EDIT: I was watching Kandee Johnson’s latest Youtube video and she talked about her nails she got done from a nail technician/manicurist. I guess the one-nail-being-a-different-color is in? ^^ love it. Kandee had all green nails, with one thumb being a matte black (looks like it).
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I was watching Pixiwoo’s Arabic makeup tutorial and I was diggin’ Nic’s nails. She had a dark color on all of her nails, except one of her index fingernails was a light/silver color.

Took that ugly design I had on yesterday off and polished this on:

My thumbs are the reddish-pink too. I love this! So simple…I feel dumb for not doing it a long time ago. Duh. :P
I love these colors. Can’t you tell? I’m always using a reddish-pink and blues (links on websites, color of my MP3 players on Mixpod).

Products»
Essie in Wife Goes On (red) and Midnight Cami (blue).

Here’s my nails last week. I literally had it on for like an hour and took it off. Same with my toes. They were a hot pink, and I changed those too. I don’t have patience with my nails a lot of times. If I were to be a client at a salon, I would be one of those women that manicurists hate to do only because I am sooo picky AND indecisive. Lol.
I don’t remember what color I had on my nails. I have a lot of those dark purply colors. My toes have a soft, yet opaque coral on them..Essie in Whisper. They were so long! It was hard for me to create pin curls in beauty school on my mannequin. Lol. Now they’re a little too much on the stubby side.
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I’ve been watching a handful of movies lately. I watch them for free online. I try to find the ones that aren’t so obviously bootleg. I don’t like watching the ones where people bring a camera in the theater and press record. That’s very ghetto. Lol. It’s all shaky and you hear what people are saying around the cameraman.
Check it out: movies.
I love watching movies that take place in the 18th century in Europe (Georgian England, France, etc.). I love seeing the beauty in all of it…the castles, palaces, the gardens, the English accents (love), the women’s clothing, makeup, hair and accessories. So divine. ^^ A lot of the movies I watched were based on history. I hated history in school, but I love learning about it now. I was going a bit crazy. I would watch a movie, Google/Wikipedia names/places from the movies I watched, read everything, and click on related links. I know Wikipedia is an open source, but I believe most of it is true.
I love Google and Wikipedia. I learn so much. Who needs college?
Just kidding. School is cool kids.

Movies I watched in the past few days:

The Valentine (2010): It was cute. I lovde Jennifer Garner since Alias. I like chick flicks. Especially the ones that are romantic comedies. One chick flick I didn’t like, The Notebook.

Pride & Prejudice (2005): Beautiful. Keira Knightley is one of my favorite actresses. She’s so beautiful. I started reading the book up again a few weeks ago. The first time I tried to read it (last summer), I only got up to chapter 3. This time around I got to chapter 27 out of 61. It’s such a hard book to read for me. I obviously gave up and watched the movie. I loved the movie. Though, the sisters, Lydia and Kitty annoyed the crap out of me with all that giggling. Jane and Elizabeth, I loved. =) Towards the end, when Mr. Darcy asked for Elizabeth’s hand again, I had a few tears flowing. Beautiful scene.

The Duchess (2008): This was my second time watching this. I would have to say this is one of my favorite movies. Another movie starring Keira Knightley. I never knew what a Duchess was until I Google/Wikipedia-ed it. I was fascinated with the royal rankings. I am Vietnamese-American if you didn’t know. Wikipedia also made me realize what a Countess was, too. I first heard of a Countess by watching The Real Housewives of New York City (LuAnn de Lesseps). Back to the movie…The Duchess was based on a real person, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. It was easy to fall in love with her. I thought Knightley was the perfect choice for the role. I teared up quite a few times because I was convinced by her. What a strong woman she was, having to go through life like that.
Forced & convinced to marry at such a young age (17) to a Duke, whose only purpose of the marriage is to conceive an heir. Having to care for the Duke’s illegitimate daughter that was conceive by a maid before her marriage to him. Husband gets away with adultery with many women, including her only & best friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster. Being looked down on for conceiving two daughters, no an heir. Falling in love with a man she couldn’t have. Gets raped by her own husband. In result to that, conceives a son. Conceives third daughter by Grey. Forced to give that daughter up. Forced to live in a marriage with Lady Elizabeth & Duke.
I teared a lot because I felt so bad for her.
Did you know:
A descendant of the Duchess of Devonshire was the late, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Georgiana was also a friend of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.
I think I could talk forever on this subject. Watch the movie if you haven’t.
Moving on.

Of course after seeing The Duchess and wikipedia-ing everything…

Marie Antoinette (2006): I liked Kirsten Dunst for Marie Antoinette, but I think she (and husband) should have acted with an accent. This movie is similar to The Duchess because the real women had similar lives. Marriage at a young age, yearn for romance/love, gambling, social life, and pressure for an heir. Contemporary music instead of Classical was used in the movie a lot. I’m in the middle of hating and loving that. I guess since modern music was used, it wouldn’t matter if characters had the right accents or not.
“Let them eat cake.” I never knew the accused history of it until this movie. OPI has a name of a nail polish that reminds me of this phrase: “Let them eat rice cake”.
I liked the movie. Again, fun to see the beauty in the fashion and places.

I looked up a lot of the chateaus, palaces, and other buildings from this movie and The Duchess. I would love to see them in person…the ones still present.

Rise: Blood Hunter (2007): I decided to watch it because I love Lucy Liu and vampires, but the movie wasn’t good. I did watch the whole thing. First, I think the vampires should have had fangs. Second, the vampires should have been protrayed stronger and more immortal. Are vampires suppose to bleed? I’m actually not sure about that, since they’re already dead. I’m not comparing this to the Twlight saga (Stephanie Meyer stories). Two different kinds of vampire movies. This one is more about revenge. Twilight saga is more about romance.
Maybe it was a low budget film? This was made in ’07, could have been better. Not worth seeing. Still love Liu though.

Coco Chanel (2008, TV): No disrespect at all to the late Coco Chanel and/or the brand, but this movie bored me. I think the execution wasn’t the greatest, but maybe it was because it was just a television release? I wonder if the other movie about Chanel is better? Coco avant Chanel, 2009. It was neat to know the history, but I don’t know…I was bored.

That’s all for now. I plan on watching The Queen (2006), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Young Victoria (2009), Gandhi (1982), The Diary of Anne Frank, some newer ones, et cetera.

Yawn.
I’m so tired. On a crazy schedule as usual. Woke at up 7pm yesterday. It’s not 9:30am.
Man, blogging can be work.

My polish is lasting pretty good. It’s the polish I have on from the previous post. Today makes it 6 days. My nails have grown pretty long, so it was tempting to take my polish off and just re-polishing it with the same color. But I want to see how long this color will stay on. I’m sure it’s going to last longer now that I applied another coat of topcoat. That’s a tip, if your polish is applied correctly (from yourself or from a manicurist/nail tech) apply another coat of topcoat a few days later; it’ll make the color stay on longer and give your nails a boost of shine again.
(The picture above is the same polish as the picture below. It’s just different lighting).

I decided to bling up my nails by adding glitter. Lately I’ve been loving glitter on nails. Not on the entire nails though.
Here is just applied glitter to the corners on a diagonal. You know those glitter polishes you can get that have small flecks and big flecks of glitter…sometimes the big flecks are different shapes like hearts, stars, flowers, etc? I used one of those.
I just polished the path that I wanted first, then fished out the bigger flecks and dabbed it on.
Then I took craft paint, and added some light blue & black dots.
Then I painted on a few strokes of silver glitter polish.
Then added some curvy strokes of gold and dark blue glitter.
Add some gray dots following one of the gold strokes.
Finished with topcoat.
Yes, it’s going to be a bitch to take off, but that’s where I have pure acetone polish remover for.

Oh yeah, I think I jinxed myself. A friend asked if my nails were pretty much killed by all the pure acetone I’ve been using because I change my polish so much (everyday almost). I said “no” at the time. After a few weeks off wearing all the colors in the rainbow, my nails were getting weak. I switched to a non-acetone polish remover. It’s alot less harsh than straight up pure acetone. From now on, I’m just using the pure stuff for when I have to take glitters and glittered nail polishes off. Yeah, pure acetone is soooo much faster and easier to take any polish off, but it can really do some damage to your natural nails.
I also keep my polish on longer now.

In case if you were wondering, whenever I take my polish off to put on another, I don’t buff them nails. If I did that every time, my nails would be so thinned out and break off. I only buff them at the most, once a month. I have ridges on my nails, so when I do buff, I just buff the regrowth. So keep in mind, don’t buff too much on your natural nails, it thins them every time.

Products I used»
Seche Vite Crystal Clear Base Coat.
Sally Hansen Salon Complete in Commander in Chic
N.Y.C. Long-Wearing Nail Enamel in 105A: Starry Silver Glitter
Sally Hansen Salon Nail Lacquer in Shooting Star
Striping paint in a shimmery gold & a dark blue glitter
folkArt acrylic paint in:
524 Calypso Sky
938 Licorice
2561 Steel Gray
Seche Vite Dry Fast Topcoat

Acrylic craft paint is great for making designs. I got mine at Walmart in the craft/scrapbook section. They’re like a dollar each. You get a lot more product from these than you do with striping paint. And also, they’re water-based, so if you mess up, just wipe it off with a damp paper towel instead of having to take the polish off. ^^ I’ll think of more designs to do with just the craft paint later.

I thought drawing feathers on nails would be hard, but it’s actually quite easy. You’re simply drawing a stem with short strokes pointing in the same direction. The strokes towards the tip of the feather is a bit longer than the strokes towards the base. Practice with pencil and paper first. =)
My nails were at their longest when I did this design. Crazy long for me. I could draw the full feathers on shorter nails, but the details won’t really show. So the “partial feathers” are for the short nails. There suppose to be the tips of feathers. From far away, the partial feathered design looks better. I still like the full feathers though.

Inspiration: I love feathers and it didn’t come to mind ’til a friend requested it. =) Hope this is what you meant when you said feathers…lol. People have different meanings for feathers/feathering when it comes to nail designs.

All pictures: click to enlarge

Products»
Essie in Au Natural
Striping paint in light blue, silver, white, and black

Hope you guys liked it! ^^

I love nautical stars. People get tattoos of it for the meaning of it, but I just simply like the design of it. Well, I guess, I look at it as a rocker thing. Either way…it’s a cool design for tattoos and your nails! Lol.

Besides flowers & feathering/lining/stroking, this design was the most requested at the last nail salon I worked at. I myself love this design. This one will probably be one of the harder designs of mine because you have to be able to draw a little. Other designs of mine are real easy because you’re just layering strokes on and adding dots.
So for this, you just need striping paint. Make sure the paint/polish in the bottle is the right consistency. The polish should be thin, not runny…pretty much how it is when you first purchase it. My bottle was on the thicker side, but I didn’t have any polish thinner to thin it out. I fixed that problem though. You can get polish thinner at beauty supply stores, probably Sally’s.

So here are the steps of drawing a nautical star. If you can’t draw it on paper, then it will be hard for you to draw it on a nail. Lol. Practice drawing this on paper first.

This drawing is pretty self-explanatory.
Polish two coats of your choice of polish, wait to dry a few minutes, then draw.
I did this design a lot with the colors I chose: purple polish with a white/silver star. I did it a few times with a chalky pink polish (Essie Figi) with a black star. Sometimes I would go over the drawing part only with glitter.

Since my polish was thick, I colored in the “negative space” with a color that wouldn’t be so noticeable. This makes it look cleaner and sharper. I used black because in natural light, you can’t see it. If you have striping paint that matches your nail color, use that.

Two stars are never going to be exact since you’re hand drawing this. I only rock one star when doing this on myself. =/ Can’t draw this one on the other like I can with my other designs.

I loved putting this star on the index fingers or thumbs. This is my friend, Ashley that came to me all the time for my designs. ^^ Miss ya, girl. Opera singer that moved to NYC. CRAZY voice! Younger than me too.

Anyways…hope you guys like it!

This has got to be my most favorite and EASIEST look I’ve done. I wore a purple version of this look on Monday [refer back to "FirstDay" post]. Seriously, I love love LOVE this look. From far away it looks like a bad paint job, but when you look closely, it’s beauty. It’s like a painting on a canvas. ^-^ So here’s a tutorial on Abstract Nails.
Inspiration: paintings I’ve seen before. Reminder of that inspiration: a skirt I got from Urban Outfitters. I love this skirt. I don’t have a picture of it right now, but it’s one of those ones you sit high on your waist. The skirt is made by Kimchi Blue, one of my favorite brands sold at UO.

One coat base coat. Two thin coats of color.

Add a stroke of two or three different colors randomly. Express yourself. It’s art!
Lol. Or just copy what I did here. =P

I layered a few shimmery polishes. [I always put shimmer/glitter on my designs]
Now, choose a color that’s matte and totally opposite in shade than your base. Here I chose a bright pinkish, red for my base. So for this step, I chose a matte navy blue so it really stands out. If your base color is really dark, almost black, then I would use a matte & opaque color for this step…like white or pastels.
When you pull your brush out of your bottle, make sure you wiped off pretty much all the polish off. Then paint your nails with dry strokes. You want those “stroke” lines to show. Then you can go back and grab more polish to add a few wet strokes.

Finish with topcoat. ^-^

Products»
Essie Wife Goes On
Orly Lola
OPI Banana Bandanna
China Glaze Beauty & the Beach
Sally Hansen Salon Shooting Star
Essie Midnight Cami

Enjoy!