Needs New Camera...

Sorry I've fallen down on the job again, nail art peeps. My camera is dying, and I really am not happy with the photos it's taking these days, so I haven't been taking many. And it's unwieldy trying to take photos of my nails with my tablet.

With any luck, a new camera will be in the budget soon, and I'll be back in the blogging game...

New Post Next Week...

The holidays have me all discombobulated...forgot it was Tuesday today (and last week). New posts next week...red with a silver lattice, which is this week's manicure. :-)

I hope you got all the polish you wanted for Christmas...

Peppermint Stripes

I was going to do a gift wrap design this week, but decided to go all strip-y instead. I really should clean out my nail polish drawer too, considering how long it took me to find my white striper bottle, but that's beside the point, eh?

Very simple colors for this one - China Glaze "White Out" and "Red Pearl" and then two art polishes with long, thin striper brushes. The red striper was provided to me by SparklyNails sometime *last* year, and the formula is still very nice to work with. Impressive, for a striper polish!

I decided to alternate colors, so I started with Seche Vite base coat, followed by two coats of red & white on alternating nails.

Then I striped the red nails with white...

And then the white with red (painfully simple, eh?). 

A couple coats of Seche Vite top coat, cuticle clean-up, and voila! Guaranteed to make everyone's eyes go buggy.  ;-) 

Next year, I need to make my cuticles more of a priority, I think. They're horrible, poor things, and I should take better care of them. 

Also, I'm curious, so if you have a minute to leave a comment, please help me decide where to take this blog in 2012. Would you like to see: 

- Don't change anything

- More video

- Less tutorials (I get a lot of complaints about how messy my process is - would you rather just see the finished product?)

- More color swatching

- Anything else you'd like to suggest (politely, please!)

Until next week, have a Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday!

Sparkly Green

This week's photos are a bit blurry - sorry! The Christmas tree is pretty, but it sucks more light out of my space and while I should have just moved...I was too lazy.

I'm all about the glitter this month...this is actually last week's manicure, and I've got something similar going on this week. It's a nice way to sparkle without spending a lot of time - handy since both of these last two manicures happened between 1am and 3am. Busy busy!

For this one, I started with a base coat of the Sally Hanson Triple Strong formula, because that middle nail is still not quite long enough to cut off. Once that was epoxied together, I put on two coats of my favorite white, Finger Paints "Well-Cultured Pearl".

Then I started at the tip, and brushed on a thin layer of Sinful's "Call You Later", a lovely green & gold glitter I got on sale at the drugstore awhile ago. 

Then one more layer of the glitter, just not quite as far down on the nail for a nice gradient.

Then a couple coats of Seche Vite to top it off, and clean up in the shower the next morning. Easy peasy.

You'll have to excuse my super-dry skin...I can't seem to get enough lotion this time of year. Dry, cold air will do that...

Next week, gift wrap. :-) Until then, happy polishing!