The Begining: The How and The Why

People who know me know that I am in no way, shape, or form a "girly girl". I was the typical Tom boy growing up; played sports, fixed things with my dad, stayed out of the kitchen (unless it was time to eat), and things of that nature. Now as an adult, I'm a lot of things; a mom, a teacher, a gun girl (go GLOCK, woot woot!), but still not a girly girl. So how did I get into nail art?


Enter Pinterest. A friend of mine posted something on Facebook that was linked to her pinterest account. Those of you who are familiar with Pinterest know it's like going down the rabbit hole and it's hard to get back out. Somehow I came accross a picture of nail art. Now the concept of nail art isn't new to me. I've seen and heard of it before but it has never before caught my interest. However, this particular day I saw some really funky design that was created by the average "Josephine", and I was fascinated! Another of my childhood passions (and major in high school) was art. I've always been a fan of anything unique and creative, and this particular design of nail art hooked me. To me it was like wearable art...what a concept! So, I had to try it for myself.


That evening, after having spent hours on the net ooohhhing and aaahhhing over other peoples nail creations, I went out and bought some supplies and got started working on learning the art of nail art. Currently I'm about two weeks into it. My decision to blog about it comes more from the desire to have a catalogue of what I've created, where I started from, and note improvements, failures, discoveries, and the like. Admittedly, I have the awful habit of getting into something and be passionate about it for a few months, then let it die. We'll see where this new fascination of mine goes. In the mean time, I'll share some pictures of the very begining. Please keep in mind, I have no fancy equipment for taking pictures (and probably never will). I'm using my camera phone in whatever lighting is available, sometimes my hands are lotioned, sometimes not, I don't always clean my cuticles 100%, and I'm no hand model....

This is 2 coats of this bright green polish and a coat of silver crackle I found at 5 Below (I promise I'll get better at using correct names and such in the future). This was actually part of the small stash of polish  I already had. I did this before my trip to various stores in search of new polish. My sister (who has always been into having perfectly manicured nails, the ultra girly-girl and my total opposite) dubbed this mani "The Hulk".

This is the stash I bought at The Dollar Store. I'm working with a budget, don't judge. I couldn't get the picture to show correctly for the life of me so you'll have to tilt your head for this one (sorry).

 


Here are a few more items I pickec up at WalMart (there were some others I didn't get pics of).

Here's what I did with the new polishes. Left hand, right hand. I'm not a fan of these "poses". They look like agressive "monster hands" to me, lol!. These are a couple coats of each color without design or top coat.

My first attempts at some kind of design and trying out some other "poses" I've seen on the net, haha!



I kinda really like this pinky. It's a terrible, blurry pic. This polish is the L'Oreal something-having-to-do-with-sand-in-the-name polish (aigh!). A coat of the LA Colors sparkle and a top coat of N.Y.Co. It really is pretty in person.

That's all for now, I'll post more of what I did with this " experimental mani" in a future post. Ta-ta!