Guilty Hello!

Hi Everyone! (Or anyone still out there? :))

Long time no see! Is that even appropriate to say to people I have never actually seen before? In any case, I recently realized that (last 4th of July mani not including), it has been a year since I have last actually blogged. What is even more sad is that I can count the number of manicures I have done during that year on just my two little hands. And in that count, I'm including just polished nails that didn't involve any nail art. Pathetic, right? Friends and family that used to comment on the oddity of seeing my nail unpainted now did a complete 180 and mockingly stare when spotting color.

It is not that I didn't miss creating nail art, it is just that I had a lot going on at the time. I got busy, started working night shift and just sort of shut down when it came to doing my nails. If I couldn't do it all; swatch, review, create nail art, blog and keep up with social media, I wasn't going to do anything at all. Somehow in a weird and bizarre way it made sense back then then, even though it doesn't so much now. I think I was so used to blogging about every mani that I created (whether I ended up actually wearing it or not), that in the back of my mind it seemed logical that if I didn't have time to photograph and blog about a manicure, I would put off creating it. Recently a friend gently (or rather not so gently) pointed out that I should be able to make time for myself at least once a week and create a manicure, even if it is just for myself and not something I blog about. So simple, right? Since I can't really argue with that logic, that is exactly what I hope to do...

Hanukkah Sparkles!

Hi Lovelies! Today I have another Hanukkah manicure to share with you. I don't usually get the chance to create multiple manicures for the occasion, but I got an idea that I just had to try out. Waiting until next year was not an option that I could live with, so time had to be made for the time consuming endeavor. I've been wearing this for the past couple of days and I hope it will last me at least through the weekend because I can't stop staring at them. I'm actually having a difficult time writing this post since I keep getting distracted by the nail...

Happy Hanukkah!

Hi Everyone! I want to wish a Happy Hanukkah to all of you lovelies who celebrate the holiday! This year I created two manicures to celebrate, the first of which I would like to show you today.

I'm always slightly jealous of the abundance of Christmas holiday stamping patterns available. Although I do make good use of those said patterns (so I won't complain too much), I wish more companies would create patterns to celebrate other cultures, traditions and beliefs. There is always a part of me that gets super excited when I see a pattern that I can use for a Hanukkah manicure. So queue the excitement and a dizzying game of dreidel...

Snowflakes Again!

Hi Lovelies! Well it has been exactly a week since I showed you my last snowflake manicure, so one could say I'm way overdue. Although just to set the record straight, I wore them more than a month apart and I'm just a slow blogger. Hanging my head in shame over here. I kid of course, but I do love snowflakes and will pretty much take any opportunity these next few months to wear them on my nails. Consider yourselves warned, you'll likely see more, but I do hope you enjoy them as much as I do...

Raindrops on My Parade

Hi Lovelies! Today I have some stamping to show you. As it often happens, I was inspired by the polish name, Don't Rain on My Parade. More specifically, I was drawn to the rain part of the name. That is likely either because it's been raining in Seattle a lot recently or maybe because a parade wasn't something I was willing to tackle on my nails right now (I'll have to save that idea for another day). In any case, I decided on this beautiful pattern which reminds me of rain drops and puddle splashes. Perfect for a rain theme...

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Lovelies! You may have noticed a lack of Halloween designs from me this year. It is actually one of my favorite holidays for nail art, but since I was out of town this year, I missed out on the fun. Of course I couldn't miss the actual day itself and the opportunity to have some creepy crawlies glowing on my nails...

Midnight Owls...

This is one of the very rare occasions when I get the chance to post about what is currently on my nails. A group of girls on Instagram thought it would be fun to post their nighttime inspired manicures this weekend. I got caught up in the excitement and created one for myself filled with stars, moons and adorable sleeping owls...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my lovely readers who celebrate the holiday! I'm not Irish and have no plans to go out and celebrate, but that doesn't mean I won't use this as an excuse to wear my greens. I was short on time yesterday so I created this simple and fun manicure to wear today. Honestly this is all in an effort to avoid getting pinched! ;)

Happy Ho Ho Holodays!

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates!

I have been having too much fun playing with nail studs lately and although I had something entirely different planned for today, this happened at the last minute and I love how it turned out. Truly I think often the best manicures are the spontaneous, unplanned ones...

My Favorite Ornament

December seems to be flying by at rocket speed and I'm realizing that I don't have much time to execute a lot of the ideas that have been floating in my head. This is one such idea that I'm happy to have found the time to create. It was in one way or another inspired by a number of talented ladies, so I thank Beaching Nails for the idea of using nail studs for ornaments, Drama Queen Nails for the idea that studs can be painted with polish and Eeek! Nail Polish! for the idea of stamping onto rhinestones. Sheesh! Feels like I'm making some sort of acceptance speech here, but truly I learn so much from seeing everyone's manicures that even though my manicure doesn't resemble theirs, I did get the idea from their beautiful art. And now without further adieu, my ornament manicure...

PolisHaus Spectrum Snowflakes...

Hi! Today I would like to show you some quick nail art that I created while swatching the PolisHaus lacquers last night. I really couldn't resist adding snowflakes over this periwinkle blue beauty. The combination of the two really put me into the winter mood. Might as well get into the mood since it has been really cold lately and the weatherman is threatening snow next week...

Dazzle Dry Dragonfly...

Hi Everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend! Today I would like to show you some quick nail art that I created while swatching the Dazzle Dry Blogger's Mystery collection. I really love this dragonfly image on one of the Messy Mansion plates and I have been looking for an excuse to use it again. As soon as I saw this Dazzle Dry lacquer named Dragonfly, I knew that I had found my excuse...

Mermaid...

Today I would like to show you a show you a mermaid manicure which was inspired by the beautiful InDecisive Mermaid glitter. I love the beautiful teal shade over green and it really made me wish to create a manicure around it...

Rays Through the Haze...

I'm back from a fun birthday getaway and want to thank you for all the wonderful birthday wishes that you sent my way! Thank you! Thank you! I was without internet access on my trip (since I choose to live in the stone age with no smart phone) and I was so excited to read all your comments when I got back home. They mean so much to me!

I'm also thrilled to see that you like Sea Jewel. I wore it for my entire trip and spent my free time dreaming of what fun nail art I could create with it. I would like to show you today the one look that I had to try out first...

Sunday Stamping: Light Stamp Over Dark

Today's Sunday Stamping theme of light stamp over a dark base gave me the perfect excuse to create a manicure I've been wanting to do for a while. When I first saw this stamping pattern, I couldn't help but get the feeling of deja vu. At the time I couldn't figure out what it was all about and it wasn't until weeks later when I finally realized what it was. The trash can that stands under my desk has this exact pattern on it. Really, I mean this exact pattern. It would be a crime not to replicate it on my nails...

Shimmer Leslie Stamped

I have been really enjoying stamping over glitter especially with intricate patterns that allow the glitter to peek through in spots. This is another one along those lines. It is not quite as subtle as the last one that I did, but this for me is a much better result...

Hanukkah

Today I wanted to show you my first Hanukkah manicure this year. I showed a sneak peek of it on my Facebook page a few days ago, so you might have seen it if you follow me there. I "lit" the candles one at a time, but of course I'm not patient enough to wear this for eight days, so they all got done on the same day. There is a little animation treat when you get down to the bottom of the post...

Nail-aween Challenge Day 10: Halloween Manicure

Happy Halloween Everyone!!

Today is the final day of the Nail-aween challege and gives the freedom to create any Halloween themed manicure. I want to show you a manicure that I actually created with the Bundle Monster contest in mind. The contest was held earlier this moth and is now over. Even though I made the manicure in time to enter, I changed my mind at the last minute and didn't actually submit it. I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to show it to you and there can't be any better day than Halloween itself!...

Nail-aween Challenge Day 7: Spiders

In typical spider fashion, Day 7 of the Nail-aween challenge just snuck up on me. I'm not really ready to admit that Halloween is just a week away. For today's spider challenge I was really excited to play with the spiderweb pattern on the first Bundle Monster set. It may seem insignificant  but I'm pretty sure I bought the whole set just for that pattern. It is really one of those patterns I can picture a dozen or more different manicures with. Here is one that has actually made it onto the nails...

Sunday Stamping: Metallic Madness

Sometime you look for inspiration and sometimes it just finds you. Such is the case with this metallic zebra manicure by Chickettes that I stumbled upon on Pinterest. Usually I would repin it for "some day" and move on, but I just happened to be wearing Barielle Jordana's Skinny Jeans at the time and couldn't resist

So what does that have to do with Sunday Stamping? Good question. Every week members of the group, Adventures in Stamping, vote on that week's challenge. I rarely vote, instead I just look at chosen challenge towards the end of the week. It is more exciting for me to get a random theme (voted or pulled out of a hat) by someone else. So as this manicure was done and photographed, I thought I'd check on the poll for this week's stamping challenge. To my surprise the top two contenders were "metallic madness" and "over a saran wrap method base." This mani is so close to meeting both challenges. I guess it is lucky for me that metallic won the vote in the end so I could show you this today...