When “Endless Blue” is a Little Too Real

Nail polish stain remover

Time commitment: 5 minutes
Cost: Free
Ease of activity: 8/10
“Re-Pin” Worthiness: 8/10

I’ve never been one for nail polish, but last year I found this great brand at Target called “Sinful Colors” that was cheap and lasted without chipping too much. Don’t worry about the title of the brand though; the nail polish has yet to be responsible for leading me down the path to unrighteousness.

I ended up buying eight colors and have since made painting my nails a regular activity. One of my favorite colors is a bright blue called “Endless Blue.” (Does someone actually get paid to come up with these names? Does this person get fulfillment out of his/her job? Is this what all the people who major in women’s studies end up doing? These are the questions that keep me up at night.)

Little did I know how true the polish was to its name. After wearing it for a week I used nail polish remover to take off the color. But *gasp* my nails were still blue.

In the past when this had happened I would just keep repainting my nails until they grew long enough where you couldn’t see the color anymore. However, Pinterest came to the rescue.

With some toothpaste and water I was able to remove the majority of the resilient color. I had to put my fingers under water, rub them with toothpaste, and let it soak for a few minutes, but overall it worked pretty well.

The worst part about this experience was rubbing toothpaste on my fingers. I did not much enjoy that feeling. However, it worked decently.

Takeaway: Random household products can be used for things other than their intended purpose. Check out Pinterest as many users are really good at finding and sharing them.

Patriotic Polish

I have to admit that I really enjoy the Olympics. I find myself being the smart-alec friend who knows a lot of the rules about different sports (thanks Wikipedia!). My favorite things to watch are figure skating and anything with snowboarding. I don’t care who you are, you  can’t help but feel patriotic while rooting on Team USA! I regularly sport an American flag keyboard cover, but I decided to support Team USA with this red white and blue manicure I found on Pinterest:

I used OPI Blue My Mind, Essie Fifth Avenue and So Easy Stripe Rite in white in order to recreate this look. I also used Scotch Tape.

I started with a base layer of the OPI. It’s a pretty thick polish, so I only had to do one layer. Let it dry completely before you start to tape it off in order to apply the red. If your tape is too sticky and it will pull up your polish, stick it to the back of your hand before putting it on your nail. In the pin, you can tell that the red stripes are hand painted and that she applied the white over the blue instead. I don’t own a white polish that has a standard brush, so I chose to do the Essie next. Since the base blue is so dark, it too a pretty thick coat of the red in order to get the color I desired. Too thin and it looked maroon.

After peeling off the tape (immediately, while the paint is still wet) and letting the red coat dry, I painted on the stripes. first I did the horizontals, then the diagonal. These look better on some fingers than others, since they’re freehanded. I also used a polish with a very thin brush. If you don’t have one, you can use the tip of a pen or pencil or a small paint brush. I decided to omit the glitter, since I didn’t have any that would go well like the original star glitter.

After they dried, I applied a top coat and viola a super patriotic manicure!

During the next few weeks, make sure you tune in to support our athletes. Do something out of your ordinary routine to show some patriotism! Go Team USA!

The Most Frustrating Manicure I’ve Ever Attempted

One of the most fascinating areas of Pinterest to me is the nail art boards. Mine is full of ideas I’d love to try, but I rarely try because I’m afraid to fail. I’ve followed nail art blogs for years and about a year ago, I finally decided to give the basic “scotch tape mani” a try. That’s simply when you take scotch tape and use it to create lines and patterns on your nails. This advanced into me ordering dotting tools (use an old pen or pencil if you don’t want to buy them) and striping tape. I’ve had decent success with those tools in the past, which lead me to trying the pin below.

I started with a layer of black polish as my base. Make sure you keep this one thin, you want it to dry quickly. If it is gloopy and takes a long time to dry, you’re going to be really frustrated when it comes to the taping process. The base layer doesn’t need to be perfect, if it’s sort of transparent you won’t be able to tell in the end.

I didn’t have glittery polishes that I thought varied in color slightly enough to be an ombre, so I chose various shades of turquoise and minty greens/blues instead. I used OPI Fly and two of the five bottles included in an ombre set from Forever 21, which they no longer sell.

I started by sectioning my nails into three parts using the tape, pushing the edges down using tweezers (sorry I didn’t get pictures, I only had so many hands!) This is a tedious process and the hardest part about doing this type of manicure. Once a whole hand was sectioned off, I opened all three bottles of polish at once and did one nail at a time. You have to immediately pull of the tape before the sections dry, or you run the risk of pulling off large chunks of polish. This is why I did a whole nail at a time, so that the different colors don’t dry while doing the other nails. This is also where the thin base layer comes into play. When you go to pull up the tape to reveal the black lines, you might pull up black polish. This is seriously frustrating. If this happens there may be a few culprits: 1) The base layer was too thick 2) you base layer was still tacky or 3) your tape was too sticky (solve this by sticking it to the back of your hand before putting it on polish). I had this happen more than once, but instead of starting all over, I used the black polish with a really thin brush to paint in the ruined areas. Cheating, I know, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!

In the end, I liked the way this manicure turned out. However, it is super time consuming and takes a lot of extra tools if you want to recreate the stripes accurately. It also requires an immense amount of patience!! This is how mine turned out:

Time commitment: 1.5-2 hours
Cost: Depends on how much of the stuff you already own, free-$10
Ease of activity: 4/10, the taping process knocked this one down.

What is the most daring manicure you’ve ever tried? How did it turn out?