Black & White Nails: Stripes and Polka Dots

I had high hopes for today's nails, as I prematurely boasted yesterday on my Facebook page. As it turns out, even with the aid of nail stickers, the "stripes" aspect of my "stripes and polka dots" nails didn't turn out perfectly. My stripe game needs some work! But my polka dot game is pretty on-point in this mani, if I DEW SAY SEW MYSELF, so hopefully you'll still enjoy it:

For these nails, I used:

• Snow Me White by Sinful Colors
• Stiletto by Revlon
• Quo by Orly dotting tool
• Quo by Orly detailer brush
• Essence nail art stickers (featured here)
• tweezers

For anyone curious, the dotting tool and detailer brush were part of a Quo by Orly set called Instant Artist. I bought it last year in this haul.

I started by painting all of my nails black, except my ring finger, which I painted white. Then I added the white polka dots to all of the black nails using my fail-safe method of making polka dots. After trimming down a few of the nail sticker strips, I lay them carefully across my ring finger and pressed them down firmly to (TRY TO) make sure that no polish would bleed around the edges. Then I used the black polish to paint over all the exposed white stripes on my nail and quickly used my tweezers to remove the strips before the black polish could dry or become tacky.

After removing the strips, I wasn't really super pleased with how my stripes looked. There was some bleeding, and the polish had apparently become slightly tacky before I'd removed the strips, so there was a tiny bit of "string-age" going into some of the white stripes.

Guys, I've never spent so much time on detailed clean-up of a mani. I know you wouldn't know it by looking at the final product, but I really did spend awhile trying to make that striped finger look better! First I used the detailer brush dipped in white polish to try to clean up the white stripes. Then I spent foreverrrrr using that same tiny detailed brush dipped in acetone to try to clean-up all around the cuticles on that nail. It's really hard not to make a mess all over your nail edges when you're using the striped lines tape/sticker method. If you know a secret to keep it clean, please share with me.

David is gone today and tomorrow, off on a hiking and camping trip with a friend. I'll have to keep myself entertained the next day or so, which shouldn't be too much of a problem. There is probably a solid amount of ice cream, laundry, take-out, writing, photo-editing and YouTube-watching in my near future. SHOULD BE A SOLID TIME.

What are you up to this weekend?

Know any good movies I should try to Netflix/RedBox?

What's your favorite YouTube channel?

Random update on 2/24/14: I completely forgot to mention that this mani was inspired by a fashion blogger's outfit! Alison over at Get Your Pretty On did a blog post where she was rocking a white-with-black-stripes top with a black-with-white-polka-dots scarf, and I thought the combo of the two B&W looks with two different patterns was so cool! I pinned Alison's outfit onto my Nail Polish board here! Sidebar, follow me on Pinterest for a good time. ;)

FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST INSTAGRAM

{Linking up with The Nail Files, Friday's Fab Favorites, What I'm Loving Fridays}

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!

New Nail Polish Tools + More Goodies!

Yesterday morning I got up early because Dave left for an avalanche class (yup.) at around 7:30, and I figured I might as well get up because it wasn't raining outside!

I made a list of things I just absolutely "had" to buy up on 4th Ave, leaving plenty of leeway for things I didn't need at all but still wanted (#idowhatiwant), and headed out for a little walk up the hill to 4th. After walking around a bit to enjoy the misty non-rain, I ended up at Joe's Grill (blog about Joe's to come soon!) for some good old fashioned eggs 'n bacon. As you know... that's my jam. Once fed, I stopped at Urban Outfitters where I grabbed some of their printed 2 for $24 t-shirts and a knitted navy and white top that was on sale for $20, down from $60. #salesonsalesonsales

Thennnn, onto the IMPORTANT stuff!!! I walked a couple more blocks up 4th to Shoppers Drug Mart to see if I could scoop up some nail tools to help me create some better nail polish designs.

.  sha-wing .

I didn't think I'd be able to find a dotting tool there, but I was wrong! Check out this little set:

.  get ready for me to blow your mind with dots and stripes .

It's a double-ended dotting tool (two different sized dots) as well as a fancy-looking detailer brush! The former is what I was looking for, but the latter was just a bonus find!! Whoop!

.  the big end .

.  the small end .

.  ima paint all types of straight lines with this thing . 

I also grabbed some of these Quo makeup sponges - the little spongy triangle things. I want to use these to do gradients of colors on my nails. I've seen tutorials on the technique but have never tried it myself... We'll see how it goes. FINGER(NAIL)S CROSSED!

.  sponge-bailey triangle-makeup-sponge... pants  .

Aaaand I wanted to find something like a cobalt blue polish, so I ended up grabbing this polish from Sally Hansen's Hard As Nails line in the color Blue It. I own another color from this line of polish (Pacific Blue) and it applies incredibly - just one coat for opacity and the color is stunnnnning. Hopefully Blue It is just as good!!

.  bluuuuuuuuu-ooooh oooooh ooh ooh ooooh-uuue  .

Because the Hard As Nails polishes happened to be on sale for $3.99, I picked up a second polish - this minty pastel green called Mint Sorbet.

.  fun fact: mint chocolate chip is my favorite ice cream flavor  .

.   swatch-a-roo  .

Not so exciting was that I also got some nail polish remover:

.  crickets...  .

Hey, here's a funny Canadian thing that happened. After Shoppers Drug Mart, I walked across the street to my bank to deposit a check. The teller, making conversation, asked me what my plans were for the afternoon.  "Ooh, probably just going to walk around and enjoy the weather," I answered - which I thought was a pretty neutral, inoffensive response. He looked back at me like I'd just kicked a puppy and said, "Oh, so I guess you're not a hockey fan." YIKES. I looked wildly around for a split second, searching for some giant clue that I might have been missing. Nope. Would they unleash the hounds on me if I said no??? I took my chances and responded with, "Umm... no. Is there something going on today?" Apparently it was the "first day of hockey." I didn't ask him to explain any further what that meant, because that would have been a waste of time for both of us.

So I finally got rid of our Christmas tree on Friday, which is a bummer because it still smelled quite nice. It's also a bummer because Dave and I both really enjoyed the ambiance of the lighting that the tree was providing. It was definitely well past its time though, which I don't have to tell you because you can deduce that Friday was January 18th, and that clearly means that my Christmas tree was past its time. It was brittle as shit!

Solution: We planned to buy a live tree to put in the same spot in our living room, that we (I) could dress up with the Christmas lights. I was thrilled that Dave would agree to this, BELIEVE ME. I mean... I think he agreed to the Christmas lights part... now that I'm writing this, I hope that wasn't just a figment of my imagination...

So on my walk back home from 4th Ave yesterday, I stopped at the market that's beside our apartment and purchased one of their 4-foot-tall lemon cypress trees:

.  botany  .

It's awesoooome! I'll have to pick up a nice pot for it too. It's a much larger version of the lemon cypress that I bought for Dave back in early December when I was decorating the apartment for Christmas.

I think I might have to wait to pot it before the lights can go onto it, so maybe I'll head back up to 4th after I write this blog and buy a pot from this gem of a store called the Kitchen Corner, where you can buy ANYTHING. Seriously.... anything. I know they have cheap pots of all sizes, so it'll definitely be the first place I look.

I can't wait to put all of my new nail polish tools to good use and hopefully be able to start posting some more "polished" looks. #seewhatididthere?

Happy Sunday everyone!

p.s. Like my fingernails in these pics? Learn how to do it yahself here:  Valentine's Day Nails

.  i am nail polish and so can you .