Sour Watermelon Slices

In high school, a favourite activity among my group of friends was to drive one of our parents’ cars (a wild assortment of vehicles that included a VW bus, a plush Crown Vic, a compact Festiva, a Jimmy and my family’s tragic LTD) to a completely out of the way 7-11 to flirt with cute skater boys in the parking lot.  Yup, not much more to it than that – just a whole lot of cute teen awkwardness fueled by the occasional pit stop actually inside the store to fuel up on sugar, like little paper bags of 5 cent sour gummy candies shaped like cherries and peaches and watermelons.  Hey, kind of like these watermelons here!

Or should I say waterMALLons?  Y’know, on account of the melon-hued glitter polish I used here, KB Shimmer’s Belle of the Mall?  I love this polish so, so much – in my top five at least.  Best of all, as you can see from the lowered polish line and the cluster of holo glitter towards the bottom of the bottle, I use Belle of the Mall all the time.  Pretty AND functional?  Well, that makes it pretty much the greatest polish ever, especially when it also helps create such great (sour?) watermelon slice nail art.

Whoopie!

I do believe this is the most randomly-inspired manicure I have ever attempted.  Behold, my polished tribute to the fluorescent green, purple and periwinkle skirted formal jumpsuit Whoopie Goldberg wore to the 1993 Oscars!  There were also matching shoes.  Random, of course, because that’s actually a pretty accurate description for the “Genie goes black tie” dress she wore (a photo of which you can see here, courtesy of Us Weekly) and also because, well, Whoopie Goldberg?  Or, more accurately, a single dress worn by Whoopie Goldberg over 20 years ago?  Although I must say, cracked out Genie look notwithstanding, the colours in her embroidered jumpsuit (did I mention the jumpsuit part was embroidered?) and duster overlay were stunning, and she looked gorgeous.  Whoopie should garb herself in manic jewel tones all the time, methinks.  Just like my nails!

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.