Valentine's Day Nails!

Hello!!! Happy Valentine's Day, one day early!

Okay, here is my REAL Valentine's Day manicure! I wanted to spice up these pictures, so I posed with some of my girliest things! First, my cell phone case, which is covered in pink and white pearls, flowers, and bows. Second, my Nintendo DS case, which I blinged to hell and LOVE!!! Note the nail polish bottle cabochon on my DS! I'm really into pink and white, and jewels and pearls, so now maybe you can see why I love Valentine's Day so much!

After my manicure debacle yesterday, I decided to keep things more simple and chic. I started with three coats of Zoya - Bela. It started out sooooo sheer, but built up really nicely with each coat! It's a very sweet pastel pink, perfect for everyday wear. It's definitely still on the sheer side, but creamy.

As an added bit of trivia, I can tell you that Bela is "featured" in the movie "Black Swan." In one of the dressing room scenes, Nina has a bottle of Bela on her makeup counter. Just a little movie/nail polish trivia! Have you seen it yet? I loved the movie. There is one fingernail-related scene that almost made me throw up. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about!

Anywho, I have to get back on track here. After Bela I added red hearts from Nicole by OPI - Have a Heart. I couldn't bring myself to open the $1 Target purple hearts polish again because the smell is so overwhelming. DEFINITELY not the most eco-friendly polish, I'm sure. And the pink hearts in the LA Splash polish had too much glitter, so I stuck with red for this look, and I really love it! I did three diagonal hearts on my ring and pointer fingers, then one heart facing out on my other fingers, including the thumb.

The only thing I don't like is that using a toothpick scraped off a little of the color on the hearts. You may be able to see in the pictures that they have little silver marks. I'm not sure how I could have avoided that, though.

In personal news, my boyfriend and I couldn't wait until the actual day to exchange gifts, so we did so last night. He got me a new LaLaLoopsy!!! Blossom Flowerpot! I'm so happy. I was freaking out. I love these dolls. I guess it's the part of me that isn't ready to let go of being a kid. I don't care; I just think they're so cute! I got BF a translucent green Swiss Army Knife, engraved with a special message. Then I was at Target and saw a really cute picture frame related to my nickname for him, so I picked that up and put in a picture of us from our trip to Key West. I like to do cheesy things like that for Valentine's Day.

What are you doing tomorrow? Any plans? Thanks for reading, and please follow!

Ummmmmmmmmm... no.

Okay, sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you envisioned it would. Sometimes, the same thing happens with manicures. This is one of those times.

First, let's look at the arsenal of nail polish used for my Valentine's Day manicure. Please see the picture for bottle shots of all EIGHT. Here's a list of how it went down:




1 coat Orly Bonder base coat
2 coats Sally Hansen - Lavender Cloud
2 coats China Glaze - Rainbow
1 coat Seche Vite to dry things faster

THEN I used a toothpick to pick out the following:
Red hearts - Nicole by OPI - Have a Heart
Purple hearts - Random Target nail polish
Pink hearts - LA Splash - Be Mine

THEN...
1 coat of Gelous to smooth things out
1 coat Seche Vite

Oh, and did I mention that I started this manicure at 10:30 last night? Bad idea. Let's go to the pictures.

Be Mine has white microglitter PACKED throughout, and that covered all of the red and purple hearts, which I hated. Also, everything I slopped on top totally covered the effect of Rainbow, so I really wish I had just left off those two coats! So even going to bed last night, I knew it was a disaster. I left it on just to take pictures. It was just TOO MUCH.

This morning, I woke up to BUBBLE CITY. All of the dark speckles in the pictures? Bubbles. No wonder, there were like 1000 coats of crap on my nails! Bubbles popped up EVERYWHERE, making the entire manicure totally laughable. Oh well, it just goes to show you that things don't always go as planned!

To add insult to injury, I woke up today with a pounding headache, almost certainly caused by shutting myself in a room with eight polishes for the evening. It's gone now, though, so yay! Both the manicure and the headache, that is. Sorry, but I didn't take time to clean up my cuticles or any sloppy workmanship for the pictures. I took this look off first thing, and came up with a much cleaner, more understated look that is equally Valentine-y.

I'll have the TRUE Valentine's Day manicure tomorrow! For now, enjoy this failure! I like the concept, just not the execution. Boo0000!