Black and White TV

Have you ever watched The Twilight Zone? You have to have seen or heard of it, and if you have, you probably immediately went to black and white. Those classic mystery shows were inspiration for this far-fetched Halloween theme tonight. Though it's certainly not your typical Halloween design, it still applies.

The ombre effect was continued onto each nail, pulling out the base color from each block of three on each nail. The colors used, from darkest to lightest, are Strumming my Nails (Sation), Carey (Zoya), Movie Star (Essence) and Black Onyx (OPI).

I'd also like to take a moment to thank everyone who supported me in the Tadashi Shoji nail art contest. Unfortunately, I wasn't the winner, but the talented Sarah at Chalkboard Nails did win, and I must say I'm thrilled it was hers that won. Her freehand skills were fantastic, and the colors were a unique choice compared to all the other entries. I can't wait to see what the clutch looks like! Congratulations Sarah!

Gradient On Fire

After yesterday's inspiration fiasco, I looked to my readers on Tumblr for inspiration. I asked for ideas and some readers happily obliged. smoresz suggested: I’d love to see a smoky gray nail fading from dark to light, with a red/orange/yellow sparkle on top of it so it looks life fire and smoke! 

Ask and you shall receive...kinda.

Unfortunately this wasn't the best glitter choice for the manicure so I'm not entirely happy with the result. The gradient was done with Essence Movie Star and Zoya Carey. The glitter topcoat is Phoenix from Pretty and Polished. I wish I had an awesome metallic glitter that would've been appropriate because this beautiful matte just isn't right for the effect. Beautiful, just not right.

I hope I did your idea justice smoresz! Enjoy!

Dotting Tools...Nailed It.

I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but apparently, I am utterly unoriginal in naming my blog. I really should've done my research before deciding to use "Nailed It." as my blog's title. Let's take a look at the other blogs, also called Nailed It in some form or another. Interestingly, none of us were lucky enough to snag the URL "nailedit.blogspot.com". That goes to someone with a nerdy grudge. Instead, we nail bloggers were forced to choose a less obvious username to accompany our URLs. Here's just a few I've found:

• NAILED IT! - A woman from Washington
• Nailed It - Lisa in Florida
• You nailed it! - Renee in the Netherlands
• Totally NAILed It! - Sayra

Not to mention the countless other Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts using this popular meme phrase as their own nail tag line.

So, to those of you who happened to weed through everyone and at least find me, congrats! Though my blog's title may actually be slightly uninspired, I try not to let my nails and designs be.

Luckily, the internet is chock-full of inspiration, which I'm happy to draw from. Using my spiffy new dotting tools, I made this beautiful pattern my muse.

Gorgeous right? And just dying to be dotted out. This being my first time using the dotting tool, I was unsure how big the dots would wind up being, so in the end, adding the stitching would've made the art a little too busy. I also swapped out the burnt orange color for a hot pink. This is the final result.

I'm pleased as punch with this cute design, and beyond excited to use more dotting tools. It also feels really good to have a complete manicure that matches on all 10 fingers again. With vacation, busy weekends and swatching, my nails haven't matched since...well I think since New Year's Eve! The glimpses you've caught in swatching wasn't consistent across both hands. Take it from a Capricorn...it feels good to have everything in its place.

I used China Glaze's Electric Pineapple and Flip Flop Fantasy for some of the dots, and OPI's Mermaid's Tears for the rest. The base is Movie Star from Essence. I really love Movie Star, but I wish the bottle I had were bigger. It's a shrimpy little 0.16 fluid ounce bottle. Is this how all Essence polishes are?

Everything's topped off with my new Seche Vite, which I honestly don't understand the rage about. It dries quickly, but not too much quicker than China Glaze's Fast Forward top coat, and it smells downright toxic. Fast Forward doesn't give me the same "If I inhale much more of this I'll wind up on A&E's Intervention" feeling that Seche Vite did. It did dry in record time though, so maybe I'll have to do a side-by-side of the two to really get the full benefit of it.

Either way, the nails are dry, protected, and shiny. Not bad for a first timer eh?

UPDATE (1/22/12):

Allie-Bee asked for this tutorial. Enjoy!

Happy Go Lucky Circus

Drink in today's manicure because it will be the last scheduled one for a few weeks. I'll be travelling to land of beauty, sun and polish...Southern California. Andy's family and the majority of mine live there, so Christmas, New Years and my birthday will all be celebrated there. I've packed up my polish and supplies into a rather heavy to-go container, hoping I don't wind up missing a polish I left behind here in Boulder.

But like I said, with so much going on, I won't be dedicating every day to polishing. I'll do my best, and squeeze it in where I have time and feel like doing it, but today's may very well be the last until the beginning of January.

To celebrate the festive 17 hour drive we have to look forward to tomorrow and Sunday, I chose what some might consider to be an obnoxious amount of color. I absolutely love it, seeing as yellow's my favorite color. What're your thoughts?

I used China Glaze's Happy Go Lucky and Essence's Circus Confetti. It's so beyond fun to wear this manicure, and I'm a little upset I used it early. It's a totally appropriate birthday manicure, but when the day comes, I'll probably match my nails with what I'm doing.

So ladies, farewell until Monday at the earliest, January at the latest!

Polish on!

Reddit Secret Santa Haul & Love

Reddit alien!

This year Reddit is aiming to break a Guinness world record for the largest online Secret Santa exchange. I decided to take part in it this year for the first time.

Part of signing up means filling out a character limited profile of what you'd like to see. Of course, I put nail polish and nail art supplies.

My Secret Santa totally pulled through, and sent me a colorful and amazing rainbow of polishes I don't have in my collection yet. He also included a set of emery boards and some really unique clippers.

The clippers are shaped like a foot, with a heart-shaped piercing in the big toe. There's also a small filing pad in the middle, below the clipper handles.

So of course, I had to try them all out! What I ended up with was a pretty ridiculous set of hands, but I like them all, so they'll stay.

My Secret Santa also included a kind note, and his girlfriend made a color legend of each polish.

Thanks Secret Santa, xtremepado! You (and your girlfriend), both rock for sending these awesome colors! You made a girl very happy for Christmas.