I Still Blame Blogger. (Also Known As: I Love Italics.)

You guys have no idea how stoked I am whenever you comment. I get ridiculously excited and feel like I'm the champion of the internet, because there are people out there that like my posts enough to take the time to drop me a line.

So, when I somehow accidentally deleted a comment from one of my favorite nail bloggers, Fingers from Fingers Polish Mania, on my last post, I legit felt super awful.

Soooo, to make it up to her, I decided to do a Fingers-inspired mani for today. No glitter, with stamping, and, because I know it's her favorite: BROWN.

For today's manicure, I used Kleancolor Dark Brown--a, well, dark brown--and Kleancolor Cappuccino--a medium brown. I also picked up a new bottle of topcoat, but Jewel was all out of my usual Sally Hansen Dries Instantly Top Coat, so I grabbed a bottle of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, to go with the Revlon Quick Dry Base Coat I've had to use as of late.

I don't usually wear brown polish. I've owned a few over the years, but much like my dislike of yellow polish because it reminds me of nail fungus and pee (real mature, I know), brown polishes have always kinda reminded me of, well, poop.

And Kleancolor Dark Brown and Kleancolor Cappuccino are both cremes, so I was sitting there, contemplating this manicure, thinking, "Great. There's not even any shimmer or anything to make it look like PRETTY poop.", but the idea for the manicure was already stuck in my brain, so I went for it.

The first coat of Dark Brown went on looking like a thin coat of chocolate syrup. Cappuccino went on looking like... Frappuccino (I don't drink cappuccino, so I don't know what it looks like, but I have been known to splurge on a Frappuccino every once in a great while, so...).

"Okay," I thought, "Chocolate and Frappuccino. I can work with chocolate and Frappuccino", and that made me feel a little less poo-y.

The second coat of Dark Brown darkened the color quite a bit, much closer to how it looks in the bottle. I still had a few thinnish spots, but I snapped a few pictures anyway.

Mmm, brown-y!
Artificial light, no flash.

With the flash on, the Dark Brown looks much closer to the color it looked at one coat. Just FYI.
Artificial light, flash.

I know how long Kleancolors take to dry, so I stopped at two coats at 10pm, because I knew I'd have to stay up for a few more hours just to let my nails dry enough that they wouldn't be destroyed when I went to bed. I ended up staying up until five o'clock in the morning, and they were still dentable, so I kind of dozed while trying to lay very still for two hours until I had to get up for work at seven.

Luckily (?), I was able to keep myself from falling into a deep enough sleep that I might accidentally move and ruin everything, so my nails were still in good shape when I got up. I was pretty tired after my morning emails, though, so I laid back down around ten. When I got back up at two, there were sheet marks mashed into my right pinky nail.

Twelve full hours after I'd applied just two coats (well, plus a layer of quick-dry base coat), and my nails had STILL dented. WTF, Kleancolor? I love your colors and glitters, but damn. Do something about your drying time. And your smell. Thanks.

I'd been planning on adding a third coat to cover those thin spots I mentioned earlier anyway, though, so I wasn't too concerned about the sheet marks.

After a third coat on each nail, I stamped my accent nail using Dark Brown and Bundle Monster plate BM21.

The stamp is a wee bit crooked, which tells me I'm out of practice and need to do more stamping! ; )
Natural light.

Artificial light, flash.

Artificial light, no flash.

Even though I'd never used this stamp before, I cleaned it with nail polish remover before stamping. I guess I must've still missed some silver polish that had gotten smeared on it from when I used one of the other stamps on the plate, though, so I ended up with a bit of silver in the circles near the tip of my nail. : P
 
Initially, I was super frustrated with my crooked stamping and the bit of silver that my stamper picked up. I wanted this manicure to be perfect, and it's just not. But the longer I wear it, the more I don't care. Because it turns out, I like brown polish. And it's not poopy at all. It actually looks really nice!

So, Fingers, I hope you like this manicure, imperfect as it is. Alllll part of my charm. ; )

The Fact That There Are Christmas Themed Pringles Containers Already Is Killing My Soul.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH.

I just wrote a kind of medium length entry about how I've been dealing with depression for the past few months, and how there's a lot of stressful stuff going on in my personal life right now, and how I feel like that plays a big part in me not having the motivation to update my blog more often, and I added a whole bunch of pictures, and then Blogger ATE IT.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!??!??

(Sigh.)

Fine. I'll upload all the stupid pictures again. And come up with captions for all of them. Again. But I will not retype the post. I have my limits.

...I hope you really appreciate what I'm dealing with for you right now. No. Really.

*groans*

Okay, soooooo. Here:

To make up for not posting very often, here are a whole bunch of pictures in one post. We'll start with some old ones that my Facebook friends will probably recognize from my "I Love Nail Polish" album:

First up, a little snowman I did last winter, using just the nail polish brushes and a toothpick for the eyes, nose, and buttons. Unfortunately, I decided to wait several days before snapping this picture, and you can see how beat up it is. Still cute, though.

This picture was actually taken to show off my then-brand-new Bamboo Pen & Touch, but it features one of my very favorite polish combos: OPI Ate Berries In The Canaries and OPI Sun-body Loves Me!

My very first go at stamping using my Bundle Monster plates. I let my boyfriend pick the colors and design. He said he wanted it to look like a creamcicle.

He was a good sport and let me stamp his nail, too. I decided to play to his masculine side with a tiny tribute to bacon.

My first--and only--attempt at sponging. Not very pretty. Maybe I'll try it again someday...

I believe this was my second attempt at stamping. Plus freehand tips.

Oh my God, my cuticle line in this picture kind of makes me want to vomit. Still, this was one of my favorite stamped manis. The green really popped in real life.

I have a LOT more old pics, but I'm gonna save some, because I'm probably gonna need to to another of these picturebomb catch-up posts in the future...

So, on to more recent things!

A kind of lazy Halloween mani using this years Wet n' Wild Fantasy Makers polishes in Black Magic and Spooky Pumpkin. Again, I waited until I was ready to take the polish off to snap the pics, so it's looking a bit rough here.

This is the mani I actually wore on Halloween. I was thinking out loud about what I should do, and my boyfriend suggested bats on an orange background, so that's what I did. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed with a coat of Wet n' Wild Fantansy Makers Spooky Pumpkin, and the bat stamps from my Bundle Monster plates.

Oh, Clarins 230. You whore. <3

And lastly, and certainly leastly, I figured I'd throw in a shot of yours truly, doing what yours truly does best: Not knowing what the crap she's doing.

This is how I roll...

Okay, then. I hope throwing all these pictures at you was enough to make you forget that I'm a crappy blogger. Come back next week. Maybe there will be more words and pictures to look at or something.