Mani Thursdays 3: Watercolor Nails

Hi everyone!

Thursday has come again, and for this Mani Thursday I’ve decided to do watercolor nails! I used the method with acetone; the plastic-wrap method didn’t work so great for me.  Basically, you just put dots of nail polish on your nail (painted with a base coat, base color, and top coat) and use a brush wetted with acetone to make the polish watercolor-y (rebecca likes nails has a nice tutorial). A lot of people doing this tutorial used bright colors, but I prefer a more pastel, laid-back blue-green look.

I used: Sally Hansen White On (white) & Mint Sorbet (pale green); Sephora by O.P.I. Read My Palm (darker green); and Jin Soon Blue Iris (blue).

Well, that’s it for today!  What should I do for the next mani Thursday? I hope my striping tape arrives by then 🙂

China Glaze Golden Meringue

Hi!

Recently, I purchased my first China Glaze polish! It’s Golden Meringue, which is a sheer polish with a barely-there-under-some-lights golden shimmer. It looks really nice in the bottle, but not so great on my nails. (the first picture is not realistic. The second picture is what it actually looks like – really yellowish).

That weird ring finger thing is an idea I got from Begone, Gluten! It seems like it would work with some sheer polishes, but this one I applied pretty badly and it looked really clumpy over the white base (Sally Hansen White On, of course).  Ugh.

I don’t think I’ll be wearing this polish much, but maybe it’ll have second life as a toe color? At least it was only $2.99…

– Rover

Argyle Nails

Today (actually yesterday) Buddy came over and let me do her nails! I tried argyle nails with my new brushes. They came out all right, not the best, but passable (it took FOREVER though!) 

I used: Sally Hansen White On (white) and Mint Sorbet (light green); Jin Soon Blue Iris (dark blue) and Poppy Blue (light blue); and Sephora by O.P.I. Read my Palm (dark green).

This design is pretty self-explanatory, but Cutepolish has a great tutorial on it.

– Rover 

 

WordPress vs. Blogger? And Our New Blog

Hi! So here’s the sacrilegious post that’s been in the works for a little while, but that I never got around to writing until now.

WordPress versus Blogger? Which one is a better blogging platform? I’ve started a new blog — just about nail art — on Blogger. And this blog is (duh!) on WordPress.

I’ll admit, Blogger has a better interface. It’s faster to load, and you have a lot more control over what your blog looks like/what goes on it. There are a LOT of people who can follow your blog through Google Friend Connect (a feature found purely on Blogger). On the other hand, there’s no equivalent of the “Topic” reader thing on WordPress (it has a name, I guess, but I don’t know what it is). On Blogger, you can look at a certain category, but only the MOST POPULAR blogs in that category are shown, not the most recent posts. Which means it’s really, really hard to get yourself “discovered”. I think I’ll end up having to go comment/follow a LOT of people’s blogs to get myself noticed, at all.

But oh, well. I’ll just have to see how the two blogs do (and if you’re following the blog for its nail art, check out the new Blogger blog — it’s purely about nail art and there’s more detailed stuff!).

– Rover

P.S. Sorry for not posting as frequently — flute, soccer, SAT prep, blah. Now I’m turning into Buddy (oh nooo! I mean, no offense, Buddy 🙂 )

EDIT: I forgot about AdSense — you can’t put ads on WordPress blogs easily, but AdSense is free and easy to manage. Although I haven’t put ads on my Blogger blog, it seems a little… arrogant?

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– Rover & Buddy 🙂

Mani Thursdays 2: Galaxy Nails

Hi! So… Thursday has rolled around again, and I’ve done galaxy nails! Not much to say about these. Plus, I’ve posted a tutorial here (GASP! On my other blog!). 

I used Sally Hansen White Out; Deborah Lippmann Invincible, I Fought the Law, and Twilight Tone; Jin Soon Coral Peony; and Funky Fingers Mood Ring. Hope you like!

– Rover

 

(More) tape nails!

Hey, Buddy here (I feel like I need to say that each time because you probably just assume it’s Rover.) I know I haven’t done too many nail posts – oh wait, I haven’t done any. Sorry about that!

So anyway, I was contemplating whether or not to post this nail design. I took this picture yesterday, and it’s pretty bad quality but I wanted to post it anyway… I don’t really know why. I got this idea from somewhere and thought it would be cool to try, but of course in the end it turned out not that great.

Well, here it is:

I used Deborah Lippmann Sparks Fly (thanks for that one, Rover!) and a regular pink I got for probably $1. I love this idea, but the colors don’t go quite so well as I had imagined.

Turns out you have to wait a loooong time before you put on the tape or it gets all messed up. I’m way too impatient for this design, so I probably won’t be trying this any time soon.

Well, that’s about it!

~ Buddy

What shape should your nails be??

Apparently I should have square nails, which is what I’m planning to do as soon as I take off my polka dot nails 🙂 I think they’re probably going to end up round despite my best efforts, though… Sigh.

Craftynail

I was doing a little research on nail shapes and came across this great article on the Nicole by OPI website!  Check out their chart that explains which nail shape looks best for your fingers and nail bed size.  I didn’t even realize there was a science to it until now!  (You can click either of the above images to read the article from the Nicole by OPI website.)

I would love to have square-shaped nails.  Square is my fave!  But I can’t seem to keep mine square…especially when they are long.  They naturally round a bit on their own (or break!).  The diagram says I should have square nails too- but I think mine might actually be squoval.  Oh well, close enough I suppose!

What shape nails should you have according to the chart?

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Scaly Nails

I know, I know — I’m only supposed to paint my nails once a week. But I just found this picture on my iPod from… hmm, about 2 weeks before I started this blog, which is to say dating from early June. 

It’s a terrible photo. The nails are terribly out of focus but the carpet is perfectly in focus! Frustrating iPod pictures. Argh.

But bad pictures aside, this was a very fun nail design to do. I started with a base coat of orange, did the scale outlines (would they be called scales? not sure) with brown acrylic paint and a toothpick, and then finished filling it in with yellow/purple.

I’m not exactly sure, but I think the nail polishes I used were: Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, and the orange/purple were these strange nail polishes I bought in China (don’t know what they’re called as I can’t read Chinese characters haha). 

– Rover

New Sandals (our first non-nails, gardening, cooking, traveling, or origami post)

I never even considered this being a fashion blog, but… well, all the other nail art blogs have a little fashion mixed in, so why can’t we? (just yesterday I was describing everything as “too mainstream”… haha)

So anyways, yesterday I dropped by DSW Shoes (which isn’t even cheap!) and got these:

I wasn’t — and I’m still not — sure if they’re a little too conservative. But whatever. They’re super comfy and match a lot of stuff 🙂 The downside was that they were pretty expensive (around $40… gasp), which was a lot more than I was expecting to pay. But I THINK I’ll wear them a lot, so…