SO NOT FAIR!

Well, not the best start to the weekend. I got home from work and found it was only 63 degrees in the house. That's not cool! Actually it was cool, just not the kind of cool I want in January.

I managed to get in touch with my furnace guy, and I decided I'd start cleaning so I'd stay warm. It was also at that point I realized I didn't have enough dog food to make it until Kev gets home on Monday. Dammit. That meant I had to go back into town.

After I did that, I got to cleaning. It did help me stay warm, but the repairman got here after about an hour so that wasn't too bad. He reset whatever it was that needed resetting and told me I needed to put in a new filter. Fantastic. That meant I had to leave the house and go back into town again! Once I did that, I finally managed to get the house clean and shiny, but it took me until 6 p.m. instead of the usual 3 p.m. Annoying.

It's also annoying when I keep attempting things on my nails that just aren't working.  A few months ago I had tried using foils on top of stamping with only "minor" success, which to me is a fail even though people liked it.

Now some little stinker over in one of the nail groups did it, and for her it works perfectly. She did a video which shows exactly how I'd been doing it. Only difference in it is the fact that it works for her. How is that even fair?

So last night I was determined to try it again. I had the same troubles I had last time, and I finally said screw it and gave up. Again. It's even more frustrating now that everybody else is doing it successfully. 

Once I gave up that left me with about 30 minutes to figure out what else to do.

I did this quick and didn't bother to redo any that weren't centered very well. I actually really like this. The blue/green is China Glaze Deviantly Daring. It's underrated, IMHO. I think I've only ever used it in marbling way back when because I don't remember ever just polishing with it. It's super pretty.

I just grabbed Essie No Place Like Chrome for the design, which is from the MoYou Fashionista 04 plate.

Like I said, I like it. It's dark enough that it's covering the beginnings of the gap at my cuticle line, so that's a plus. It seems like it's too soon for a soak off, but I guess that might be something I have to accomplish this weekend at some point.

Maybe I'll fight with the foils some more in the next day or two. Based on what I'm seeing in the groups and all over Pinterest, I guess it's time to consider throwing on something Valentine-ish, too. What a useless pretend holiday. 

On a brighter note, I did find some Peeps today!! I scored myself 6 boxes of Easter Peeps. It might be too early for Easter candy, but I'm pretty happy about it. 

I just polished off 6 an entire row of those cute yellow chickies. I'm pretty sure the rest of that box will be gone before the end of the night.

Yummers!!!

ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS

I was really looking forward to getting home yesterday because I was seriously pumped about doing that water marble. I found a color combination online from a color palette site that I sometimes use, grabbed my laptop and headed into the polish room to try to match up the 4 colors on my computer screen to actual polish.

As a side note, I remember when I used to call that a bedroom. Now I just think of it as the polish room. Sad.

I did manage to find the colors I wanted and got all set up to get a-marblin'. An hour and a half later I wanted to punch a baby. (and no, I would never actually punch a baby)

First of all, two of my chosen polishes would not cooperate. They would spread fine, but they were doing that super annoying thing where they prevent the next color from spreading. Off to the polish room to choose other polishes.

So now I've got 4 colors plus black that I'm playing with in different combinations. I tried with all 5, then 4, then 3, and nothing was satisfying me.  I kept doing a basecoat on 5 fingers and attempting different things, but it just wasn't happening for me.

So it didn't.

I finally just gave up about 2 1/2 hours in. One thing about marbling, sometimes I just have days where it won't work. They just weren't pulling into any sort of loopy design, which is what I wanted. I'm sure I could have managed either the stripey or the swirly, but I wanted loopy.

I was loopy by the time I gave up.

Eventually I decided to just use another of my new stamping plates. It's one of the nicest things about stamping plates.....guaranteed fast mani.

I'm pretty glad I decided to just give up on the marble and do this. I really like it, both the design and the color. I'm at the point in my nail growth where I have to kind of stick to dark colors due to growout.

The burgundy is Zoya Mikka. It's a great color, but as much as I normally love my Zoya polishes, this particular one is showing quite a bit of tip wear already.

The frosty pink I used to stamp with is Julep Maria. It works fantastic as a stamping polish. For realz.  The design is from the Ali Express AP 22 plate.

This was a nice, quick mani which is exactly what I needed since I'd been monkeying around for over 3 hours by the time I was completely finished and had everything put away.

And then it was time for bed. At least that's what I tell myself every night just around midnight when I have to work the next day. I swear I look at the clock 3 minutes later and it's 12:45.  I don't know where that 45 minutes goes.

I don't know why I have such an aversion to bedtime or to getting a decent amount of sleep. I'm paying for it right now; I've hit the mid-afternoon sleepy-slump.

I'll need to get past that. I don't think bossman would appreciate me laying face down on my keyboard.

SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE IT, DAMMIT

Have I mentioned recently that I hate Mondays? If not, let it be known; I hate Mondays.

It was such an uneventful weekend I don't have anything to either whine or woo-hoo about. I'm a boring soul.

I stared at my left hand for two days while pondering what to do about that turquoise mani. Leave it on? Take it off? It actually was starting to get on my nerves that I couldn't decide.

Suddenly yesterday afternoon I decided I was kind of tired of it, so off I went to grab a bunch of polish, striping tape and the new plates I got from Ali Express.

When I ordered them, I was a little concerned about the size of the designs, but I figured I'd give it a shot because they weren't super expensive. They are the round plates that are a little bit bigger than Konad, and a lot of them have designs that fill up 1/4th of the plate. I figured those images would be big enough, and I was right. This is the set, and I chose 12 of the 25.

Pardon the yellow hands, but it's what I apparently have to do in order to show something even resembling the China Glaze Agent Lavender and American Apparel Mount Royal that I used for this one.  The stamp is from the AP 21 plate, although I did see that other sellers have the same plates but with different numbers. Weirdsville.

While I do like the design, I wish I had used different colors.

Actually, what I really wish is that the striping tape mani that I started would have been turning out like it did in my head. I tried a couple of different things and then gave up. Sometimes I just don't have the patience to mess with striping tape. Maybe if I'd started earlier in the day I would have continued on with it. I should know better by now that to do stuff like that I need to play on a Saturday. That way if I get frustrated and only get part way done, I have Sunday to wrap it up.

Honestly, what I really wanted to do was a water marble but didn't want to bore anyone with yet another of those. 

It's still stuck in my head, though, so that might be what you end up seeing at some point this week, possibly tomorrow.

Looking down at my fingers as I type, I really wish I would have stuck with the turquoise. Someday I'll have to do that again, actually do both hands and then actually leave the house with it.

I think a lot of my mani's kind of go to waste now that I only work part-time. Well, other than the fact that I plaster them all over the interwebs.

Nobody appreciates them in real life like my interwebs nail peeps do anyway, which is why I appreciate all of you!

TURNED OUT COOL!

Hey, ladies....and gents, too, I suppose, are your heels as in craptastic shape as mine? 

I'm not a feet fan, and certainly not of my own. After 55 years of avoiding their proper pampering, they are not exactly cute. My heels are rough as hell, and since  a)  I'm too cheap to go get a real pedi, and b) I don't like people playing with my feet, I've tried off and on to find something that I can do on my own to fix them.

Last year I discovered the Best Pedi Prep Ever from Julep, which is a roll-on solution that you let sit on your feet for a few minutes and then use a file to get rid of dry skin. It actually works quite well, and if I wasn't too lazy to keep up with it, it might have eliminated the issue.

But I am too lazy and don't really concern myself with my feet until summer hits and want to wear sandals. In the winter my feet are covered in my socks which are only off long enough to shower. 

So I had seen an add for the Amope foot file thingie on tv and decided that would be the next thing I try. I ordered it from Target. OMG. It works crazy good!! I used it once a couple of weeks ago, and it really made a difference. I did it for the second time last night. My heels are smooth. They are so smooth my damn feet are literally sliding around inside my socks. This smoothness is completely foreign to me. I'm already looking forward to wearing sandals.

Enough for the commercial that I'm not getting paid for.

I did manage a mani last night, and now I have a dilemma.

I have seen the different water marbles using hairspray or alcohol, some of which were for the look of turquoise.  Since I don't buy hairspray and didn't have a spray bottle lying around to put alcohol in, I didn't think I'd ever try this method.

Well, I found a little sample bottle of hairspray in the spare bathroom so I decided to try it.

I did two coats of Kleancolor Pastel Teal, and once that was dry I used saran wrap and dabbed on some spots of Milani Gold Dust. I did a coat of topcoat before I marbled. I put just one drop of Orly Liquid Vinyl in the water and after it spread, I sprayed it with hair spray. 

Holy coolness!! I was surprised at how easily it worked. My only complaint with the method was that after spraying it, then the polish wouldn't spread for the next finger. I managed to mostly solve that problem by kind of swiping the water with a cotton ball between fingers.

I only have this on my left hand right now, so now I have a decision to make. The plan was to do a few different mani's this weekend, and now I can't decide if I really want to take this off. Part of me wants to do the other hand and leave it on until Monday night.  The other part of me wants to take it off and do a striping tape mani I've got halfway planned in my head. Another part of me wants to play with some new stamping plates I just got from Ali Express.

Decisions, decisions!! I honestly do not know what I'm going to do.

Geez, it's a good thing there aren't any more parts of me.

HOLO ON HOLO. HOLLA!

For those that may not know me here, I've worn my Custom Nail Solutions nails every single day since May of 2012. I've had different lengths at different times, but if something were to happen where I couldn't wear them.....

Let's just say I wouldn't leave the house without gloves on.

So just imagine my horror when, as I was driving on Wednesday afternoon, I ran my index finger of my left hand over the thumb nail next to it and felt a CHIP!!  Oh, hellz to the no. This simply can't be happening. I damn near pulled over to see if I was imagining things.

It wasn't chipped when I painted them the night before, and it wasn't chipped after I showered and made myself presentable to be seen in public. So at some point between noon and 4 p.m. I chipped a nail. I wasn't even doing anything.  

I couldn't get to my computer fast enough. I needed to email the company to have them send me a new one per their guarantee. Before doing that, I checked what the procedure was and it said I'd have to send the broken nail to them. Oh, I do not think so. I took pics and attached them to the email and told them I was keeping it. I filed it down past the chip so I can keep wearing it until the new one comes. 

They emailed me back right away the next morning, and I'm happy to report that they are fine with that. They'll be sending me a replacement. I'll give them a big A+ for how quickly they responded. Rumor has it the pink material for the nails is on backorder, but I'm in no hurry. Nobody but me would ever know my thumb nail is shorter.

Whew!!

I thought I'd try something a little different than I would usually do the other night. I have mixed feelings on this one. In person, this polish is more purple, but for some reason it wouldn't photograph, not even in the bathroom where I usually have to photograph purples.

I wasn't sure how this would go as far as stamping with a holo over holo. The base is a really pretty one from ILNP, Cygnus Loop, the holo version.

My goal for the stamping was to use a silver holo, but my only true silver holo is an Nfu Oh, and from past attempts I knew that it doesn't work at all for stamping.

After digging through the Helmers, I decided to try OPI DS Sapphire, which is more of a silver with a hint of blue.

The pattern from the Ali Express 12-51 plate actually stamped really well, much better than can be seen in the pictures. What I could not do was topcoat. It made the stamp almost completely disappear. I decided to see how it would go leaving it without topcoat.

It didn't go particularly well. I put this mani on Tuesday night, and by yesterday the stamping was virtually invisible, especially on my left hand.

This is something I think I'll try again, but maybe next time I'll stamp dark over light. I'll also assume it won't be something I'll wear for very long.

Now I'm off to search the interwebs for inspiration. I'm kind of in the mood to play with my nails, and it's been awhile since I did more than one on a weekend.

Having the time to do it is nice; finding the ambition to actually start is where I'm running into a problem.

Or maybe I'll just take a nap first.

LAST MINUTE LACE

Going to be short, but I wanted to at least throw a mani out here.  With over 500 new FB page likes and over 100 new Instagram followers in the past 8 days, I really want to try and post more. 

I'm still not feeling great, but Tuesday I got my new DRK Themes  Enlaced plate. It's a beauty, and I just had to hurry up and use it Tuesday night.

Sometimes it's so hard to choose a color!! I try to not repeat myself, but even with all that polish in the other room, it still isn't easy.

This CQ Gem Green has a really pretty shimmer to it that of course does not show up here.  I used DRK's black stamping polish for the lace design. I'm very pleased with the stamping polish, and I thought it was pretty reasonably priced at only 3 bucks.

The house is all cleaned, so my weekend has officially started. Kev leaves tomorrow and with his upcoming flight schedule and stopping to watch the Super Bowl with some family downstate, I won't see him until February. 

Sometimes being married to a pilot is like being single but without all the single life shenanigans and tomfoolery.

I prefer married.

HOLY COPY JOB, BATMAN

For some reason, I feel craptastic. I don't know if I have a touch of the flu or what. I won't get too graphic with the deets; let's just say homemade pizza goes down and should stay there, not come back up in the midst of eating. 

I'm still feeling a bit shaky 12 hours later, and I'd like it to go away now. I'm not sure if my stomach is going to behave or go crazy like it did last night. I did go right back to eating the pizza last night, and before I went to bed I ate a scotcheroo bar and felt okay. The whole thing is just weird. 

That was a fun read, right? lol

I had seen a gradient mani that was done by heartnat that she did in 2013. It was shared on another nail page, and I thought it was so pretty I decided to do something very similar. So I grabbed a pink and a purple that were like hers, looked through my stamping plates for a floral design, and set about doing it.

The pink that I used is Zoya Shelby, and my purple is Wet n Wild On a Trip. I used Konad white with my MoYou Pro XL 14 stamp.

I was happy with how it turned out. Then as I was looking at the original that she did, I took a closer look and discovered I had actually ended up using the exact same stamping design. So I guess this one is pretty much an exact copy. Sheesh.

If you haven't ever gone to her blog, you really should. She is amazing. She's one of those nail artists I strive to be like.

In a few months it will be 3 years since I got started with these nail shenanigans. Somebody on Instagram commented that she loved one of my mani's and it happened to be one from 88 weeks ago.

Yikers....it is so bad!! I will say it is nice to see how far I've come since the beginning. 

I'm so tempted to delete the entire first year of pictures, but I guess I'll suck it up and let the crappy ones stay.

Everybody has to start somewhere, I guess.