Fun times with acrylic.

I went to KY this weekend to visit family while my dad helped my uncle put up a fence. I had free time where I could either watch TV or luckily I took my acrylic supplies and practiced my sculpted nails, which I haven't done in probably a year or so. I did some pink and whites, plus played with putting different nail art pieces in the acrylic, a few of them turned out meh, but others came out really cute. The way I do them is something cheap and easy I learned in nail school. I use these old wooden clothes pins. Its a little awkward at times, but it works and they are easily reusable or cheap to buy if I need new ones. The pictures are below, and just a couple notes: the dark marks around the edge is pencil, its a way to draw in a cuticle to know where to place the acrylic so I don't just put it where ever, and I took these pictures with my DSLR camera, some aren't that well focused because it was awkward trying to hold the camera and focus, but they turned out better than my canon elph was wanting to give me.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Transferring my License(very long winded post)

So after having moved from FL nearly 3 years ago I'm finally going through the whole process of getting my license here in WV. I went to school in FL for 300 hours, the law only requires 250 so why in God's name I had to do 300 I don't know. WV requires 400 hrs, and doesn't allow any reciprocity for Nail Technicians, which means I cant just go up and say "hey I have my FL license give me a WV one in exchange." I need 150 more hrs of schooling or I have to show proof that I worked for at least 6 months(25hrs is credited for each month your work in a salon/spa). Also in FL they don't require NT's to take an exam, my school gave a written one but to be licensed by the board there isn't an exam in anyway shape or form. WV has a good 4-5 hr exam, two written parts and a practical exam where I have to do a manicure, tips, sculpted nails, and a nail wrap.

Now if I hadn't piddled around for so long about getting my license here I probably wouldn't care that much, but basically when I moved from FL I was in no mood to do nails, or really anything for that matter. Now that I've waited over 2 years I'm a little out of practice. Monday I called one of the schools near me and they said it was me 5$ an hour I'd need to go 25hrs a week so I'd be done in 4 weeks(this was before I spoke to the WV Board and they said it didn't matter that I logged 300 hrs at school) and I would need to pay for registration and a new kit. Now at the school in FL my kit was only worth maybe $150-200. So I'm thinking along the lines of $800 for this measly 100 hrs I need. I get the brochure the school sent me, and I nearly died. So $500 for the hours I need, $100 for registration (WTF!?) and SIX-HUNDRED for the kit. No...just no. That took my total up to $1200 for 100 hrs, 300 hours at the school in FL only cost $2500!!

So this morning when I wasn't very busy at work I called the board to see if they still offered the 25hrs per month working(I think that's rather ignorant considering that's less than an hour a day but whatever). Find out that FL is 250, so I'd need another 50 hrs on top of everything else so my grand total(before extra fees and exams fees) is $1450. I actually cried after I got off the phone because it felt like everything was just discouraging me from doing nails here in WV.

After I calmed down a bit I decided I should really try and contact the owner/manager of the spa I worked at after I graduated. I worked from May 07 to Nov 07 so there's my 6 months of work experience I need. I didn't know if her numbers still belonged to her, or even if she still had the spa. Luckily I'm OCD about phone numbers and keep them forever just in case. I tried the spa's number and she answered on the third ring. I think she was in shock I called her because I haven't spoken to her since I went by to pick my things up the day before I moved.  I told her about me trying to get my license finally moved to WV and how things just weren't going well and that my last option was to mail her a form and have her say I did work there from May-Nov 2007 and have it notarized. She said if I mailed her the stuff she would do it for me. It was like the heavens opened up and there was music and singing.

After speaking to her I got on the WV Boards website to print out the forms I needed and managed to find stuff about the exam. After reading through it I started getting all nervous again. I won't have all of my forms and paperwork in time to take the August exam which is fine because I need to practice a lot before then. The main thing I'm worried about is the whole WV laws and the written tests because while I learned stuff in FL it was the FL laws that I learned, I have no idea how different the laws may be, and I really don't want to have to pay to learn that stuff at the school here because that's a bit ridiculous for how much I'd need to pay. So my plan is to try to speak to some different NT's in the area to get some information about the test. I actually made an appointment to get a manicure near where my normal job is so maybe I can speak to them about the exam and the laws. If all else fails I can try to get into a couple classes at the academy. Which on a side note all the beauty schools in this area close at like 5-6pm. Which is very inconvenient for me, if I had gone through with taking the hours at the school I'd have lost hours at work and would have had to use vacation for some of the days to make the 25hrs a week they wanted. Apparently the schools are only for those who don't have jobs or have someone to support them through school. In FL I worked until 3:15pm Mon-Fri and then went to school from 4-9pm. I was done in less than 5 months.

Haul and picket fence nails?(photo heavy)

I went to work out at the gym this morning, then headed down to cosmo prof on the other side of the city to check on a couple things. First I'll show you guys the stuff I picked up, plus a couple things I got from ebay in the past week, I have a few more things arriving but they haven't yet.

Here are a few nail art items I picked up. They were each 2.99$ the crushed shells were regular 3.50$

Everyone has been raving about seche vite and I just hadn't gotten around to trying it or even really checking if my supply stores had it, I managed to spot it when I was looking for cuticle oil and grabbed it.

Finally got some cuticle oil since I believe my last one is gone.

This I'm actually considering returning, it was 15$ and they usually have good priced little china glaze boxes like this but I pay 3.25$ a bottle for china glaze and with this box set I'm paying 3.25$ plus 2$ for the box/beach ball, plus I already have one of the colors. I may return it or try to sell them, I'm not sure yet.

The colors are: Sour Apple, Bad Kitty, Dreamsicle, and Blue Hawaiian

Here are 3 china glazes I picked up, I've been wanting to two from Up and Away collection and just got around to picking them up, the gold is from the Wizard of Ooh Ahz Returns collection

I needed some new tweezers for picking up some nail art stuff like rhinestones and whatnot, my old ones the tip broke off on one side so they basically became useless. I bought these off of ebay.

I couldn't find my nail art polishes that I bought when I was in nail school over 3 years ago, and so I found this set on ebay and bought them. Well I found this bag of a lot of my nail art stuff from school when I was going through my closet so I'll probably sell these to a friend since I have all these colors already.

I really don;t know what I was thinking when I did this, I was trying to do flower petals, and it ended up looking more like a picket fence. Oh well.

Oh after I did the nail art I decided to go ahead and give seche vite a try and wow, it dried faster and smoother than I thought possible. The top coat I got addicted to in school is starting to bubble on me, and I bought some Daby at the premier show in Orlando in June but I'm hording it because unless I want to pay 13$ for a bottle I have to wait until next summer to get more for only 5.33 a bottle.

In the bag I found most of my nail art stuff, I also managed to find my 3d nail art brush, and while I don't like having acrylic nails on I absolutely adore doing 3d nail art, its so much fun. So once my new colored acrylic gets here I'll probably start playing with that more, at the moment I just have clear/pink/white plus a shimmer blue and red but I can't have much fun with 2 colors. Here is a picture I have from when I was in school, we had to do a project with nail art and all but 2 of mine were 3d.

Lemon, banana, orange, cherry, pear

plum, grapes, pineapple, strawberry, green apple

Hope everyone has a happy 4th!

The Hungry Asian Giveaway!

Here's a link to a giveaway Kae over at the hungry asain is having. You will be able to enter until the 14th. She has a few different polish sets, and a couple frankens she will be giving out so be sure to head over and fill out the form!

The Hungry Asian Giveaway click here!!

I took off my eclipse nails and I started on doing new ones, until I went to sit and watch TV to let the polish dry a bit before starting some nail art and I passed out watching 'keeping up appearances'. I should have a post sometime Saturday afternoon with my new nails.

Eclipse!

I decided to do my nails tonight, and after running to the theater to buy Eclipse tickets I thought it was fitting.

The last picture my camera's macro mode didn't focus right but I thought it was a good way to show the glitter polish's I has on. The pictures don't do the polish justice, I was in a bit of a hurry so I could head to bed.

I used China Glaze - Black Diamond, different striper paints for the lettering and the eclipse symbol, and China Glaze - Fairy Dust on the blank nails on the right hand.

Eclipse tomorrow at midnight, then again with my mom(because I got her sucked into the twilight fandemonium) Wednesday at 7.

 Oh yes, Eclipse twice in less than 24 hours.

I did it for New Moon also, haha.

Times I wish I was ambidextrous

I saw a nail tutorial on youtube and decided to give it a try. I used the french tip stickers you can get at any drugstore for the white tips, China Glaze white on white, then I hand painted the flowers and dots with acrylic paints.

The link to the youtube video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oYedFeYkEA

Marbling

I've tried marbling before and it's never gone well, I also don't like all the clean up. I tried a couple times on some tips last night but the colors just weren't spreading out like they should have been and were also drying really fast. I gave it another try earlier and experimented with different water temperatures and different colors of nail polish. I finally realized that part of it was the colors I was using just didn't work well with this technique particularly a couple of the neon's from China Glazes Ink collection. I managed to pick 3 random cream CG polishes that did work. The pink I was using did dry a bit faster than the other two polishes, and I realized my ceiling fan was speeding up the drying.

Here are a couple tips I experimented with before trying it on my own nails.

I really need to start using oil/lotion before taking photos of my nails, my hands look horrible, but oh well. 

Not too bad for the first time I managed to get it to work. 

The colors used were: CG Lemon Fizz, CG Shower Together, CG Pool Party

Black Diamond Nova

Here's a quick manicure I did after going out to breakfast with some family(dad, mom, pawpaw, uncle, and my baby cousin)

It is CG Black Diamond, with CG Nova faded in from the tip. The glitter in nova is so thick and chunky it didn't photograph very well.

Hope everyone has a Happy Father's day!