Happy October!

But first I have to apologize for not following up on my claim to do something spectacular with my ocean theme stickers. I did... but I didn't write about it. So here's a picture real quick:

My favorite is the crab on my right index finger because it looks like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAH" like the slugs from Flushed Away. It's like, "AAAAAAH A SHELLLLL!!"

The background is gold, plus red plus orange plus blue plus blue glitter plus a black tip. I'm not gonna bother saying what each nail polish is cause I'm tired and it's 1:00am and I have school tomorrow.

These nails were fun but they felt pretty gross by the end of the week. The stickers started chipping off and my nails felt rough and textured... dolphins got decapitated ... nasty stuff. And it was really hard to get them off. But hey, they were fun and I got a lot of compliments last week, so that makes it worth it, right?

This week... marks the beginning of October. Unfortunately only my Christmas stickers came in the mail and I'm still waiting on the Halloween stickers. Hopefully they'll be here soon.

But in the meantime, Happy Beginning of October!

What I Used:

• 
  
  Base Coat: Avon Nail Expers Smooth Beginnings Base Coat
• 
  
  First color: OPI Nail Lacquer in "In My Back Pocket" -- 2 coats
• 
  
  Second Color:
• 
  
  One or two coats of OPI Nail Lacquer in "Alpine Snow"
• 
  
  One or two coats of Sephora by OPI Nail Colour in "Cab Fare"
• 
  
  Third Color: OPI Nail Lacquer in "Alpine Snow"
• 
  
  Glitter: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Color in "Disco Ball" -- Just a little coat on the white part.
• 
  
  Top Coat Nailene Acrylic Strong
  
  

Yea, they're kinda backwards in color, compared to real candy corn. But I did it on purpose! I've been doing dark tips a lot lately so I figured it was time for some light ones.

And the verdict is... meh.

See how they look textured and bumpy? I ended up with bubbles, which I've read is what happens if the coat you put on is too thick or the coat underneath is still wet. I'm gonna blame the top coat for this one though, because even my sister said that the Nailene stuff is too thick. It doesn't go on smoothly like my other stuff and it kinda "glops" on.

Another complaint I have about this set of nails is that the OPI nail Lacquers are too thin. It takes two coats just to get the color to be bold enough so that streaks don't show through. Those happen to be my only OPI Nail Lacquer colors, and conveniently they're both too watered down. The yellow is fun though, it's glittery. It just needs a coat of white underneath or else it'll show whatever's underneath it.

And a final complaint is that these nails took too long to dry. I used my drying drops and everything, but that only dried the top coat, and I could still smush the color around. In fact, I tried to open a window and ended up putting a dent in my thumbnail. And then there were a few casualties through the night... my middle finger and thumbnail had to be erased and completely redone. And even today, 24 hours later, they're still a little soft so they haven't dried completely yet. That's annoying.

Well, at least I like them somewhat, right? I like them enough to keep 'em, but at this rate I'm expecting something else to happen that'll make me abort the whole thing. I like how long they make my fingernails look, though. And I piled on the polish so much that they almost look fake. And that's good, right?

Anyway, Happy October.

Sally Haul 9.15.09

my new tweezers and stickers from sally's
 

Sorry, you'll have to excuse the drastically overstated use of the word "haul" to describe my two-item purchase at sally's, but I really couldn't help myself.

I went to Sally's and finally bought the Ocean Life set of Nail stickers by Cina, and a Tweezerman set of tweezers to use when I apply the stickers to my nails.

closer look at the sally's sticker so you can see what I mean

The awesome thing about Sally's is the Sally Beauty card. I became a member in January this year for the fee of $5 and got a $5 coupon to use in store the next month. Being a member means that you get a discount off of everything in the store. The secret to finding the price is to look at the numbers on the Sally tag: The actual price is written as a price with the dollar sign and all that good stuff. But the members price is at the end of the long number above that -- so my Stickers costed me $3.49 instead of the listed $4.39... which is awesome. And to top it off, I also used a 20% coupon that was good toward my entire purchase, so I got some super savings there too. I'm pretty happy right now.

my old tweezers from my swiss army knife with a U.S. dime for size comparison

The tweezers were a purchase long in the making. I've been using my tweezers that came attached to my swiss army knife but they just aren't doing the trick. I mean, they worked in that they did their job but after my fiasco with the black hearts jumping off the plastic sheet I decided to go for some good ones. We'll see how it ends up -- either terrific or a waste of $3.50...

Oh yea, and I bought a set of Halloween stickers on eBay for $4.89. They were an international purchase so they'll take 7-14 days but I'm still excited. Halloween nails here I come!

And... I can't believe I finally got the ocean life set! Expect great things from me next week when I use these puppies. I have been wanting this set for EVER but didn't really know how I'd use them, but boyo, do I have an idea now. This oughta be good.

Glittery Blue tips and flowers

My sister said these are her favorites of all the nails I've done before. She said that she always wishes I would buy the ones in the store but that I always end up going for the ghetto ones instead. *shrug* ... 's true.

This week's glitter and blue tips are inspired by a set of fake nails that I keep seeing in stores. Of course, I love looking at the nail section in Target and Walmart and now that I've copied an idea that I've seen before, I can't find a picture of them online. But yea, I did copy the idea from somewhere.

  

What I used:

• Remover: Equate Regular Nail Polish Remover to remove last week's nails -- four cotton pads did the trick (soaked and used all four sides).
• Base: Avon Nail Experts Smooth Beginnings -- 2 coats
• Glitter: Sally Hansen Hard Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Cor in 4860-09 Disco Ball -- 1 coat over half the nail and some touch-up dabs after the first coat dried
• Blue Tips: Nicole by OPI in "It's Up To You" -- 2 coats, then some more glitter on top of the tips again
• Stickers: Combination of the flowers found in
• Cina 3D Nail Decals Item #CI-18013 and
• Kiss Nail Accents #NS13
• Top Coat: Nailene Acrylic Strong Topcoat -- 2 coats
• Drying Aid: Sephora by OPI Nail Colour Drying Drops -- 2 drops per nail
  

OTHER NEWS!

Coming up in October!!

I'm really excited because I just won an auction on eBay for 5 sheets of Christmas nail stickers. Now I'm on the prowl for a good deal on halloween stickers. I love halloween and plan on doing Halloween Themes for the entire month, so be on the lookout for that. :)

Also -- I found this awesome site that's an online nail community / message board system. CoolNailsArt.com Lots of nails and lots more nails. Most of them are way longer than I can handle, but I love all the designs. I've never gotten my nails doen professionally so it's pretty exciting for me to see what people are capable of doing with nail polish...

Pink hotness, yep!

But first an update on the nails that I posted in my last blog:

They held up surprisingly well! My family went to Reno for a 4 night vacation at Harrah's and I was so sure that they would end up chipping by the end of the week. At the base of the nails I could see the color lightening a little, which meant (or at least I thought...) that they would start peeling and chipping. I'm used to lighter color meaning that the nail polish is separating from my nail surface and only hanging on because it's connected to the rest of the polish that's still attached. But hey, it lasted well until I got home.

Removing the nails was interesting. The last time I used stickers I had applied them to fake nails, so it was simply a matter of peeling off the nails and putting something on something new. Since then I've graduated to using my natural nails. When you wipe your nails with nail polish remover, you take off the nail color and the design on the sticker but the plastic stays on your nail, leaving a sticker-outline of the color you had underneath it. Then you have peel off the sticker and remove the polish leftovers and THEN you're done. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's about two more steps than I'm used to dealing with, which is a bummer but not SO bad, I guess.

Okay the new set:

What I used:

• Base coat: Avon Nail Experts Smooth Beginnings -- 1 coat
• Color: Sephora by OPI Nail Colour in "Lost Without My GPS"-- 2 coats
• Tips: Sally Girl Nail Color in "Poser" -- 1 coat
• Accent Color: Savvy Nail Lacquer in "Golden Honey" -- 1 coat (little stripe on the black tips)
• Stickers: Broadway Nails Fashion Diva Nail Art "Find Me" -- applied with my pocket knife tweezers
• Top Coat: Nailene Acrylic Strong Topcoat -- 1 coat

Stuff I noticed:

1. The stickers are difficult to get off the sheet. I had at least 4 stickers go flying when I picked them off.
2. The stickers have examples on the back of how awesome your nails would look if you put more than 2 stickers on them. In real life, they just look ridiculous, like you couldn't decide which stickers to use and just kept going and going. Plus it's impossible to get them in a straight line with my left hand, which adds to the ridiculousness.
3. I'm getting better at painting on tips. Even my sister says so. :)

Why Nails?

There are dozens of nail websites out there, all with really great information on proper nail care and professional procedures for real manicures and all that. I've read a bunch of them, and they're helpful and awesome and there's really no need for me to re-state everything I've learned online because it'll just come up in the same Google searches as everything else.

But I don't care. :)

I like doing my nails. It's the "me" time that I can take to just relax and think about something really simple like shiny glittery color and straight or curvy lines as opposed to all the really frustrating things in life that I could be thinking about (like stupid chickens... but I won't go into that).

My nails grow pretty fast so I take advantage of the length to do things on my natural nails that people otherwise do on stick-on fake nails. The paint jobs last about a week for me before they start chipping. I like to do different designs with stickers and nail polish, and I tend to get compliments from other girls when I really take some time to get it all done and pretty.

Here's an example of my latest set:

So, till next time! Yay!

A change of topic

After two weeks of not blogging in my "ideally daily" blog about hamsters I've decided, based on the excellent advice of my sister, to switch topics. To nails.

Hamster goodbye!