Forms Over Function

Happy Tax Day! I hope that everyone got their taxes done... I was a procrastinator and only did mine just last night. :-D I hate doing my taxes, all the legalese and fine print, etc, are like Greek to me. Oh well, in any event today's nails are inspired by income tax forms (and the IRS). :-D



I used American Apparel Cotton as a base, with American Apparel Hassid for the black on all nails, China Glaze 2030 from Khrome Collection for the gold outline on the dollar sign, with American Apparel Hunter and Green Scene for the dollar sign. Topped it off with two coats of Seche Vite top coat.

What are you going to do with YOUR return (if you get one)?

On an updated note, root canals are evil, I'm sick of soft, bite-sized food (it was a lower incisor that was worked on, so no biting!!), and I'm hoping the new prescription works, because the Lortab sure didn't do anything to help. :(

NEW GEL POLISH COLORS!!!!

I am having too much fun with the nail art this week. 1 more week until the Vegas nail show. I can hardly wait to go get all sorts of new nail art ideas! Whoot Whoot!




These are all temporary tattoo nail art.




This aqua glitter is from sparklesnailproducts.com

This a french manicure that I did with opi gel polish in black onyx. FYI to all of my gel polish clients I just got 8 new colors of gel polish! The new opi gel colors include: Kyoto Pearl, My Private Jet, Here today... Aragon tomorrow, Miami Beet, Barefoot in Barcelona, Cosmo-not tonight Honey!, Pink Flamenco, and Pink Before You Leap. You can try the colors on at opi.com

Retro-Active

Not going to lie, today's nails are easy and simple, and pink... definitely not my usual. lol After my root canal yesterday (which completely sucked, btw, see below for details), I decided that I deserved a present. Well, I was in CVS, and had a coupon for $4 off of $20. I also had $7.50 in CVS Extra Bucks. The ORLY Sweet collection was on sale for $6.99 each, so I got Cotton Candy, Pixy Stick, and Gumdrop....for a total of $11. :) I thought that they were fitting of a post-dentist reward for the sheer fact that their inspiration was what sends people to the dentist in the first place! :-D Even though I'm not a pink person usually, I really really liked the pink I used in today's design...who knows. I wasn't feeling that great last night after the dentist, so I was after a simple design, so I busted out some fauxnad plates from a NailArt Diva kit that I got at ROSS, of all places. I loved the retro look of the sparkles on one of the plates, so I HAD to use 'em!



I used Orly Cotton Candy as a base, with Essie Foot Loose applied with the un-numbered fauxnad plate. Topped it off with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat for that candy-coated shine!

Root canal details:

Got one round of 'Novocain' , or whatever they use these days for numbing, still felt stuff, so he administered another round of it. Felt ok, then he started working...about 5 seconds in, I felt EVERYTHING, so he mentioned something about 'crossover' since everything he was doing on the right, I felt on the left, so I got ANOTHER round of shots in the FRONT of my mouth, and he got back to work. the drilling was fine, but once he started the actual root canal part, I felt EVERYTHING, and no anesthetic was helping (he tried flushing the canal with anesthetic, etc) so I had to suffer through the rest. Once he got to the bottom of the tooth, he discovered that it was infected, so they couldn't finish it, and I'm on antibiotics for the next week until I get it finished. He prescribed pain killers for me (Lortab/Hydrocodone), but they have no effect on me, which I discovered was probably because they are a composite of codeine and thebaine, and I've noticed that codeine-basesd painkillers don't have an effect on me (surgery, codeine cough meds, etc), they never take away pain, knock me out (as every doc says they will), or anything else. Oh well, I'll live, it just sucks because it feels like I was punched in the teeth (the root canal was on a lower incisor). :-P Enough bitchin' and moanin'. I'll live. ;)

Thank you again everyone for the well-wishes!

How to: How I shape my nails

Hi everyone! How are you all doing? For today I decided to write a short little post about how I shape my nails, since some of you have been asking me about this. I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but this is mine :-).

Pictures are property of CND

Shape up! Ok, first thing to decide, is your desired shape. There are about 5 basic shapes to choose from: pointed, square, squoval, round and stiletto. In the past women always went with a rounded or oval shape. Nowadays the square and squoval (stands for squared oval) looks are really popular. A new trend however is the pointed and stiletto look. The stiletto thing is not really my cup of tea, I've seen them once in real life and I wasn't that thrilled about it, they just don't seem practical to me. I might stab myself while I'm sleeping. I do think they look very vixenlike when they're covered in ManGlaze hotness ;-). And they're great canvases for nail art. Most of the times they're artificial, I think I'd have to grow very long nails to achieve this look. On the catwalk we're seeing a lot of oval shaped nails, so I'm guessing that's going to be a trend as well. My nails are always hovering between squoval and square. They say nails are less weak if you file them like this, I'm not sure how true this is, but I've had way less breaks since stopped filing them round!

Wear a dark color I always try to shape my nails when I'm wearing a dark color. This way it's easier to see the actual shape of the nail. When I'm filing my nails without nail polish I always end up with crooked nails since my nailbeds aren't symmetrical at all.. And, they're not the same length either, so to end up with similar lengths, I'm ignoring my naked nails entirely ;-). I got this great tip from Kirsten from The Dutch Nail Blog, and I'm doing it like this ever since! Pssht this is Emerald Sparkle by China Glaze, don't you just love it?

Step away from the clippers Alright, tt's time to dig up your file! I'm not a fan of clippers, every time I use them, my nails split. So, after messing up a 1000 times and ending up with really short nails, I'm sticking with just filing, *foolproof*. If your nails are more on the softer side, clipping might not be a problem. I can't stress this enough, but please invest in a glass file, they may be more expensive, but they last you a very long time. You'll have less risk of tears and splits, when you're using a glass file. I use a fine buffing file too. I use this when I'm done shaping, to soften up any hard edges you might have.

Let's start! When you're filing your nails, please don't move your file back and forth, it can cause damage. I often hear you're not allowed to file the walls of your nails, but the rebel in me decides to do so anyway. If I don't, I won't achieve the shape I want. As you can see in the picture, I always file in one direction, and that's the center of the nail. This way the edges remain the smoothest.

Tada, you're done! Now, I'm really curious to see what everyone's shape preference is! Please fill out my poll if you'd like to. I hope this was helpful to some of you, please take care and till next time!

pollcode.com free polls

What shape do you prefer?

Pointed Stiletto Squoval Square Round

Animal Style

So today's nails are for the west-coasters, whom I hope will recognize them as the In-N-Out Burger cup design!! :) I LOVE In-N-Out, it is one of the places that keeps me here on the west coast! :-P I had it for dinner last night, and while I was eating, I looked at the cup and thought that the design would make for good nail art. Now, mind you, I've had In-N-Out of the idea list for some time now, but the original intent was to include it with a bevy of other fast food logos, but when this idea presented itself, I had no choice but to dedicate a day to it. :-D

The inspiration (I swear I heard angels singing, and possibly children's laughter):



The nails:



I used American Apparel Cotton as a base, with China Glaze Salsa for the palm trees, line, and squiggle line. Topped it off with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat.

Hmmm, maybe Ill have it for lunch again today... Cheeseburger , no onion, fries lightly well, and a Dr. Pepper, please!!

On a suckier note, I get to have a root canal today, *cry* so I'm freaking out a bit.

Fortunately, GLEE is on tonight, so I have something to look forward to!!! YAY I'm so excited!

So Outta Shape, I'd Settle for Half-Toned!

Happy Monday, people!! (Ok, Mondays pretty much suck, but I'm trying to be positive, lol) Today's design was inspired by my career, and what I went to school for. One of my favorite things in college was learning about different printing techniques, styles, etc. I decided to try to do a halftone on the nails, I couldn't get the rosette quite right, but I'm overall pretty happy with the effect. If my professors could see me now.... :-P lol



I used Sally Hansen All the White Stuff as a base, with Essie Foot Loose, American Apparel Manila, American Apparel Peacock, and American Apparel Hassid applied with Konad Plate m60. Topped it off with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat.

Sorry for the state of my cuticles, I've been slacking on the Lemony Flutter application. *sigh* :-P

BTW, thank you to all the well-wishers that posted hoping that I'd stop hurting! :) I have the best readers!!!

Zoya Jolene in Action

Hello my Sweet Nail-Art Lovers :D
This manicure and ring set demonstrates a Jolene polish from flash collection by Zoya.
Again it is a bit brighter in life than in pictures, really hard to catch real color.
I love this shade - very summer and extremely girly.

Send in Reinforcements!

Hey everyone!! Today was a lazy day, I ended up not going to class because I hurt myself on the jetty climbing around like a 5 year old (which apparently you can't do as easily when you're nearly 29), I slipped on a wet rock and pulled something in my calf and hurt something in my back. Sucky. The back injury hurts with each breath, I'd stop breathing, but that might be a worse situation to be in! :-P I FINALLY got my hands on Orly Glam Rock, the matte copper metallic that I've been lemming for a while now. (Nick G. from Sally Beauty went far and beyond his job to find it for me in the Vegas area, but alas, it was sold out, but I managed to get it from transdesign.com. YAY!!



To explain today's post title, I'll tell you what I used to create this manicure- PAGE REINFORCEMENT stickers!! :) I painted the Orly Glam Rock, then stuck the stickers on, painted the nails with American Apparel Peacock, then removed the stickers. After that, I used a dotting tool for the dots, which were an afterthought, because just the arcs looked super plain. I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite top coat, I wanted to leave the copper matte, but the Peacock was matte because it was painted over the matte, and I didn't like how it looked. Hope you like it! :)

H&M - Creme de la Creme

Hi guys! How is everybody doing? I hope fine :-). As I'm typing this it's already past 3am over here, I'm so nocturnal, it's insane! Anyway, before I go to bed, I want to show you another H&M polish, one that belongs to the same line as the one I showed you yesterday. Meet 'Creme de la Creme' by H&M. I'm having a really hard time restraining myself from typing 'Creme de la Menthe' though, haha! This golden polish remained untried for so long, because I really wasn't feeling the dull golden color. When the first stroke of polish finally hit my nail, I almost kicked myself for not trying it sooner. I was pleasantly surprised to see this wasn't just any gold! Creme de la Creme is actually a fine mix of silver and golden particles, I kinda like it! I do think the overall color could've been more vibrant, but I can imagine this polish would pop more on a sunkissed hand. Creme de la Creme consists out of a gazillion fine holographic glitters, it's really subtle and delicate. It only took two coats, a lot of smoothness and major quick drying, to decide its application is pretty great! Well, I'm off to sleep, good day and night to all of you! Thanks for stopping by and take care. -Michèle

Beachy Keen, Jellybean!

Hey everyone!! Today's nails were inspired by where I was today and yesterday- the beach!! I went to Newport Beach to get the hell out of Vegas for a bit... plus of course, I wanted to go t IKEA. lol I meant for todays nails to look like surf breaking on the shore... its fairly simple because I didn't want to carry a bunch of tools/colors with me. I also got to see San Pedro today, which has amazing views, thanks to our awesome 'tour guide', Kerry. (and thanks for lunch, too!! :-P)

The inspiration:



The nails:



I used OPI Sand in My Suit as a base (fitting right?!), with Orly Snowcone for the water, topped with Milani Cyberspace. for the breaking waves, I used Diamond Cosmetics Giddy and American Apparel Cotton sponged on the shoreline. Topped off the sand with LA Splash Chmapagne Sparkle for the sparkle of the sand, and mattified it with Essie Matte About You.

From the Mad Greek- Fresh Strawberry Shake!



My first fried Cheese on a Stick, from Jane's Lemonade. :-P It was... interesting. :-D Yes, I was making the goofy face on purpose! :)



I need a nap now. :-/ lol