New York Skyline Manicure for #ASE14

A few weeks ago I made my triumphant return to New York City to attend and speak at Affiliate Summit East 2014.  Since I’ve been blogging about my nails for a little over a year now, and of course sharing all of those posts to Facebook, a lot of my industry colleagues have taken notice that I have a penchant for nail art and started asking me how I was going to do my nails.

Challenge: Accepted!

At first, I was running out of time and was going to do something relatively simple.  A few months ago I ordered some Custom Minx Nail Wraps from Zazzle with this here blog’s logo.  I was stoked to wear them to BlogHer ’14 when I realized that, due to a recently broken nail, my nails were not long enough and the logo was not going to fit.  Bummer.  While my nails were slightly longer this time, they still didn’t quite feel like they’d be long enough.  So I was going to go with a very basic manicure using L.A. Colors Color Craze polishes that I grabbed at Dollar Tree a few months back.  They seemed to pretty closely match the purple and turquoise of my logo, so after I decided on what clothes I was going to take with me, I decided that mostly turquoise with purple accent nails on my ring fingers was the way to go.  When it was all done, I wasn’t super happy with it, but I had errands to run before an ungodly 4:45 AM wake-up time to get to the airport, so I had to just accept it and head out for my errands.

Have I mentioned how much I love Dollar Tree?  Tons of good stuff and I can feel like I went on a shopping spree for $20.  I tend to troll their makeup aisle a lot since occasionally they get some awesome nail art stuff that was originally north of $10 at my local drugstores for just $1.  They didn’t fail me this time!  I went in with the intention to pick up a new hairbrush and some other assorted toiletries, and came out with the most event-perfect manicure ever.

Check it out…don’t you agree?  This is Julep Jeanne, which I already owned of course, with Maybelline ColorShow Nail Tattoos: Skyline on top that I picked up at Dollar Tree.  I almost missed them, but in my trolling I saw them high on a peg hook.  They had several styles, all New York themed.  I was super excited to find the very basic skyline ones!  I got home and showed them to Dominic and he suggested putting a sky blue behind them… my original thought was to do some kind of night sky behind them.  But I’m glad I went with the light blue as they read a lot better.

The Maybelline ColorShow Nail Tattoos: Skyline apply just like the temporary tattoos of your youth – put down the stickier side, hold down something damp on top for long enough, peel paper off.  I was a tiny bit disappointed that the more recognizable scenes like the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge scenes didn’t quite fit on my nails.  The first two were close enough to attempt, but the bridge decal was too wide even for my thumb… really better suited for a big toe, but since I was not going to be wearing any open toed shoes, that would have been a wasted effort.

This is probably the first time I’ve ever done two manicures in one day.  Once I brought these home, I completed removed the turquoise and purple basic mani I already had on that I wasn’t 100% in love with anyway and took to painting.  I stayed up probably later than I should have letting the blue dry sufficiently to do the tattoos, and then everything dry so I could get last-minute packing done, but hey, I made my ungodly early morning flight so it’s all gravy.  And my New York Skyline manicure managed to get me compliments not only from my industry colleagues, but several random New Yorkers I encountered at the airport, hotel, and various restaurants!

Luckily I had the foresight to pick up extras of the Skyline design and picked up the other designs; on my last venture into Dollar Tree they were sold out.  I strike while the iron is hot when it comes to great deals on overpriced nail supplies!