Nails of August
After my last post about attempted nail art, I realised I didn’t need to write one every time I painted my nails, I could probably just do a round-up at the end of the month.
So, here are the nail varnishes I’ve worn this month. Some of them are attempted patterns and such, and others are just plain colour.
Note: I will link to the varnishes I’ve used, but it you are not seeing much hyperlinked text, you may need to turn off AdBlocker; I had to switch mine off for the whole of WordPress because it just wasn’t letting me see people’s external links.
The first nails we have here involve the Isabelle Dupont Coquette varnish (pretty sure my mum had this brand when I was a kid) in Teal Shimmer, and fish shapes painted over on one nail with Mahogani and the cheap stencils I got.
It went OK, I think the red was too dark against the teal to see the fish shapes well, and losing a fish was obviously awkward.
The clear polish I used on top is by La Femme, I chose it based entirely on the fact that it was incredibly cheap and it looks like the brush is long enough to not leave a bunch of polish in the bottom of the bottle like every other clear polish ever.
This one came after I found the joy of Barry M’s Molten Metals! The base is Silver Lining and I used a stencil of little crosses to add Mahogani on top. The Molten Metals are great, I only have two of them but there’s something appealing to me about making my nails look like bathroom taps, and I think Silver Lining is the best polish to do that since L’oreal Chrome Shine. I don’t know why they don’t sell it anymore, but it bums me out.
My eponychium (often confused with the cuticle) hadn’t been pushed back in a while and you can really tell. My nail shape looks horrendous here. You probably don’t know this from looking at pictures of my hands alone, but I actually have really tiny hands, and also, really tiny nails (not good for nail art!). Other people’s little fingernails are bigger than my entire thumbnails, if that gives you any perspective. Will has toes longer than my fingers, it’s all very alarming. But yes, because of this, my nails are unflattering enough as it is and I really don’t need to make them look any worse by neglecting to push back that big ol’ fold of skin.
For these nails I used Persian from the Barry M Aquarium range, which looks purple to gold-ish brown in different lights. On top of it I used Silver Lining with another stencil. Silver looks good against purple, but not so much against brown.
This one is Barry M’s Gold Rush, with Silver Lining and the Aquarium range’s Arabian as little accents, which I did with a chevron stencil thingy although it doesn’t look very nice.
I don’t normally do anything about varnish having gone over the edge of my nail, as it usually flakes off overnight anyway, but maybe I should get one of those tiny brushes and sweep the edges of my nails with acetone.
I forgot to take a photo of this one when I first did it, so it’s a bit scuffed. It’s Silver Lining again with some Persian on top in the shape of water drops. It didn’t turn out very well.
These were the nails I wore at our barbecue, Gold Rush with Arabian as a tip on my ring finger and with a mermaid scale pattern on my middle finger. I smudged the scales a fair bit on both hands. I also feel like I used too much clear coat and it went a bit bulky.
I realised that I didn’t have to use stencils for every little thing I did, so here is some plain Mahogani on its own. You may also notice that I actually started to shape my nails.
And these are my current nails, a lovely colour called Purple Cow. I have very obvious cuticle skin growing down my nails at this point, so I really must dig out my cuticle remover stuff and sort that out. Hopefully then I can start to improve my overall nail shape.
This is how my bare nails look at the moment (with red around the edges because I was taking off Mahogani):
Not super attractive, right?
As well as being very small, my nails are also weird on account of those odd vertical ridges down them, and the fact they are a bit thin and papery. It’s way too easy for me to yank my nails back in half if I catch them on something (very worried about doing that). When you look straight at the tips of my nails, rather than being a “C” shape they are a bit wavy. I don’t know if that’s all down to Ehlers-Danlos or if I just have odd nails. I get those vertical red and black stripes too but I imagine that’s just bleeding caused by the above issues.
I have never really shaped my nails before (bits peel off when I’m filing?) but now I am on a nail beautification mission.
This is probably TMI about my relationship, but:
To cut a long story short, I am allowed to have flings with women. Even though I’ve been with Will for almost 7 years, and I stopped playing the guitar a long time ago, I have still cut my nails short, just in case. Even though, (more TMI) I am more of a tribbing person than a “let me put my nails inside you” person, I still worry about what other girls think of my nail length. Despite this, though, and despite having gotten fairly far with some girls recently and not being sure if it will continue to be a thing or not, I would like to grow my nails a bit anyway.
I want them slightly longer than they are right now, but I don’t think I’d go longer than that, for my own safety at least. This reminds me of when me and my friends thought we were all super cool goths as teenagers and we used to cut our nails into spikes because we were soooooooo hardcore yo. In reality there was a lot of sore exposed skin from under the nail, and the spike tips snapped off super easily.
I am personally trying to go for a “squoval” shape with a bit more length now.
Here are some videos about growing your nails, if you are also interested in this:
I must clarify that these are definitely not my own videos, my YouTube channel is incredibly boring and features me being very uncharismatic.
Although nail hardeners are generally not recommended, I am going to try one on my thin and bendy nails. I’ll take advantage of the Amazon add-on thingy when I order dog food.
I do recall trying a nail hardener before, as a teenager. I think it was one that my mum got from QVC, when she watched a lot of that. Definitely overdid it though, I remember getting out of bed one night to remove it because my nails HURT.
So yeah, in summary, I’m trying to up my nail game.