Manicure for Mini Nubbin Nails

I love black nails.  Love them!  I'm very glad they are in style right now.  However, and this is just my opinion- I think they look pretty witchy when they are on long nails.  Luckily (or not!!) for me, my nails are currently itsy bitsy little nubs.  Blame the Praxis!  And blame my fiance's car.  I tried to shut the trunk in the rain the other day and broke two of my nails.  I didn't even know nails this short could break.

Anyway- tiny little nails means YAY!  Black nail polish!  So I hooked it up with some black, and one of the polishes I got in my stocking, topped with a matte topcoat.  Looks pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

Products Used:
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out
China Glaze Snow Globe
Essie Matte About You

Fall Leaves on Cheeky Chops

Since I felt kinda weird wearing around these yellow nails, and I'm too cheap to take it off immediately, I decided to go forth with some fall inspired stamping!

I used Butter London's Cheeky Chops as a base since I'd swatched it previously, and stamped on top with a Bundle Monster design in red, orange and brown.  I like it, but I thought it was missing something- so I topped it with my matte topcoat, and I like it.

Products used:

Butter London Cheeky Chops

Revlon Hot for Chocolate

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed

Gap nail polish in Admire

Essie Matte About You

Bundle Monster plate BM04

Chalkboard Nails

I had this brilliant idea.  I've been wanting to do a mani with crackle tips, and I've been wanting to do a mani with matte pastels, so I thought "why not combine the two!"  Well... I tried it.  And I kind of don't like it at all.  The pastel green with the matte topcoat reminds me of sidewalk chalk.  And I guess I'm just really bad at doing tips or something, but I also kind of hate the crackle tips on me... on everyone else they look so awesome!  Maybe if I'd been able to find my silver pen and do a line in silver like I wanted to, rather in black...

But anyway, here it is!

Products used:

Revlon Minted

OPI Black Shatter

Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in Black

Essie Matte About You

And here's another one for good measure: 

We haven't seen Abby in a while, but she made her presence known today!

I Have Been MIA... and Very Bad :(

I haven't posted in ages, and here's my excuse... I bit off ALL MY NAILS!  I am so ashamed.  I've still been painting them, but quickly and without much love, and I've been so stressed and busy that I haven't had time for photos.  But I'm back in the swing of things (my summer semester started up and it took me a few days to readjust) so hopefully I can get myself back on track and grow these babies out.

I have a mani on my nails right now that I want to show yall, but I haven't cleaned it up yet or put on a topcoat.  So I will do that and hopefully have some photos by tonight or tomorrow to get things going.  But until then, I have some non-nail-art related photos to tide you over.

My boyfriend and I went to Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm for their tulip festival a few weekends ago.  So here's some colorful, happy, springtimey flower photos!

And I leave you with a few questions/I'm asking for advice:

1. I once again attempted to use my Zoya matte polishes and, once again, they chipped off within the first day.  Then I tried again with Essie Matte About You topcoat and that STILL didn't help.  Does anyone else have these problems?  It's not with any of my other matte polishes, only Zoya.  Do you have any suggestions to make that work?

2. I am looking for a baby, baby, pale pastel blue.  Actually, any baby baby pastel color recommendations would be so awesome.  But particularly a blue, as I haven't been able to find one.  So: powder/pastel/baby blues that you've tried/heard are awesome.  

Thanks so much!  I'm trying desperately to catch up on everyone's blogs, so sorry if I spam you with comments all at once!

ELF Summer Ready Collection: Lilac

I really really wanted to wear a pale purple matte manicure, and thought "Hey, why don't I continue swatching the polishes from my ELF collection?"  Because I said I was going to do that and never did.  Unfortunately, I decided to do it late at night when the sun wasn't out, so my photos of it aren't so great straight out of the bottle.

Here you can kind of see the color.  It's pretty sheer, this is I think 3 coats.  I probably would have gone for another one if I hadn't been wanting to go to bed.  I used OPI's ridge filler as a basecoat, but you can still see them ridges.  Overall I think it's a very pretty, springy color.  Oh and forgive the part where there's polish all over my skin and stuff, I have a very slapdash method of applying nail polish, and I definitely didn't clean up before taking pictures.

So after that, I slathered it with a coat of Essie's Matte About You.  These photos really don't do it justice!  Also it looks pretty streaky or bare in some places in the photos, but definitely not IRL.  I really liked this one, and my boyfriend liked it a lot too.  I think it would look super great with the green that also came in the ELF collection, so maybe I will try some combination of the two for Easter!

Ugh, Abby's hair gets everywhere!

Products Used:

ELF Summer Ready Collection: Lilac

OPI Ridge Filler

Essie Matte About You

Springtime in Matte Green and Pink

Well I tried to use both my new products, but the pink Essie did not show up well over the green, so I reverted back to my old faithful- Sally Hansen!

OPI's Gargantuan Green Grape Matte was, like most mattes in my experience, very streaky at first but dried almost instantly.  Shown in photos is about 3 layers.  I don't like the way my ridges shown through so visibly, so next time I would definitely use my ridge filler as a basecoat.  There is no topcoat used here.

Products Used:

OPI Gargantuan Green Grape Matte

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Flashy Fuchsia

Bundle Monster plate number BM16

Matte Black and Shine, and a teeny Ulta haul.

Saw this design floating around the internet and decided to give it a go.  It came out okay... looks way better in person, but if I were to do it again, I'd do a few things differently.

I used a matte black and covered it in a matte topcoat.  The I used SV on the tips.  Next time, I would do tips in a non-matte black color and THEN a topcoat of SV for extra shine and to really make the separation more obvious.  But for a first, time, I don't think it's too shabby.

Products used:

L.A. Girl Matte in black

Essie Matte About You topcoat

SV topcoat

Annnd today I went to Ulta for the first time (it is right down the street, that's really a crying shame) looking for crackle nailpolish (no go) BUT I discovered their clearance section and snapped up two OPI matte/suedes and a pink Essie.  I'm totally going to do the green and pink together- how springy!  Maybe I'll do another watermelon design.  Each one was like 50% off- each $4.99 for each bottle, regularly $8-$8.50.  Score!

Essie Exposure, OPI Gargantuan Green Grape Matte, and OPI Russian Navy Suede

Starting Point

Thursday night I had class and by the time I got home I had bitten/chipped off nearly all of my nail polish.  Which is not a new occurrence, but I figured it would mark the perfect starting point for my new goal.  So heads up, this isn't pretty:

I know, right?  Look at those cuticles.

I didn't even try to put on lotion or anything, because let's be honest, I have a problem that I've been working on for years and this is still what my hands look like on a normal basis.  It isn't as bad as it could be (or has been in the past) but I'm working to make it awesome.

So anyway, this is my starting point.  And to begin I decided to try a matte royal blue.  

Not too shabby, right?  They don't look terrible when the polish is on.  

Products used:

Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth Treatment (I've been using this for years and I love it long time) as basecoat

Revlon Top Speed in Royal

Essie Matte About You topcoat

I painted these on Friday afternoon and they lasted until... today.  They were chipped up by Saturday, and I tried repairing them but by my shower this morning my repairs had worn off and I chipped the rest off all by myself while wandering through a book store.  

This is going to be harder than I thought.

It looked nice while it lasted.