Happy Fourth of July day, nails!  I know the fourth has come and gone, but thought I'd share a pic of the holiday sparkle nail that I wore on the the special day.  I was a bit lazy in my attempts to create a firework nail or some other fancy new creation, but was happy with the end result consisting of patriotic colors and a bit of sparkle.  It's about time I got my head in the game and created some fun new art to add to my repertoire.  Perhaps I shall put that on my list for the upcoming weeks...

Hope you had an excellent 4th of July, and that your summer is amazing thus far!
xoxo

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you all enjoyed your weekend and had a fun holiday! My sister's birthday is a few days before the crazy day, so celebrating her birthday tends to include a bit of Irish goodness and a few green beers. In honor of the day, I decided to create this simple shamrock manicure.

Have a great Sunday night! 

Xo 

HAPPY FRIDAY!! 

I have been thinking about this manicure for awhile and decided that today is the day.  Nothing like a lil mustache fun to brighten up the day right?!  I paired my fancy lil mustache with a springy pink color in hopes of convincing spring it is time to arrive.  Topped off with Seche Vite and I'm good to go.  

P.S. Who decided that mustaches were cool?  They are everywhere- magnets for your wine glasses, erasers, flasks, nail art!  Nevertheless, I dig it.  :) 

Have a fab weekend!  

xoxo

Happy Valentine's Day!! As promised, here is my new manicure in honor of the day of love!
Polishes I used were: Essie (Fiji), Essie Luxe, Stripe Right (black, white, and silver) and Seche Vite topcoat.  This manicure was a lot of fun to create, but also a challenge coming up with something different for each nail.  I am definitely a bigger fan of my left hand than my right, but I suppose that goes without saying to some extent seeing as how it is the easier hand to paint.  :) I hope that you had a wonderful Valentine's day and felt loved and appreciated!

Xoxo

Had a little fun with my nails while watching the Grammys.  Pinterest inspired, nonetheless.  Check out my "Nails I need" board on Pinterest to see where I find my inspiration.  Come back in a few days to see what I've come up with for my Valentine's Day Manicure.  

Xoxo.

  

These are probably my most favorite nail art creation yet.  I was inspired to create these after being invited to an arcade night at a friend's house.  (Her boyfriend had 10+ arcade game in his basement!! SO fun!!) I grew up playing and loving Pacman so I couldn't think of a better design for the occasion.  After a few hours (it's putzy work man!) I came out with these!  I like the left hand designs a bit better than the right, probably because of it's cleaner look.  But I was very happy with both.  Enjoy!

It's been awhile since I did anything fancy to my nails so I decided to try something new.

Hi. My name is Mindy, and I am an Olympic-aholic. 

For weeks I have been looking forward to seeing those rings on NBC and hearing the "Dum dum da dum dum dum da dum dum dum dum"(if you can't hear the song when you read those words, you need to watch some Olympic coverage). In order to prepare for and build my own excitement for the opening ceremony I painted my nails to start getting in the Olympic spirit.

Finally, the big day rolled around and I decided to dress accordingly for the opening ceremony; ready to cheer on my country. 

My sister made me pose for a pic saying,
"I need to capture this.  My sister in full swing.  Yup that's my sister".
She gets quite a kick out of my style sometimes.

Now that the opening ceremony is over and the events have begun, I'm not going to lie- I'm kind of like a kid in the candy store when the Olympics are on.  I get all sorts of excited at the idea of watching all the different events.  I was pretty excited today because I was able to bring a portable tv for my desk to watch the Olympics while at work.  No complaints here.  

I am not sure when it all began, but I definitely have an addiction to the Olympics. There's something extremely beautiful about watching the world come together in one place, even if it is to compete against each other in athletic events. Besides my love for sports, especially volleyball, maybe underneath it all it's the idea of a sample of all of God's people coming together in a peaceful manner. While watching the opening ceremony my sister commented, "I bet God loves the Olympics... I bet He's proud." Well wouldn't he be? I mean sure, competing against each other can end up getting a little ugly if people get upset or mean or something. But overall, it's pretty cool that people from all over the world are in one place. It's like a tiny sample of what heaven will be like right? A melting pot of every country come together for the same great purpose.

Regardless of whether it's my love for sports, or the coming together of all the countries- I am hopelessly in love with the Olympics.  There is something nostalgic or comforting about the voice of Bob Costas, or the sound of the Olympic theme song.  I'm quite excited for the days and nights left of quality time spent in front of the TV living vicariously through these athletes who compete to be the Best at what they do.  As the torch goes out in 2 weeks, it will be a sad moment until excitement re-builds and we come together again to watch the world compete in the winter Olympics in 2014.

So tonight... go home, spend some time with Bob Costas and join me in my love for the Olympics.
 

Here's what happens when you're bored with a few hours to kill.  A little something different on each finger.  

Here's my latest mani!  My sister bought me this awesome Holographic Sparkle polish from Sephora and I am already in love.  The beauty of it is that you can put it on any color and it picks up the color of the polish you are using.  So fun, and so sparkly :) 

Enjoy! 

It has been awhile since I have posted anything on the good ole blog, so here is a fun new manicure that I just did for my friend Megan.  She found the idea on Pinterest, which then linked us to a tutorial via a blog called Mad Manis.  It is such a cute manicure and actually quite easy to do!!  Here is the link for you to check it out.  Turned out really great  :)

http://madmanis.blogspot.com/2011/06/weeds-can-be-pretty-too.html

A friend passed on a picture of some nail art titled "Dippin' Dot Manicure" and I decided that it would be the perfect manicure to do in honor of the Color Run. I started by painting my nails white with the Essie polish. Then I proceeded to make colored dots all over my nails using many different polishes and the dotting tool I bought from Sally's Beauty. I did one color at a time, putting a few dots on each of my nails. By the end I had quite the artist's palette of colors on my paper plate, and a beautiful white nail with multi-colored dots. Super fun to do and super easy as well (even using my left hand)! 

Try it out :) 

Here is my first use of the awesome Stripe Rite nail polish that I got from my friend a couple weeks ago.  There are so many fun ideas on the internet; so after a bit of searching I decided to try out the Zebra Nail.  It was a lot of fun to do and actually pretty easy!  I even managed to do my right hand as well, and it didn't look too shabby!  Lots of fun to do and got lots of compliments too.  

Enjoy.  

Here are the polishes that I used.  The Stripe Rite has a thin
brush that works really well for striping!

This is the best Top Coat!  It dries super fast, makes your nails feel
strong, and gives it a nice glossy finish.  Found at Sally's Beauty.

My Zebra Nails :)

Lately I have been on a nail art kick, as you can see from my new Nail Art tab on my blog.  For my birthday, my friend Audra gave me a bag full of nail polishes!  She gave me a bunch of fun colors, and two nail stripe bottles- that are just awesome and allow me to be more creative with stripes and like in the image below, I can make bows, etc.  I was totally stoked and of course had to paint my nails almost immediately.  I tried out a zebra stripe look, (which I will show you in another post) and then I tried this manicure that I found on Pinterest. It was from a tutorial featured on thebeautydepartment.com.  It is actually a pretty sweet site, put on by Lauren Conrad and a few other ladies.  It has a bunch of hair tutorials, nail tutorials, and just really great fashion sort of stuff.  I love the site.  Anyways, thanks to their tutorial, I gave this manicure a try on my sister's nails.  It took a little while, with all the colors and layers, etc.  But I think the result was pretty cute!  

Enjoy!  

My nail color happened to match my purse perfectly.

Grey French Manicure

Heart Nails

Painted my sister's nails from a little Pinterest inspiration.

So I have to admit that I am a sucker for painting my nails.  I'm not a super girly, prissy, high-maintenance girl, I assure you.  I just have fun painting my nails.  As I was painting them the other day, I wondered to myself "who came up with painting your nails?"  I mean really, isn't it a little strange?  So I decided to look it up. Check out what I found out- thank you to Wikipedia.  

The Incas decorated their fingernails with pictures of eagles, but it is unclear how the practice of coloring nails progressed following these beginnings. Portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries include shiny nails.^[1]

By the turn of the 19th century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed with a chamois cloth, rather than simply polished. English and US 19th century cookbooks had directions for making nail paints. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, women pursued a polished rather than painted look by massaging tinted powders and creams into their nails, then buffing them shiny.^[2] One such polishing product sold around this time was Graf's Hyglo nail polish paste.^[2] Some women during this period painted their nails with clear, glossy varnish applied with a camel-hair brush.^[2] When automobile paint was created around 1920, it inspired the introduction of colored nail glosses.[2]

Interesting, right?  Well thank you Incas- if you are in fact responsible, because it is definitely something that I enjoy taking part in.  I think I have always loved painting my nails since I was little.  I remember painting my nails all sorts of colors- sometimes each finger was a different color and also had a different design on it.  As you grow up, it's not quite as cool to do different designs (or so I thought) so I went with the solid colors.  But now, I feel like the trends have changed and doing different designs on your nails are not just for pre-teens anymore!  I started noticing this when the whole "paint your ring fingernail a different color" thing started becoming popular.  [I would also like to know who came up with this crazy idea?] At first I was like, okay- that's weird.  But now I have totally jumped on the bandwagon- It's fun!  Maybe because it reminds me of when I was younger and put way more effort into making a cool unique design on my nails, but either way- I'm digging it.  

Now that I have joined the world of Pinterest- it's like fun nail designs are all over the place.  I was a bit skeptical about Pinterest prior to joining but now I am thankful because it definitely sparks all kinds of creativity; from making yummy meals, to awesome diy projects, and now to pretty nails!  I have a board on my Pinterest (check out my Pinterest page!) labeled Nails I Need, where I have pinned some of the designs I find intriguing.  I look forward to finding more Nail inspirations and trying them out!  It may not be crafting in a typical sense, but it's another way of pushing myself to be more creative right?

Here are a few of the designs that I have done.  I am thinking one up in honor of St. Patty's day (mainly because I have a minty/turquoise green that I've been wanting to use.  So stay tuned- and check back for more of my creations in the future :)

Essie brand nail polishes- not sure of the pink,
but the sparkly is the Essie luxe effects nail polish.

This is the same Essie brand luxe effect sparkle,
and OPI Lincoln Park after Dark (has a slight purple tint to it).

This nail art was inspired by thebeautydepartment.com
Check them out, they have tons of great nail, hair, and other beauty tips.