4th of July Manicure

Here is my sloppy attempt at a festive 4th of July manicure. ;)
I used Zoya America (felt like I had to use a polish named America! :)) for the red, Essie Mesmerize for the blue, and Zoya Ginessa as the white.
I had originally wanted to use Ginessa to make white french tips (on the red fingers) as well, but decided that it would look trashy. After I made the star on my thumbs, I decided it would have looked better just to leave it red and blue. I think it looks a little campy. O well!
Here's a close-up of my dreadful, dreadful job on the star. Keep in mind that this is the one that turned out well! :O It is dang hard to make a star without using nail art brush! Zoya's brushes are especially squat ... it probly wasn't too smart to use Ginessa, but I wanted the sparkly look. It ended up looking more like silver than white though.

This is my last post before I leave for Colorado tomorrow. I've got a dumb consultation with an oral surgeon at 8:30 am, and we'll leave directly after that. Don't even ask, it's been very complicated and involves getting my wisdom teeth out before school starts. Anyway, we're driving. It's a 17 or 18 hr drive, so we'll get there noonish on Tuesday. My aunt owns a condo on Beaver Creek mountain (right next to Vail, if you know where that is), and she lets us stay up there every year. This year they'll be up there for a week with us, as well as my grandparents, and then we'll get the condo to ourselves for a week. Very nice. :) It is simply lovely up there and we are so looking forward to the cool weather. This was the hottest June in recorded history for Houston ... it has been 100+ every day for the past few weeks. Aghhh! 75 degrees is going to feel very good. :)
I'll be posting while I'm away, but probly not as much as normal. I've got some posts all arranged, about 2/week. O, and I'll be gone for 3 weeks, instead of the 2 that you've probably deduced. I'm leaving for St. Louis to stay with a friend for a week the day after we get back from Colorado. I'm a having a busy July!
So, until Colorado, see ya!

My Experiment With A Likeable French Nail

Y'all know that I hate french nails, right? But for some reason, I've been majorly wanting to do a red french. I saw them on a girl at the library a few months ago, and thought it looked really fresh and cool. The usual French's irritate me to no end, but this one seemed different. Soo, using Rimmel Passian and OPI I Pink I Love You, I concocted my own version of a red French nail.
And there it is. Granted, it is very messy - don't even look at my ring finger please - but I'm pretty happy with the results. I used one coat of Passion (I chose Passion b/c it's very opaque in one coat), then a coat of I Pink I Love You. However, I didn't like the blurred look that gave the red line, so I added another coat of Passion on top, then some Seche Vite. Pretty easy, except for the actual drawing on of the french tip. Haha! I know that the beauty magazines say to use tape as a guideline, but I tried that back in my dark ages of nails (i.e., before I became obsessed with all things nails and a hater of French nails) and it didn't work so great.
Keeping a steady line is difficult, especially on the non-dominant hand. I'm left handed, so y'all always get the picture of my badly applied hand. I've gotten pretty adept at painting with my right hand (I'm am extremely left handed, I can barely do anything with my right hand ... just manoevering a computer mouse, haha), but the French tip escaped me. O well, better luck next time. I'd like to try this with black sometime soon.
What do y'all think of this look? Are you French lovers? Haters?

[EDIT: This marks my 100th post! Woohoo!]

Silliness

Today as I was about to take off Cajun Shrimp and put on a new color, I had the sudden urge to do this. Isn't that crazy looking? :) It looks like I was coloring something and got bored and colored on my nails instead. Now I think I've told y'all that I really don't do nail art. I have no interest in buying a Konad or any of that ... but today, out of nowhere, I did nail art. Haha!
As y'all can see, this is a very colorful look. I love the rainbow - my family and friends will tell you that anything I paint, etc., has to have all the colors of the rainbow in it. Thus the colorful nails. :) I used OPI Cajun Shrimp as a base, Essie Big Spender as the wider stripe down the middle, China Glaze Shower Together as the polka-dots, Sinful San Fransisco as the zig-zags, and Zoya Juno as the thinner stipe down the middle.

p.s. The reason I photographed my right hand and not my left as usual is that I am left-handed and since I normally don't do nail art and I'm bad at it, but left hand looked horrible. ;)
p.p.s. I'm so sorry about subjecting you to the disgusting state of my cuticles! I'm rectifying their snagglyness as we speak.