Insert Nail Art Here

I was going to have a winter-themed manicure for you today. I really was. I had my background all set, and was going to do the fancy bits as soon as I got off work. But I seem to have come down with the flu, and while I did leave work two and half hours early, the smell of polish is kind of making me gag at the moment. So later, then. In the mean time, I have a very (VERY!) subtle gradient for you, using Sally Hansen InstaDri "Blue Bye" and Brash "Blue Dream."

Here's hoping that by Friday I'm well enough to finish this one off: 

Pinterest Day

There were some awesome holiday manis floating around in the blogosphere this week. Here are a few of my favorites:

Source: canadiannailfanatic.blogspot.com via Sophia on Pinterest

Source: kaylashevonne.com via Sophia on Pinterest

Source: canadiannailfanatic.blogspot.com via Sophia on Pinterest

Source: canadiannailfanatic.blogspot.com via Sophia on Pinterest

Source: thenailasaurus.com via Sophia on Pinterest

Source: nightskynaildesign.deviantart.com via Sophia on Pinterest

I hope you all had a safe and happy holiday, regardless of what you celebrate, or just a nice few days off from work. See you Monday!

A Very Important Issue

Clearly, I need to go shopping. I've discovered I'm missing two very important colors in my polish collection: navy and green. Yes, I have navies and greens, but what I need are non-shimmery versions, and the green needs to be somewhere between true green and forest, whereas all of mine are either spring green or leaning more towards teal. Oh, the problems of polish.

For now, I will just have to suffer through with the shimmery navy blue that I got as a stopgap a few months ago, but is really closer to royal blue, which isn't the same color AT ALL.

Yes, I'm being ridiculous. I know. But the color just isn't right.

Which means, of course, that I simply must make my way to Sally's a some point this week. Oh, woe is me.

At any rate, here is the first of two snow-themed manis I have planned, using the substitute color:

For the designs, I used the dotting tools that my roommate got me for Christmas.
Colors used:
Revlon--I have lost the name of this one, sadly.
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull"
Essie "Set in Stones"
Pop Beauty "Metallica"

I was going for a "gently falling snow" look, but I forgot just how densely packed "Set in Stones" is, and I ended up with a blizzard instead! I still like the way it turned out though--it's fun to look at.

Happy Holidays!

Peppermint Sticks

Just another quickie for the holidays.

Colors used:
Pure Ice "Siren"
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull"
I just cut up pieces of scotch tape for the stripes. :)

Blessed Yule and Happy Solstice! I hope everyone is enjoying the "end of the world."

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

I can't believe I just used that as a post title. They've been playing that song twice an hour at work, and it makes me want to hurt someone now. Still, it's pretty apt for today's manicure:
 

I can't claim the idea for the Santa hats. Another nail blogger did them last week, and I thought I'd saved the image to Pinterest, but evidently I've been lax in my pinning. I only have one holiday manicure up.

I used Pure Ice "Siren," Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull," and a nail art pen for the black details. Since I used a Halloween polish on a Christmas manicure, does that make this the Nightmare before Christmas?

 

I'm so excited because all of my photos before now were taken in artificial light. But, with our new place we have so many more windows all over the house, and there's even a nice big yard, so I could use natural sunlight for the first time! Now if only our dryer would stop tripping the breaker, everything would be dandy. :)

Well, that didn't go as planned.

So you might have noticed I missed a couple of posts there. It wasn't intentional. I even had a couple of manicures in the vault so that I could post them even when it wasn't practical for me to be doing nail art. I failed to save the photos onto my computer, however, and in the move my camera ended up in the wrong box. Then the battery died, and the charger was in another, unknown box. And, well, that seems to be the story of this move. We didn't get a fridge until a week and a half after we started sleeping in the house. I say sleeping, because we are still missing at least three large pieces of furniture that have been in storage. Weather and schedules have conspired against us, so we're still mostly living out of boxes. I did, however, find my yarn, my camera, and my nailpolish--those are the most important things, right?

Speaking of things that didn't go as planned, here's the first manicure I did in the new house. This was a case where my topcoat worked against me, turning my careful designs into blurry lumps. (note to self: don't use SV on patterns with small details)

The lighting is dramatic, yes? Well, that's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. This house actually has much better light than the last place, but I did this late at night (read: missing furniture=limited lamps) and I knew they would get messed up the next day (which they did) so I wanted to get photos taken before they flaked like a ditzy cheerleader at exam time.

 

This was inspired by the song "My Favorite Things" which for some reason has become a Christmas song. It doesn't say Christmas to me, but there you are. At any rate, I do love the song and used S•X•Y "Dreamy Cocoa" to create brown paper packages, and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri and Pure Ice "Siren" to tie them up with string. On my pinky, I had a smudge, which I covered up with a decorative bow--realizing after the fact that it would be upside down to everyone but me. 

This is why I am not Polish Insomniac. I shouldn't be allowed to do creative things after 10pm. I tend to get a little....too creative.

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I have been as active in the nail blogging community lately. It's not that I'm blogfadding or anything, but life has been happening and after a summer filled with nail art, everyone now seems to be focusing on swatches. And swatching primarily the same things. 

Boring. 

So while I may not post as often as some, I do promise that this blog will be swatch free (unless I find something that I'm SUPER excited about, and simply MUST share) and hopefully a little more interesting because of it. 

See you on Monday.

The Ghost of Wednesdays Past

Over the past couple of months, I've done a lot of thinking, and I've come to several realizations. Basically what they come down to, is that I will no longer be doing Wednesday posts on this blog.

I love blogging. I love nail art. But nails are just a hobby for me. They're something fun that I do when I need a creative break, and something that brightens my day when I'm at work. I don't do this professionally, and I probably never will.

What I do do professionally, I would like to change. And over the past six months it has become increasingly clear that if I'm every going to get out of my current job, it's going to be by going into business for myself. After five years in retail, no professional experience, and graduate work that is completely useless where I currently life, most potential employers just toss my resume aside as soon as it crosses their desk.

In order to work for myself (i.e. writing and designing full time), I need to be able to dedicate more of my time and energy to that. This means cutting back on several things, but the biggest one is time spent online in a non-professional/promotional/research capacity, since I could easily spend all day playing Threads of Mystery on Facebook or watching videos of kittens caught in hamster balls on YouTube.

This includes nail blogging. Trying to come up with 2-3 really cool nail art ideas and the time to execute them every week is a challenge, and when my nails are wet, I can't knit. I love doing it, but I don't want to have to force myself to do it every week, particularly when I have other things that need done.

In the past two years, I've accomplished a lot of things: I bought my first new car. I got a promotion. I moved out of my parent's house, and for the first time, some paid me for my writing and my patterns.

Over the next two years, I want to do bigger and better things. It is my goal to publish a novel (or two or three) and at least one knitting book. To that end, it is time that I turned my focus in that direction.

I will still be around on Mondays and Fridays, but my posts will probably be much shorter than they were over the summer. I won't be doing swatches, because, really, I don't like looking at post after post of swatches. I started this blog for nail art and bargins, and that is what I'm going to keep here. I may, in the future, have to go down to one post a week. We'll see. But for