You've Been Nailed

I finished two 12-page papers this week and DAMN, i feel like a champ. ive been rocking these since Tuesday cuz
a) i needed a work break and OBVS i was gonna spend that doing my nails and
b) when you’re working on papers for days straight, looking down and your nails and seeing how swag they are is a TOTAL pickup. DEFINITELY reminding you that there is beauty outside of the traumatic experience of writing geography papers. UGH. srsly guys, i NEVER want to talk about permafrost ever again. EVER. AGAIN.

i LOVE the snakeskin pattern on these! i did it by putting a piece of netting over a black base, and sponging beige and green polish over it. i used shine of the times as a top coat (LOL what else would i use? i LOVE that stuff). AND, got these AWESOME gold studs from..you guessed it…dollarama! that store is the SHIT. this one seems really popular, a tonne of people have commented on them…so i’m def rocking them again!

I recently began following an art blog called ‘dark silence in suburbia’ and i LOVE it. i open my dash and every day there is SO much inspiration for original nail art! PLUS i get to be all pretentious about it. “This manicure is inspired by Marc da Cunha Lopes. Oh wait, you’ve never heard of him? Oh that’s too bad.” lolz.

This mani is inspired by a piece from that blog, it’s called “In Rainbows” by Pope Saint Victor. The piece itself is SO cool, and as you know I am very much into minimalist designs. I don’t actually have a dark purple polish unfortunately, so ‘lilac’ had to do. I hope you likey! :)

So today was another BEAUTIFUL day outside, so obviously i didn’t do any work. instead i hung out on my porch for literally 7 hours, chillin / gossiping with christina (omg…it needs to rain soon so i can be productive). so of course while we were out there i got around to doing her nails for her, i mean DUH, it’s us. what else would we do? I chose a bunch of colours that were PERFECT for spring and look very happy together…purple and orange and green, oh my! I also used shine of the times on it…bitch better be pleased I used my 13$ nail polish on her!!!

I personally LOVE the clouds, I think I’m gonna do one soon where all the fingers are clouds, and I’m gonna throw some balloons and kites and stuff in there. PLUS they were super easy, alls I did was use the end of a bobby pin to blob on some white here and there! WOOO laziness!

Happy summer daaazzee!!

sooo it’s the day after st. patrick’s day…and 2 days after friday…wooahh. WOOAHH guys. im getting too old for this shit. my liver is practically a post-trauma patient all on its own right now. time for ceasars with brunch! :D

this is my st pat’s mani that i did a few days ago…it’s really damn elaborate, it took me over an hour, and i love it! i put ‘shine of the times’ (srsly i’m addicted) on the pot of gold to make it more realistic, cuz you know, of the details. i’m pretty sure i used over 15 pots of polish on this one. my fave one is the beer for sure…it’s so cute!!

so i REALLY didnt want to take off the neon orange but that little voice inside my head that likes painting nails so much was like…’dooooo eeeeeettt’. also i kinda had to do it today because i have to do a st. patty’s one for this weekend! WOO!

today i have peacock feathers!! they so purrty. i shoulda done all my nails with the feather design but i thought it would take way longer than it did, so i just didn’t put down a white base for all of them. next time! there are 6 different polishes used on the feathers themselves : urban outfitters green #1, revlon (WOOOO) tangerine, revlon midnight affair, opi no room for the blues, and of couse, essie shine of the times (SOOO SPARKLY YAYY), and my black striper. for the glitter fade i used urban outfitters green #1 and revlon blue mosaic. enjoyyy!! :D

so, as you can tell, i am CLEARLY obsessed with ‘shine of the times’ as i have used it on the last 3 manis that i did. i can’t stop. it’s just TOO. AWESOME. it changes appearance based on the base colour so i’ve been having so much fun ~experimenttinnngg~

today i used tape for the first time. OBVIOUSLY i used a quick dry base colour, ‘midnight affair’ from revlon. you know, i REALLY like revlon. i know they’re the lame loser friend of essie and OPI, but they have really nice colours now! they’re TRYING guys!! and the polishes are less viscous (lol, my nerd is showing) that the other ones, which i like. UNDERDOG FOR THE WIN!

p.s. my inspiration for this was Frank Stella, a famous minimialist American painter from the 60s & 70s. check it yo:

color maze, frank stella. although this painting is actually bigger than me in real life!

hey hey y’all, it’s been a while! today i have a peaches and cream manicure (from urban outfitters 99cent bin, FRUCK YES) with a top coat using my new ‘shine of the times’ from essie on the accent fingers, ring and thumb. alas the studs kept catching in my hair (super annoying) even though they are sooooOOOooOOOoo pretty so this lasted like 3 days. OH WELL THAT’S TOO BAD TIME TO DO MY NAILS AGAIN :D

So the other day i was perusing shoppers (aka dragging poor bee-rad around the beauty aisles) when i stumbled across the Essie Luxe Effects collection. I imagine it’s the same way archaeologists felt when they found Tutankhamen’s tomb, aka, AWESOME. and I bet they also started squealing ‘OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG’ when they found it too!

It’s the most amazing collection of ‘luxe effect’ top coats, which can be used by themselves or on top of another colour for really cool effects. I picked up “Shine of the Times”, which has these crazy teeny-tiny holographic flakes suspended inside. The polish itself is “jellier” than others, but not tacky. The formula is great and spreads on evenly, and the flakes are well-distributed (I hate it when i put on sparkly nail polish and get like…one sparkle. eff that.)

the coolest part about this one is that it CHANGES COLOUR. it’s the MOTHERFUCKING OPTIMUS PRIME of nail polish!!! one way the flakes are green, the other way they’re orange. it’s like those old-school “3D” holograms we used to have as kids. in the nineties. good timezzz. ANYWAYS. i can’t stop looking at my nails now, they look SO COOL!

i cannot WAIT to do this!! i think i have found my perfect valentine’s day mani :)

Doily Nail Art Tutorial by Hey, Nice Nails

We were originally going to explain how to create this nail art look by exaggerating this tutorial by the lovely ladies at Polish You Pretty, but someone asked if we would make a tutorial so we decided to give it a go! Enjoy.

1. Apply a base color. The color in the photo is Essie Cocktail Bling

2. Using a contrasting color, paint two heart shaped lobes at the tip of the nail

3. Outline the top of the heart in white

4. Use a large sized dotting tool to make white circles around the top of the heart

5. With your base color and a smaller sized dotting tool, make small dots inside the larger white dots

6. Use the smaller dotting tool and make small white dots around the inside of the heart

7. Top everything off with a good thick layer to topcoat to seal in your artwork!

these are my friend brit’s [toe]nails! they are a great variation on animal print…they have sparkles. SPARRRRKKKLLLESSSS. i LOVE shiny things! shiny shiny shiny :D

she has used a black striper and free-handed the whole thing, bless her talented heart. she has the same thing on her fingernails too! i love changing up hands / fingers…when they don’t all match, it looks pretty cool, amirite? also there’s a new trend where everyone does their ring-finger nail to stand out from the rest. i LOVE that! it’s just an excuse for MOAR EXTRAVAGANCE!!!! GIMME MOOARRR!!