St. Patrick's Day Marble

Hi everyone! Here is the mani that I am rocking for St. Patty's Day! It is a green and gold marbling design! I used OPI Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow as the base color, and then I marbled with a mix of OPI Green-wich Village and China Glaze 5 Golden Rings. I love how sine Green-wich Village is sheer, it just changed the tone of the dark green in places. Isn't it pretty and funky? I love it! What are you doing for this awesome holiday? (If you celebrate it)

Nail Art: Mardi Gras!

Laissez les bon temps rouler! Hi everyone, today is Mardi Gras so I am sharing not only my Mardi Gras nails, but the Mardi Gras tradition as well. I used OPI Green-wich Village, China Glaze Harmony, and Art Deco Gold Glitter.

I am not Catholic, so I do not do Lent, but I do cheat and celebrate Mardi Gras anyway. Much of my family lives in Southern Lousiana so I am hardcore into the Mardi Gras tradition. I used to give presentations on Mardi Gras every year in French classes and such. I won't go through the whole shpeal with you all, but I will share a few fun traditions for those of you who may not know about the holiday. If you have any questions about this holiday at all, just ask, I can probably answer it.

In case you have no idea what this holiday is about (this is the super simple short version), in the Catholic religion people go through a 40 day period called Lent in which they give something up for the 40 day period (like chocolate or ice cream or nail polish lol). Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the day before the first day of Lent (Ash Wednesday) and basically you gorge yourself on the thing that you are giving up that day. It is also a day of merriment since Lent isn't meant to be a happy time. So it is basically a day to party!

I want to share with you my King Cake! This is a traditional cake of the Mardi Gras holiday. Everyone at the party has a slice, and in one of the slices of the cake there is a little plastic baby (it is usually hidden in the cake). My grandmother actually express shipped me this cake half-way across America from Baton Rouge Louisiana, so this is very authentic lol. The person who gets the baby hosts next year's party!

Another tradition of Mardi Gras is the parade! I don't have any pictures for you of a parade, but basically it is a line of floats that throw candy and plastic beaded necklaces at the crowd. They play loud music and it is just so much fun! Don't worry, I don't spend my Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street! ;)

Masks are another important part of Mardi Gras. This is me wearing my cheapy mask because I don't have my nice one at school with me. Most Mardi Gras parties used to be Masquerade Balls. Even though we really don't have those today, the tradition of wearing masks is still widely practiced.

I don't want to make this post too long so I will stop there. If you have further questions please ask them to me, I love this holiday, it really ranks up in the top three for me! It is a really important tradition to me, which is hard in an area of the United States that does not really celebrate it, well at least not as hardcore as I do. ;)

Also Lucy, if you are reading this; it is great to see you back! I was very excited to see your comments!

Holiday Nails: Candy Canes

Hello everyone! Happy Christmas Eve to those of you who celebrate Christmas! Today is the last installment of holiday nails this week, and I brought you candy cane themed nails! Are you all enjoying the holidays?

One of my favorite candies during this season are candy canes, I love spending hours eating these sweet candies! I wish that I had gotten the white stripes a little thicker, but overall I think that it looks ok. There were definetly better candy cane manicures out there in the nail blogosphere than this one. I used Essie Forever Young and Art Deco White. Do you like it? I know that it is not nearly as good as other blogger's versions!

What are your favorite holiday foods/sweets? Is there something around the holidays that you crave because you only eat it around this time of the year?

Holiday Nails: Christmas French

Hi everyone! I hope that you are all having a great week! Today I decided to go ahead and do a French manicure interpretation of Christmas, if that makes any sense at all. I basically did a french in traditional Christmas colors. For some reason this didn't photograph very well, the red looks darker in real life and the glitter stripe is much more noticable.

I used OPI Big Apple Red, China Glaze Emerald Sparkle, and Art Deco Gold Glitter. I considered using China Glaze Ruby Pumps as the red color, but I thought that it would be an overwhelming amount of color and glitter. You likey?

Holiday Nails: Winter Trees

Hi everyone! For the second installment of holiday nails this week; I bring you winter trees! Of course this design doesn't quite apply to those of you who are experiencing summer right now, but it is very snowy where I live.

I like how this turned out, although it was not what I was expecting. I wanted to do crisper lines, but I like how the branches cross and fade into each other. Doing these nails reminded me of that guy (if you remember his name put it in the comments for me please!) who had that painting show on PBS? He did a lot of nature scenes, and he made painting look so easy!

I used China Glaze For Audrey as the base color and Art Deco White for the trees. Hope you like!

Holiday Nails: Ornament

Hi everyone! Today through Christmas Eve (December 24th) I will be doing a holiday mani everyday! And then on Christmas Day I will be posting the amazing present that I recieved from the Nail Polish Bloggers X-mas Exchange. Today's mani is supposed to be an ornament. It looks like one that my family used to hang on the tree. It was a red satin ball with a gold mesh over it, so this one is nostalgic for me!

I used China Glaze Ruby Pumps, the konad m57 fishnet pattern, and China Glaze Twenty-Four K as the stamping color.

You may notice that my nails are nubbins now. I had several nail breaks within a day, and frankly I was tired of all of my nails being uneven because I didn't want to cut off the ones that were just the way I wanted my nails. But my nails were in such rough shape that I figured it was time. A lot of my swatches and such will be posted with pictures from having my long nails, but for now I am stuck with nubbins until they grow back out.