Guess Who's Back...

...back again...Dee is back!...Tell a friend....guess who's back guess who's back...LOL

For those of you who haven't fallen away and moved on to bigger and better things, let me apologize for neglecting my blog.  2011 was crazy.  So much to do so little time.  Priorities took over and unfortunately my blog became a victim to my hectic schedule.  Anywho, it wasn't just my blog that I was neglecting, but my nails were being neglected too....at least from a polish perspective.  While I cannot promise regular daily postings, or even weekly postings, I will say that I will try to post more often this year (at least when inspiration strikes).  Though I haven't posted in practically a year, I have been following my fellow polish bloggers.  One blogger in particular that I'm a fan of is Colette and her blog My Simple Little Pleasures, and her specialty is water-marble manis.  Watching her tutorials inspired me to try it for myself.  So last night, I threw caution to the wind and tried it for myself.

Here are my results:

Not to shabby for my first attempt, huh?? (BTW please excuse my mummy cuticles.  I got lazy.  LOL)  If there's anyone who doesn't know about the water-marbling technique, my description is that it's a throwback to kindergarten art class with the tub of water, sprinkling paint in the water, taking a stick to swirl the colors and then taking some paper and dipping it in the tub...but instead of paint and paper, you use your nails and polish.  Check out Colette's blog and tutorials here for a better idea.  I used 4 polishes (1) OPI "Alpine Snow" (base color & in water marbling) (2) OPI "Rumples Wiggin'' (3) Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear "Pacific Blue" (4) Wet n Wild "On a Trip".

Overall I love the result, although I didn't love the process at the beginning.  You have to use room-temp filtered water, and I STRESS temperature of the water is key.  Too cold and the polish will freeze up and  not spread along the top of the water.  You'll have little droplets of polish at the bottom of the cup.  I forget the reason for using filtered water, but since that's what Colette says, her word is good enough for me.  It's a lot of trial and error - what polishes work on their own, do they play well with other polishes in the water, making the pattern and working fast enough so that the polish doesn't set up before you finish working on the pattern.  Once that happens, the polish becomes like the skin that develops when you make pudding.  It's RUINED!  I was frustrated at certain points.  It's a messy process and when I wasn't succeeding, I felt like I was wasting polish.  

BUT..I figure with more practice I'll get the hang of it, waste less polish, and also experiment with cheaper polish.  Note also, water-marbling doesn't seem to work with polishes that set really fast i.e. (Sally Hansen Fast Dry polish)....I could be wrong though....I'm off to practice some more!!  J/K I'm going to bed now.  Night night.  Sorry for the long rant/post :)

Ombre Manicure

Let me preface this post by apologizing for my absence and noting that this post is WAA----AY overdue.  LOL.  My life had gotten a bit hectic and I had some unexpected personal issues that needed to be handled, so manis/pedis were the last thing on my mind.  Anywho, now that things have calmed down, I can FINALLY do another post.  I finally decided to do an ombre manicure with my fave teal/turquoise polishes.  Though the picture below seems to wash out the colors and bring out the blue more than the green(clear case in point is Peacock which looks straight up blue in this pic instead of a rich jewel teal).  I tried to color correct, but wasn't able to do so. *sigh* You'll just have to take my word that this mani looks better in real life. :) 



This will be a first of many ombres I will try, and I hope I can get better representations posted later on down the road. 

Submission for Polish Hoarder Disorder's Weekly Challenge - Color Accent

One of the blogs I regularly follow (and my fave by far), Polish Hoarder Disorder, does a weekly challenge.  Up until now I've always liked watching from the sidelines, but not participating, either because I don't have the time (deadlines are usually Friday at midnight), the resources (haven't purchased that Konad Stamping Set), or the "know how" to send in a submission.  However, her challenge this week is a "Color Accent" mani: use grey, black, white and ONE color as an accent.  The deadline is tonight instead of last night, so I figured, "I can TOTALLY do this one."  Mind you that I've never done any sort of nail design before, and my skills as an artist are the next step up from "caveman drawings", so this is really my first time doing anything outside of just putting polish on my nails.  (It's been years since I've even given myself a french manicure!!!)  Anyhow, here's my submission for the challenge:

I used American Apparel's Factory Grey as my base, Orly's La Vida Loca as my accent color, and then Sally Hansen's nail pens in Black and White to fulfill the other two polish requirements of the challenge (strangely enough I don't have bottles of black or white polish).  My idea for the design was "a car's racing stripe".  You know, you see a beautiful Mustang or other muscle car with this nice wide white (or some other colored) stripe going up the center of the car....I guess I watched too much of "Pimp My Ride" when it was on MTV.  LOL

While it's not quite to my liking (the perfectionist in me kept saying "You can do better"), I figure it's pretty good for a first try.  I LOVE the color of La Vida Loca, which is why I chose it as my accent color.  I had some other candidates, but I figured this is a unique color, and since my design is so simple, I had to add something special to make it "pop".  What do you think?  Is this something you'd wear?  I'd like to try it again once I've perfected the technique and do a comparison :)

The Mother of All Nail Tears!!!!!

While I was getting ready for work yesterday morning, I reached down to open one of the sink cabinets. To give you some background, the doors to my sink cabinets are weird in that they are old and outdated things with tiny little handles (think the size of a doorknocker of a dollhouse) located in the MIDDLE of the door.  (more ornamental than functional) To make the process of opening said cabinets even more difficult is that they are sealed from within by magnets.  So I try and pull at the corner of one of the cabinets, not paying attention to what I was doing and LOW and BEHOLD I catch the corner of my thumbnail, my nail polish peels/chips off the corner ruining my mani, and I get a small tear.  I was annoyed at the polish chipping because it was pretty noticeable and it meant that I had to take off all my polish before trying to get out the door on time for work.  I didn't really worry about the nail tear since I have this lovely little nail repair kit, which I tossed into my bag.

I've used this only one time previously and it worked really well, so as soon as I got to work, I applied some glue, threw on some powder and went about my work.  Towards the end of the day I notice that the repair didn't hold, and to make it worse it got bigger!!! ( > o < )  I'm disappointed in this product and will not be using it again.  I got it because it was cheap and I definitely got what I paid for.


I remembered a tip from a book I read where it said you could use kleenex as a patch.  I grabbed some kleenex, applied some glue and that seemed to work.  

I awoke the next morning to find that my second attempt to fix this tear failed.  I remembered that a piece of teabag used with nail glue could ALSO be used as a patch for a torn nail, and that previously worked for me.  Got to work, applied glue and patch...more glue....more glue....OKAY.  I go about the rest of my day, check on the patch...still holding...good good!  BUT when I come back from the gym, I notice that my THIRD attempt to fix this stupid tear has failed and my tear is worse.  (FYI...this tear is below the quick and it's deep enough into the nail bed that it would be impossible to try and salvage by cutting and filing it down.)

I whine and complain to my friend/co-worker and then immediately search the web for a better solution.  I find this lovely tutorial using silk wraps by a fellow blogger, My Simple Little Pleasures.  (Click here to view her tutorial)  I get the necessary items and am in the process of putting the finishing touches to this patch.  I'm hoping FOUR times is a charm.  Here's the offending nail:

OUCH!!!  I'll post an update if this works. Stay tuned...