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