Per request (thanks Shannon!) a real honest to goodness Hello Kitty manicure. See, I wasted the first title, “Hello Kitty Nails”, on the Hello Kitty brand polish I bought last year… and it’s been bugging me ever since, seeing people search for Hello Kitty nail art and end up on this site with bupkis. Problem [...]
Last month Marra sent in a request for Team RumBelle nails — I confess I wasn’t familiar with the term, though apparently it’s awfully big on Tumblr — from the ABC show Once Upon A Time. I watch that show too (let’s face it, the tv is nearly always on around here, it’s good background [...]
Just in under the wire, I got it done this weekend! My personal pledge for this week: More balance. More me time. Which means, more manicures. Last week took all the gas out of me and that’s just no way to function. And I can’t take care of other people if I don’t take care [...]
Quick post — I know I’ve been off the radar, it’s been completely unintentional and I totally don’t want to rehash what a nightmare this week has been… BUT I *will* be at Belladonna Day Spa in Uptown New Orleans tomorrow as part of their Mother’s Day Celebration from noon til 5 doing demos and [...]
As if I’d let the opportunity pass to do a Mexican themed mani! The rub: I’d already done the doggies on my right hand and really didn’t want to take them off, so I used the nail transfer technique over there on the sidebar to paint some designs and apply them to my sad, neglected, [...]
Another one for the local pride pile, lemme tell you about one of the best parts of my neighborhood: Belladoggie. It’s a dog resort and spa a quick walk from my house that has more than I’ve ever seen done in one place for dogs. The two-story building sat untouched for years til owner Kim [...]
S&A requested some owl nails awhile ago (since unintentionally taking the week off last, I’m feeling horribly backlogged so you’ll be seeing acrylic stuff for a little bit here — more standard/easy manis soon, promise) and hooray, I finally got to it last night! I wanted to do cartoon owls on all of ‘em, but [...]
How is it we’re half way through Jazz Fest already?! This year is going by so quickly… But this was a mani I’ve had noodling for awhile, partly because I had this yellow to test out but mostly because I love the iconography of Jazz Fest. In case you aren’t familiar with the festival/haven’t been [...]
I’m not even going to pretend I know what these are — but honestly, any request that comes in I’m going to execute (I’m a big believer in passionately adoring something, so if you’ve got a bug I’m happy to support it), and even if I don’t fully grasp all of these it was a [...]
Having worked in design for more years than I care to admit, I’ll confidently call this one: the two-color combo you’ll see more than anything else in the corporate world has got to be blue and orange, hands down. It’s got a lot to do with the psychology behind the colors — orange stimulates socialization [...]
a-england, per usual, knocks it out of the park with Order Of The Garter. It took 3 coats for a solid finish, but I don’t mind being that extra-layer-patient with something so beautiful — just look at that sparkle! While the polish was still wet (it doesn’t dry super fast) and my computer was running [...]
Whooooosh there goes Monday! Sorry for not getting this posted earlier today — I really should know better than to schedule any personal stuff on a Monday since it’s notoriously a whack-a-mole day work-wise. Better late than never though, right? First, the mani. I’ll tell ya, this one drove me a little bonkers. I actually [...]
Well that was worth waiting by the mailbox for. Deborah Lippmann’s Private Dancer, a deep purple mirrored chrome, showed up today (along with some buddies, oh boy oh boy) and I had to try it on immediately. It’s not the thickest polish — took three coats to get it opaque, which for me just means [...]
Not to get on a New Orleans tear this week, but let me tell you about another cool thing I got to do recently: volunteer at Second Harvest Food Bank of New Orleans and Acadiana. My friend was taking a group from her work to spend some time packaging produce for distribution and I hopped a [...]
Here’s the current polish pickle (oh woe is me with all these pretty polishes!) — I’ve got a new batch of nail polishes sitting in my kitchen and I’d say about 75% of them are so pretty I don’t want to do a single thing to them. Sparkly and holo and ridiculously gorgeous on their [...]
This past weekend was one of those rare blocks of time that I really and truly take off of work — no “quick” tasks, no checking in via email, nada — and what a weekend to do it! Over 500,000 people stormed the French Quarter in New Orleans for the French Quarter Festival Thursday through [...]
Welp, finally done did it. Full on rhinestones, no mucking about. Maya sent in a request a few weeks ago for a tutorial on how to do the full-cover bling nails, so I went for it with the first round of colors from a new wheel (for the record, it took about 2/3 of one [...]
Geez this week is flying by! Had to whip out something quick for today so did a marble technique on a bit of parchment paper to create some color-darted layers using a few colors from the China Glaze Hunger Games Collection — Fast Track (sparkly coffee ice cream color, reminds me of China Glaze Classic [...]
Know what color I haven’t done in awhile and is perfect for spring? Yellow! For the base of this I started with two coats of China Glaze Lemon Fizz, then sponged in some OPI The “It” Color (because I haven’t sponged for a spell either). Once that dried I used Kleancolor Black to draw in [...]
Before we get into the fun stuff, the nails: the base on this is two coats of China Glaze Stone Cold, a graphite matte polish (did I realize it was matte when I pulled it off the shelf? Of course not, because I’m too lazy to check these things!) so before I went and screwed [...]
Obviously. Having plowed through all of the An Idiot Abroad series (and loving it/Karl’s general Karl-ness), in recent months I hooked on to the animated series on HBO, The Ricky Gervais Show (culled from audio recordings of Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington’s record-setting podcast series from the mid 2000s). Here’s the thing: calling it [...]
Growing up, there were a lot of Sandra Boynton items around: books, bedding, nicknacks, kitchenware, all of it. I’m not even sure which of my parents’ houses was the biggest offender, but I DO remember it was my mom’s house that had the “A Twenty-One-Bun Salute” coffee mug. Didn’t matter that the woman had like [...]
The search box below will help if you're looking for a specific polish, otherwise you can use the links further down the sidebar to browse by nail polish color, theme, brand, whatever!
I looooove getting ideas from people for what to do for the more intricate nail designs — use the email link up above to shoot me a note and I'll add your idea to the list! (because yes, there's a list, but it's AWESOME.)
If you see a design you'd like to try but want me to post a breakdown on how to actually do it, shoot me an email -- I'm happy to explain anything!
