On Hiatus

I am writing today to inform those of you that follow my blog that it will be on hiatus for an indeterminate amount of time, probably around a couple months. It is not a choice that I have made, rather a choice that has been forced upon me by an unfortunate circumstance.

You see, a few months ago I decided to make the switch to using OPI Nail Envy as a strengthener. It had been personally recommended to me a few times and I've heard nothing but good reviews. I was reluctant to purchase it as I found it to be a bit pricey, but when I found it on sale for $10 I couldn't resist taking advantage of the opportunity. I eagerly began to apply it as a base coat under all my manicures, excited to see the benefits that everyone else had raved about. Unfortunately that's not how things went for me.

A few weeks in I began to experience some pain in my nail beds and in the skin around my nails a few minutes after application. It didn't happen every time I applied polish, but became more and more frequent. At first it was bearable and I would just ignore it, but eventually it got to the point that I had to take my polish off and run my fingers under cold water to alleviate the symptoms. I knew this was not normal, but I thought I must be using it wrong. The fact that I might be allergic to it also crossed my mind, so I turned to the internet for advice. I was told I should stop wearing it, that the pain wasn't normal, and that I was likely having a reaction to it. This was all good advice, and it was advice I should have taken. At this point, however, I noticed that the pain only occurred when I painted my nails immediately after removing my old nail polish. If I took a break and washed my hands thoroughly in between then everything was fine. I decided that clearly it was a reaction between the Nail Envy and the nail polish removed, and once I began taking steps to make sure they did not come in contact then life was peachy keen again.

In July, I began a new job. While I love it and am very happy to be working at this company, the work is not very kind to my fingernails. I first started noticing my nails lifting slightly shortly after I started. I mentioned it to one of my coworkers, and they assured me that it had happened to them too. It was normal. As it didn't seem to be progressing much, I stopped worrying about it. Until one day, at the start of August, I took off my nail polish and the lifting had seriously progressed in a very short period of time. They looked diseased. I knew as soon as I saw it that I could no longer deny what was happening. My pinky and ringer fingers are the most affected, which doesn't make sense if it were trauma from work. No, it was clear that I was paying for my stubbornness and denial. I immediately stopped wearing Nail Envy, though I continued to wear polish with no base or top coat so that I didn't freak out the patients I work with.

After a week I wasn't seeing much improvement. I decided to give my nails a breather for the weekend. This was also a weekend where my boyfriend and I were doing a deep clean of the apartment. The cleaning products, combined with scrubbing and frequent hand washing, caused my nails to worsen significantly in a matter of a few hours. Worried that they were going to fall off completely, I finally consulted a professional on how to keep from making it worse. I need to wear gloves at work to prevent trauma and to stop me from washing my hands all the time, as getting your nails wet repeatedly can make them lift more. I was also told to cut my nails as short as I was comfortable with (some of them would end up really short if I cut them all the way down) to help protect them. Finally, and the reason my blog is now on hiatus, I was told I shouldn't be wearing nail polish at all. I'm not comfortable going to work with my nails uncovered as I have reason to believe that some patients may mistake my issue for nail fungus and not want me to work on them, so they recommended a polish free of the bad chemicals that cause the most problems with nails. I have one bottle, one colour, that my nails will be until they grow back out, and that doesn't make for very exciting blog posts.

So there you have it. I believe it will take a few months for my nails to grow back out properly, and as soon as they do I'll be back painting them all kinds of colours again. In the meantime, I'm going to be resting them and taking care of them so I can get back as soon as possible.

Until then!

-Danielle

Maybelline Polka Dots

A few weeks ago I was at Walmart picking up some nails supplies and I spotted a display for Maybelline's new "polka dot" nail polish. I really love the look of it, but unfortunately the only colour they had left was orange and I didn't think I would use it that much. I figured I'd find more colours somewhere though, so I decided to just keep my eye out for them. Turns out I was wrong. The next time I went to Walmart the display was nowhere to be seen, and none of the other stores I shop at had it in stock. I looked everywhere and couldn't find even a single bottle. Finally, a Target opened up near my work and had all the colours to choose from! I chose to get the green colour and dress it up for the weekend. I apologize in advance as this isn't my cleanest manicure ever, I was a bit rushed in doing it and it took a few days before I had time to take pictures so there's some tip wear.

I absolutely love this nail polish. It took 3 thin coats to get good coverage, but each layer dried really quickly and it didn't end up being too bulky, and the glitter distributed itself fairly evenly across the nail. I got lots of compliments on them too, even from my boyfriend's friends who were over for a guys weekend. You know it's good polish when boys like it.

The colour I got was "Drops of Jade", and the extra decorations are done with Quo's Instant Artist polish in Black and White.

New nail shape and fancy french triangles

Well, after having spent years trying to get my nails long and strong my goals are going to have to change. I started a new job recently, which is fantastic. However, I'm using my hands a lot and that's not really conducive to having long nails. I'm still going to work at getting them strong, but they're going to have to get shorter again. I decided to try out a more square tip for a while because I think it's a nicer shape for shorter nails. So far I've been semi-successful, hopefully with practice I'll get better at shaping them.

I want to try a french manicure with my new nails and a wedding this weekend should have been a perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, one of my nails has completely lifted in the corner and doesn't look all that wonderful. As my french manicures usually involve a fair bit of nail showing through I had to adapt my plans. I have a grayish-pink polish that I love so I decided to use some white and silver nail art polishes to do something fancy. I think I still had french on my mind though, because the results ended up being rather similar!

The base colour is Sally Hansen's "Gray-t Escape", and the design is done using Tivoli Nail Art polish in silver and Quo Instant Artist polish in white. I still don't have the nail shape right, but I've decided to leave it for now and try to fix it next time. If anyone has advice on how to get this shape it would be much appreciate it!

Circuit board nails

The last couple times I've tried to paint my nails it's been a total disaster. I've had problems with the polish bubbling up on my nail like a poorly applied sticker, water marbles where the polishes refused to spread properly, and even glitter that appeared to be determined to only apply to one corner of my nail. You know you're having a bad run when you can't even apply glitter properly. I painted my nails 4 times and not once did I end up with a successful manicure. So when I did my nails today and they actually came out good, I could have danced for joy.

I had a gold and a dark bluish-green that I knew would look great together, so I decided to do some geometrical stripes using striping tape. I finished the first nail and realized that I had accidentally done circuit board nails! It was completely unintentionally, but I think it's a cool look so I'm happy with it.

This took hours upon hours to do and seemed to use up about half of my roll of striping tape. When it looks this good, it's all worth it!

The colours I used were LA Color's "Jungle Fever" and Maybelline Color Show's "Bold Gold". 

Happy Canada Day!

I'm going to keep this short because I'm off in Montreal celebrating Canada Day! I made sure to have appropriate nails for the occasion, and what would be more appropriate than a Canadian flag?

I wasn't confident in my ability to paint a maple leaf, I can't even successfully draw one on paper. So I cheated a little bit recruited my boyfriend to do the hard work for me. I think he did a fantastic job! The pointer and ring fingers I did using tape to attempt to get a clean, crisp line, though as you can see that didn't quite work on all of my fingers. I used a nice sparkly red as well, because who doesn't love a little sparkle?

The colours used are Sally Hansen X-treme Wear's "White On" and "Red Carpet". Before I go, I also thought I'd share with you the cool calligraphy my boyfriend did of my initials while he was practising painting maple leafs. Like I said, definitely artistic!

HAPPY CANADA DAY, EVERYONE!

Green to blue gradient

I've been seeing lots of gradients around on other nail blogs and it's made me want to try one on my own nails again. The first tutorial I saw (which I now can not find for the life of me) used a small piece of sponge to dab two different colours up and down the nail. It worked, but it was generally really difficult to make a smooth transition from one colour to another. For today's gradient I tried out swirling the nail polish together on some plastic wrap and then stamping the whole thing on my nail. I decided to try a green to blue gradient so that I could do an accent nail using a blue and green glitter polish that I haven't tried out yet. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

The gradient ended up being a little more subtle than I originally intended, but I still like the colour combination. The only downside is that it took a LOT of polish to get the blue to show up. I must of used about half a bottle of each colour. Thankfully I used cheaper polish, which is probably why I had to use so much of it, so if (when) I do this again I'm going to try a polish that I know is a bit thicker.

The colours I used for the gradient are LA Colors "Palm Tree" and "Splash", and the glitter is "Cosmic" by Jordana. I love this glitter, I'm definitely going to have to use it again!

Bumblebee from Transformers!

I love doing my nails, but it can be really hard to come up with ideas for what to do time and time again. A few days ago I mentioned my lack of inspiration to my boyfriend, and his response was "You know what would be cool? Black and yellow stripes. Like a bumblebee. Oh, like the transformer!" So, these nails come to you courtesy of inspiration from my boyfriend. 

This was my first time trying to use striping tape where it wasn't just a straight line across the nail. I'm always in awe of The Nailasaurus and her ability to make impressive designs using striping tape. I did my best to follow her tutorial, and as you can see I haven't quite mastered it yet. I think it was a good first attempt though! I'm also disappointed that the autobot logo smeared a bit when I put the top coat on, but thankfully you can't really see it from a distance.

For the striped nails I did two coats of Joe Fresh's Onyx, laid down the striping tape, and painted a thick coat of Sally Hansen's "Lightening" on top. For the accent nail I did two coats of Sally Hansen's Lightening and then used Konad Special Nail Polish in black to paint the autobot logo.