Formal Nails

Last weekend, my husband I went up to our alma mater. While in college, we were in the same co-ed fraternity, which had its formal dance last Saturday.  I brought up a bunch of my nail stuff and did the nails of some of the girls there. Unfortunately, I didn't really end up having time to do my own nails so I just slapped on Zoya Sookie which I then forgot to take a picture of before it got all chipped and stuff. Sigh. Anyway, onto these lovelies!

Rachel's nails. She wasn't sure which of 2 dresses she was going to wear so we went with a simple black and silver design.

Suzanne has a super pretty gold dress with a black lace overlay. For her nails, I painted them black, added a simple swoosh using gold polish and gold glitter then added a gold rhinestone where the swoosh started.

Katie choose to wear glue on nails since she has shorties but still wanted to jazz them up. On the smile line, I used purple striping tape was somewhat of a pain to curve. Then we added on light green, dark green, and purple rhinestones to match her dress.

Side note: you can see a bunch of nail wheels in the background. On three of them, I did mock ups of designs I could do so people could pick from them.  I also swatched the colors I brought on 2 nail wheels, making it easier to see the colors I had brought with me.

Naomi actually borrowed Suzanne's dress from last year which is made from this beautiful, duochrome, color shifting fabric that went from red-ish orange to orange to gold.  For her design, I painted the nails using a shimmery darker red then added on diagonals using gold glitter and finally gold polish dots to frame the glitter.

Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe

I got this polish a while back when Deborah Lippmann polish was on sale through a offer with Good Morning America. I have finally had a chance to use it, and I'm so sad I didn't try it earlier. This polish is AMAZING and looks wonderful with my skin tone.  I used Savvy Deja Blue on the base on this to conserve this beauty. Onto the photos!

Update and Lack of Posting

I've decided to put off my Food Nail Art Series for now. It kinda sucked the fun out of doing nail art, plus a lot of the ideas I have left are summery and Wisconsin seems far from summer right now.

I want to apologize for the lack of updating. I've been making sure that I do update, but my posts are becoming less frequent.  I'm super tired all of the time lately, making it hard to do things like my job plus taking care of my house.  At night (which is when I polish my nails / update my blog), I've also been fighting pretty bad nausea. Well, there is a good reason for all of this!

My husband and I are expecting a baby due November 20th!

Here's a picture of the little one's first ultra sound.  Since I'm still in my first trimester (my husband and I have no qualms about telling people early, everyone already knows), I'm feeling the symptoms and changes to my body pretty harshly. I'll be out of my first trimester in about 2-2 1/2 weeks so hopefully I'll get my energy back and get rid of the "morning" sickness.

Hot dogs

For another day in my Food Nail Art Series, I have hot dogs for you.  I choose to do different flavored toppings on each nail.  From left to right, I have cheese, pickle relish, mustard, and ketchup. Now, I know Chicago-style hot dogs are the best (I grew up in that area), but I just don't have the talent to do those!

Bananas

My next Food Nail Art Design was inspired by Emily's Nail Files.

I used China Glaze For Audrey as my base coat. I love the color and it's super universal.

I really like the way this turned out. My ring finger is my favorite.

Nail-Venturous Floam

Sorry about posting super late this week. We were on vacation (I had my Easter posts scheduled in advance) and didn't get home until very late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Then on Wednesday I had work and was feeling super sick last night. So now here I am finally with a post!

I'm interrupting my Food Nail Art Series to bring you this awesome polish I got in a swap: Nail-Venturous Floam. I've been lemming this one for a while so I'm super excited that I was finally able to get it.  It can be hard to apply and you sort of have to glob it on. My pictures are 3 coats, and there still isn't complete coverage.

I apologize for the quality of the photos. I redid my nails on vacation and forgot my camera (oops!) so these were taken on my iPhone.

I also had to take them in my car since the lighting where we stayed was terrible.

So crappy photos, but pretty polish.

Easter Egg Nails

Happy Easter! For my final Easter design and another continuation of my Food Nail Art series, I have Easter Egg nails for you today.  On each nail, I painted a base coat and then used the other 4 colors to add a different design to each nail.

Here are the colors that I used:
Pinkie: Ulta Encore Pink
Ring: Pure Ice Twinkle
Middle: O.P.I. Stranger Tides
Index: China Glaze For Audrey
Thumb: China Glaze Light As Air

Peeps

For day 3 of my Food/Easter series, I have that iconic Easter treat: Peeps. Now, I'm not a big fan of Peeps. In fact, I think they are rather gross tasting, but I do think they are cute!

Here are the colors that I used:
Base coat: one thick coat of Sally Hansen Green with Envy.

Blue peep: Sinful Colors Why Not

Purple peep: Rimmel Wild Orchid

Yellow peep: Maybelline Sunshine

Pink peep: Pure Ice Peony

Peeps logo: Sinful Colors Why Not and Maybelline Sunshine

Jellybeans

For the second day of my Food/Easter series, I was inspired by this design by Nail Loopy.  I used 2 coats of Finger Paints Paper Mache as my base coat that loads of random colors to make the jellybeans.  I just used a dotting tool and made comma shapes.  I think mine turned out pretty good, but Nail Loopy's is so much better (perhaps she used better colors than I did).

Bunny and carrots

I decided that I wanted to do some Easter designs. At the same time, I didn't want to stop my Food series, so I combined them!  Today I have a bunny as accent with carrots on the other nails.

The base coat is 2 coats of Sinful Colors Nirvana.  Then I added on L.A. Girl Uninhibited to get that dirt effect.  Finally, I drew on the carrots and bunny using various polishes.

I think this turned out pretty good. I wish I would have made the bunny not look so sad though :(