4th of July nails

This year my husband and I are trying to celebrate all the holidays, if only just a little bit.  I'm including painting my nails as celebrating.  I keep expectations pretty low around here.  Enjoy my shiny, patriotic sausage fingers!

I did something I had never done before, which was use cheap acrylic paint for the red and blue.  My husband sent me this Duck Hunt nails video, which I did not do, but she uses acrylic paint for most of her nail art, which is SO MUCH easier to work with than regular nail polish.  I don't have red or blue nail polish, so it was nice not to fork out cash to buy them for one set of nails.

I used Essie's Good To Go topcoat (which I do really like) and even though it shrinks the polish, it didn't really do that with acrylic paint, so that was pretty nice too.

I used a striper for the lines and stars, which were haaard and looked TERRIBLE but when you put them all next to each other it's like the cheerleader effect from How I Met Your Mother (a bunch of ugly girls grouped together can be deceptively pretty just because of how many of them their are, same with my janky stars).

I sported my nails at a Civil War Reenactment (which they have in Oregon!  And probably everywhere!  Well, in 'Merica.  GO TO ONE) which is more of celebrating a holiday than nails, but I have no pictures to prove we were there.  Oh wait yes I do!

Shamrock nails!

Wimmy wam wam wazzle!  They're shamrock nails!

I used the small tutorial within this cutepolish video to make the shamrock (three hearts and a stem with a striper).  I don't have any green items of clothing, so I was glad to remember to use some polish my sister gave me for my birthday before we went out to drink green beer tonight (and to avoid getting pinched, which is very rude and I'm still bitter about getting pinched when I was 16).

Happy St. Patty's!

Post-holiday nails: Sally Hansen Salon Effects Strips

Nails!  I didn't do my nails once over the holidays, because I was busy with working on Christmas presents for my family.  Now that it's done, I was excited to try these strips instead of doing the whole base coast, polish and top coat schtick.  Jesse saw them in the store and pointed them out to me (thanks, Jesse!).  They are Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips, in Girl Flower.

They are actually really easy to apply (well, once I started following the directions, take off the plastic on top first!  Duh).  If one of my nails couldn't fit the strips provided, I just used a slightly larger one and folded the excess off (with the stick they provide) like I did for the tip of the nail.  I wouldn't buy these all the time (I had a gift card so I didn't really pay attention to the price) but if I was going to an event and didn't want to fuss with my nails beforehand, I'd definitely get these again!

Crafting nails that aren't crummy

My name is twelve, and I'm a recovering nail biter.

Hi, twelve.

I think I started biting my nails when I first realized I had something growing out of the top of my fingers.  Or maybe it was after I stopped sucking my thumb.  Thumb sucking: the gateway drug to biting.

I've stopped biting a few times here and there, to get a manicure or something (I got scolded when I first received a manicure because "Your nail too short!" she said, over and over again).  It wasn't until a few months ago that I read a blog post that changed everything (language warning in that post, btw).

I decided to stop biting my nails not out of vanity of wanting pretty nails, but because I always had at least 2 or 3 nails that were in pain because I bit them too short.  It would get worse if I didn't have much to do (if it was quiet at work or I wasn't doing anything with my hands while watching tv - hello knitting!).

After reading that post I decided screw it, I'm not going to have hurty fingers anymore, I'm going to stop biting them.  I had no intention of painting my nails fun colors (I ditched painting my nails about 6 years ago when I was 19).  I planned to buy a nail strengthener (I got Sally Hansen Hard As Nails), a nail file, and call it good.

Then I discovered cutepolish videos.  And Colette's videos.  Cutepolish designs were so simple!  I could do that!  I always thought it was either paint your nails a single color, or go to a salon and get your nails painted a single color, with maybe a flower on your big toe.  Das it.

Sooo, I decided to still keep my nails on the "short" side (they're still pretty long to me) but long enough to where I can paint them without painting a bunch of skin at the top too.  My nails are all janked up because some of them were gnawed on more than others, the white parts of my nails vary a lot.  And some of them grow out straight while others are rounded.  I decided to grow my nails out and clip them rather straight, and then round out the edges instead of keeping the whole nail round.

I still think keeping nails short (with no white) looks really good too.  I'm not picky with nails.  I didn't have a problem biting my cuticles (though they needed to be pushed back all the time in the beginning!). 

This was the first time I gave myself a fun manicure after I quit the habit:

I'll probably post more when I take nicer photos of what I do with my nails, but that blog really helped me get the motivation to say "HEEECK YES I CAN DO THIS" and I wanted to share the love.