Half Moon + Polka Dots

Another one of those looks that was better in my head than in real life. I'm currently working my way through my polish rack, trying to give some love to many polishes which haven't been used in a LONG time. This brown is actually a franken I made before I knew that anyone else did that sort of thing.

Long side note: Six weeks after my 4th baby was born, fibromyalgia descended like a load of bricks out of a dump truck. Among the many ways I have tried to deal with it was a long phase of treatment from this book. It didn't work for me, but during that phase I bought some sal-free cosmetics here. I ended up dumping some coppery brown loose mineral eyeshadow into a polish I didn't like, and tada! I never even named it...maybe I'll go back and do that!

So, it being late spring, I wasn't really excited about going into my brown stash. I thought pink (Sinful Colors Pink Forever here) would be a good pairing, and it might have been with a shade a bit lighter. But I was going for something that wouldn't require a gazillion coats over the brown, or laying it down first and then carefully painting in the half moons as I saw one blogger recommend. I did learn something cool: I was able to go back with a second coat of the pink, and it sort of reactivated the first coat, so I was able to remove the paper hole reinforcements from the half moons without messing up the lines.

The polka dots were a pain. Kudos to every nail artist out there who can achieve perfectly same-sized dots with their dotting tools. I can't. No matter how carefully I work, I can't. But really, who in real life is going to look at my nails that closely? And I did get a couple compliments on these!

Eddie Munster nails?!?!

If there was ever a testament to the painful reality of my inadequate spacial relations skills, here it is:

WTH? Jenna, what is Eddie Munster's hair doing on your tips? Sigh... OK, so, in my head this would have had an effect similar to being under a black umbrella and seeing the rain falling just past it. Only, my inability to judge distance and size meant that the scallop-edged tape I cut with my decorative scissors and used for this funky French mani didn't translate to the realization that only about two scallops would fit on each nail, thus giving the illusion of hair slicked back from a creepily Dracula-esque widow's peak. (Whew! Major run-on there.)

Oh, but here's the kicker: there's even more humorous bungling hidden in the depths of this look! The base color was a franken I made before I learned that not ALL glitter is solvent-resistant. The original color of the polish was pale peachy-pink with turquoise, orange, pink, and gold hexes mixed in with iridescent micro glitter. Once it had finished mutating into a deadly muddy grey with glitters mere ghosts of their former selves, I just happened to name it "Bride of Frankenstein". Bwahahaha! What better polish mating could there be for a look that turned out to be so hilariously horrible?! Say it with me, people: "FAIL."

Flosser Stripe Mani

I fell in love with this idea from cutepolish at first sight! It doesn't have the texture of a candy floss/spun sugar mani, but it's so much easier and less time-consuming to do! I used three coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls as my base color, then painted Sinful Colors Aquamarine and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Vigorous Violet directly onto a floss pick (not both at the same time, obviously). I also showed a little love to Sinful Colors Super Star on my trigger finger accent nails. I pretty much LOVE this look!