DIY: Ombre Glitter Nails

Today was fancy nails day in my house. Not much else to do, due to the rain. The rest of the afternoon will probably be spent drinking tea and doing not a whole lot - I think I'll watch Long Way Down [Ewan MacGregor and Charlie Boorman riding motorcycles from Scotland to South Africa] - then going out for supper. Good thing my nails are fancy for it.

I did glitter ombre - something I've been meaning to try for a while - and it actually turned out really nicely! I didn't take pictures while I was doing my nails, so I just will type out the instructions and show you pictures of what you'll need, etc.

So obviously, you'll need nail polish. I suppose you could just do glitter with no base colour, but I like the base colour to make it extra fancy fancy. I chose to do my bright Barbie pink (Revlon Pink Lingerie) with silvery-pink glitter (Sally Hansen Strobe Light). And, as always [the one step I usually neglect], a top coat. So now you're set to go!

1. If you're a base coat user, do this now.

2. Paint your nails with your solid base colour. I did two coats. Do as many coats as you like. I am no nail dictator. Wait to dry.

3. Paint the top 2/3 of your nail with glitter and wait for it to dry. (Another way of wording this might be "paint two thirds of the way down your nail...)

4. Paint the top 1/3 of your nail with glitter and wait for it to dry. This will start to create your ombre look.  ("one third of the way down your nail...")

5. Paint just the very tip of your nail with glitter. This will give you the most sparkles at the top, graduating down to no sparkles at the bottom. If you want to reverse that and make it so your nails have the most glitter closest to your cuticle, just do the opposite - paint the bottom 2/3, then the bottom 1/3, then a small strip by your cuticle.

6. After all that was sort of tacky and almost dry, I went back and very carefully touched up places with less glitter that needed more glitter, and added a few single sparkles to the bottom parts of my nails.

7. Once the glitter is totally dry, cover it all up with a top coat, and voila! Ombre glitter nails! Go forht and be fancy!!!

Sunburns, sparkles, and success

Today was a day to top all days! Woke up to a sun alert. Yes. A sun alert. I will take a sun alert any day. So I spent the morning reading Gossip Girl, slathered in sunscreen [about 400 layers so my burn from yesterday wouldn't become more burned - did it help? Nope.] soaking up all the Vitamin D possible. Can I just take this opportunity to say how much I hate winter? It's just not okay with me. Those few days around Christmastime with the soft snow, and jolly festive air, those days are okay. The rest of the wet, slushy, freezing ice pellets pelting your face... those days aren't okay. I will trade snow for stomach sunburns any day.

Two very exciting things happened today:

1. I sparkled my phone case. It is now fabulously sparkly. All you need to do this magical sparklization is the modge-podge, and the glitterz, and a phone case. And a sponge brush, but I guess you could use your fingers, or a popsicle stick... or like... cat hair taped to a chopstick. But I used a sponge brush. It seemed like a good idea. Anyway, I just modge-podged the case, sprinkled the sparkles, waited for it to dry, brushed off the loose sparkles, then just put another fairly thick layer of modge-podge over it to seal in all that sparkly goodness. Et voila! Unicorns be jellin' of my phone.

Unicorn Phone

2. I got a sweet job that is actually related to what I want to do when I grow up! I will be working as a summer staff person at our local museum! I'm actually so excited about this job... I get to do actual fun work, collaborate with some pretty rad people, archive, do community outreach and fundraising. It's going to be an excellent time! It makes me very excited. Probably the most excited I have ever been about a job. I'm pretty much a nerd... but we knew that already.

I think my copious amount of sun today has successfully melted my brain out of my head, so please excuse any spelling, grammar, or syntax errors in this post. e.e. cummings didn't really believe in "proper"syntax... so neither do I - 'cause he was a legit kind of guy. I'm starting to rhyme as well as alliterate now... so I think that's my cue to leave. I hope everyone else had a stellar day too!