Crafty Shenanijinks = Coloring Life Outside the Lines: The Nails Have It!!!

Hello All,

So here I am still being my BAMFing self and it's March!!! The third month of the year is in full swing and I'm swinging with it. I've been crafting and writing and guess what... Doing nail art! GASP! I know!

So I have like 30+ nail colors and I've decided to start using them. It's a lot of fun that takes nothing but about 10-15 minutes of your time and patience. I cannot stress this enough. It really helps your art if you give it the necessary time to dry. If you need to dance around or wave your arms like mad then do it, but give it its time. I'm guilty of trying to rush the process, but I've really improved on this.

First I did the Galaxy Nails: Blue, Purple, and Pink polish sponge painted on a black base and topped with glitter (cough cough stars). Sounds nice right? Here's the pic.

The Pics don't do it justice!!!

I always start with a Base Coat of Sally Hansen's Diamond Strength Instant Nail Hardener (to shore up weak nails, a result of my print photography class's chemicals). I followed with a coat of Sally Hansen's Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color in 370 Black Out. I find that Sally tends to have thick polishes that give me solid opacity in one coat. The sponges are your standard cosmetic wedges. I then sponged on Sally's Hard As Nails in 770 Rock Bottom(purple) and La Colors Color Craze Nail Polish with hardeners in NP424 Wired(blue) and NP383 Ballerina(pink). The glitter was Rimmel London's 60 Seconds in 831 Magic Stardust (hint hint).

Not here's where things get weird. I used a "Fast Dry Top Coat" that supposedly dries instantly. LIES It takes at least 5 minutes and even then you can still get smudges, prints, and creases. It's annoying. If you wait the required time, the results are amazing. My nails lasted a whole week and this is with me submerging my hands in water, using chemicals, and down on the floor at work doing some heavy duty hand work with carts and pallet jacks and other such nonsense.

So today I took off the galaxy paint because my left index finger finally got a chip. I was going to attempt my own version of the newsprint nails, but lo and behold I had not ONE scrap of newspaper ANYWHERE!!! So I decided to do Water Marbling to reflect my job's color scheme. Check em out!

So I've been hearing that water marbling is so hard and messy... It isn't really. I found it to be simple and fairly quick honestly. I started out with my Diamond Strength base coat and Followed with L.A. Colors in NP164 French White(duh) for my base color. I then filled a teacup with water from the tap and dropped circles of L.A. Colors NP424 Wired, Milani 84 Green Glow, and Sally's Xtreme 360 Mellow Yellow in that order. I did each color three times in the above listed order. The trick of the trade is to: 1) Use a small vessel (whatever that may be). 2) work quickly for your layers can (and will) dry in the water. And 3) PATIENCE!!! You will get it, just take your time. You must completely submerge your finger to really get the design on your nail and remember when dropping, the seeming disappearance of the polish is normal. Just keep dropping.

I also scored FOUR of the colors on my list: Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri in 375 Gone Gray, Sally's Xtreme in 150 SunKissed and 160 Cherry Red, and Sally's Magnetic Nail Color in 908 Graphite Gravity. I am stoked that I'm finding the colors I want. I also finally got Essie's Matte About You AND NYC's Matte Me Crazy top coats. Things are about to get C.R.A.Z.Y!!!

I'm going to wear these to work for sure! I already got a completely out of the blue compliment by a man tonight. He just stopped me and said, "I really love your nails." All I could do was say thanks and smile like a nutter. Oh well, I seem to be getting tons of attention with my nail art and other crafty undertakings. Little do these admirers know how close I am to total destruction, murder, and mayhem hahaha.