I WENT OLD SCHOOL

I'm happy to report that no cooking was involved with my evening. Hubby happily agreed to take me out for dinner. From there my initial plan was to go home and take off that striping tape mani, but our car drove itself to the casino instead of making the turn to go home.

We had fun but came home losers. As usual.

When I was getting ready for work this morning, I looked down at my left hand, and to my horror, a huge chunk of the polish on the right side of my middle finger is gone. How crazy do you think that has been driving me all day?? It's sooooo bad!!! I don't know what I knocked it against, but it sure did some polish damage.

Now I have no choice but to do them tonight. Well, I already knew I had to, but now I can't weasel out of it. I have a doctor's appointment out of town, and obvi I need something impressive, especially since I've never been there before.

This mani from a couple weeks ago was a "just playing around" thing. Back when I first got stamping stuff, the first set I bought was a Bundle Monster set of 25 plates. One of the plates has this flower. Of course, those plates don't fill my finger, but a lot of the XL Bundle Monsters are just larger versions of their original plates. That's why I bought 'em.

I did my light pink with American Apparel Coney Island. When I stamped, I put Loreal Crazy for Chic and Cult Los Feliz in little blobs on the Bundle Monster BM XL05 plate so the colors would kind of smoosh.

While this did work out the way it was supposed to, it was only "meh" for me. I don't think I really care for those flowers as whole-nail coverage. I've used one or two in the past just for accent purposes, but to me this looks juvenile. In fact, the photo at the top of my blog on the far right has this flower from the original plate as a French tip accent.

It's probably why I didn't bother doing both hands. It just looked like a mani for a little kid on a grownup's hand. I bet I would have liked it better if I'd stamped with a really dark color.

I doubt I'll ever know because I probably won't ever use this image on my entire nail again. I may, however, at some point recreate that French tip mani using it as the accent. I still like that little mani. My friend had posted it when I first started doing my nails and kind of challenged me to do it. I was a real beginner then, but I was happy to try. After that she got all hooked on nails, too! LOL

I kind of enjoyed being able to say I was just a beginner at nail art. It gave me a built-in excuse for anything that didn't turn out very well. I'm guessing at 3 years in, I can't use that one anymore.

Now if I mess up, it's straight up incompetence. And that sucks!

SIMPLE, BUT NICE COLORS

I'm super happy my daughter, grandson and Zero came home Friday to visit for a few days, but having Zero and Seven here at the same time for an entire weekend is really knocking me on my ass. They play to the point of obvious exhaustion but fight sleep like little kids.

Last night they both slept with me, but it makes me sleep much lighter because I'm listening for them with the ears of a mother of newborn. Every tail thump woke me up. And as is pretty standard when Tyler is here, I didn't get to bed until around 4 a.m. The brats woke me up at 7:40. If Baylee pulls that nonsense, I can just tell her to go lay down, but since these two are only 10 months old, I'm not so brave with trusting them completely. So I got up, let them all out, fed them and then went back to bed to get another couple hours of off and on sleep. 

And they haven't stopped playing since then. The little buggers sure are adorable, though, and for the most part are very well-behaved. They simply have too much energy!

I did this mani at least three weeks ago.

The lighter color is China Glaze More to Explore and I stamped with Cult Laguna and the Bundle Monster BM XL05 design.

The Cult polish stamped really well, and it was the perfect color to stamp with. 

For the holiday, Cult is doing their Buy One, Get Two Free deal again. I jumped on it but only got two of their new colors and another white. If you decide to check it out, use the code MEMORIAL to get in on the deal. With shipping, my three cost $16.95. Even if they hadn't any new colors I wanted, I probably still would have hopped on board and just got three white.....love 'em.

I hope I can find some time to do my nails soon. I'm still sitting here with that gradient on, and I am SO over it at this point. I can barely stand looking at them.

If I get stuck wearing a holo or a multichrome for this long, at least those are still fun to look at on day five.

That gradient, not so much.