Nail Art: Chicago Blackhawks Feather Nails

I'm a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan, so of course I had to express my excitement for the Stanley Cup champs through manicures several times this past season. Here's one of my favorites:

 

 

Nail Art: Galaxy Nails Attempt #1

I've seen a TON of different takes on galaxy nails recently, and the concept seemed easy enough, so on a day when I had a dark base color already pre-applied and ready to go, I decided to give it a shot.

Nail Art: The Joker at Mardi Gras?

People kept asking me if these were Mardi Gras or Joker nails, and although neither of those were my original intention, I think they're pretty apt descriptions of this look!

Nail Art: Pink and Purple Holo Gradient

My second ever attempt at a gradient manicure—and it actually went pretty well!

Swatch: Sugar Coat in Red Velvet by Sally Hansen

I think textured polishes can be really fun on occasion, so when I saw Sally Hansen's Sugar Coat polish in this gorgeous Red Velvet color on the store shelf, I just had to have it.

Nail Art: Inspired by the Michael Kors Resort 2014 Collection

I was feeling a bit uninspired recently, so I decided to spend an evening browsing through some designers’ recent collections in hopes of finding some ideas that might work well for nail art. Well, I ended up finding LOTS of things, so expect this to be the first of many fashion-inspired manicures from me!

As soon as I saw this eye-catching little dress in Michael Kors's Resort 2014 collection, I knew I had to do a manicure inspired by it. And although it took the better part of an afternoon/evening to do (with lots of long breaks to allow for drying time between steps!), I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out!

Swatch: Day Trippin' by Pretty & Polished

Thermal/color-changing polishes seem to be a big trend right now, so of course I had to get in on that!

Nail Art: FNUG Color Blocking Trio

I have a lot of neutral polish colors, but I always seem to get distracted by other, brighter colors and forget to use them! So I decided to use multiple neutrals all at once and really make an effort to feature them in this manicure.

Nail Art: Blue-Teal Gradient

Gradients are one of my very favorite nail art looks: when done well, they're so impressive! I'm still trying to perfect my own technique (fully blending the colors is my biggest challenge), but I'm reasonably happy with how my first three-color gradient turned out.

Nail Art: Pink Tips and Studs

I'm often pretty busy with work, chores, etc., so it's not unusual for one nail art look to take me a couple of days to complete. I'll start by applying a base color one day, and then a day or two later, I'll go back and incorporate some fun details when I have another small chunk of time. That's what happened here: I started with the base color from my previous post and then added to it the next day. It's actually a really great way to approach nail art, if you have the patience for it, because you don't need to be nearly as careful about messing up your base color when it's had a day or more to fully set up.

Swatch: Galithée by NARS

For my first real post here, I thought I'd start things off simply with a little swatching action!

First post!

Hey, everyone! I've been posting my manicures over on tumblr for a while (at amateurmanicure.tumblr.com), but I recently decided that it was well past time for me to get a real, full-on blog up and running. So here we are! I'm going to be posting both new and old stuff for a bit—going to cross-post some of my better tumblr posts here as well—and then all my new stuff will land here first and get cross-posted to tumblr later. I'll also be upgrading the look of this blog as I go, so even though it's pretty drab now, I promise it'll be better soon.

You can follow me here, on tumblr, via RSS, or on bloglovin.

Welcome, and thanks for looking in!