I’m sure you have figured out by now that “next week” can sometimes mean “next month” when it comes to my updating here 🙂 I’m sorry! I read somewhere that it’s bad to keep polish on your nails, so I actually took a lot of time off from doing manicures to give my nails a break. They broke, alright – which extended my break because they ended up in a bunch of different lengths, chipped constantly, broke, etc. It was a crap shoot from day to day. Of course, I added a quick top coat of glow in the dark polish without any base coat or top coat for Halloween and they started to turn around. So I think this “let your nails breathe” thing might be overrated for a person who keeps polish on most of the time.
Without further ado… my manicures from September & October are below. I know I did more than just these 2, but these are the only ones worth sharing.
One of my favorite discoveries to date has been following nail artists on Instagram. I found a great picture of some brick nails that were done with striping tape that I immediately had to screenshot and pin to my Mani Mania board to do later. Shout out to Amy @McPolish on Instagram for her photo! In September I finally got around to doing it when I finally found the Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Cherry Drop at the drugstore.
The nice thing about this manicure was that it really didn’t require a tutorial to replicate – it’s pretty self explanatory by looking at it. Luckily Amy mentioned that, if she’d do it again, she wouldn’t have used a textured polish for the white base, so I used Zoya Purity for the “grout” of the bricks. I then did the stripes with the striping tape. Some nails fared better than others (as you can see in the picture) but for my first attempt, it was fantastic. And it got a LOT of compliments as I was out in the world! I do think a darker red might look more like a brick, but this gave you the idea enough.
Last year I bought some Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail strips on clearance just after Halloween. I waited, clearly, until the next appropriate opportunity to use them, which was this Halloween. My costume involved white gloves, so I didn’t need to worry about matching for the costume or being within the same theme. I’m sorry that I don’t remember the name since it’s no longer available. This is only the second time I’ve used the strips, and I did better this time than the last. It helped that it was a darker background that was easier to hide some of the blemishes than the first time, which had a white background. I was very happy with this, and hope they bring back this design next year!
There you have it! So far I have one manicure for November and a Thanksgiving manicure planned! I’ll try to share those in a much more timely manner! I also bought some little caviar beads at Dollar Tree, so I’m looking forward to trying those soon too!
