Resistance Is Futile!

My geek seems to be showing this week in my titles. That's ok, I have geek pride.

I'm really excited to show these nails this week.  I finished them off this afternoon, got the pictures taken, edited and watermarked and now it's time to get down to business!

The idea for these are not completely original. They were a special request base on an element of a previous design I had done for the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge in 2012. Specifically, Day 22: Inspired by a Song. The song I chose was Rollin's Band "Disconnect. You can go back my original blog post to see the original design, and the circuit board nail that was the inspiration for the special request! I decided to follow that basic color scheme and add a little bit more detail.

Now onto the pictures!

I struggled a little bit with editing the design. It was hard to not make it tooo busy.  Here's a macro shot of one of the nails.

You can see that some of the little microbeads bled the tiniest bit - but in this context - that actually added to the technical look. Overall I'm happy with how these came out, and I think it is way cooler looking than the original circuit board nail that I did. Not that the original was bad, but I'm happy that I was able to come up with something new to add to the design!

I normally don't work on custom orders until the $$ comes in but this time I decided to make an exception because I think the idea is unique enough that even if the promised payment never comes, it just may sell on E-bay. Heck, depending on the overall response, I may keep this in my regular rotation!

UPDATE: Payment has been received and the set has shipped out. I'd love to get some feedback on whether I should make another set to sell. Would *you* buy these?

I hope you enjoyed today's design! Have a groovy day!!

Return Of The Nail Art!

I've been pretty busy over the month of January! I've been keeping on track with my New Year's resolutions, filling some custom orders for nails, and helping my husband with his palm trees. In fact, Today I worked on the very plants used in the background photo for this blog and my website!

I feel like I have been completely remiss with this blog, I have been struggling with managing my time. My help is needed outside in the nursery, the new exercise regimen, all the eating of the yummy food and of course my actual nail work! I haven't even taken any pictures of my work. I think I've finally gotten a grip on all these changes and now it's time to get back to blogging!

Today's nail pictures are of the current set I have on sale on E-bay.

I originally got the concept for this nail around Christmas time but never got the chance to make it happen. I decided to go ahead and do it - because red and gold are 'any time of the year' colors. Bring on the bling! As with all my other nail tips for sale - The topcoat is Gelish.

This is my standard gradient and I thought light tone of the gold and the dark tone of the red would make a nice contrast. Here's one more shot of it.

I really like these and have worn this design on my own nails during a night out with the hubby. He very much pays attention to my nails and even had a say in which design I wore on our wedding day!

The project I have scheduled to work on this week is actually based on a request I got from a young lady who loved an element of a design I did, very early in my blog, during the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge. I will for sure be posting that because it will highlight the progress I've made in my nail art skills since I've begun this blog!

I hope you have a groovy Monday because I know I will be! I'm off to have lunch with some friends that I haven't seen anywhere from two months to over a year! Yay!

A New Year and A Not So New Outlook!!

Yay! The world didn't end, and 2013 is here! I never doubted that it would be but I thought it would be fun to celebrate that fact just because I could.

It's that time of year when we look back and then look forward. Last year was the first time in ages I'd actually made a resolution. My resolution was pretty simple - remember to eat a bunch of times a day. I've always been bad for getting caught up in what I'm doing and forgetting to eat meals. I'd fix meals for the kids and not eat any myself. I'm proud to say that over the last year, I took time to eat when I should. This year, the focus is on making sure I'm eating as good as I want to. Making sure I'm not filling up my daily calorie count with too many carbs and sugar just to make that minimum. My second resolution is to be better about making time to get my work outs in.  This second one will be made somewhat easier by the fact that on my birthday a wonderful dog came into my life, she's everything I could have wanted in a dog.  She'll be relying on me to make those trips to the park to play and do some walks with me. Funny how it is I have this tendency to make time to take care of others but not so much on taking care of myself.  Which brings me to my third and final resolution this year. Make that time for taking care of me!

That's pretty much it as far as the resolutions go. So far, so good. I've downloaded this calorie counter app on my phone and I love it. I can look up nutritional facts about pretty much everything and then decide if it's what I want to eat. Of course it also tracks my exercise too :P

As far as the nails go - I'm still going to continue my quest to keep working on my skill sets and making sum awesome nails! woohoooo!  How has your new year been? Any resolutions this year?

A little twist on a classic look

Today I am showing you some pictures of what I've been doing with my time lately. I finally got around to taking some photos. These are available for sale on ebay.

I really liked the Christmas Tree designs with the zig zag style trees and decided that would be perfect to do with mirco-beads since I have so many left from the Fish Egg Mani trend that was so hot last spring. I also took the time to use the Gelish Structure Gel to overlay the bead design. It makes for a smooth nail and keeps the beads completely secure! I have about a bazillion designs in mind for beads and other little nail art doo-dads along these lines.

Now, to the pictures!!

A macro shot of one of the nails.

The entire set.

A side view to highlight the smooth surface and 3D effect it gives.

These took quite a while to do...I spent two afternoons working on them. I apologize for the sorry state of my practice finger. What do you think? 

Making that leap

Well today I have no real new nail art. I just felt the need to share what it is I have been doing instead of blogging lately.

Over the last year I've had so many friends and family give me feedback that it's too bad I don't live closer. More than a few are aware that you can buy nail art and have asked - when am I going to start selling them? The girl at my local nail supply has even asked - Do you do that? I've even gotten requests for different designs through my website. Up to now, I have hesitated to go that route partly because of just outright fear of failure and partly because I wasn't sure what would be involved in making that happen. What are the up front costs involved for materials, where to sell it, etc?

When I started getting it from my Dad and my husband, that was it, I needed to seriously look into it. Just for the sake of simplicity, ideally I would like to have used my website. I already have a merchant account through my provider and currently use that account to accept Credit Cards for my services. I have been known to take risks to try something new, but at the same time, I like to keep an eye on my bottom line.

After a few very frustrating days, I was able to determine that my website provider required that I pay an additional fee per month to add a web store to my site. My inner cynic tells me that it's great I have so many supportive people around me, but will I be able to sell enough per month to cover the cost??

Ultimately, I decided that it wasn't worth the risk. So I looked at other options; ebay, etsy, craigslist, etc. In the meantime, I was finally able to purchase some supplies I would need and I got to work. In the end I decided to go with ebay since they are no longer charging you for a basic listing with them as a seller. Of course, that does have some limitations, but those limitations are more than acceptable to me since I'm not bringing a huge amount of inventory to the table right off.  

I took some pictures of my product and this morning I set everything all up. You'll notice I've added a link above to a complete listing of what I have available. Linked it all to my website as well...posted a few links to facebook and here I am.

I thought I would feel more nervous about this venture than I am. I'm less anxious about anyone buying them and more relieved that I did it. It's like I did it and now I can focus on making it work. I've been a firm believer that whatever you put into the things you do is what you get out of them. That's a philosophy that had one pretty good for me so far.

What do you think? Am I nuts? Would you or have you ever put yourself out there like that?

Blogging your heart out!

I don't normally do these things, but now that I actually have the time to do it - I'm all in!!

Sarah Payne has awarded me the "Blog Your Heart Out Button." How awesome! Definitely a blog for you to check out - lots of great videos about nails, make up and other fun girly stuffs. I am so tickled to have her pass this one to me cuz I love Sarah's work and am a genuine fan. Now I get to pass this along to 5 more bloggers that blog their hearts out and answer these 5 questions:


1.What/who encouraged you start blogging?
2.How did you choose what topic(s) to blog about?
3.What is something that most people don't know about you?
4.What are 3 words to describe your style?
5.What do you like to do when you're not blogging?


Here's my answers!

1.What/who encouraged you start blogging? I don't think anyone actually encouraged me as much as I was inspired by the many awesome nail/beauty bloggers out there. I've done blogging before on a few membership based community sites and I genuinely enjoyed it. I no longer maintained either blogs and I really did miss the blogging.
2.How did you choose what topic(s) to blog about? This is what I do for a living. It's never been about making money for me but doing what I love to do. I've been in the business off and on for decades and I keep going back to it...because deep down, it's what I truly love to do. I wanted to share that love and excitement I still have after 30 years of painting nails.
3.What is something that most people don't know about you? That I'm the girliest tomboy you've ever met. I like all my girly girl things but I won't let go of all that 'boy stuff' like sports, cars and comic books. Yah, I have been known to sit and work on a design while watching ESPN.
4.What are 3 words to describe your style? One of these days I'll learn to not ask my husband for help with questions like this "I hate questions like that.....you're not that simple that I can only use three words". LOL So I'm going to go with "Simple" "Direct" and "Creative".
5.What do you like to do when you're not blogging?  I love the beach!! There's nothing in the world that a trip to the beach and a few hours enjoying the sand, sun, ocean and the sea breeze cannot fix. I like being outside in general now that I mention it. Of course, I like being a Mommy and Grammy too. When I can I like to meet up with friends for lunch, dinner, drinks...just hanging out.

Now it's that time for me to pass it on to five more bloggers!!! Be sure to check out these gals and see what they have to say...and don't forget Sarah too!!

1. MsMidnightBlue's Glittery Shiny Bottles of Polish
2. Live.Laugh.Love...Nails!
3. RyCoBra's Southern Nails
4. Tip Top Nails
5. WellNailed x


If you received this award, you must pass this along to 5 bloggers that have less than 100 followers and that blog their hearts out.  Also they must answer the 5 questions above.  It's nice to learn a little something extra about each other.

 Have a groovy day and enjoy the blogs!! Much Thanks to Sarah too!!!

World Diabetes Day Mani

Good afternoon! Today is World Diabetes Day today and I had no idea until I saw this post posted by Maria at Cult Nails on facebook this morning. I spent quite a bit of time last night cruising pinterest to get some ideas and inspiration for my next manicure but I was still not feeling it. After seeing that post this morning - I knew I HAD to do it!! I have type II diabetes and many of my family and friends have both type I and type II, so it seemed the perfect thing to do today! I loved my last mani so much, it seemed hard to find something else to follow that up with.

Now, let's get to the pictures! I'm going to start with my indoor shots.

Here's a few more outdoors. I made more of an effort to catch the holo effects here. One day I will master catching the effect. 

I think I did ok catching the effect on the macro shot but you be the judge as to which is your favorite. To do this one, I started with Seche Vite clear coat, then I added Orly's Snow Cone. Then I added a thin layer of Hits' Poseidon. Poseidon doesn't have a strong color - it builds up with multiple coats but I didn't want that many coats of polish here. Then I sponged on a gradient of Hits' Apolo. Finally I stamped on a flower and then used Hits' Hefesta to create the center dot of the flower.  Finally I finished this mani with a top coat of Seche vite. 

How has diabetes affected your life and your family??