So these nails aren't exactly festive but they make me smile! When I was a kid we used to play the crap out of our Nintendo.  Of course by the time we got one in our house, the Playstation was already the new big thing and Nintendo games were far from new.  Still, we didn't love it any less! Some of our favorites (outside of the obvious Mario and Zelda!) were Lolo, Tetris AND...this gem; Dr. Mario. My mother STILL loves this game and plays it on her DS! I thought since my nails were rounded and the absolute perfect shape for pills I'd give it a go!

 

 

Honestly it was remarkable easy to do as well. Even the little monsters weren't as bad as I'd assumed they'd be though they didn't come out spectacular. I hope you love these as much as I do! What was your favorite game growing up?

Today's mani is a quick Halloween look I threw together at the last minute for work. I had done pumpkin art earlier in the week but I wanted a change that was still festive but I could wear a little longer without it screaming Halloween!! I went with this simple glitter gradient.  Now, I LOVE gradient nails BUT they are a bit time consuming and sort of a pain to do.  You need the colors, a sponge, top coat, something to mix the polish on....sometimes a toothpick or something to mix them up with, depending on the method. Then there's all the globbing of the polish and the waste. No thanks. I didn't have time for that!! So I want to show you a different method which takes WAY less time and requires nothing more than your polishes.  This works best with glitter since it's not an exact science and the glitter sort of muddles the gradient a bit. It does work with regular polishes as well though. You'll need a clear polish (NOT A TOPCOAT) if you choose that method. So here we go!!

First polish your nails with the base color. I used Lime Crime Peaches <3 Cream. Let that fully dry (or even better, use this to spruce up an old mani which is chipping at the tip!).  Then, take your second color (I've used Color Club Wham Pow) and just brush it roughly at the tip, almost like a French. Don't worry about neatness, you're just going to spread it out anyway.  Last, take the glitter polish* (or clear polish. DO not use a top coat and be sure to wipe the brush between nails) And, starting about 1/3 of the way down the nail, begin to brush it on towards the tip. Each time you take another stroke, you'll see the second color pull and spread down the nail! Easy as that! Top coat and done. Fast, easy and mess free! :)

*for my glitter polish, I used China Glaze Boo-Gie Down

Well it's finally here! It's October and this year October is the month of the SMALL NAIL on Bee Polished!! On Saturday, I told you how I had nubbinized my nails for job interviewing. As they're growing back to their medium/short length, I want to show you all how much fun shorter nails can be!  This is a perfect time to do this because NYFW just happened and if you surf for nail art from the event you'll notice that all the models have short, rounded nails. Very classic and very versatile.  This is actually a look from last years fashion week but I love it.  It works really well on shorter nails because the ratio of the neon to white is much better. I love brighter colors anyway on a short nail because I feel like it's not as flashy as on longer nails! Plus this look is wickedly easy to achieve and because the color is concentrated at the ends, it can actually draw the attention up and make shorter nails less stubby looking, especially if you have wider nail beds!  I hope you all have fun exploring the world of short nails with me this month! Do any of you keep your nails shorter? Would you try this look?

Well ladies and gents, it's St. Patrick's Day!!  I can't believe it's here already. Time really has been flying hasn't it?  Anyway I've done a few different designs over the years for St. Patrick's and this year I wanted to go a little more simple but still incorporate all the important things! Gold, rainbows, green and shamrocks!  So here is my simple design. :) For the ring finger I layered two different gold polishes to make it a little more visually interesting and for the pinky finger I wanted to do a sort of rainbow in the sky look so I sponged blue over a white base and then added the rainbow over the top.  I hope you enjoy them! Do you have big plans for today?

Colors used:

Zoya: Apple, Logan, Purity, Sharon, Yummy, Pippa and Ziv

Essince: Don't Feed the Tiger

Color Club: Twiggie, Chelsea Girl, and Pucci-licious

Essie Too Too Hot

For today's Geek Week nails I wanted to go a little more abstract!  I'm a little disappointed in how the ring finger turned out for this.  The emblem on the uniforms is meant to be a gold rimmed silver but the contrast just didn't really work for this mani.  Still, I love all of it together! If you haven't figured it out yet, it's Star Trek!! These are representative of the uniforms from The Next Generation version of the television show.  There were three uniform colors: red, blue and gold.  In general, red is indicative of commanders and helm crew, blue is indicative of medical staff and science personnel and gold indicates a security, engineer or operations crew member. There were of course, exceptions to this like in the case of Deanna Troi who wore purple a lot and various other colors.  Then there are gold pips on their collars which are admiral insignia.  I started with the idea of doing specific pip numbers to represent cast members (like the red with four pip's for Captain Picard) but as the seasons went on many of the crew earned more pips so it seemed a lost cause!  Anyway I hope you enjoyed the design! Don't forget to check out what the other ladies came up with for day three!

Colors Used: 

Color Club Chelsea Girl

Essence Kiss On Top of the Rock

Nails Inc Hampstead Gardens

Zoya Raven

This week the Digital Dozen ladies have chosen to do "geeky" as a theme. I'm very excited about this because, well let's face it I know I'm a geek.  I'm probably also a big nerd because I always loved school and learning and I spout off ridiculous knowledge at people all the time.  :P  I had a million ideas for this week but since there are only five challenge days I tried to do some designs that I feel sort of round out my geek-ism and also semi-reflect my favorite geeky things! So I'm staring off today with something a little more nerd than geek leaning: Chemistry.  I LOVE LOVE LOVED Chemistry in school and at one point thought about making a career out of it but then I decided I wanted to go for something more people involved.  I intended to go a little more normal with this and do H2O, otherwise known as water on my nails. However, while I was executing it I had a major distraction and ended up making HO2.  Which incidentally, is Hydroperoxyl.  Never heard of it? Well let me enlighten you!

Hydroperoxyl is what you get when you remove a hydrogen atom from hydrogen peroxide or by pronating the superoxide ion. Hydroperoxyl exists in our atmosphere and is, sadly, what is responsible for the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere. It is very reactive and acts as a "cleanser" of the atmosphere by degrading certain organic pollutants. The chemistry of hydroperoxyl is of considerable geochemical importance for this reason. Yay for destructive nails.  Lol...but hey, we all learned a lesson today didn't we?

Don't forget to check out what the other ladies have come up with for the first day of Geek Week!

Colors used: 

Zoya Purity

Models Own Nail Art Pen in Black

Essence Kiss On Top of A Rock

Color Club Chelsea Girl

It's the final day of the Digit-al Dozen challenge! Today is me only recreation of an art piece for this challenge. It's a recreation of a painting by Piet Mondrian.  Mondrian was a Dutch painter and a very important person in the De Stijl art movement. The basis of his work, and of the movement, was to use only white, black and primary colors and to use grids to create patterns.  The movement went on from around 1917 to 1931.  I really love the idea that these artists had only five colors and straight lines to use and yet came up with endless pieces of unique art.  It goes to show you that you don't need a lot to create when you have an imagination. :)  I hope you all enjoyed the challenge!  Please check out the art my fellow dozeners came up with for today's challenge and stay tuned for the next installment in my New Year New Nails series!  It will be coming this weekend. :)

Zoya: Purity, Pippa

OPI Red

Color Club Chelsea Girl
Models Own Black Nail Art Pen

Day two of the Digit-al Dozen art challenge is here! Today's inspiration was water color.  I used to really love using watercolors as a child and I still love the soft, sheer quality they have about them.  I used a new technique for this challenge and I'm considering making a tutorial for it since it's super easy and the effect looks really intricate.  I used a creamy base coat to sort of represent a canvas and then I used a fan brush to make patterns on the top.  A few days after I had this on I decided to add some glitter and it looked pretty amazing but then it started peeling off in sheets. Fail.  I think the glitter with the Gelous with the top coat with all the layers already on just became too thick.  I'll definitely be revisiting this technique so maybe next time I'll get it to work! Don't forget to check out the other girls art inspired mani's for today!

Lime Crime: Milky Ways

Color Club: Poptastic, Chelsea Girl and Pucci-licious

Today's Purple Crumpet Fairy Challenge was ducklings.  I thought I had a pretty good idea for this one, but it turned out less than cute on my nails.  I just really don't think yellow and orange flatter my skin tone...and the ducky's eyes are a bit...I don't know...weirder than I envisioned!  But still I think you can tell that they're ducklings and that's half the battle!! I used ManGlaze Butt Taco as a base coat.  It's a GORGEOUS suede orange with little micro orange shimmer in it.  It looks stunning matte as well as shiny but it's just not doing anything for my pale skin!  I then used Color Club Almost Famous to make a reverse french so that my ducks would have little bills.  And last I used Revlon White On White and Hard Candy The End to dot on breathing holes and eyes!  I hope you all enjoy and thanks for following!! It finally feels like Spring here in the mid-west. How are things where you live?

Today's Spring Challenge was Unicorn Magic Day!  The challenge was to make your mani magical.  I didn't want to do a full on unicorn on my nails -- well OK I did -- but I didn't really have the time or inclination to attempt it!! So I did some magical type colors anyway.  This mani reminds me a bit of those velvet posters everyone used to hang on their walls in the 80's.  The background is loads of fun colors, the foreground is leopard (which is just awesome let's face it) and the matte topcoat gave it a washed out jeans type effect.  VERY magical!  I hope you all enjoy and thanks again for following!! 

PS.  I'm REALLY working on my cuticles for you all!! I've had TWO paraffin dips this week AND I'm keeping a constant stream of Neosporin and cuticle oil on them. They look TONS better already!!

These nails were the result of a lot of glitter sandwich experiments!!  The base color on this, P2 Dangerous, is quite sheer and jelly like on the first coat.  You can't really tell in the picture but after three coats it was still a tiny bit sheer.  I layered it with Color Club Sugar Plum Yum because I hate the scent on it and I was hoping a few layers of polish and some top coat would mask the scent.  Then the whole thing got messed up and when I started over I didn't have the patience to redo all the layers to make the sandwich. So I went with an open faced (lol) and just put a coat of glitter over the P2.  The Seche Vite topcoat DID actually mask the scent of the polish  pretty well. :)  Thanks for following! 

It's day six of the 31 Days of Christmas Challenge and that can only mean one thing. Elves.  I was pretty worried about this one actually.  I imagined myself doing these tiny little elves on my fingers and just making a royal mess of the whole thing.  But I ultimately decided to go a little more abstract with the whole thing and do some elf-like costume art instead.  They came out pretty nice and you can definitely see that they're elf suits!  :)

Enjoy and thanks for following!

Base is Orly Wandering Vine

Belt is: Color Club Gingerbread Man

Black Models Own Nail art pen and white LA Nails art brush used for details.

So I pretty much totally slacked off on the Halloween nails and I wanted to try to make up for it on Thanksgiving!   When I thought of Thanksgiving the first thing that came to my mind is those handprint turkeys that everyone makes at some point during their childhood. You know, trace your hand, draw feathers on the fingers and a turkey head on the thumb?  So I instantly thought that was what I wanted to do.  But then I kept thinking about it and it seemed like something everyone else would be doing.  So I asked my go-to person (my wonderful husband) what he thought I should do.  He said, 

"Why don't you make your fingers feathers and then do a turkey head on your thumb?" 

So I thought, if both of us think it's a good idea, it must not be half bad!  I searched the web this morning and was surprised that I actually couldn't find any turkey nails like mine.  So I'm glad I chose to do them after all!! Choosing the colors was the hardest part.  I wanted pastels at first but it just didn't jive with the fall vibe so I ended up with red, yellow, green and orange.  I hope you all have a wonderful holiday (those of you who celebrate) and are able to enjoy time with your families! :)

Pinky is: Revlon All Fired Up

Ring is: Barry M Spring Green

Middle is: butterLONDON Cheeky Chops

Index is: butterLONDON Jaffa

Gold on feathers is: Color Club Gingerbread Man

Thumb is: Orly Prince Charming, Orly Orange Punch, Revlon All Fired Up, Ulta Snow White, and Hard Candy The End.