Much Ado About Valentine's Day Cupcake Nail Polish

Hey-oooo! I'm really excited about today's blog because it ties in with a blog that my friend and colleague Lauren has also posted today over on her blog, Much Ado About Somethin.

Lauren is a woman of MANY talents, and one of those talents is baking up a G.D. storm of cakes 'n cupcakes. I'm talking Sandy Storm. Too soon?  OK, Katrina Storm then. Still too soon? Ok uh... geez forget it, the chick bakes a lot, OK?? She shares many of her culinary adventures on her blog, which allows me to check out all of her cupcakes all the way from Canada. Which in turn allows me to just hang my head and cry because I can't EAT any of them. *Shaking my fist at Vancouver's distance from Lauren's kitchen.*

So Lauren mentioned to me on Friday afternoon that she had a Valentine's Day cupcakes blog planned for Monday, so I immediately demanded that she provide me a preview picture of the cupcakes and insisted that she allow me to create a nail polish look to coincide with them. #IMBOSSY. JK, she was excited at the idea of a cross-blog, cupcake/nail polish mashup, too! It's kind of like back in the 90s on TGIF when Steve Urkel took off with his jet-pack in an episode of Family Matters and crash landed on the backyard picnic table of the Fosters/Lamberts in an episode of Step by Step. It's kind of like that.

ANYCRAP, without any further ADO (haha see what I did there?!!?!), here's my humble nail polish interpretation of Lauren's Much Ado About Somethin Valentine's Day Cupcakes:

.  click for a larger view!  .

And of course, Lauren's actual Valentine's Day cupcakes:

.  click for a larger view if you want to get really hungry and ornery at the same time. because you can't eat these cupcakes. they're just on a computer screen. although, you CAN order some cupcakes from lauren yourself, which i definitely encourage you to do if you're in the boston area. this is a pretty long caption. it's raining today in vancouver. SEWPRIZE. what's the weather like where you are? alright, that's enough, back to nails  .

This project took me awhile. Good thing my entire Saturday was pretty much clear....

What I usededed:

.  relic  .

One of the oldest nail polishes I own, a Sally Hansen Hard As Nails that could very well have belonged to my mother when she was a little girl.  I don't think I've ever used it before in my entire life, but I know it's been moving around with me from place to place for a solid number of years now. It's called Reaction Frost (so I guess it was made in the late 80s/early 90s when American Gladiators was popular??) and it is a slightly pearly light pink with shimmer. I'd tell you that I was pleasantly surprised by this polish and that it applied well (after all these years) and was opaque after two coats, but it doesn't matter because you cannot run out and purchase this 1987 model of Sally Hansen polish anymore.

I also used a clear-based pink glitter polish from Wet 'n Wild called Sparked (not pictured, but I used it in this other Valentine's Day nail polish look), a hot chocolaty-taupe Essie polish with silver shimmer called Mochacino, Sinful Colors' Snow Me White, Milani's Tip Toe Pink (aka the Pepto Bismal Polish), and Sinful Colors' Ruby Ruby.

.  can you figure out which is which?  .

I also needed to use the following nail tools:

.  pretty maids all in a row  .

In case you didn't think I was taking this cupcake challenge seriously, here is proof of my practice rounds:

.  i doodle hard  .

SO WE BEGIN.

I was aiming for a cross between my "lefter two" pen doodles in my practice picture:  the cupcake wrapper would be at the base of my nail, then a bit of chocolate cupcake, then a fluff of frosting, with some hearts sticking up out of the frosting. I wanted to leave enough space between the tip of my nail and the top of the "frosting" that I'd be able to have some of my hearts sticking "out/off" of the frosting... if that makes sense! That's what I was attempting to convey in my lower left pen doodle anyway. ENOUGH CHIT CHAT.

Step 1:

Paint all of my nails two coats of the American Gladiators Pink Reaction Frost.

Step 2: 

Nextttt, I used my new Quo nail detailer brush to add some small stripes to the bottom of my nail - these are the lines on the wrappers of the cupcakes.

Step 3:

Add the layer of chocolate cupcake! NOM NOM NOM. This Essie Mochacino polish really is tasty-looking. Which isn't a weird thing to say about nail polish.

I did this by dipping the regular Mochacino nail polish brush into its bottle and using the bottle's rim to wipe off most of the polish from the brush head, leaving a dollop of polish on just the tip of the brush. Then I dabbed/dragged the paint in a line across the top of the "wrapper stripes". 

Truth alert: Until this point I was doing all of this on both of my hands. I was committed fully to donning cupcakes on my hands for a day or two. But if we're being honest, which I intend to be, having just prefaced this paragraph by declaring a "Truth Alert," shit wasn't lookin' so good on my right hand (thanks a lot, Left Hand... dick.) so I decided to pump the brakes on that hand and just focus on the one that stood a chance at survival.

Step 4:

Frost yaself!!  Using my double-ended Quo dotting tool I painted white dots across each Mochacino cake layer for a frosting effect and then added a nice heap of white frosting to the top of the cupcake. As I mentioned in the beginning, I wanted to leave space between the top of the frosting and the end of my nail, so I'd have room to add some protruding heart cupcake-toppers. See how I left some space for that?

.  upside down cupcakes!  .

.  don't worry, we're going to wipe off that excess polish with a q-tip dipped in polish remover. just settle down  .

Step 5:

Time to add the heart cupcake-toppers! I tried out a couple of different techniques for making these tiny hearts and the one that I settled on was a combination of using my dotting tool and a toothpick. Depending on how big/small your nails are, you'll decide which sized dotter to use. My nails are obviously the size of a toddler's so I had to use the smaller end of my dotting tool. Place two dots side-by-side and then use the toothpick dipped in polish to draw a "v" on the bottom of the dots to complete your heart. I did all of the red hearts first and then went back and added the pink hearts to each nail. And make sure to give some of them that "protruding from the cupcake" effect by painting the heart past the end of the cupcake frosting.

And you're done!!

And now for a total photo dump - because I couldn't decide which of these photos to post so I figured I'd just post them all:

.  sneak peek at our newly potted lemon cypress tree in the background!  .

Let me know what you think of these cupcake nails! They were fun to do but I mucked them up pretty much immediately after I took these photos, so I've had to take them all off already. WHOOPS!

Be sure to check out Lauren's blog to learn how you can make actual cupcakes like these... that you can eat with your mouth. And subscribe to her blog if you like tasty things or fun times or tiny dogs.

By the way, Much Ado About Somethin' hit a milestone on Friday of reaching 10,000 views! Hoozah!!!

If you try out this Valentine's Day Cupcake Nail Polish look, tweet me a picture at @akaBailey!

Like these Valentine's Day themed nails? Check out a couple others here:

• Delightful Dots: Valentine's Day Nails
• Valentine's Day Nail Polish ALREADY. YIKES.

More to come!