Those 70s Nails

SO 70s, right?  Like, somewhere a wood paneled rec room is missing its rug-hooked wall art (ah, here it is, behind the macrame’d basket for the hanging spider plant.  Never mind – call off the search!) 🙂

Mega Magpie

As in I’m hoping you will make like one and be thoroughly dazzled by the shiny, sparkly things – here Color Club’s mad rainbow-throwing holo wonder, Crystal Baller – so you won’t notice how hopelessly lopsided these chevrons really are.  Yee-ikes!  I don’t know what to tell you, geometry has never been my strong suit, not even in nail art. 😉

I Heart Chevrons

Or is this rick-rack?  Colour choices aside (red, pale blue and white always read as very nautical to me), this looks like the design on a nubbily knit Christmas sweater, a mani ever so slightly out of seasonal step with today’s so gross, super sweltering weather.  Must be cool, wishful thinking on my overheated part(s.) 😉

Red Carpet Fashion (31DC2015)

Last Sunday’s Emmys brought all the usual fashion choices to the yard (and Gwenyth’s, like, “My cape’s better than yours.”) Mostly, I find that award show red carpets bring the beautifully predictable – the naked dress, the gossamer ballgown, the men’s-style pantsuit, the jewel-toned mermaid. I may have just described nearly all of the outfits that made their way down the Emmys red carpet last week – pretty, but also pretty boring.

There was one dress, though, by designer Naeem Khan and worn by Ellie Kemper (of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which is so weird and irreverent and sweet and funny and why are you not watching it on Netflix right now?) that I just adored, and so I chose it as the inspiration for these nails that I did in service of day 25’s theme of fashion in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge. Ellie Kemper is just the cutest, pluckiest thing ever (I can’t help but think that in real life she and Kimmy are actually quite a lot alike) but she sells the hell out of this slinky, 1970s-style number – the tailoring is exquisite, and she carries what has to be a 30 pound dress with admirable ease (all those sequin chevrons = heavy.) You can see a photo of the dress (and Ellie Kemper!) here, once again courtesy of the fine ladies of Go Fug Yourself (who were likewise wowed – hard not to be; this dress is fabulous, and I think these nails are, too!)

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

The colour palette I used in this every-nail-for-itself manicure – grape purple, dark turquoise, nude, gold and black – is a rich, bold and unusual one that begs for multiple types of nail art to showcase it to its best, from stripes and swirls, to blossoms and scales. So why settle for one design when you could have a little bit of everything? I really love this type of random/not random mani that’s limited only to what you think might look nice on each one of your nails, although I think I like it even more when there’s a little bit of polish cohesion to tie the whole beautiful package together.

Melon Mania

Chevron patterned nails, the type of manicure I was tasked with creating for a challenge I’m participating in over on Instagram, befuddle me. It’s a super cool effect (very Missoni) and I know you can buy all sorts of fabulous nail vinyls to help you achieve the crispest and most even of chevrons, but it’s never been my favourite look. Unless of course I can find a way of combining those chevrons with something foodie – always my preferred nail art inspiration! And so I did, creating these pastel watermelon nails that use a favourite new base polish, Whimsical Ideas by Pam’s perfectly pink Tutu Sweet. I love how its ultra tiny matte glitter provides a hit of natural visual interest to this fruity manicure that really is too too sweet!

Throwback Chevrons

There’s lots to look back on fondly with this manicure I recently did that not only uses a glitter polish that predates my interest in nail art, Nails Inc.’s Special Effects Sprinkles in Topping Lane, but also features a chevron pattern in the exact design and colours as this blog’s first background wallpaper. It is a look that did not last for long. Although I love the crisp tidiness of a chevron pattern, especially in a pink, navy and white colour combination, it strobed harder than one of those anime seizure movies, and I thought it prudent to maybe not induce vomiting in my readers every time they attempted to scroll down the page! Small blogging tip for you there – don’t make your readers hurl.

Chevron Waves (OMD2)

Let’s see, sandy beach, gently lapping waves…if this post was being written by anybody other than me, they might actually be into that! It’s not that I’ve got anything against beaches, it’s just that the beaches really seem to have something against me. I’m just not a beach person. Sitting under an umbrella with a good book and a drink sounds like it would be fun for about two hours, and then I guarantee you I’m looking for more air conditioned locales. Also, as we’ve covered about 100 times on this very blog, beaches are typically adjacent to slimy critter-concealing bodies of water that I refuse to even wade in. Plus I have never not burned (the summer my Egyptian friend and I had a tan-off was a very bad one indeed) and I tend to wilt in the humidity. I’m simply not a nature person under the very best of circumstances, both in temperament and pasty white skin tone, so I’d do well to stay off the beaches.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t find a way to enjoy beaches on my own terms, say safely confined to my nails where I can’t be eaten, sustain a burn or get sand up my swimsuit? Sounds like a plan! And that’s how these beachy nails came about, an idea I just sort of fell into while messing around with some new polishes and day 20’s theme of chevron in the Oh Mon Dieu nail art challenge. Chevrons lend themselves quite nicely to wave-type designs, and they look particularly lovely when crowded up against one another in a wealth of sea green polishes (one might even say they look beachy keen? Huh, huh? Nothing? Man, I’m losing my touch with corny jokes…)

Don’t You Forget About Me

Every lacquerista worth her acetone has at least one bottle of polish that for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to her, she never, ever uses. It’s not that it’s an ugly colour or of poor consistency or otherwise unusable; it just manages to somehow avoid detection, time and time again. The base of these nails, China Glaze’s shimmery purple Full Spectrum, is that polish for me. And I really don’t know why, as it’s lovely, packed full of gorgeous rainbow glitter and provides the perfect backdrop for some nail art, in this case a couple of fingers’ worth of high shine turquoise chevrons.