Deborah over at Love, Varnish, Chocolate and More is having a giveaway to celebrate her 100th follower.  go check out her blog for some pretty nails :D

oh, yeah, and silver.  and new falsies.

i used China Glaze Reggae to Riches, Joe Fresh white, Sally Hansen Black Out and Kiss Nail Art in silver glitter.

and you can totally see that i am still pretty new to nail art by my wonky dots.  lol.  i am surprised that the silver lines turned out really rather straight and neat on my right hand, usually the designs on the right are just... blah... being right handed and all.

i'm not sure how long i'll keep this one.

i am really nervous about using polish remover on the acrylics though.  will it ruin them if i use it often?  i'll have to google that. 

 one with the flash:

wahoo!  i have long(ish) nails again.  i gave in and went to the salon and got some acrylics.  i just couldn't handle the stubbin nails any longer.  so i gots me my veddy veddy first acrylic nails.

for the most part i'm happy with them.  but gah, they're thick!  next time i go for acrylics i'll make a point of asking for thin!  also, they seem wider at the tips than the are at the base, is that normal for acrylics?  i feel like a such a newb.  oh... wait... i am.  heh.

it is late here, i'm really tired after a night of poker and chillin' with the boys, otherwise i'd be all over taking some pics right.naow.  but i'm not so tired that i couldn't come rushing here to talk about my new acrylics.  so tomorrow... or, technically, later on today, i will update with some photos.  and i'm definitely going to be removing the salon polish and doing my own.  i'm a bit of a clutz, i wrecked the perty salon job pretty much as soon as i walked out of the door.  :\

k.  to bed.  nighty night blogiverse.  i will be back in the daylight with pictures :)

having super short nails is really not fun.  the ones that i broke at Ikea are still stinging like mad everytime i wash my hands or do dishes.  or paint them. 

since there isn't much to paint i decided to go with a nude look. 

heh.  who am i kidding.  i don't do nude well.  so i did a nude glitter! 

i used 2 or 3 coats of Funky Fingers Sakura Glow because it has a pink base and i thought it would help disguise the staining on my nails.  and then i used 2 or 3 coats of Orly Prisma Gloss Silver.

and a super duper way-to-close macro shot where you can see that my fingers took a beating from the "clean all the things" day:

a trip to Ikea for one shelf turned me into a cleaning monster today.  i have literally done nothing but clean today.  and the one thing i wanted to accomplish hasn't been done.  i wanted to get the shelf assembled and the stuff that's going into it organized.  i got the assembly part done...

 i also got my entire living room and kitchen tidied up:

and my dresser now looks like a girl actually lives here:

but the stuff that is going on the new shelf?  still a terrible untidy pile on my dining room hutch.  most of it is my man's work stuff.  he runs poker tournaments at night and does contracting during the day.  there is quite the assortment of things on it... a showerhead, cards, receipts, pencils galore, floor plans, a NY Giants baseball cap, a measuring tape... oh my.

so, no nailpolish today.  i broke two nails right down to the quick pulling boxes meant to go in the new shelf out of the box they had them in at Ikea :(  so i have stubbins again.  stubbins with slightly chipped polish from all the cleaning i did today.  why isn't it as much fun painting them when they're shorter?? ;)

yesterday during a long ride in the car to visit family my man suggested a manicure idea.  last night i decided a variation of what he described was a great idea.  so i pulled out my polishes and spent about an hour (yeah, laugh away) deciding which colours would work for the idea.

i came out with Color Club's Total Mystery (the blue), Alias (the purply-ish one), and Ulterior Motive (the pink).  all from their Alter Ego Keep It Under Cover collection.

i painted my thumbs with Total Mystery, my index fingers are half Total Mystery, half Alias.  the middle finger is all Alias.  the ring finger is half Alias, half Ulterior Motive and the pinky is all Ulterior Motive. 

with the flash to show the glitter a bit.  you can also see the shrinkage caused by my brand new Seche Vite :(

and now i must get dressed and ready to go.  we're heading out to Ikea to buy a couple of shelves for the living room so i will have more strorage for my yarn and polish :)  i love Ikea :)

the girly manicure did not last.  i just couldn't take it anymore.  all the elements together were just too sweet.  so i spent a while soaking off the decals last night and removing all evidence that my nails were cutesy girly.

i replaced the girly with more pink.  but it's way less cutesy than yesterday's look. :)  i used OPI's Designer Series DS Signature and OPI's Teenage Dream from the Katy Perry Collection on my ring finger and the tip of my pinky finger.

i have to take a moment to tell you how i ended up with Signature.  i was perusing the makup section at my local Winner's (a brand name discount store here in Canada) and i saw that they had nailpolishes.  i wasn't huge into polish at the time.  i don't really even know why i looked.  but i did.  and i saw the Signature and i was wowed by it.  i didn't know it was called a "holo" or that it was discontinued or even rather iffy to get one's hands on.  i just saw *pretty* and Had To Have It.  i paid $6.99 for it.  the most expensive polish i had ever bought (at the time).  when i started to read nailpolish blogs and really get into polish i realized i had scored a pretty decent deal on the Signature!  now i kinda wish i had bought all three bottles they had!

so... in essence, OPI DS Signature started my nailpolish obsession :)

for the pinky i wiped off a lot of the polish from the brush and started applying it 3/4 down my nail.  i got a light coat of the glitter this way.  when it was dry i applied another light coat from about 1/2 way down my nail.  and then when that was dry i did another coat at just the tip of my nail.  i think the effect turned out similar to a sponged look :)

i applied my Seche Vite top coat and voila!  all done.  i applied a rather generous coat to the glitter nails but i just like my tips to feel smooth rather than gritty, as glitter tends to feel.

with flash, because it is so overcast here today that getting the camera to pick up the holo effect without the use of the flash was proving rather difficult: