Party Nails!

I'm headed up to Austin tomorrow!! Hooray! Oh, Sixth Street, how I've missed thee. And friends, too, but come on now.

In celebration of this joyous occasion, I decided to do rainbow nails! But I couldn't decide which kind I wanted to do - stripes or confetti - So I did both! :D

Look #1: Confetti Nails

VERY simple to do. This took me about 5 minutes. Minus drying time.

Apply a white base coat and allow to dry. Then grab your brightest colors and go to town! I used one of the dot-makers I bought a few weeks ago, and just took turns adding each color on. Don't worry about being exact with the dots - confetti is pretty lop-sided. Cover with a clear base coat, and you're done!

Look #2: Rainbow Stripe Nails

Not quite as simple as the first, but still pretty easy. Apply a clear base coat (or white, if you want your colors to really pop. I was going for more of a Lisa Frank look.) Take the same rainbow colors, and one by one, paint diagonal lines across your nails. I used a smaller paint brush that I purchased with the dot-makers. If you are too lazy/cheap to buy one, then use fewer colors / fatter lines. Don't worry about being exact with the lines. I think it looks a little cooler if they're swirly! Add some glitter and a top coat and get ready to rave!

The Death of Netflix as We Know It

Good god it's been forever since I've written a post! What a failure.... But I do have an excuse! I was in a car accident (not my fault) on the 15th, and I've been dealing with insurance issues and car repairs. I think there should be an inconvenience compensation along with all of the damages. I have other things to do! Like write blog posts!!

Today, I think I'm going to rant about Netflix. A few short months ago I was raving about what a great company Netflix was, but oh how the tides have turned. If you haven't heard already, Netflix raised their rates an incredible amount all at once. Mine went from $15 to $20, I think. That's a 33% increase!! OUTRAGEOUS. And on top of this disgusting betrayal, the CEO announced that Netflix would soon be splitting into two separate companies - Quickster, which will continue mailing DVDs along with the addition of video games, and Netflix, which will become online streaming only. WHAT. THE. HECK. So now I'll have to keep my movie lists up to date on two separate sites!

I don't think that's going to happen. And millions of other customers have agreed. Netflix's stock prices plummeted in the past few weeks as many customers reduced or cancelled their subscriptions. I've already reduced mine, and will most likely cancel one service (or both) fairly soon. This is so disheartening. Since I'm a totally TV/movie junkie, I really need my flix! The only way Netflix can recover from this is if they manage to stream EVERYTHING - not just the old movies from 1946 and the ones that flopped a decade ago. Either that or take back everything they're attempting to do - price-hikes, company-splitting, and game-adding.


Do it.





Do it.

Starry Nails

Texas Wildfires: George Bush Park Edition

I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of the entire state of Texas burning to the ground. Today at about 3:30PM, a brush fire erupted in George Bush Park, near Highway 6 and Briar Forest.

I took these pictures from work, driving around, and from my apartment.

Football For Dummies

I have been watching football for as long as I can remember. The most exciting day of the year for me, other than Christmas, of course, was Super Bowl Sunday. Being six or seven years old, the prospect of eating snacks in the living room while yelling at the tv seemed too good to be true.

Unfortunately, many people don't understand and/or like the game. Unreal! For many, many years, I've attempted to convert many of my besties into fans by explaining the scoring system, positions, etc. This doesn't seem to work. Ever. So I'm taking a new approach - humor! I'm hoping that once people see how fun and hilarious football can be, they'll be less hostile to sitting down and watching a game with me :)

Keyshawn Johnson, a former wide receiver and current ESPN commentator, started the C'mon Man segment before each Monday Night Football Game. Each week, he picks out the most ridiculous plays and invites America to laugh at the ones they love.

Product Testing ~ Quick-Dry Polishes

Last night was the first game of the 2011 NFL season. I was counting down the days, minutes, and seconds to this game since... one minute after the Super Bowl ended. I don't know if you've picked up on this already, but I love football. Being a short, fat, injury-prone girl, I have never played this glorious game, but I can shoot the shit about it with the best of them. Thankfully, many of the awesome people I work with also love football, so we went out last night, watched the game, and got a little rowdy. :]

Before I went out, I decided to play with some nail polish. Because I make no sense. Anyways, I tried out three different "quick-drying" polishes to see which one worked the best. I absolutely hate waiting for polish to dry, and 99.99% of the time I end up smudging it. Which is really frustrating, since I often spend an hour or more getting them to look awesome in the first place.

☀ Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color

Don't buy this. Seriously. The polish itself was crap. I'm not sure how to describe polishes like this. I actually have a few of them. They come out of the bottle fine, but as soon as they touch your nail, the get... clumpy? But not really clumpy - lumpy? I don't know. But they're not smooth, not shiny, and don't cover evenly no matter what you do. The way to make these work (if you have similar issues) is to put a clear and/or glitter layer on top. That somehow makes them perfect again.

Anyway, back to the original issue of quickness. The bottle says it dries in 60 seconds. Five minutes later, it was still goopy and smudgey. This might have been because I attempted to fix the lumpies with an extra layer..? It says it's supposed to coat in one layer, but that's a lie as well.

Although this didn't dry nearly as fast as I was hoping, it did have a couple good aspects. I don't know if you've noticed this, but polish creators have started using a different brush design - which I love! It's flat and wide, rather than round and thin, which makes it a lot easier to cover your whole nail in two strokes. This brand also had some really cool colors. Which I like. Revolon, the other brand I tried, only had fairly basic colors (at least at the CVS I went to).

I think I might have to give this one another shot, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I wouldn't rush out to buy more any time soon though.

☀ Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat

This product sounded SO COOL. It's a clear top coat that claims to make any polish dry in a minute. The box says to apply your normal polish, wait 2 minutes, apply this top coat, and wait another minute. Although it definitely didn't dry in a minute (it was more like 3-5), I still liked it. I don't know about you guys, but I already have a million colors that I don't want to have to replace just so they'll dry faster.

☀ Revlon Top Speed Fast Dry Nail Enamel

I had heard rave reviews about this Revlon polish from a couple other bloggers. And it actually lived up to the hype! By the time I had finished painting each of my nails, the first nails were already dry!! It was a miracle. I only saw a few colors in the store, which is kind of annoying, but I have a feeling that if I hit up Ulta there'd be a lot more to choose from (the website says there's 32 colors).

When I was testing for dryness, I did both the finger print test (does it leave lines when you poke it?) and the nail-edge test (poking the edge of another nail straight into the polish). This was the only polish that passed both tests easily and quickly. The bottle claims that it dries in 60 seconds. It passed the finger print test in 60, and the nail-edge test in 2 minutes or so. Not bad, right?! I'm really excited about this stuff, if you can't tell. The only thing is that if you put a different polish on top, it will take longer to dry again. But all polish is like that, so I wasn't surprised.

There are about a million different types of "quick-dry" polishes out there. I'm going to try to test out a few more, but if you have any brand suggestions, or any type of testing suggestions, let me know! I'm going to work with the Konad stamper stuff soon, so I'll let you know how my second attempt at stamping goes!

Fall & Football Nails

This weekend the bestie came to visit!! I forced her to let me test out all of my new nail stuff on her. Since college football is starting up (Hook 'Em!) and it's supposedly almost fall (109 degrees...) we went with that.

Longhorn Nails

Mine were really boring/simple.

Base coat: UT Burnt Orange (from the Co-Op)

White polka-dots and clear top coat

Dot maker! It worked really well!!

Fall Nails

For Laura's nails, we tested out the Konad nail stampers! Since she has strangely small nails, I just used part of the stamp (one leaf instead of three).

Base Coat: Pure Ice Orange

Konad plate.

 The plate looks a little smeary because I was playing with it. We used the leaves in front. I bought a set of 20 plates from Amazon for $20 or so, so they're really not too expensive.

Konad Special Nail Polish - White

 Ok, so once the base coat dries, you paint the "special" polish onto the stamp that you want and use the little metal scraper to scrape off the excess. Then gently/firmly roll the stamper across the paint. Make sure that you get the whole image, and then roll that over your nail.

Scraper and stamper.

Once the stamp dried, we decided to add some gold dots. - just for the heck of it. Once it all dries, apply a topcoat of Sech Vite, and you're done!