Frenching Beetlejuice: A Then and Now Post

Lordy, that’s a BAD title!  Almost as bad as the nails that went along with it, a messy, dark and smudgy effort not remotely befitting one of my all time favourite movies.  And so I took another stab at turnin’ on the (Beetle)juice to see what shakes loose, tidying and brightening up this black and white striped French mani inspired by the sandworms of Saturn.

Along for the ride to the Neitherworld is a clamshell of Beetlejuice-inspired scented wax from Super Tarts, a fun and thoughtful gift from one of my cool online friends, Jay of The Candle Enthusiast.  Do I think Beetlejuice smells like the very yummy combination of apple butter, iced oatmeal cookies and buttermilk pancakes that Super Tarts suggests? Probably not, although I do appreciate that they didn’t go for heavy realism with this inspired-by scent – I imagine that Beetlejuice smells pretty rank.  Dude doesn’t look like he bathes very often.  I mean, he does have moss growing on his skin.  Never a good sign. 😉

I Carried a Watermelon

Little Dirty Dancing humour for you there on this Victoria Day long weekend.  Which would normally signal the start of summer – hot and hazy temps, fireworks and lots of watermelon – except it’s about 10 degrees above zero today and gloomier than a Tim Burton film.

So I thought I’d liven things up a bit with this watermelon mani featuring one of my favourite polishes, KB Shimmer’s Belle of the Mall.  I’ve rhapsodized about this polish on more than a couple of occasions, and with its lively mix of silver holographic glitter in a fruit punch-hued base, it makes a more than adequate stand-in for summer’s juiciest and most ubiquitous fruit.

Odd little blank spot in my life: I have never consumed an electric (or shall we say alcohol-enhanced) watermelon.  Can anyone tell me if I’m missing out here?  I feel like maybe the time for such conspicuous consumption is beyond my advancing age and liver, but I could *perhaps* be convinced otherwise. 😉

Cheerful

Here’s a simple and sunny French manicure in a rainbow’s worth of holographic lacquers, Enchanted Polish’s red February 2015, orange Desert Sunset and a smidge of sky blue September 2015, Cirque’s golden yellow Chyrsopoeia and Colors by Llarowe’s emerald green Gemini Rising (a polish I am somewhat scared of using, as the last time I wore it, it stained my nails pea green for the next four months.)  Cheery!

Update: Gemini Rising strikes again!  Here’s the staining that resulted from just 12 hours of wear over top of TWO thick layers of base coat.  I won’t be using this polish again (not that I could from its current position at the bottom of my garbage can.)  Terrifically unimpressed with Llarowe – their house brand polishes are not inexpensive, and Gemini Rising has destroyed my nails now twice, despite my better preventative efforts.

Gilded Raspberry-Chocolate

This manicure, which by the title of this post alone you should be able to guess reminds me of gold-flecked, raspberry cream truffles (when does a manicure not remind me of food?), started out life as a ruffian, a type of mani in which you polish over a rounded strip directly in the middle of your nails, leaving a half moon of base polish up by your cuticles that stretches down both sides of your nails. Sounds complicated, but it’s really not – just imagine your nails sporting one of those ridiculous mustaches that drop straight down off a man’s face and that’s a ruffian.

But over the course of ruffianing it up, I got a little overzealous and accidentally lacquered over the elongated sides (which had nothing to do with the fact that I really hate those mustaches and everything to do with my willy nilly approach to polish application), turning my wee chocolate-raspberry ruffian into a proper reverse French manicure, which, given that it was a giant mistake in the first place, seemed as good a place to stop as any.

Here I topped Smitten Polish’s dark brown holo, Seasonal Lattes, with A England’s raspberry red holo, Rose Bower, and then added a smattering of gold glitter, Ardene’s Golden Child, because no nummy truffle is complete without at least a sprinkling of luxurious golden flakes.

Drusilla: A Then and Now Post

Last year I did a set of bloody, bite-marked nails that weren’t half bad (see below), although I’ve often thought I could have done better. So when the theme of vampires came up in the Halloween nail art challenge I’m participating in over on Instagram, I decided to take another kick at the vampire-bitten can, combining elements of that first mani (ragged puncture wounds and drippy blood; check and check!) with a few nails inspired by one of my favourite television vampires, Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both crazy and clairvoyant, Dru had the kind of personality really only a Mother could love (before becoming a vampire, she was a nun!) or maybe just Spike, her long-time paramour (like, 120 years long-time) and protector. I liked Drusilla and Spike in the early days of Buffy’s run when they were weird and punk and dangerous, although any time Dru would start yammering about how the stars had disappeared and Spike would drolly remind her that they had disappeared because they were indoors and she was staring at the ceiling was pure gold. I loved Dru’s personal style, too – lots of lacy, empire waisted baby doll dresses with puffy sleeves and her signature killin’ nails (RIP Ken-drah the Vampire Slayer), long, vampy, blood red talons tipped in stark white.

Here I combined my small-nailed version of Dru’s killer mani with a lace-trimmed thumb and two improved-upon nails from last year’s nails. I’m encouraged to see that my technique has gotten much better (tidier, cleaner and more precise, specifically), although I am the most pleased with the visible improvement in my nail care game. Well-tended nails provide a tidy base for your mani masterpieces, and elevate any nail art beyond just “painting your nails.” Bloody good work!

Frenching Beetlejuice (OMD2)

French nail tips, you perverts. Get your minds out of the gutter, please.

This manicure, featuring a colour palette inspired by one of my all time favourite movies, the immensely twisted and delightful Beetlejuice, was prompted by day 14’s theme of funky French in the Oh Mon Dieu nail art challenge. French manicures are one of the basics in nail art, and involve painting just the tips of your nails an alternating colour from the base. White tips on a nude base is the standard, and the type of French mani you’ll see most often, so it’s nice to have a chance to colour outside the (nail)lines with this theme.

Here I laid down a base of two polishes from OPI’s recently released Coca Cola collection, Green on the Runway, a greeny-pink duochrome, and A Grape Affair, a dark purple cream, polishes which don’t particularly remind me of their inspirations, Sprite and Grape Fanta, but do apparently remind me of Beetlejuice (this is actually not so surprising; most things in this world remind me of Beetlejuice. It’s the movie that taught me that life (and death) is an insane goat rodeo, and you either adapt with grace or perish. And also that black and white striped anything is AWESOME.) Then, using striping tape for a nice, crisp edge, I taped off the bottom quarter of my nails, painting out just the tips in white before adding those Beetlejuiceian black stripes. Once dry, I removed the tape and smoothed everything out with a high gloss topcoat. And just like that, one fun-kay French mani for folks not totally enamoured of the all nude-and-white thing.

Wishful Thinking

About two seconds after I finished this manicure, a coral tone-on-tone-on-glittery flower design, I recognized it for what it truly was – a rather bald and desperate wish for better weather.

I’m Canadian, and ruminations on the crapass weather we’re presently dealing with are just what we do – “Cold enough out there for ya?” – but even I’ve reached my limit, and that’s because the bad winter weather just WILL NOT let up! One day it snows, the next day it freezes rain. And if it’s not snowing, it’s bitterly, bitterly cold. If the temperatures stay above -20 these days, that’s considered a decent reprieve from the frost-covered madness.

No doubt, we could all use a real break from the Winter That Won’t End, and while a beachside vacation awash in rum-based cocktails would be best, sometimes circumstances dictate you go for the less-is-more approach, which is where these nails come in! So brush the snow off your hottest hued polishes, scrape the frost from your detail brushes and dotting tools and get to work on a little lacquered pick-me-up that’ll hopefully convince you that spring is just around the corner. And if it can’t do that, well, at least your nails will look fly.