2015 christmas nails 2.0

One day left! How are you going to spend your last day of 2015?

Andrew and I will be spending time with our friend Tim who's visiting from the East Coast (and who we are trying to convince to move to Portland once he's done with grad school!)
We have 2 parties to attend on New Years Eve and I'm a little nervous we won't be able to get a cab and go to party #2, but we shall see!

As promised here are my second set of Christmas nails for 2015...

Trees, Snowmen, and chubby Polar Bear faces!

These turned out so cute!!

The thumbs are by far my favorite part, I think next year I'll just do a whole set of polar bear faces wearing funny hats.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
See you next year!!!

christmas wreath nails

Christmas Eve is tomorrow!!!
Are your presents wrapped and ready for giving?

We're staying in Portland for the Holidays this year, and for the first time in 10 years I live in the city that I will be celebrating in! No holiday travel! How exciting! 

These are my first of 2 sets of Christmas nails for 2015.

Candy Cane Stripes and Christmas Wreaths.

I love how the little white bows turned out!

Have a Very Merry Holiday Season everyone!!

 

 

 



thankful

Thanksgiving was over 2 weeks ago already! and Christmas is less than 2 weeks away! What happened to this year? The Man and I have barely begun to shop for x-mas gifts and time is running out!

We had 3 Thanksgivings this year, 2 in Portland with various family members and our traditional Thanksgiving in southern California on the actual day.  It was beautiful and fun as always and also as always I waited until the night before we left to paint my nails...

So to cut down on stress I went with a simple "thankful" on my finger nails and spent most of my time working on the little cooked turkeys on my thumbs

I added shading and a little bit of greenery on the plate and they turned out pretty nice!

Now on to the Christmas nails......

nautical nails

A few weeks back The Man and I went to a fancy Connecticut wedding, it was at a Yacht Club and everything

So as a nod to the little boating town we were staying in I went with nautical themed nails

It was rainy and windy the whole time we were there so I only got a few pictures (you can actually see the raindrops on the nails if you look close!).

We got back home and things got busy, but I managed to take a few more pictures before they chipped.  I was actually quite surprised how long they lasted, it was about 2 weeks!!

halloween nails 2015

spooky ghosts and spider webs!  this years Halloween nails:

We had a fun and busy Halloween weekend.  We had a friend in town and a costume party to go to, so to make it easy on ourselves we used an old standby...Lumberjacks!

I feel like any costume looks better when you have multiple people dressed the same.

We didn't know the guy in the background, but it was pretty hilarious that we all had the same idea (although he had an actual hatchet....which became a little nerve wracking once everyone started to drink a little more!)

new job nails

I’m employed!!

It’s almost 3 weeks since I started my new job.  It was crazy being unemployed for so long after leaving my last job to move to Portland.  I was so happy to have so much free time, but the lack of income was starting to make me queasy! My new job is at ZGF, it’s an architecture firm in downtown Portland.

I wanted to do some I’m-excited-I’m-finally-employed-again nails, so I painted office supplies on my nails.  I was planning on re-doing the stapler (I don’t think it’s recognizable enough and it should be flipped the other direction to match the other supplies) but of course life happened and they’ve stayed as they were. (also the notebook should be shaded in white… maybe next time)

oregon trail nails

Sorry for the month long hiatus but The Man and I have moved to Protland, OR!!!

It's been a along time coming but after 10 years (11 for The Man) it was finally time to leave the Windy City for a rainy one.  We are extremely excited and equally terrified of what this new adventure has in store for us.

What with packing, going away/birthday parties, job searches, a 10 day road trip, and moving into a new apartment there has been no time for blogging, but on the trip I did manage to paint my nails in a very trip appropriate theme…

Oregon Trail nails!

Do you remember the 90's computer game Oregon Trail?  You got in your covered wagon and tried to make it across the country to Oregon while shooting buffalo and watching your travel partners die of dysentery along the way.  It was great!

My left hand was painted with the imagery that would always be at the top of the screen.  A simple digital image of your wagon and the river you would eventually try (and fail) to ford.

My right hand is my favorite! Lining each side would be little buttons that would represent things like money, guide, eating, etc. The ones I painted are sleep, hunting and navigation.

These were so fun to paint, I used to love this game and would always play it in Elementary School.

red & blue flowers mani

I had a wonderfully lazy holiday weekend, and The Man worked away at the shop.  Great for me, not so much for him, but we did manage to squeeze in some hang-out time with Hamburgers and Ice Cream!

I wanted to do some lose painterly flowers but once I started the outlining it became quite the opposite!

The background color is OPI - Kyoto Pearl, it's a nice silvery pearlescent shade.
I didn't do Memorial Day nails but I thought these blue and red flowers count for some patriotism!

it's stufest y'all!

It's the great Stu Flint's Birthday, you know what to do!

Grab a Frosty Beverage

Find a shady spot and 

Do  ab-so-lute-ly  Nothin'!

Hit it Pop!!

Happy Birthday! You're the best dad any girl could ask for, and I can't wait to celebrate Stufest in person soon!!

Love you!

the man turned 30

Andrew (aka The Man) (aka the Love of My Life!) turned the big 3-0 on Sunday. 

We spent Andrew's 30th with his mom, who flew in from Hawaii for the weekend, and saw Book of Mormon and ate a lovely dinner at Volare.  It was a wonderful and very grown up day.

Happy Birthday to the most talented, hilarious and handsome man I've have ever and will ever meet in my life.  I'm so happy you're mine.

knife nails

Last week I was feeling pretty uninspired, so I thought I'd just paint my nails a solid color and be on my way.

I chose a translucent pink and after a few days of no-art nails an idea from a few years ago popped in my head. Knives!!

Two years ago for Thanksgiving I painted turkeys on my nails (both cooked and alive) with a little knife on the pinky nail.  After posting them to Facebook my friend Dana commented that I should paint all knives and I've been meaning to do it ever since.

Of course I got lazy and never completed the second hand, but I think I might have to take another stab at this design at a later date because I love these!     (get it? stab? Ha!)

The scissors are my favorite!

easter ... a lot late

Ok, I know Easter was a week and a half ago, but we were visiting New York on Easter weekend, and with all the people to see and meals to eat I never got a chance to sit down and post my Easter nails. So we're all just going to have to deal with some belated bunny butts..

I toyed with making the solid colored nails matte, but just like this post I never got around to doing it. I think it would have made them look more like Easter candies (like Robbins Eggs which are my absolute favorite!)

I started painting the stacked up bunnies and after staring at them too long I was afraid they looked more like cats but then one of the girls at work thought they were those bunny peeps (the marshmallow candies) and I got really excited.  I wasn't even going for peeps but it's so Easter!!

spring … ish

Friday was the first day of Spring.  It was beautiful outside, the snow was gone, the boots were put away and I hadn't worn my puffy winter coat in a week. Glorious!

I woke up on Saturday morning wanting some fun spring nails and painted these.

Then we woke up Monday morning and BOOM! Snow! Terrible, terrible snow.  Inches and inches of snow.

Ugh.

But at least these nails are reminding me that warm days are coming, I just have to hold on a little bit longer.

st. patrick's day 2015

So, just as I said we would in Thursday's post, we went out last weekend.  And now that we've done the whole Chicago St. Paddy's Day bar crawl celebration insanity I don't think we'll ever need to do it again.  To quote Roger Murtaugh "I'm [getting] too old for this shit!"

I like the way these nails turned out but they didn't come through in pictures very well.  The photo below is a better depiction of the true color of the green.

For the four fingers I did a quick gradient and then added some gold leaf specks. For the thumbs I was going for a rainbow gradient but not all the colors showed up, and then added little shamrock for some Paddy's day flair.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!