the first day of the rest of my life.

Well hello there! It's officially almost my first day of student teaching. I'm so nervous, but excited at the same time. After reading over the syllabus for the practicum course I'm about to begin, I've realized I probably won't have much free time this semester. Painting my nails is a relaxation technique so that will probably still happen from time to time, but actually getting regular posts up here probably won't happen, so I'm bracing myself for a mini-hiatus (or, at least much less regular posting).

I'll also be updating the blog sale soon; I have a LOT of polish just sitting around that I need to get rid of. I need the money and I also need the space in my room. ;P

I'll be checking in on here from time to time, because there's no way I could completely go without blogging. I'm just hoping my student teaching practicum goes smoother than I'm expecting.

Here's the last manicure I wore... that is what I'll leave you with!

 

 

The pink is Essie I Need A Vacation (yup.) and the purple is Essie Love & Acceptance. I am digging the rhinestones in this pattern. So cute! Simple styles are my fave.. and this is so simple and chic. 

I wish you all a happy Monday and a great week overall. Maybe I'll get a post up this week, maybe I wont! We shall see.

french mani monday

Hello! Ah Monday is almost over... today was actually not so bad of a day. Work flew by and I seemed to have a productive day. I have no complaints overall. For some reason, I struggle to produce blog posts when I'm home... not sure why, but I need to overcome that! I've been doing my nails regularly, I just have no motivation to blog.

Yesterday I needed a palate cleanser, so I went with a French manicure. I loooove French manicures- I really should do them more often. It just annoyed me how fast they chipped. I was doing a lot of work with my hands today, so it's my own doing, but still very annoying. Here they are:

 

I freehanded the French tips, which I'm pretty darn proud of. I have no artistic ability whatsoever but these could probably fool you into thinking I do. ;D This is OPI Alpine Snow on the tips and a coat of the soft Essie Cloud Nine. I then topped it with a new top coat of mine, Cult Nails Wicked Fast. It really did dry really fast, and I noticed that it seems to be much thinner than my faithful Seche. 

What do you think?

pink glitter gradient

Hello ladies! Happy Tuesday! I could seriously get used to not working and lounging around all day! Well, that's probably a lie... I know I'll be mad when payday comes around. Ah well- it's worth it, if only for a few days. I will, however, say that it's so nice to have time to do my nails! I even got to give myself a pedicure yesterday! Wahoo. Loving this. 

I got a few free Essies from work the other day. There was a pile of them that were all separated and not suitable to be sold, so my boss let us take some home. One of them was Essie Lion Around, an absolutely amazing pink shimmer polish:

 

It's pale enough to look really delicate, but opaque enough to be a two-coater. I love this polish! It didn't stand out when I first grabbed it, but I love it. The formula was amazing and it's the perfect amount of pink and shimmer to be absolutely stunning.

The reason I chose this polish is because I realized it looked like it'd be a perfect match with one of the new Mariah Carey OPIs... OPI Pink Yet Lavender. This was my favorite from the collection:

 

I decided to do a glitter gradient with it, and I'm glad I did because I really like this look. It'll probably be super annoying to get off, but definitely worth it. Pink Yet Lavender reminds me of Pirouhette My Whistle from the NYC Ballet Collection that OPI put out last spring. It's sort of a pink version of that glitter. 

What do you think? Which of the Mariah Carey polishes did you pick? I got a few of the liquid sands... not too thrilled with them, more so bought them just to have as a part of my collection. Keep an eye out for them on the blog- should be posting them soon!

Have a great day, everyone!

how i know i'm on vacation?

Dreaming about nails. Cray cray. I had a dream last night that my college asked me to create and teach a nail design course. Hell yeah. Could you imagine? That would be totally awesome. My dreams are typically scary work dreams... even though I go home to sleep at night, I feel like my mind never actually leaves the office.

While the boyfriend still sleeps, I get to procrastinate being any sort of productive by blogging. Two posts in a row is a new record for me. Heh heh. At least for this year.

When student teaching starts, I plan to still work anywhere from 30-50 hours a week, depending on how many hours I get at my second job. With that being said, I'm going to be even busier than I was the past few semesters- which I admit, I didn't think was possible! The past few days I woke up at 6am to go to the gym before work. I think that as long as I have really good discipline, I can get everything that I want to get done done. Here's hoping for the best.

Today, we're going to the Cheesecake Factory for a midday lunch/dinner and to walk around these shops that (I think) are right near the restaurant. I need to go to Sephora. I've started wearing makeup again and my tinted moisturizer is embarrassingly old. Once I get my new stuff, I may do a review of the makeup that I use. I am obsessed.

Anyway, today I'm showing you a manicure I wore last week. See, even though I don't *actively* post, I do try to paint my nails! I'm even gonna paint them today! ;D I rebelled and wore bright pink even though it's winter. I mean, I usually don't care about that type of thing, but winter kills my mood and makes me typically wear dark shades.

I feel like I've been using a lot of essie polishes lately. This is Essie Peach Daiquiri (the name is delicious enough) with an accent of Essie Beyond Cozy. I absolutely ADORE Beyond Cozy. I think it's gorgeous. I literally feel like I'm wearing the most beautiful diamond ring when I have this on my accent finger. I get so many compliments on manis like this. They're simple, but easily noticable.

This mani lasted almost a week with some minor chips. The formula on both polishes were outstanding, but I had some SLIGHT visible nail line (VNL) with Peach Daiquiri. I could've stood to do one more coat, but I didn't entirely feel like it.

What do you think?

blue abstract gradient

Hi ladies, happy SUNDAY! I am beginning a little mini vacation from the horrible stresses of work. I'm super excited. I took four days off to go up to the bf's lake house to simply relax, unwind, and spend some time together. It couldn't possibly be any more needed than it is right now.

I start my student teaching in 15 days, and I need some relaxation before that. I'm excited to start but at the same time I'm also a bit nervous. It'll certainly be exciting to break into my field of study more. I love kids, and I'm so passionate about education. 

Anyway, as I try to add some nail art to my schedule, I decided to do a blue gradient. I recently got new glasses that have a blue ombre side- I guess you could say I was inspired by that. 

 

I used two coats of Essie Lilacism for my base then sponged on more Lilacism and Essie Butler Please. These colors are so fun together! I was worried that Lilacism would be too purple-toned but this worked out nicely. The formula on Butler Please is amazing, and the formula for Lilacism is typical of a really light polish. I did my best to not have any evident bare spots, and the sponging on of the gradient definitely helps with this. I sponged on two times, not just once.

This type of manicure is one that people really do notice. I had a bunch of people who don't usually notice my nails stop and point them out.

What do you think?

making a comeback.

HELLO! I've taken an unintentional almost month-long hiatus, but I'm back now (I hope). If at least just a weekly post, that's certainly better than nothing. I guess like many others (at least I think) the upcoming new year has me thinking about resolutions and bad habits I've acquired this year. Read: my constant lack of blogging and my horribly inconsistent healthy eating and gym visits. Those are really the only two things I'd like to change. I'm quite happy with everything else... 

I'm dating someone amazing who I love very much... I can't remember the last time I was able to say that, but I am so grateful for him. Work is good, which thus means money is good... which will hopefully also mean my savings account gets to see some of that. I'm also starting my student teaching the end of January which I'm so very excited/extremely nervous for. 

I'm hoping to get back to posting here regularly because I have so many exciting things going on that I need to share with the world! :) For now let me share some of my recent manicures that haven't been featured in blogland yet. 

 

I wore this on Christmas. Candy canes! 

 

This one I wore to my family Christmas party. Not crazy about the colors but I was in love with this rhinestone tree!

 

This was my first encounter with rhinestones, and as you can tell from all of these manis I am OBSESSED ! 

My nails have been pathetically naked for about five days now, but I'm about to dazzle them up for New Years Eve, my FAVORITE HOLIDAY! I still don't know what the boy and I are doing but I'm super excited! This'll be my first NYE as a 21 year old ;D 

Now time to go do my nails and get myself ready for bed. I have an early wakeup for work tomorrow. Have a great (& safe) New Years, everybody!

weekend recap- mani & all

Hello hello! Back from my amazing weekend away and thus back to reality. I usually work the entire weekend, so I never have anything to "recap" on Mondays... however, I'm taking advantage of this whole having a weekend off thing, so I'm going to recap!

I worked during the day on Saturday, but I had the night off so the bf and I left for his lake house early Saturday evening. We went bowling and hung out with his friends Saturday night. Long story short, I'm a horrible bowler. The last two times I bowled strikes, however. Not sure how that happened because I completely bombed the rest of the game. Sunday morning we got to sleep in, which was glorious. B insisted on having the wood stove going before I got up so I laid in bed which he started the fire. Let me tell you, a lake house in the middle of the woods with a wood stove and a guy as amazing as B is this girl's dream come true.

After moseying around the house being lazy for a few hours on Sunday, we went into town and had lunch at this cool place called the Gypsy Joynt. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was awesome, too. Then we Redboxed a movie and got some dinner food (read: Spongebob mac & cheese, popcorn and some Goldfish) and headed back to the house. It was sooooo nice to relax. The lake house has a sauna that we got to use Sunday night which was the cherry on top of a perfect weekend.

Getting back to work this morning downright sucked, but it was nice to get away if only for a day and a half. The mani I'm showing you today was done on Friday night. I'm actually still wearing it now, with minor chip wear.

 

This is two coats of Essie Sew Psyched with Essie Beyond Cozy accents. I used a pointed q-tip to create the polka dots on my pointer finger, and scotch tape to create the solid, straight lines on my other nails. 

The formula on SS was great and the color is awesome. Slight shimmer, green, grey-ish? Perfection. The BC spiced it up a LOT and the two colors looked great together. Formula on both gets an A+. I love Essie, and I always forget how much I love it until I use it again. Essie wears very well on my nails. Not much tipwear and barely any chipping after 3-4 days is awesome in my book, and hard to come across for me with my busy lifestyle.

 

 I am obsessed with rings- here's another I got that I had to show you all. I just bought earrings at Express that match this almost identically. 

And I'll leave you with this beautiful picture I took on the lake while I was away this weekend. This was about an hour before sunset. Ah, how I long to go back...

 

pretty edgy and beyond cozy

Hello, hello! I am back! Sometimes I get so busy and it becomes near impossible to get a post up. My goal for posts is this:

Sunday/Monday blogazon roundup

Tuesday off topic tuesday

Wednesday Thursday Friday nail posts

Saturday Sunday off, unless I have something to post

It's seriously my goal to regulate this this week and get things onto a regular schedule. Even though it's Sunday I do have a nail post for you! This is one of my favorite manicures as of late and it's a simple one. I got both of these polishes at my new job. Check it out:

 

Shown is two coats of Essie Pretty Edgy on four of my nails. Three coats of Essie Beyond Cozy is on my accent nail. Pretty Edgy is a color I wouldn't normally purchase. With my short nails, I feel like I can pull off anything. I'm finally embracing them. ;D The formula on it is great, and it's the perfect green. I wore this manicure for four days with very limited tipwear and no chips. It's also SO shiny! I topped it with some Seche but it still stands out as being so shiny. Someone actually commented on how shiny it is. 

Beyond Cozy is from the brand new 2012 Winter Collection. We just put it out out at work. I wasn't immediately in love with the collection, but after taking a closer look at Beyond Cozy, it seemed awfully reminiscent of one of my faves of 2012, China Glaze's I'm Not Lion. I'll have to do a comparison of these two. I'm not a huge gold person but something about this gold glitter just calls to me! I probably wouldn't wear it on its own as a full mani but for accents, it's perfect. Application on this one was great and I probably could've gotten away with 2 coats but 3 just seemed to be better (maybe all in my head...). 

What do you think?

HAPPY SUNDAY, by the way! I work every Sunday always but I have this Sunday off. Just doing my routine tutoring then heading to SIX FLAGS for Fright Fest! So excited. Hoping the bad weather holds off at least for a while so I can enjoy my day outdoors.

autumn leaves

Growing up, fall was always my favorite season. As I've gotten older, I tend to enjoy summer more. No classes, warm weather, more opportunities to travel and vacation... but as a kid, fall what were it was at. I loved the changing leaves, playing outside after school in the crisp weather with my neighbors, going to the Big E, camping... the memories go on and on.

Today's manicure was inspired by something I saw on The Nail Network. I tried to copy this look in its entirety, minus a few color changes. I love everything about her blog; I suggest you check it out! Anyway, I found this manicure by googling "autumn leaves mani." I wasn't entirely impressed with some of the others but I loved this particular one. Here it is:

My version didn't come out perfectly but I was happy with the finished product. I first painted on two coats of Essie A Lot Of Shekels which is my go-to sheer pink/nude French manicure shade. Every time I use it, I fall more and more in love with it. I think it's an older color, because I got it in a clearance bin at a beauty supply store (actually, at the one I'll be working at starting next week!). Great clearance bin find.

I then freehanded some French manicure tips with OPI Warm & Fozzie (bottle pictured in the picture above). W&F is such a great fall shade! It's got so much depth to it. I swatched W&F on its own here, if you're curious! ;D The French tips don't have to be completely perfect because you end up stamping over them anyway. I used two coats of W&F to get this look.

For the leaves, I used image plate bm04 from bundle monster's first collection. I tried a whole TON of different colors to stamp the leaves but a lot just wouldn't show up well over my base. I ended up with a brown/orange, Love & Beauty Brick, and a red, OPI Revved Up & Red-y. Brick is actually a brown but looks more like burnt orange stamped. I wish I could've gotten more colors to work.

I'm eager to try this look again with different shades or even a different variation (ie butterflies instead of leaves, or snowflakes??). I'll leave you with two pictures I took at Ashley Reservior in the town next to mine in little old Western Massachusetts.

 

My foliage mani WITH some foliage! Couldn't pass up this shot.

This picture was edited on Instagram to show the depth of the foliage. I love this time of year.

What do you think of my autumn mani? Do the leaves change color like this where you're from?

inspired by... gray cheetah

Hello hello! Happy Friday! As of late I haven't been working on Fridays, just babysitting for a few hours. So glorious! Especially with my newfound constant headaches. I had a CT scan yesterday for them so hopefully we can find out what's wrong. Not sure if it's due to nerves or something but I haven't been able to get much good sleep the past few nights, most especially last night. It was a battle the whole night. I just felt like shit and kept waking up every hour, nearly right on the hour. Ugh. 

Now for the good news, I got the job I interviewed for the other day. It's at a beauty supply store that sells OPI, Zoya, China Glaze, Essie, Color Club, pretty much everything. AhHhHhHh.. I am so excited. I get everything either 50% off or at cost... come to mama, OPI! I can't wait. It's only part-time, so probably like 20 hours or so, but that's okay. :D

Today's manicure was inspired by this bracelet:

 

Gray cheetah print is really popular in clothing and accessories, and it's something I've never attempted before. I really like how this came out. I just wish I had a lighter gray to use as the base, and use the gray I did use for accents on the cheetah print with the black. I used two coats of Essie Power Clutch from last year's fall collection, my one and only gray. The black is Fingerpaints Black Expressionism and I sponged on China Glaze Silver Lining on my thumb, pointer and pinky. I used the same silver glitter to accent the cheetah. 

What do you think?

pastel tribal nails

Not feeling too talkative so I'll get right into my notd. I was feeling very inspired last night. I originally planned to do a solid nude color with black stamping, but I saw this manicure using the exact same stamp I planned to use and I loved this way more.

 

For this manicure, I started off with a base of OPI Alpine Snow- just one coat. I then painted on stripes with my three pastel colors. Using white under any polish will simply make it brighter on the nail. I started painting without a white base and I just didn't like how it looked. 

On the bottom-most part of my nail near the cuticle is Piggy Polish Poet-tree. The middle is Essie Tart Deco, and the top (and bottle shown in my pictures) is China Glaze For Audrey. I started with the green, then did the blue. I then went halfway between the two to add a stripe of the coral. All of that polish looked pretty clumpy, but I smoothed it out with a coat of Seche Vite (after letting it dry a long time; no way was I gonna mess this one up). After waiting a while, I stamped using Fingerpaints Black Expressionism with bundle monster image plate #315. I love this image! Absolutely love it.

All of the polish I used cooperated quite well. I have no complaints with this manicure. In some areas my stamping was a little funny but I've gotten so many compliments on this manicure; others don't really notice the imperfections quite like your own self does. 

What do you think? Do you like my color choice? What about the tribal look?

Feeling Grey: Welcome Back, Nails!

Finally, it's time to get back up on the saddle! I took a few days (erm.. maybe a little longer) off to collect my thoughts and try to get things back in order in my personal life but I am (hopefully) baaack! I think I'm officially ending my participation in the challenge. I sort of feel like a quitter but it's hard to get back into it. 

Things are hopefully getting back on track in my personal life. I've found a possible new job opportunity (FINGERS CROSSED FOR ME) and I just started talking to a new, absolutely amazing guy. Hoping both of these things continue to go well for me. It's nice to come out of a dark phase to some amazing, positive things. 

This is the first manicure I painted to get back into things. I was feeling very grey so I decided to use a grey polish for the first time. I only own this one, and I only bought it so I could one day do newspaper nails. I still have yet to do that. But, whatever. This is Essie Power Clutch.

 

This is two coats of Essie Power Clutch. I used Essie A Cut Above on my middle finger and Essie Stroke of Brilliance on my ring finger. These are both from the Luxeffects collection. Love these glitters! 

Do you own any of the Luxeffects? How about Power Clutch? What do you think?

Day 12: STRIPES

Hey hey! :) Happy hump day. I worked a realllly short shift today and planned to be super productive afterwards... that plan completely died. I came home and got pizza for lunch with my mom. We watched The Voice while we ate lunch. It was nice to spend some time together. :o) Not to mention I am becoming obsessed with The Voice. Arrrgh! Blake Shelton + Adam Levine.. and Michael Buble is joining the mix as a mentor... can it get any better? I'm in a picture mood today... here is Blakie & Adam if you have no idea who I'm talking about (or if you want a photographic reminder ;D).

 

YUM. I will take the both of them. But mainly Blake. Really. 

 

I've seen Michael Buble in concert twice. The second time, we were in the 2nd row and I touched his
hand as he walked by. By touched, I actually mean grabbed & wouldn't let go of. *swoon*

Ok. Done swooning. Back on task, back on task. I did like three different manicures for this striped theme but the first two sucked. My Seche kept ruining them.. and the colors weren't working out. So, I decided to revert back to what I like to call old faithful:

This is Essie Ole Caliente and China Glaze I'm Not Lion. I'm practically obsessed with how these two polishes look together. I can't even handle it. =O I'm just in awe. I've never striped it like this before, but I figured why not go for the gold. This was so easy to do. I slapped on a few coats of polish, a layer of Poshe (because Seche is being pissy), then used Scotch tape to add the lines. I love the middle two fingers where there's just one vertical line. So cute!

Let me leave you with a REALLY funny picture. I found this one when I was browsing on my Facebook for a picture of Michael Buble. This was my OPI stash circa April 2011. This means I've accumulated over 400 polishes in about seventeen months....

 

My caption on Facebook for this one was "This is $100 worth of polish..I think I have a problem" HAHA!

Day 10: GRADIENT

Hi guys! This is a manicure I'm really excited about! Today is day ten, gradient day! For today, I decided to use this tutorial from The Nailsaurus. I used colors sort of similar to the ones she used because I loved how they looked. I've done a ton of glitter gradients but I wanted to try a color gradient with some solid cremes. I fought the urge to add glitter to this manicure. Well, here it is:

I took this picture to show a friend this hair treatment I got, 

and I LOVED how my nails looked in this picture!

This manicure was really hard to photograph, but I got a few color-accurate shots. It looks awesome in person. I'm loving this. I used two coats of Essie Art Deco and I sponged with that & Essie Watermelon. These colors look awesome together, and the gradient was really easy to do. I followed the tutorial completely to get this look. 

If you've never tried this look, I definitely recommend it! It was much easier than I expected!

Day 9: RAINBOW

Happy Sunday, my fellow polish fiends! Today is day nine of the challenge! For today, the theme is rainbow! I can honestly say I've never done a full-out rainbow manicure. There's gotta be a first for everything, right?!

 To me, the "rainbow" idea is a little daunting because of how many colors it requires... I am not an artistic person, and sometimes matching colors is hard for me (i.e. which "purple" or "green" is right). I was a little nervous about this challenge day. The fact that there was so much creative liberty scared me. Red is red. Blue is blue. Polka dots are polka dots. Stripes are stripes. But rainbow? You can do anything with rainbow. Ahhhh! The possibilities are endless.

I ended up with a rainbow base and a black stamped manicure. Check it out.

 

My first thought process was.. roygbiv = 7, my fingers = 5. This is where the idea to do half-colors on my nails came from. Then... I stamped.

 

I'll list the colors I used from pinky->thumb:

pinky: OPI Overexposed In South Beach, Love & Beauty Dark Purple

ring finger: China Glaze Shower Together, Brash Electric Sky

middle finger: OPI Don't Mess With OPI, Piggy Polish Poet-Tree

pointer: Zoya Pippa, Essie Meet Me At Sunset

thumb: Essie Ole Caliente, Cult Nails Evil Queen

HOLY POLISH! I've never used this many colors in one manicure! It was a lot of fun to do, though, that's for sure. I used however many coats it took to reach full opacity. For the yellow, it was a few more than for the red. Actually, I only used one coat for my thumb nail- Cult Nails polishes rock! 

I stamped with bm-205. I really like this butterfly/bow-looking image. It looks whimsy & fun over the rainbow design, something different.

What do you think? Are you wearing rainbow today, too?

 

Day 8: METALLIC

I've made it through a full week of the challenge! Wahoo! I wasn't sure if I'd make it, because let me tell you: painting your nails every. day. and working full-time and going to school is HARD work! It's a great feeling to get a brand new post up on the blog every day, though. I hate hate hate not being able to update regularly, so I try my hardest to fit it into my schedule, no matter how busy I am. 

Today is day eight of the challenge: metallic nails! I only own a few metallic polishes, but one of my untrieds just so happens to be Essie Penny Talk from Essie's recent Mirror Metallics Collection. I'm trying to use untrieds for this challenge, so Penny Talk fit the bill!

 

After wearing Penny Talk by itself, I decided to add some stamping to see how that would change it up. The image plate I used is bundle monster-322 (I usually forget to add in which plates I used but I'm getting better at that!). I used two coats of Essie Penny Talk and stamped with the same black you saw yesterday, Nina Ultra Pro Black. 

My stamping wasn't perfect but I'm happy with it! As for the Essie, application wasn't horrible, but this polish will show any and all imperfections on the nail, so beware! That's just the nature of metallics. I've heard that this line by Essie is much better than some others.

What do you think!? Are you a fan of metallics?

Zoya Jo and Essie LuxeEffects Stroke of Brilliance

Howdy! Having a pretty productive morning- got some good sleep, went to the gym, had a good breakfast and now having lunch and getting this post up! I work 12-8 today... yuck. Looking forward to getting out of work tonight- playing some night tennis! Night tennis is always a lot of fun. 

I bought Stroke of Brilliance from Essie's Luxe Effects collection when I was at Transdesign in Georgia last month. I've been trying to decide what to do with this for weeks! Here's what I tried-

This is two coats of Zoya Jo and one coat of Essie LuxeEffects Stroke of Brilliance on my ring and middle fingers. I'm sorta mad with how this came out- not the colors, but the potential Seche shrinkage? I've never had this happen before but it's really annoying. It's like tipwear without actually doing anything to have tipwear happen. It's very faint but it pisses the perfectionist in me off. Might be time to switch back to Poshe.

Do you ever have Seche shrinkage? Which is your top coat of choice?

¡Esto es muy caliente!

Sometimes (read: all of the time) it's so hard to pick out a color to use. Today, I decided to pick out two! I've been staring at China Glaze I'm Not Lion since I first picked it up at Transdesign. I hate gold jewelry and any variation of it... that usually translates to nails, clothing, shoes... etc. This was not the case with I'm Not Lion. I was infatuated with it. It's even prettier on the nail than in the bottle, and it looks great with the Essie I paired it with. See for yourself! 

(sorry for how small these are today! you can click on them to make them bigger.)

I used Essie Ole Caliente -- this is a red-orange-and sort of pink creme-y goodness. I was just thinking earlier how much I disliked Essie's formula sometimes, then this polish came back to make me take back my words. The formula on this was AMAZING. So easy to work with. I got barely anything on my cuticles/skin because it was just so agreeable. You see China Glaze I'm Not Lion (from the recent Safari collection) on my middle & ring fingers. Isn't is great? I like the mixture of creme & glitter here- it's a lot of fun. What do you think?

Good Intentions... So-so Execution: Stamped Ombre Nails!

Sometimes I get cool ideas in my head, but due to a lack of creativity/artistic ability I just can't execute them as well as I had originally planned.. that's not exactly what happened with this manicure.. I'm blaming the stamping plate here. It just wasn't agreeing with me for some reason. I decided to try an ombre mani using various oranges. I wasn't sure how I'd like the look plain, so I decided to stamp over it. Here it is!

I was trying to pose my hand in a way as to cover up the nails that didn't look so hot and this little guy landed on me... thought it was pretty funny lol!

Colors Used: thumb -> pinky Essie Tart Deco, Fingerpaints Original Orange, OPI A Good Man-darin Is Hard To Find (middle & ring), Essie Meet Me At Sunset

I wish this manicure came out better because I'm in love with it, but I guess it's okay... when I get my new Bundle Monster plates in I'm going to try these same colors with a different stamp over it to see how that looks.. I might even make that my first vacation mani! So excited! 6 days until my road trip!