Fall Feels

Here’s a fun dovetailing of two of my favourite interests these days, nail art and hand lettering.  I’ve done lettering-type nails before, of course – these Beetlejuice nails from 2016 remain undisputed champions – but not since re-discovering my teenagehood love of calligraphy via Instagram (oh Insta, is there nothing you can’t turn into a new obsession?)  After taking a lettering module during grade 9 art class, I got way into calligraphy and other hand lettering, even going so far as to compose my letters to my American pen pal in ornate, looping script (and in a rather dashing bright turquoise ink, no less, a present from my parents, who also supplied me with a gorgeous refillable pen.)

But just lately I’ve been taken with short lettering videos on Instagram; they’ve really reignited the old lettering bug, even if practice makes me feel a bit like I’m auditioning for the Well-Mannered Serial Killer Olympics (Hannibal Lecter is always a contender.)

Anyhow, here I combined a holo-happy gradient with some loopy lettering for a mani that’s really feeling all the Falls. 🙂

Are These Ugly?

Real talk, not fishing for compliments – are these nails ugly?  I really think they might be, despite my better efforts to have them, you know, not be!  It might be the colours – we’re all good, looking spacey and/or galactic and/or Pandora Rave Jungle until we get to that green-gold, and then things take a turn for the fungus-y.  Prime example of a mani undone by a poor pick of polishes.  I DO like the reddish-purple bits, though; gives me some good and potentially gory ideas for a mani inspired by a Stephen King book I just finished.  See, creepy lemonade from fungus-y lemons. 😉

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

Because camouflage, get it?  Yeah, I know, that was bloody terrible, sorry – lazy camo humour should be beneath me! 😉

In a few days’ time this blog is going to be celebrating its sixth anniversary, and in all of that time, I have never once done camouflage nails.  Weeeellllll, proper camouflage nails – I *did* once do a manicure with overlapping pigs in camo-type colours, because why would I not?  But I’m following along with this nail art challenge over on Instagram, and the third prompt was for camouflage nails, so here we are – your basic green, green and beige camo print, perfect for keeping those fingernails protected and well hidden. 😉

Nailed It!

There is a show on television – you may have seen it, but I haven’t – called Nailed It! wherein hopeless home bakers seek redemption and cash through a reality TV-style baking competition.  It’s hosted by Nicole Byer, who I DO know from Brooklyn 9-9 as delightful car thief Doug Judy’s baby sister, Trudy Judy (“baby” nothin’ – Trudy Judy takes care of her own business, you simple little barn animal!)  Anyhow, I always see the show’s title and think it’s actually some sort of nail art competition, which definitely falls on the not-so-edible side of things (though apparently so too do most of the baked goods produced by the contestants, hey-oh!)

I’m not sure there’s much of an audience for a show about both baking and nail art, but if there were, this manicure, which was inspired by a gorgeous cake I saw on Instagram, would certainly land me a spot on at least, like, the first two episodes. 😉

LOVE these nails, gigantic, unwieldy golden charms and all.  If I had any complaints, it would be that the roses are not quite red enough (how very “Off with their heads!” does THAT sound?) and the gold not quite yellow enough.  I used a frosted, almost icy-looking gold here, whereas the original cake used a lush marigold yellow that I far prefer.  Just in general, these nails read far more “edgy tea set” than bitchin’ Queen of Hearts cake, but I love them all the same.

Clueless About Plaid

I did this manicure for the prompt of Back to School in a nail art challenge I’m following along with over on Instagram.  Come by and see me sometime – park_or_perish is my handle.

Having dabbled in Cher Horowitz’s fashion sensibilities for much of the mid-90s, particularly on the first day of grade 13 – come on, all those little velveteen dresses and stacked Steve Madden loafers were AWESOME! – Back to School to me always means Back to Clueless, a place – or is it a state of mind? – I’m never actually particularly far from anyways.  And what’s better than Cher’s yellow plaid outfit she chooses – or is it her computer that chooses? – to make her big entrance at school?  Ooh, Snickers. 😉

Blue China

Sort of?  You know, like those ubiquitous blue and white Chinese vases you see anyplace anyone wants to add a touch of “Asian fusion influence”?  Or maybe Wedgewood, another type of blue and white china (English-made, that one.)  Hmm, or perhaps a cross between the two.  Basically, I don’t know what I’m looking at here.

Except for some pretty fly floral nails!  I’m so pleased with how this manicure turned out, particularly as I only used three polishes, a neutral beige base, a dusty pale blue, and that stupendous indigo creme, Londontown‘s Lakur polish in Iconic.  I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t find nail polish to be the easiest artistic medium to work with – it wants to dry out so quickly, I never feel like I have enough time to putter about, mix up my paints, try new techniques.  But I’ve been attempting to use my nail polish more like acrylic paints these days, and that’s how these lovely nails came about.  I particularly love the sweet little variegated petals on the roses, which were the result of dipping my detail brush first into the pale blue polish and then into the dark blue polish, before brushing the whole pretty, swirly mess onto my nails.  Feels a little more undone than my usual, and a lot more natural, too (you know, if blue roses existed outside of a giant plastic bucket filled with three dozen white roses and a metric ton of blue food colouring!)

Amethyst-y!

That’s a big Buffy-ism – tacking a “Y” onto the end of any word, not to describe a thing, but the general state of a thing.  So this manicure, which looks like a purple gemstone caught somewhere between an amethyst and a tanzanite, definitely qualifies as an entry in the suffix chapter of Buff’s Good Guide to Grammar.  The little round studs up by my cuticles are natural seashell gems I picked up from Daily Charme.  They come in all sorts of colours and mimic the look of natural gemstones.  I liked these blue/purple stones best, so that’s why they came home with me!

I did these nails using exactly the same marbling technique as this manicure from the other day.  I just switched up the polishes, using three purple lacquers (a pale lilac creme, a chromatic periwinkle and a deep purple holo), highlighting the “fissures” with a glittery purple topper.  Aw man, I’m really going to have to do that tutorial now, as these are too easy to keep to myself, but also just a touch too hard to describe simply with words.  You know, in a grammar-y-type fashion. 😉  Keep a look out for that one in the coming days, should you be interested in how to create a super high impact, ultra low effort mani.

Marbleize Me, Michael!

Heh, that’s a line from the second best character* on my favourite TV show, The Good Place.  Janet, played by D’Arcy Carden, is an “informational assistant” – basically an Alexa that can walk and talk and learn to throw shade.  Janet’s natural state is to walk around as a hot brunette (in inexplicably stodgy 1960s secretary wear) but when the goings get dicey (and are they never not dicey on The Good Place?) she can be “marbleized” – shrunk down into a easily hideable glass marble, simply by inserting the end of a paperclip in the tiny port behind her ear, and booping the end of her nose.  Wow, is The Good Place ever a weird show.

Anyhow, none of that has anything to do with these nails – was just bandying about some ideas for the title of this post and thought, “Huh, these look like marble.  Let’s Play Marbles?  Ugh, no, that’s crap.  Venus de Marble?  Seriously?  Gawd, go home, you’re drunk, that’s terrible.  *GASP!!!*  MARBLEIZE ME, MICHAEL!!!”  Yup, sometimes it really is just that scattered.  Also, I need to re-watch last season of The Good Place before the fourth – and final – season starts this fall.

Oh-kay, getting back to these nails!  They were insanely easy.  Like, embarrassingly easy.  And they only took about 20 minutes, including dry time.  Maybe I ought to create a tutorial?  But the hows for now?  I dipped a small, wide-edged detail brush into three polishes – here a dark brown, a lighter brown and a pale pink – and gently zigzagged it down my nails, already painted in a simple white creme, to create the veiny look of marble.  I repeated that process wherever there was space, trying to keep things loose and not too “done.”  Annnnnnnnd that was pretty much it.  Oh!  I also added just a tiny bit of glittery gold detailing, just to really highlight those little “fissures.”  Also, too many quotation marks in this post. 😉

*The best character is clearly Jason Mendoza of Jacksonville, Florida.  BORTLES!!!

That’s S’more Like It

Here’s another one of those super fun tri-thermal polishes from KB Shimmer, this time That’s S’more Like It, a brown-to-red-to-berry-to-pink colour-changer shot through with golden shimmer (and yes, I realize that’s more than three hues, but that’s just what these polishes do – the three “base” colours are just a jumping off point for half a dozen or more different looks depending on the temperature of your hands.)

Like its collection mate, Best Buds, That’s S’more Like It changes from one colour to another, and then one more colour beyond that, in hot and cold temperatures.  With Best Buds, a blue-to-purple-to-mint green colour-shifter, I found the polish most often showed on my nails as the warm-leaning mint green, with streaks of just-starting-to-cool-off plum.

But That’s S’more Like It was alllll over the place, in the very best kind of way.  For those of you who polish seasonally, this is a nice seasons-bridger, with That’s S’more Like It showing on my hands as everything from an almost frosty bubblegum pink, to blushing peach, to strawberry, to fiery cinnamon hearts (oh cripes, I’m getting hungry here!)  My nails were also a tiny bit longer when I swatched That’s S’more Like It than when I swatched Best Buds, so I really got a lot of that edge-of-the-nail, French mani-type action with this one.

Right after completing this manicure last week, I fell sick.  Just a cold, but it pretty well took me out for the week.  But one thing it did not take out was this mani – a week and a half on, it was still wearing like iron, with virtually no chips, dings or pulls.  Very impressive!

As always, I purchased this KB Shimmer polish through Harlow & Co.  For a little while there they were out of stock – of these tri-thermals, and just about everything else as well – but everything is back in stock now, so go get you some.  This is a good one. 🙂

Technicolour Swirls

Well, isn’t this always just the way – sit down with a bunch of polishes and absolutely no firm idea in your mind of what you might like to do with them, and out the other side pops one of the best manicures you’ve done in ages.  Must be a Friend of Murphy kind of situation (as in Murphy’s Law.  I always call annoying, vaguely ironic happenstances (if you’re using the Alanis definition) that don’t fall under the banner of Murphy’s Law “Friends of Murphy.”  I suppose they could also be relatives.  This is very clearly a Maeve Murphy situation as it applies to nail art.  You know, dear old Aunt Maeve with the manicures.)

I think this post may have gotten away from me a bit.

Anyhow, I really did just sit down with a pile of holographic polishes and no real idea of what to do with them, and an hour later this is what emerged.  I don’t often do much colour blending in my manicures, as I find nail lacquer a really difficult medium to paint in – it wants to dry out so quickly, I often don’t have time for proper puttering and painting.  But I gave it a whirl today, and I love the results.

Also makes for a very pretty wax paper palette.  Just in case you’ve ever wondered, by the way, what kind of palette I use for my polishes, I use whatever’s handiest.  For the longest time I used the front or back of old DVD cases.  It was fun painting blobs of polish over top of Ben Affleck’s face.  But these days I use a tiny square of wax paper, a system that’s working out just fine.  Less waste, mostly, but also the polish seems to dry out not quite so quickly on wax paper as opposed to plastic, which is a definite improvement in my books.  What a glimpse behind the magic! 😉