Amazing Awesomeness (sans soleil)

So every time I upload pictures via Blogger, it messes with them. Either it won't upload them or  they don't resize nicely or they throw my text into center-align... Today, it decided to upload them sideways. I really give up trying to fight with it. I need to find a new way to upload pics though, because this is making me not even want to post anything (as you may have noticed). ANYWAY.
Pics!


This is Sinful Colors Nail Junkie (LOVE the name) with one thin coat of China Glaze Watermelon Rind on top. It was AMAZING. I wore it for two weeks. TWO. Weeks! Unfortunately, during that time there was some drama and I got abducted by a(n amazingly awesometastical) friend to get me out of the house for a week, and of course I didn't bring my camera. When I got back home, the sun was playing hide and seek :( So there are no sun shots which is terrible. 

Yes I filed my nails as soon as this came off. Somehow they were getting really... crooked O.o So here are some good pictures of what Nail Junkie looks like (I also found it gooey, but I only did 3 coats and it was opaque enough for me) and here is a good swatch of Watermelon Rind. I know it's easier for you guys if I just get good swatches and shiz myself, but I'm not a huge fan of swatches/swatching... I figure there are loads of other blogs pretty much dedicated to swatching, so I might as well spread some love and link to them. Is that bad? I don't know. Someone tell me if it is :(

So I noticed that this, while it was sparkling pink and orange in the sun, completely and utterly killed my need for China Glaze's Atlantis. They're not the same (Atlantis is far more blue and the glitter is a little more sparse), but it's close enough for me :) I'm super excited about that.

<3Oreo
(THREE followers! :D)

This little blog o' mine...

...has TWO WHOLE FOLLOWERS! I see you both! Hi! :D

In celebration, here is some shameless love-spreading for a giveaway I'm entering. It ends TONIGHT so you guys should go check it out. Right now.


This is Chloe, and she really wants you to go check out this blog. Also, cats are amazing :D Surprise kitty picture! BOOM!

clickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclicky and spread some love to Liz at Liquid Jelly, who is celebrating her 500th follower! Do it for Chloe!

Birthday Haul & Optical Mixing Fail

 First off, I WON A GIVEAWAY. WOO. My first ever giveaway :D Many many thanks to the lovely Fingers (who is also having a blog sale)! Super excited about that :D

So. I figured I'd follow up my birthday mani with some pics of what I spent some birthday moolah on (despite my birthday now being a month ago LOL).
I'm not sure how I failed to realise that the one drug store chain I never visit in town was the one with the BEST SELECTION, carrying brands that I thought I couldn't get here. However, this has been rectified. First trip:


You know what the *best* part of that trip was?

I hate how the sale stickers are a bright, unsightly orange... like being on sale is a BAD THING! Look at those beauties. My first OPIs, half price. My first Sinful Colors. My first Milanis (my mother actually slipped BOTH of them into my basket). My first LA Colors. And see those tiny little tubes on the end? Those were discounted down to 99 cents per pack of two (which also came with a stamping plate)!! I went back the next day after trying them out with my Konad plates, and got 4 more. They work beautifully, they're 99 cents and they come with themed plates! The only downside is that the plates were meant to be used with some sort of machine type system, and most of the designs are in two or three parts on the plate. But really, $0.99 for 2 nail colors and a plate, WHO CARES. I can just brush up on my alignment skills :D

And now for some nail art, because there needs to be some of that:

It kind of failed. It kind of didn't. Really depends how you define "failed".
First off, you know it's time to file your nails when they're too long for the stamping design LOL.  This is L'Oreal Yellow Seahorse as a base color, and Konad Special Purple on top. Yellow Seahorse is a nice warm yellow with gold fleck glitter (?) that sometimes shows a tiny bit of orangey-pinkish, but that could just be weird lighting on my end. Normally I'm not a huge fan of yellows, but this one was *super pretty*.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T TELL. I covered it up too much! :( Plus, after I don't know how many years of art classes, I totally forgot about optical mixing. For those unsure of what that is, it's when your eye blends colors together to create new colors. Wiki article here on pointilism which made use of the effect, and also this guy, "Lucas", a portrait by Chuck Close. Chuck has some phenomenal work involving optical mixing with portraits.
ANYWAY. I was going for high contrast, and thought that purple and yellow would contrast well. I was right. However, because of the colors and *especially* because of the stamping design I chose, the colors blended and just looked brown (or, as it was repeatedly pointed out, my nails looked like popcorn). Not sure how I feel about that. But anyway, here it is in all its glory :)

I've spent about 4 hours, no joke, getting more and more frustrated with the pictures on here. Anyone else have that problem? I've given up trying to left-align my text, it seems like a lost cause. Photobucket apparently hates Blogger, so that doesn't work. :(


<3Oreo

Birthday Mani

**Please ignore the text being all centered and stuff. It refuses to align nicely**

So I had a huge internal debate at work today between posting this mani from my birthday weekend, or the AWESOME AMAZINGNESS that happened last night. I have decided to save the awesome amazingness until Wednesday, because we didn't have any nice sun today and I really want good pictures of this.

I tend to try to use all my new polishes in my next mani after I get them, so this was quite the blingy weekend. I had just picked out some new art deco stripers (first ones!) and this amazing purple jelly, and then my mom came home and surprised me with a chunky holo glitter she picked up on clearance!   *.*  oooshiney
I believe her exact words were, "even if you never wear it, IT'S JUST SO PRETTY IN THE BOTTLE."

Side note about my mother here. She loves brown. She loves nice, safe browns. I'm working together with my 73 year old grandmother (who is ALL ABOUT the sparkles and rhinestones) to shame her out of her comfort zone. We've made excellent progress this summer :D. So it's really funny when she brings me home a bottle of some funky color, all excited about it LOL

Anyway, on to the sparkles: 


Most color accurate

Not bad for something I threw on in the morning at work, eh? That purple jelly goodness with pink/purple and blue flecks is Revlon's Grape Fizz. I was avoiding it for the longest time because, honestly, I'm not a fan of my nails smelling like grape cough medicine... but WOW. I think the colors make up for the grapey-ness. The small silver sparkles are just art deco silver sparkles... BUT THAT ACCENT FINGER. That chunky hexagonal holographic sparkly attention-getter. LOOK AT IT. Nicole's Winter Glitterland. ON CLEARANCE, ladies and gentlemen. 

As soon as I was done putting this on, the stock order came in and I spent the rest of the day putting away car parts. It held up pretty darn well (just some tip wear) considering my top coat was still wet! I got some dings in my right hand, but the glitter tips covered everything up beautifully ;)

First Post! Mint Chocolate and an Introduction

This is probably going to be a long one, so feel free to scroll down to the pictures if you don't care why I'm here :P

I didn't really decide to start a blog on my own. My friends, bless them, informed me that I was going to be starting a YouTube channel so that they could replicate my nails. I wasn't all too thrilled with the idea, since I'm not one to sit still and focus all my attention on my nails... I fiddle with them while talking to people, watching tv, listening to music, etc. The hassle of setting up a video camera for a manicure seemed like a pain in the butt, and I wasn't hot on the idea of being on camera to the internet at large. On the first weekend of July I had just about exhausted the nail art video supply, and followed a link to someone's blog for more creative ideas. WELL. I've been missing OUT. 

It started with a blog that I can't for the life of me remember, who linked to FingersPolishMania and Scrangie and LetThemHavePolish and suddenly I was hooked, spending all my free time browsing what we have come to term "nail porn". The creativity some people have! It sure hauled me out of my rut! It also started putting a dent in my bank account LOL. My friends, not to miss an opportunity, pointed out that a blog means no video cameras. I was much more comfortable with this idea. Plus, I kind of felt bad not sharing my ideas when I was getting ideas from everyone else!

Hmm, what else. I started getting into nail art at the very end of last summer. I didn't *really* start getting into it until about November of 2010 when I started scouring YouTube for ideas, and found Konad. At the end of the last school year, I had a bunch of students admit they'd been secretly stalking my nails all semester because they loved my designs (which was both flattering and kind of creepy. But mostly flattering). I view each manicure as an experiment. They don't always turn out the greatest, the straightest, the cleanest or the prettiest, but at least each one teaches me something new for next time! "Never say oops. Always say 'ah, interesting!'"

The look of this place is going to change as I fiddle with stuff. I'm still tweaking, but I find the options rather overwhelming so I kind of have to be in the mood to go fiddle with them. Mind you, I'm only starting this blog for my friends who don't want to miss out on any of my nail designs, so I doubt it matters at this point XD. I have an incredible backlog of pictures to post, but I have come to realise that all my old pictures are *crap* quality. They weren't taken all fancy and pro for a blog, they were taken as documentation of what I did for future reference x.x SO. I will be trying to go back and re-do a lot of my old manicures to get nice pictures! Since that takes time, however, I'll only be doing that when I have the time/patience/motivation. Right now is not that time. I'll be trying to post every 2-3 days. (I want to be posting every day right now! But if I do that, I'm scared I'll run out of decent backlogged pictures O.O)

On to today's post!

Normally I'm not a fan of fall colors, but Fingers is so into fall colors and subtle designs that I caught the Brown Bug. Seeing as it was still mid summer at the time, I didn't want to go full on fall... so I settled for a mint green and chocolate brown combo :)

Revlon Minted and China Glaze Unplugged. I did the lines with a small brush and tried to do the dots with a dotting tool, but the one I had wasn't big enough for the dots I was trying to make. I ended up just LOADING the brush and sort of trying to drip it onto the nail. It worked alright, not great. The lines went kind of funky, but I was rushing because it was getting close to suppertime and my stuff was spread out on the dining table XD

Yes, I really am *that* pale

My right hand failed so miserably that I just ended up completely filing in the gaps, painting large circles and in general being sloppy as a pig having a bath. I even had to touch up the index finger because the brown got too wide, but I went too far "fixing" it. I also apparently forgot top coat on the middle finger. I was getting really impatient at this point, on top of trying to do detail with my non-dominant hand. I don't plan on including my right hand often, but this one just failed so bad it ended up being funny XD. Plus it ended up being a neat variant (or would be neat, if someone with more skill tried it)

What do you think? This seems like it'll be fun :D Hopefully lots of people will want their nails done when I move back to school in a few weeks so that I have lots more to post! *hinthint*