I painted my nails the other day.

I painted my nails the other day. There's a lot going on here.

I used a milky white gel base, then applied a unicorn powder on that. Then, since those flake off the tips easily and I type a lot I sponged a sparkly gradient from the free edge. I stamped one nail because OBVIOUSLY I needed to. 😂 If only I had some stones here with me I would have put at least one of those on there, too - right near the cuticle of my ring finger.

But anyway. I had fun and treated myself to something pretty. Got kind of a "gelly sandwich" going on here. I like it. 😃

Research polish;
Research plates;
Stamping and Sponge Gradient techniques

Phone pic is all I've got, but...

Phone pic is all I've got, but these are my nails. I was going for a fall-ish theme, but Shaun said that they look like wrapping paper and I can't un-see it. 😂😂😂

Research polish;
Research plates;
Layered Stamping and Stamping Decal techniques

Every year...

Every year my work hosts an event for the employees. This year it's in Montana and it starts tomorrow. Since me and the other ATCs are still considered trainees we're not invited. We did get the week off with pay, though, and WHO in their right mind could complain about that after only 2 weeks with the company?

Not me. I flew home yesterday. Did the "connecting flight" and "check a bag" thing both for the first time AND all by myself. Made it here in time to celebrate Shaun's 40th birthday with him tomorrow. I missed my family. I missed home. But in my new position is absolutely where I want to be and the time spent away from home for training is going to be worth it for us all. Can't blame me for having so much enthusiasm.

#LFG

Research polishes;
Research plates;
Layered Stamping technique

I painted Shaun's nails today.

I painted Shaun's nails today.  His toenails are a pretty purple / blue / green shifting polish with reflective glitter in so it will LIGHT UP in the right light.  I might get a picture for y'all.  His fingernails are just plain black gel.  He can do something nicer over that if he wants.  He's got a whole stash of polish in his favorite colors.

I painted my nails this evening.

I painted my nails this evening.  Last night I re-did my clear gel overlay while Shaun painted his fingernails.  Then I did his toes and he's got a dark berry color with reflective glitter on.  It looks great.  It's not really fair that he's got such beautiful feet and I have these little stumps with tiny toenails, but at least he likes his nails painted.  Shadow's the only one here who doesn't let me do his nails, but I used to have to sneak on him when he was young to clip them and he hated the way it felt so I get it.  He's done with me grooming him and that's ok.

I'm sharing this again...

I'm sharing this again because it's one of my favorite things anyone has ever done for me.  I wore this polish the day we got married and still haven't gotten a great photo of it yet.  I am going to have to change that.  (It's not what's on my nails in the photo - that's just what I was wearing when he gave it to me.)

Happy 4 years of marriage to my favorite person - Shaun, of course!  I love doing life with you.  You've been my best friend for almost 14 years and those have been the happiest 14 years of my life.  Even if you hadn't asked me to marry you in such a creative and thoughtful way I would have said yes.

I wish I could think of something more thoughtful to say, but since we've had our date and I'm in a food coma over here my brain is a little tired.  😂 I'm glad you don't regret tying yourself to me in a legal way (I ask him about that periodically - gotta keep my finger on the pulse, ya know?)  I enjoy being your legal spouse, as well.  😂  More than that I love the life that we have been slowly but surely building for ourselves.  It's more amazing than I ever dared to dream.

Digest, my love.  I'll take you for ice cream later.  ❤

I've gone through and organized / categorized...

I've gone through and organized / categorized most of the photos from my phone, laptop, and external hard drive.  A lot of those photos were of nail art for inspiration, or photos of polish I really like.  Those inspiration photos are all categorized and most are uploaded to my Pinterest... I should have the remainder of that finished tomorrow.  The polishes I want are now stored in Google Drive by brand and polish name.

Speaking of nail polish I've also gone though and put the other half of my polish into my database - FINALLY - as that was a project I started before college and then never had a chance to finish.  Needless to say, I've discovered that I have an OBSCENE amount of nail polish (closing in on 4000 bottles of non-gels) and that hits it home to me that I need to get back to making jewelry and also expand into pre-decorated press-on nails.  I have a hard time not doing stuff so I'm not upset that I can always have those things as a backup of something simultaneously fun and productive to do.  I've seen nail sets sell on Etsy and I think I could do well with that.

While still on the subject of nails I've also been studying gel application and removal and the difference between types of gels.  I feel like I've learned a lot.  So gel polish is apparently a type of soft gel that you are able to soak off with acetone.  I also have some hard gels that are not supposed to be able to be soaked off and instead need to be filed off.  They are usually used for overlays (just a protective reinforcement layer on the nail) and enhancements (when you want to add length beyond the natural nail).

I had been using a really stiff hard gel on Shaun as an overlay, but he uses his nails like tools and therefore they bend sometimes... meanwhile the gel stays stiff and so it separates from the nail.  I ordered a softer hard gel that will flex so I'm hoping we have better luck keeping that down on him.  I'm also going to try it as an overlay for myself because I'd like for my natural nails to grow out a bit and right now they're all peely and sad.  I'd rather try the gel overlay than chopping them all off (which is what I'd normally do).  So we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I would definitely say that I've been hyper-fixating on some things, but I'm not upset about it.  I'm getting so organized and it's how I'd have like to have been all along, but that is not how life worked out.  So now I'm fixing it and it is SO SOOTHING to my brain.  I was literally giddy the other day when I looked at my Google Drive and could just so easily see my "wishlist" of polish.  I'm thrilled to be able to have a spreadsheet copy of my polish table from my database in there, as well - so no more buying dupes accidentally.  Next up, I'd like to work on moving my database from Access to MySQL and possibly putting it online (just to see if I can).  That means I'll probably have to learn PHP or something, but that's ok.

This is really super not my style...

This is really super not my style, but I try with holidays sometimes because my stamping plates often have holiday images and when else am I going to use them?  😂

The candy hearts were a stamping plate image and usually they would be all one color, but I used the image several times with several different polishes, top-coated them while they were on my stamper, then painstakingly cut them apart and applied them to my nails.  Totally kicking myself after the fact for not using a pink, but it's too late now.  😕

I really need to make a collage of my Valentine's Day nail photos.

Ember of Glass by Great Lakes Lacquer;
Bundle Monster plate BM-421;
Stamping Decal technique

It's been ~1000 years since I've posted a nail pic.

It's been ~1000 years since I've posted a nail pic. Enjoy this beautiful color on my short little nubs. Gosh, I have missed this like you wouldn't believe.

Currently fighting Facebook about my page name with plans to combine Happy Nails and Polish ALL the Things. I'm hoping to be done with that soon and begin posting there again. Until then, I'm only sharing with you lovely folks.

Please don't judge my nail art or camera-wielding skills too harshly. I'm a rusty, crusty mess right now. 💜

Saffron Crocus by Kathleen & Co.;
BornPretty plate L002;
Sponging and Stamping techniques

I've done a bunch of miscellaneous...

I've done a bunch of miscellaneous "getting myself in order" over the last few weeks. This is a fun part of that - swatching my gel polishes. All of them came in black bottles that look exactly the same with little information on the outside. I decided to swatch the polishes on an old crappy nail wheel that I don't care about so I could remove the nail forms and glue them to the bottles.

The first photo is magnetic colors. If I get good with a magnet I'll be able to make designs other than a line, but that will suffice for swatch purposes.

The second photo is neons, obviously. You can tell that I legit used a crappy nail wheel to swatch on because the nails were thin and you can see through them. (I didn't want to waste multiple coats of polish on doing this - I just needed to be able to see what was in the bottle).

The third photo is my boyfriend being a great helper. 😂 He's seriously been into everything with me lately. Me and Kira were going through polish the other day and he wanted to look at them, too. He bit some of them. I don't know if that means he liked them or not, but that's always a positive sign coming from me. 😂😂😂

I've only got about 20 gels to go. I'm hoping that I get them finished up tonight. But for now we've gotta run some errands so I'm off to do that. Later, friends! ❤️

I SUPER hate being disorganized.

I SUPER hate being disorganized. It messes with my brain in a bad way. So recently I did some research to find a good app to help me get my nail stamping plates in order. I found one called "Color My Life" that's meant for paper crafters, but it's working out surprisingly well for my purposes.

The app lets you tag your items so that you can find them easily. Some stamping plates have themes (like holidays), but others have random images or patterns so there was no easy way for me to organize those and later be able to find what I was looking for. The app also lets you add a location of where the items are stored for easy retrieval. Yesss. My brain is happy. 😁

I put a solid 7 days of effort into cleaning, organizing, tagging, and cataloging my nail stamping plates (I'm closing in on having 600 😬). Now I can search my plates in a variety of different ways and see where they are stored. I'm SO pumped about this because I haven't done nail art in so long. Part of it was because of college and then moving, but another big part of it was because I was overwhelmed every time I looked through my plate binders, which was the only way I had to see my plates or get ideas. 

Now if I'm feeling a dog mani I can just type "dog" in the app and see all of my plates with dog-related images. I can decide what works best for my idea and immediately know which binder it's stored in. I 👏 am 👏 so 👏 EX 👏 CI 👏 TED. 😂😂😂 Y'all really don't even know how stupid giddy I am right now. 😂

Since the app lets you have different categories of items I'm seriously considering adding my water-slide decals, nail wraps, stickers, and foils to the mix. I don't yet know if I'm going to do all of that, but I did add a few of my decals in and I think it makes sense. Anyway, we'll see. For now this is a great start. 😁