For the record, gel polish = awesome.

As you may remember, I had gel polish applied for my vacation way back in 2012. It was on for a little over two weeks, with minimal wear and tear.

Before:

After:

Pangie was super gentle when she removed the polish, so any damage done was minimal. Nothing that couldn’t be buffed out.

Gel is wonderful for vacations or other special events, but I wouldn’t use it long term. First of all, two weeks is a long time to commit to a color. Second, I think it would be too harsh on the nails over an extended period of time.

I will definitely be using Pangie’s services the next time I long vacation is in store.

I decided to give gel polish a try for vacation. I don’t typically paint my nails when traveling because I hate chipped polish and I can’t be bothered with bringing the required supplies to redo them. Pangie was kind enough to make a house call last Monday to apply the gel. It’s supposed to last two weeks. So far it’s been one and it looks good except for a small chip on my thumb. I wouldn’t have even noticed if I weren’t inspecting so closely.

I probably should have taken a picture on Monday when they were freshly painted, but to be honest I didn’t think about it until today, and they basically look exactly the same anyway, so no harm done.

I was cleaning up my disaster of a desktop today and found this fancy nail picture that I forgot to post. It’s old, but it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything in the nail category (or done my nails for that matter).

Gold roses on matte black polish. Enjoy!

Colors used:
Zoya Raven
Essie Matte About You
Konad Gold

I’ve been anxiously awaiting for today to come so I could sport my Killer Beez nails! I wanted to represent the black and yellow for our annual Friends and Family Night, which is tomorrow. I practiced the design a bit earlier last week. It turned out to be good I did because tonight went off without a hitch.

This design was inspired by the back of the new Beez jerseys, where the material fades from light to dark yellow and the stripes are grunged up. In retrospect I should have taken pictures of each step, because there were quite a few, and watching the progression was really fun.

I started out with two coats of white polish. Once that was dry, I sponged on a white and yellow gradient—twice—cleaning the extra polish off my fingers and cuticles after each coat. (As you can see from the photos, I didn’t do a very good job. I tried, I really did, but it settled into all the dried cracks in my skin and refused to come out, even with pure acetone.) Then I topped it off with a fast drying top coat and let dry for fifteen minutes.

Next came the stripes. I used french manicure stickers to get two clean lines of black. Three would have been nice, but for that either my nails have to be longer or the stickers have to be narrower. Once the black was dry, I sponged a bit of yellow on the tips to get the grunge look and topped with another layer of top coat.

There are a few smudges here and there, but I think over all they turned out great. Probably due to the hour practice I got a few days ago. This took me about two hours from start to finish and rendered me completely useless for tasks such as helping with dinner, taking out the garbage, and doing laundry.

Colors used:
Zoya Snow White
Zoya Pippa
Zoya Raven