerie peach looks so wrong it's right.  It's got that awkward '70s color vibe that I just love!! (One day I'll show you a picture of my living room decor.  I think will explain everything!)


  If you don't have nail art brushes or a steady hand, you can totally tape off this manicure and do it that way - usually I see it done where the tip color is done first, then masked off with a corner of scotch tape, over which the main color is applied.  I do the base coat first and free-hand the triangles on top, so they're not quite uniform as you can see, but it's not hard to get these looking right free-hand.