Love is in the air. It's Valentine's Day tomorrow! One of my favorite holidays. Valentine's day is largely disputed among middle school. Some like it, some hate it. To us, the only thing that ever seems to be circulating in our head besides hormones is who we are currently "dating" if anyone. It sounds sad considering the fact that most of us don't even actually go out on "dates". Because obviously, we're too young, as most of you are thinking right now. I am not at liberty to discuss my thoughts on that.
For most, not even just middle and high schoolers, but for a lot of people, Valentine's Day is about your significant other. You take the time to realize how much they mean to you. You thank them for being there for you, for actually giving you the time of day, for loving you. But Valentine's Day is also about realizing how much you love your family. You don't always have to have a significant other to celebrate Valentine's Day.
Love. To be spent with family, or a significant other if you're lucky to have one. Always fun. In elementary school, we'd walk around the classroom and give our friends fun little cards we got from Wal-Mart that had cute pictures of barbie or Toy Story. The Valentines would always have crude little messages that were very punny. Like BEE my Valentine or I LUV YOU 2. Messages we didn't mean or know about but thought looked cool. We'd make boxes and get to sit around all day and eat the candy that we got. A little party would be thrown. To this day, i still have no idea why they celebrated it, but I didn't want to question the idea of getting free candy. It's as wonderful as Halloween!
Of course, I had to do Valentine's nails. But my camera is acting up and doesn't seem to like me. Bear with me.
Paint a base coat with light pink. I actually used a light pink at my friend Mckenzie's house but this was the exact same color just a different brand.
Thanks to the gorgeous red crackle my aunt gave me for my birthday, I have this creation. I put on one thing coat and surprisingly, the polish crackled the exact way I wanted it. Usually, it takes me a while t get the hang of the crackle but this was perfection.
Yeah, like I said, my camera is not my bestfriend right now. I guess I'll just have to tell you and let you imagine it. Yes, I want you to visualize. I took a silver striper and put french tips on the four of my connected fingers and a big silver heart outline on my thumb. In my opinion. They look totally cute. I absolutely love this polish. The crackle kind of gives it a zebra/ tiger kind of look, maybe I could do this alone... Oh the ideas...
What I used:
Max Factor Diamond Hard Formula
OPI Red Crackle
Kiss Nail Art Sliver Glitter Striper
But anyway. May your day be full of love! From friends, from family, even saying hello to your neighbor! I hope your Valentine's Days will be splendiferous!
And to get into the splendiferous mood, listen to this while painting your LOVEly nails:
Everyone does it, some more than others. They fail. It could be a quiz, homework, an art project at home. For some (like me) it could be giving yourself a bad mani. It doesn't have to be every time you take a quiz, or make an art project. But once in a while, things don't turn out the way you'd like it to. I know most of you right now are going, "So, what's the big deal? It's just nails," while others are going, "Oh no! That stinks!" either sympathetically or sarcastically.
For me, it's usually a big deal when I fail. This weekend, I found out something about my nail skills, I cannot do animal prints. I just can't. I tried this leopard print tutorial over at Steph's Closet. It seemed simple to me. I'm not really a leopard kinda gal (more of a zebra kinda gal. I LOVE zebra, almost more than the Muppets, but not quite), but I gave it a shot anyway. It looked cute on her. Of course, I'm one of those girls who always likes things when others do it, but I never like my own. Anyone else like that? Well I tried it on Friday night, and I didn't really like it, It looked like someone had strangled a cheetah and stole patches of it's spots. But it was a first time try so I didn't let it get me down too much. Too bad I didn't take a picture of it.
Well if you know me, then you know that Saturdays are gymnastics days. On Saturdays I go to the YMCA in Watertown to practice and assist coaches, (like my mom and my awesome coach and friend Carolyn hehe) in gymnastics. Well, being my blonde self, (no offense to blondes elsewhere, I'm sure you have much more common sense than I) I put a topcoat on when I woke up, hoping that my nails would be dry by the time I got to the gym. Well you can guess what happened right?
I knew you could. So those are my nails, and my rolling around and helping little Tumbling Tigers kinda pushed my nail polish back a little. Go figure. It was probably a sign from the Nail Fairy that my nails stunk and I needed to change them. That's the story I'm going with anyway.
So I changed my nails. I found this really cool tutorial a while back. It's so idiotically simple, and the idea was right under my nose because I had all the colors. I'm kicking myself for not thinking of this on my own. The best part, it's Louisa-proof! Yay! I got this idea from my favorite nail blog ever! Leslie at Polish Art Addiction. So here's what I did.
*This look is pretty cute. One day I could probably wear this alone.
Then I used Black Crackle from OPI to create the full effect.
It's like the scratch pads that used to bring me so much joy as a kid. HA! Who am I kidding? They still bring me joy and I'm still a kid. They are soo much fun, I am always like "OOHH Pretty Colors..." It's true. And I love Lisa Frank too. When I was little, I was in her fan club and got all this fun stuff. Which is now in the trash or in a box in our attic I must confess... but it was fun while it lasted. I'm a sucker for cute things and rainbows. A girl through and through.
I don't have all that fancy-schmancy China Glaze stuff. I not real High Maintenance when it comes to nail polish. If it looks pretty, I'll buy any kind polish you throw at me. So this is what I used. Gotten mostly from Wally World. Some stuff my aunt Colleen sent me. She has even more nail polish than I. Though I guess I've never gotten a full head count of mine. I'll get on that...
From Left to Right, I have:
Black Crackle:OPI
Pink Violets: Max Factor Diamond Hard Formula
Tulip Take-Off: Maybelline Express Finish
Key West Coral: Maybelline Great Finish
Hot Tamale: Pure Ice
Yellow Polka: Pure Ice
Beach Green: Kiss Nail Art Paint Stripers
Free Spirit: Pure Ice
Pool Party: Pure Ice
Celestial: Pure Ice
No Means No: Pure Ice
So that's how I failed and what I did to fix it. And a hint on my next post: I'm doing something big, it'll take me a while, I've done it before. It's a D.I.Y. and it's for someone that I love very much. Try to guess while I'm failing at that to. And here's some good nail painting music for good measure.
