Pinterest-Inspired Silvery Nails

I've been feeling sort of uninspired nail-wise these past few weeks. I blame it on being overworked in general - all of my mental energy is spent on all of my 7-5pm duties and there's little leftover for creative juice afterwards. So this week I turned to my Pinterest Nail Polish board to see what sorts of things would inspire me there. Luckily a "winner" popped out at me and even got me excited to break out all sorts of tools and instruments to complete the mani.

The original Pin used a Tiffany-blue polish instead of a dusty blue one, but I was simply not in the mood for a Tiffany color on my hands right now. It would be far too cheerful for me and my GOODNESS I just realized what a blob I sound like right now. SORRY Y'ALL. *Slaps self across the face* I'MA SNAP OUT OF IT NOW.

.  if you're happy and you know it, slap your face!  .
.  slap slap!  .

So I opted for Lapis of Luxury as the main color for this mani instead, which is a beautiful periwinkle from Essie's Resort Collection. By the way, I just realized that my bottle of polish is misnamed - the sticker on mine says "Lapiz" instead of "Lapis"... interesting. What does your bottle say?

Anycrap, other polishes I used included Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Love & Beauty Crystal Silver, and Pure Ice Beware.

I also used my Quo dotting tool and one Essence French Manicure Tip Guide sticker. The original Pin used a nail stamp as well, but I don't have a functioning stamp kit, so I opted to do polka dots on my pinky nails instead. I trust you won't hold it against me?

I started with a base coat on all of my nails, then did two coats of Snow Me White on my pinky and pointer nails, and two coats of Lapiz/s of Luxury on my thumb, middle and ring nails.

Next, I used the larger end of my dotting tool to make some silver dots around my pointer nail. In lieu of a stamp kit, I did Lapis of Luxury dots on my pinky nail with the smaller end of the dotting tool.

{Sidebar, did you see my blog about How to Make Perfect Polka Dots on Your Nails? READ IT.}

Thennn, I put a thin coat of Beware over my middle finger, which wasn't symbolic, I swear. Next I placed one of the tip guide stickers on the back of my hand and peeled it off a few times just to try to remove some of its stickiness. I'd used these nail strips once before without doing this step, and the stickers ended up leaving a sticky residue all over my nails. So definitely do the un-sticking process before you use these tip guides!

After it was sufficiently less sticky, I placed the sticker carefully on my thumb nail until it was sitting where I wanted it - demarcating the French tip area - and painted the nail above it with 2 coats of Beware. I peeled the sticker guide off pretty immediately, before the polish could dry.

The final step is to pull out large hex glitter pieces from Crystal Silver and place them on my ring finger until the entire nail was covered. I did this by fishing out the hexes with the small end of my dotting tool. This step is the most time consuming, and if I'm being honest, I didn't even bother to do this step on my right hand. I didn't take progress pictures while I was doing this part either, but I have taken pictures of doing this in the past, which you can see here in this Winter Bling Nails blog.

Also, the pointer finger nail with the silver polka dots just refused to photograph well. There was always a bright glare!

What do you think of this interpretation of the original pin? 

And are you following me on Pinterest? If not, what's your problem? Hmm?

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{Linking up with The Nail Files, and Friday's Fab Favorites}

Pinterest Project Update: Empty Frames as Wall Art

A couple months ago I posted my interpretation of a Pinterest project - empty picture frames hung as wall art. It was a super simple idea that takes mere minutes of work (plus paint drying time) - just find picture frames with interesting textures, paint them all one color (white), and hang them together in a cluster on a wall.

I started off with 3 frames and recently upped my game to include 2 more frames. I thought I'd share the update so you can see what it's looking like now.

Here were the two additional frames I bought and painted...

After several coats of white spray paint and a few nails hammered into a wall, they finished off the wall of frames nicely:

.  close up of the deets  .

I don't think I'll be adding more frames to this now - seems like it's got enough going on.  A perfect way to spruce up a random corner of our bedroom!

Here's what it looked like when there were just 3 frames:

Have you tried this out yet in your own home? Tweet me a picture at @akaBailey!

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{Linking up with That DIY Party and Start @ Home's Furniture & Paint Party}