Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!!!
The other day I was looking through some of my pictures try to find a mani I had done awhile ago as I liked the accent nails and wanted to do them again. In the process I saw picture and picture after picture of my lovely long nails. Man I really miss those nails! Suddenly I was super jealous of those days gone by. I mean come on how long is it going to take for these nubbins to grow out?!!!
So I decided to put together a little green gradient to make myself feel better. I haven't gradiented in a while and I was super happy with how this turned out
This turned out so smooth! I used Sinful Colors Innocent and Exotic Green as well as OPI Nein, Nein, OK Fine
I wish there was a pill I could take to grow these babies over night! Then again I wish there was a pill I could take to lose weight over night too LOL!
Thanks for stopping by!!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Everyone!! Happy Saturday! Despite everyone in the world telling me my short nails look fine they just don't look fine to me. It's hard to get excited about nail art on shorties LOL! But I had to do something to them! I couldn't just let them sit there looking plain. So I did what most people do to brighten themselves up I went for a holo!
I grab the super gorgeous deep purple Elevation Haleakala and then did a sweet little accent nail of Red Dog Designs Down With Love--because I don't have a polish called down with shorties LOL!
Look how stunning Haleakala is! I'm not a huge holo lover because I don't work outside but this one was just too hard to pass up!
I'm working for a few hours today--I covered for someone while she was off so now I'm playing catch up on my work but when I get home I want to play with some different techniques and ideas I have for our up coming Digit-al Dozen week. We have some new members! So that means I better be sharp so I don't get left behind in their dust!
I hope you all have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Everyone! Yesterday I was home sick. First time I've been sick and missed work for illness since 2011! Which is a pretty good track record but still being sick sucks. I laid in bed for most of the day reading which was nice and then finally got up to watch the Veronica Mars movie which was nicer----ahhhh the glory of Logan Echolls.
I thought about doing my nails. I wasn't really feeling it but felt like I should and then this happened!
OH MY GOD! All I did was take off my nail polish and then BAM this happened. I knew they were pretty dry and brittle. I should have soaked them first as I like to do that before I remove my nail polish and start a new mani. But I didn't. And now I've paid the ultimate price.
Naturally after this happened I wasn't feeling like doing my nails at all. I begrudgingly filed them all down and am left with the superest shorties of all shorties!
They are in pretty rough shape here for sure.
You'll have to stop back tomorrow to see what I put on for my first day into Nubville because I can't think of thing to do with them right now!
Hi Everyone!! Happy Monday! All of our snow here in Wisconsin is nearly melted. We can see tons of grass but still have those ugly brackish black mounds of snow stuck with debris hanging out. To me this is the worst part of the transition between Winter and Spring--that ugly brackish snow. We had a couple of days in the 40's but this week is supposed to be chilly for us again.
To stave of the blahs about the weather not being exactly what we all want it be be now I went for a few flowers to cheer me up. I didn't want to go Spring crazy though because we're not quite there yet. I settled on some lovely blue and brown to get me through the day
I'm wearing Sea Spray from China Glaze on my index finger and OPI What Wizardy Is This on my pinkie. I did a saran wrap mani with Sea Spray and White on the middle and ring and then stamped with Loreal Brownie Points--a great brown for stamping--with Lily Anna 06
I think it's a perfect little mani for that transition time between seasons!
I had a great day yesterday hanging out with my friend Emily. We tried to do some water marbling and it was a huge FAIL but we did a couple other ideas using techniques we've seen and those were great successes! I'll be sharing them with you all this week!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Everyone! Last night I hauled out my foils for the first time in a long time. I was prompted to do so after a trip to the grocery store. All the snow has been melting around here so now we have a lot of puddles. Naturally, since I didn't have boots on, I parked in a huge puddle when I got there. As I gingerly stepped out of the car I noticed an oil slick dancing around on top of the water and I said to myself, "hey!!! I have some foils that look just like that"
I don't know how so many people get foils on so flawlessly. I never do. I always get bald patchy spots on mine. And yes I have enough glue on my nail and yes I wait long enough for it to dry. No matter what I do I just can't get them to go on super smooth. I didn't get the best pics of it but here's just the foils after I got them on
Yes it looks like oil floating on water but yes it also looks like a hot mess! So I topcoated it with my gel and UV light and then stamped on it to see if that would help it
It's better but not great. I do love this image from my new Lily Anna 06 plate though!
I pretty much called a night at this point and sat down on the couch. I spied my trusty bottle of Hard Candy Matte Top Coat and thought it can't hurt to matte it, right????
ZOOMG this is not amazeballs! It's SO much better and you can even see the foil colors and designs much better this way!
It's so 70's and retro looking!
Looks great on my keyboard! Hopefully I'll still get some work done today and not just be staring at my nails!
What do you think? Do you think matte saved the day? Do you use foils? Are you successful with them or do they make you want to scream sometimes?
Thanks for stopping by! Happy First Day of Spring to you all!
Hi Everyone! Before the whole indie craze went mad and took off like a rocket, there were girls who just added some spectraflair into a bottle of polish they had and hoped for the best. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Lucky for me I got a sweet little bottle of a dark green unnamed holo from a girl I know and it turned out gorgeous. Her name is Tara so her little bottle is simply called Tara's Franken LOL!
I had actually forgot about this little mini I had until I was searching for something else. I hauled it out and put it on and really loved it!
This is just under the lamp and it's got some gorgey sparkly holo goodness in it!
Here's the bad news! I put the plate away i had used and now for the life of me don't know which ones I grabbed! UG! That is definitely a sign you probably have too many plates!
Here's some nice flash shots, see how deep green this is?
Ooooooh Ahhhhh! It's so lovely!
I do know I stamped with the McGuyver of polish--China Glaze Passion. It's my favorite gold to stamp with. I hope I never run out of bottles of it!
How was everyone's St Patrick's Day yesterday? Mine was uneventful which is never a bad thing. 3 Days of corned beef in a row!!! I better eat a salad and some fruit today!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Top O The Mornin' to you dear Readers!!! A very Happy St Patrick's Day to you all!
I did update my post yesterday to show the celtic plate design fail as well as what I considered a success but I also wanted to share with you some mani's I did and wore over the past 2 weeks getting ready for St Patrick's Day.
First up some non traditional St Patrick's Day mani's
This is a lovely blue from Wet n Wild called Blue Moon stamped in silver with Mash 63
I also did this awesome non traditional look after seeing the way Michelle from EhmKay Nails did it in her sneak peek to me last night! She and i both are totally in love with textureds!!
My accent nail is Kiko 643, OPI Solitaire and Jinx stamped in black with MM04. I painted the rest of my nails with Sally Hansen I-rush Luck
Moving over to the more traditional looks for St Patrick's Day I did this
I didn't love this one much--a gradient of Sally Hansen Jade Jump and I-rush Luck topped with Red Dog Designs Shamrock Shake and then some stamping with Cici 08 and BM405
This one I did love though!! Red Dog Designs Shamrock Shake and Blarney Stone were both used for this one
Shamrock Shake is an awesome glitter topper full of tons of various different sized, shaped and colored green glitter WITH a shamrock glitter
Blarney Stone is a glorious and I mean glorious textured with gold holographic mico glitters in it. I did the cardinal sin of top coating over a textured with this one but totally loved it! Don't anyone tell my friend Tara! I'm always giving her a hard time for top coating textureds!
I used the fabulous Messy Mansion MM04 for this mani as well. I just loved how shiny this one was!
I hope you all have a great St Patrick's Day today. And I leave you with one of my favorite Irish Blessings!
Thanks for stopping by!!! Have a great day!!!
Hi Everyone!!! Happy Weekend! I had an awesome day yesterday NOT WORKING and spending some great quality time with my family. I cooked up 5 corned beef roasts and we took them over to my little sisters house for a fabulous corned beef, cabbage, carrots and potato dinner. My Aunt Net came down from Menomonee Falls to spend the weekend with mom so she was there helping to part of the usually Lutze family insanity LOL! We had a great time though--we talked about vacations we took together and all the fun times we had growing up.
My corned beef dinner was a rip roaring success as always but oh lord the mani I tried to do was so not a success! I saw this totally awesome Celtic plate and really wanted to recreate it but fell so short! Like I didn't even make the landing that's how short I was!
Here's the plate I tried to recreate
Pretty cool isn't it??? I love it and really wanted to try this on my nail.
Here's my fail
Just not happy at all with how it turned out! I'm going to spend some time today trying to see if I can nail this look.
Here's they are side by side, it's just not good enough for me!
Have you ever had this happen before? When you just really needed it to be spot on and it wasn't? What did you do? Did you keep trying? Or did you just give up?
Okay I've worked on this today and while it is not an exact match to the plate I really like how this end result turned out! What do you think??
I did a saran wrap mani using Elevation Streetside NYC, Illamasqua Unnatural and then I painted a star shape using Loreal Brownie Points. I stamped using Cheeky XL D
I really do like this look better than my first attempt
I do think my first attempt is more like the plate though!
Here's a comparison collage, 2nd attempt on top
What do you think? Which one do you like best--1st or 2nd mani?
Hi Everyone!!! Happy Friday! I am so excited for it to be Friday because I am FINALLY not working a weekend! Woot! No more Saturdays or Sundays for me. Today I am just like most of the res of the world and today is the last day of my work week.
I have to say I had a blast this week on the Brands theme. But I will let you in on a little secret. At first when our fearless leader, Debbie of The Crumpet, told me this week's theme was brands I went "Brands?! Why are we even thinking about cattle?" Yes people, I went directly to steer branding! It wasn't until chatting with the rest of the gang that my mind wandered to store brands, company brands, and even nail polish brands.
But I got to thinking about it and read up on brands and name brands and OF COURSE the whole idea and theory behind a name brand is because of cattle branding! Back in the day when fences could get broken, or deliberately torn down the only way for ranchers to identify which wandering--or stolen--cattle were theirs was by the brand they had given it. When the world started to grow and people bought items such as food, tools, clothing and vehicles. individuals or companies started "branding" their products with their name so they would get repeat customers.
So in the end I was right!!! Woot!
So today I give you my "brand"
My brand, the double L with love is just my initials. I like to think back in the day had we been on a ranch this would have been brand my dad came up with for our family LOL! Hey it could have happened, all of us girls had LL for our initials!
I got my look doing a saran wrap mani on middle and ring using Zoya Farah and Loreal Brownie Points. My index and pinkie are the lovely Elevation Aiguilles d'Arves.
Let's make sure to check and see what everyone else came up with on our last day!
Hi Everyone! The title of today's post should really read, "There Ain't No John Deere Here"!! I was born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin. Home of the Case Tractor. When we looked out at the fields growing up the tractors were red, nary a green and yellow tractor in sight. I graduated from Case High School named after Jerome I Case the man behind Case Company. today I work for Case IH right were the Case Magnum is manufactured every day.
Today my brand is our company logo Case IH
Jerome I Case founded the company in 1844 as the Jerome I Case Threshing Company. It operated under that name for nearly a century but by 1970 it was merely known as Case. In 1999 Case merged with New Holland Agriculture to form CNH Global. The company lives under 2 brands Case CE which is the world's third largest brand of construction equipment; and Case IH which is the world's second largest brand of agricultural equipment.
We manufacture the Magnum 340. Let me tell you IT IS HUGE! You need a ladder to get up into it! It's quite a sight seeing several of these loaded up on a flat bed heading out for some lucky farmers out there. During the company picnic in the summer you have the chance to climb up into one and a get a ride. I haven't done it because I don't want someone staring at my huge rump trying to get up into the cab LOL!
Here's a pic of the Case Magnum 340
The Case Company, CNH and now Case IH is a long standing part of Racine, WI. It's been here my whole life and I'm sure will be long after I'm gone. I'm proud to represent a great company as part of my brands week!
Let's check out what everyone else did for their brand today!
Hi Everyone!!! Happy Wednesday! I'm typing this up Tuesday night so I'm not sure it will happen BUT it's supposed to snow again! OIY! We had almost 50 degree weather the other day and now snow again. They were talking between 1 and 5 inches. If I wake up to snow on the ground I am going to be so hacked off!
I might need a nice cool refreshing beverage to help me cool off and I can think of none I like better than Pepsi! Yep this girl is not a Coke girl. I love Diet Pesi and especially Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi! I knew I was going to have to attempt some Pepsi nails for brand week and here's what I came up with!
Pepsi was first created in 1893--can you believe it! It was first named Brad's Drink. In 1898 it was renamed Pepsi-Cola and in 1961 was renamed to just Pepsi. I find it rather interesting that both Coke and Pepsi were first created to be a product to aid in digestion.
The Coca-Cola offered to buy Pepsi way back when on 3 separate occasions but as you can see it was a no go. I'm glad, I definitely prefer Pepsi to Coke!
Our brand week is coming along amazingly well! I think all my fellow Dozeners have come up with great ideas! Check out what everyone did today!
Hi Everyone!! Day 2 of the Digit-al Dozen Does Brands and I've got some cute Disney nails today. It seems like no matter where you go these days Disney is everywhere. If you're some who likes to surf the net or check out Buzzfeed on a daily basis there's a Disney Princess this or a Disney Princess that. But I'm just sticking to the cute little guy that started it all!
Mickey Mouse is the official mascot of the Walt Disney Company. He was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at the Walt Disney Studio in 1928. He is one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world.
My look isn't really "new" there are tons of images all over the web of the cute little mouse ears mani. I decided to change it up a bit and make it my own by adding the accent nail of yellow and red dots with stamping from FUN6. I think it turned out pretty darn cute!
I thought yesterday was a great start to our Digit-al Dozen Does Brands week, let's check out what everyone came up with for today!
Hi Everyone!! Happy Monday! This week kicks off Brands week for the Digit-al Dozen. Man let me tell you when I first heard about it I thought "brands??? what the heck do they mean by that?" I struggled for a while because my first thought was really not what I'm sure everyone's else first thought was LOL!
I'm kicking it off in style with some yummy double stuff oreos!
The Oreo Biscuit was first introduced in 1912 by The National Biscuit Company which was later named Nabisco. The Oreo was first launched as an imitation to the Hydrox cookie. When they were first sold you could buy them for 25 cents a pound!
Oreo has come a long way since 1912, today you can get golden oreos, lemon oreos, double stuff oreos, heads or tails oreos and the list goes on and on. My personal favorite are the double stuff because come on who doesn't love double stuffing?!
Getting my Oreo cookie look was easy I used OPI Emotions a black textured along with OPI Solitaire a white textured for my "cookies"
Let's check out what everyone else came up for their first day of brands!
Hi Everyone!! Happy Hump Day! So far it's looking good for having no snow on the commute in to work this morning. The past 2 days have sucktastic. It's almost as if everyone has forgotten what it's like to drive in the snow and we've had over 63 inches of it this year so you'd think they'd be pretty used to it by now LOL!
I bought the limited edition polishes Red Dog had up for sale a few days ago so I could get my Mardi Gras on and man are they lovely! Both Harlequin Ball and King Cake are once again incredibly original and absolutely stunning. I decided to start with Harlequin Ball because it has diamond shaped glitter in it because YES I love diamond shaped glitter and I was sooooo glad I did!
I topped it over Elevation Tronador simply because it was also new and sitting next to me--Tronador is quite stunning and will get a post all on its own shortly!
Harlequin Ball is filled with gold and purple circle holos both large and small as well and green and gold diamond glitter and of course it has Red Dog's signature micro holo shimmer.
I had to settle for pictures under the stove top light since there was no sunshine out for these pics!
I stamped using both Pueen 46 and BM420
This is just such a fun mani! I really love the look of Harlequin Ball over a dark color but I want to try it over something light too. And you know I'll shre it with you when I do!
Thanks for stopping by!!! I hope everyone has a fantastic day!!
Hi Everyone! A couple of weeks ago I found a celtic knot drawing I really wanted to recreate. The first time I attempted it I was solely going by memory and I'll tell you what--my memory of it absolutely sucked! So then I tried it again and felt pretty good about it until I compared it to the drawing and once again I just hadn't nailed it so I decided to give it one more go and finally SUCCESS! At least success as close as I can get it.
Here's my first attempt
Not sure what's up with Blogger but when I look at this pic it's coloring is horrible!
But that's not all, this is my inspiration so you can see how truly off I was!
Yikes doing things from memory really sucks!
This was my second attempt. I felt pretty good about it at first
But then I looked at my inspiration and realized the green is wrong and that I needed a more mint green.
So this is what I ended up with
Finally! Now I feel really good about it!
This must look complex but really it's just some rainbow colored stamping over black. I used my DRK-B plate for the stamping. I'm glad I kept trying to get what I really wanted
Supposed to snow ALL DAY here today--OIY! I'm thinking of breaking up with Winter--how about you???
Thanks for stopping by!!! Hope you all have a fantastic day!