Nike nails for #NAILLINKUP

It’s week 1 of January Nail Art Ideas Linkup!  The theme is HEALTH & WELLNESS.  Check me out!

When it comes to being healthy I’m a big proponent of exercise.  If I’m trying to lose weight (and when am I NOT trying? lol) I always amp up my fitness routine.  I know it’s hard to get motivated, but you just have to do it.  I totally agree with Nike- JUST DO IT.  Grab your sneakers and get moving.  For me, group fitness classes are the way to go!  Gyms always schedule their classes, so at the start of the week I tell myself which ones I’m planning on attending… and then I feel accountable.  I said I’m going, so I hafta go!

Check out how my nails match my new nike sneakers….

I love the way my pinky and thumb came out.  I’m totally gonna have to try the dots-over-a-gradient-look again!

Here’s what I’m wearing-

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Growth – one coat as a basecoat

♥ Liquid Leather by China Glaze – two coats for a black base color

♥ Alpine Snow by OPI – sponged onto the tips for a white gradient

♥ Dream On by Sinful Colors – for the fuchsia nail art accents

N.A.I.L. is running throughout the month of January, so jump in whenever you’d like!

6 – 12 January – Health and Wellness :

Porcelain-Look Nails

Hi y’all!  Did anyone watch the finale of The Office last night?  It made me laugh and cry- what a great finish to an awesome series!  I can’t believe it’s over!  Now I might have to track down some prior seasons of the British series to make sure I get my Office fix!

I painted my nails while watching the finale and I used one of my new favorite polishes from AVON- Forget-Me-Not Blue.  This shade is amazing!  It’s a one-coater and dries pretty fast.  From far away it looks like navy blue, but up close you see some teal shimmer.  The formula is thick and opaque and it’s also perfect for nail art.  In fact, I’ve been very impressed with all my recent avon nail polishes lately.  I’ll be putting an order in with my avon lady soon for some of their new holographic polishes from a line called ‘cosmic’ .  Can’t wait for those babies to arrive!

Some of my other recent purchases include a 26- plate set of Cheeky Stamping Plates.  Cheeky is rumored to have some of the largest designs on the market which is ideal for ladies with long or wide nails.  I love my cheeky set but deciding on a design is so much harder now that I have a good selection of plates to choose from lol!  I decided to go with this floral design using CH44.  I used Konad special polish in white and I like how it looks like porcelain when paired with the blue.  Stamping- I love you!  What did us nail fanatics do before stamps came out???

Orly Ridge Filler Review

We all know that base coats are essential to a good manicure.  But there’s so many kinds out there.  I only started using Orly Ridge Filler a few months ago, but it has quickly moved up the list to one of my most-used nail products!  I love Orly brand Ridge Filler for a bunch of reasons as shown in my pic…

BENEFITS OF ORLY RIDGE FILLER:

♥ As a base coat it does a great job of smoothing out your mani.  It builds up a nice even layer that makes your polish look so smooth and professional.  It’s perfect for disguising ridges or uneven nail surfaces.  (My mom swears by this stuff and won’t let me paint her nails without a coat of Orly Ridge Filler underneath!)

♥ The white tint makes for an awesome base for colored nail polish.  It helps build up opaqueness and you may need less coats of color than normal!  This works especially well with neons or sheer colors.

♥ It acts as a good primer to prevent staining. I reach for my Ridge Filler any time I paint my nails navy blue or any other dark color that would typically stain.

♥ It even looks good on its own!  If you want a nice neutral nail but are pressed for time or feeling lazy…. try one or two coats of Orly Ridge Filler by itself (just don’t go too thin on the coats or it may look a little streaky).

♥ It dries rather quickly.

My only complaint is that the formula is kinda runny so you’ll need to paint it on carefully so you don’t flood your cuticles.  Still, I find myself reaching for this base coat a lot.  Just another reason for me to love Orly!

Konad Cloudy Sky Nails

Hi everyone!  Here’s the cute lazy-day Sunday mani that I came up with today.  It’s been very cold here lately, but today feel more springy and the birds are all chirping outside- so I think this happy cloud design seems fitting.  My base color is Sephora by OPI Natural Environ-mint.  It’s totally blue so I don’t know why they call it ‘mint’!!  Then I stamped some clouds on using my Konad M79 plate and some white Konad Special Nail Polish.

I added some matte topcoat by MASH to finish off the look.  This MASH matte polish is so great!  I bought it because it was cheaper than most other matte toppers.  Turns out that it dries super-fast and I’m really happy with the smooth formula.  I guess my cheapness paid off with this purchase!

Hope you all have a happy end to your weekend!  I’m going to go back to watching Breaking Dawn Pt1 now.  I recorded it a month ago and I’m having a hard time deleting it because I love it so much.  So I’m watching it again to get my twilight fix.  Maybe that will make it easier for me to delete it from my DVR box later!?

The real cost of nail addiction?

Do we really save money by doing our nails at home? That’s the question of the day!

My initial argument is YES, of course we save money!  Why pay a salon when I can do the same thing at home!?

But… (there’s always a big but) now that my DIY nail art addiction has spiraled a teensy bit out of control… I’m really wondering if I spend more dough than someone who goes to a salon a few times per month?!

I have a growing stash of polish, an array of stamping plates, topcoats, treatments, glitters, stickers, and the list goes on.  As I’m sure most of you bloggers do too!  So what do you think?  Are we saving money by applying all these nail products ourselves, or are we spending way more than the average salon patron?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!  And since we all like to looks at pictures… here’s a quick mani I whipped up yesterday morning before I attended a family function- I stamped konad M35 on my tips and topped it off with a glittery topcoat.  Quick and easy- only ten minutes from start to finish.  Hmmm…. so if TIME IS MONEY… maybe we are saving cash then??  What do you think?

10 minute mani – white konad m35 on tips and sparkle topcoat

my financial aid fingernails!

Demure manis are not typically my style….but I need to look professional this week! I flew JetBlue to Orlando FL on monday for a work conference. I am a financial aid advisor and every year my university sends me to the big Federal Student Aid conference to hear all about the upcoming changes to aid programs. One new 2013 initiative for US financial aid is a streamline of their websites! They are retiring the many, many pages for finaid….and created a new one called studentaid.gov  (they’re also on twitter, storify, and youtube). I am loving this! Apparently President Obama created an executive order for the US Dept of Ed to shape up their outreach and digital presence. The new studentaid.gov site is a great solution…. students and parents should check it out!

Moving on to my mani… I decided that OPI’s Don’t Pretzel My Buttons would be nice n professional-looking. (However the girl sitting next to me right now has a rad black n gold crackle mani…and on the other side there’s a lady with a wicked glittery purple mani). Oh well….it’s good for me to go neutral sometimes! Lol. I am really growing to looove this polish too. It sorta looks like creamy putty melted onto my fingertips 🙂

OPI Don’t Pretzel My Buttons

I had to apply three coats of Don’t Pretzel my Buttons to get it completely opaque. I used Orly Bonder as a base coat and Seche as topcoat…so I figured this mani would last me for the whole conference. I hope so cuz I despise traveling with chips! Oh yeah- I also stamped some Konad M57 on my pinkies just for some extra flavor! Hope you like it!

Thanksgiving nail fail!

Happy thanksgiving to all my American girls out there! I had this great thanksgiving nail design idea swimming around in my head for days! My inspiration was the newspaper nails technique.  My rendition was to cut out pics of favorite thanksgiving-type foods from the supermarket flyer and imprint them on my white nails. Too bad it was an epic fail! Lol! But the design is still kind of fun so I thought I’d share some pics anyway.

I scoured the Stop n Shop flyer to find and clip images of (from left to right) frenchs french fried onions, turkey, stove top stuffing, ocean spray cranberry sauce, and cool whip! Yummy!! Too bad all the words transpose backwards when using the newspaper nails technique! I knew they’d be backwards… but I thought the text would be dark enough and the logos would be recognizable enough to really stand out and look reminiscent of the foods in our thanksgiving shopping cart!  Maybe the colored print from the flyers I used didn’t transfer as well as newspaper print does?  I also had a hard time applying my Pure Ice polish.  This greyish white polish called Super Star! happens to be the only bottle of Pure Ice that I own. Not sure if it’s just Super Star, or if all of their shades are like this… but the formula was not my fave.  The consistency kinda reminded me of white-out and the skinny brush made application difficult and streaky.

Oh well! So my thanksgiving nail design fell a little flat, but i had a great holiday!  Hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends and that you didn’t have to go to work!