summer | Nail Smiles

Beach Bum

I live in Sunny California, but sadly Northern Sunny California does not have the warm sandy beaches of my childhood in Los Angeles and San Diego. Northern Sunny California has foggy, rocky, icy cold, windy, overcast beaches for the majority of the year; so even though I live about half an hour away from the beach, it’s not really a bikini kind of trip. I’ve painted a Beach Bum (pun intended) in honor of the hot summer days we’ve been experiencing where I’m dreaming of warm sand!

This design is done with polish for the background beach colors of yellow and blue and acrylic craft paint for the actual body. I tried the Orly topcoat first, but it was so-so…so I added another thick layer of Seche Vite (which I think is still in the lead right now). Both coats had some micro bubbles in them. I’m not quite sure how long she took me since I got in “the zone”, but it wasn’t a quick 5 minute job. Hopefully she’ll keep me entertained while I’m working hard preparing for a meeting I have this weekend. A girl can dream.

What’s your favorite beach you’ve been to?

Mine is on the shores of the Grand Cayman Islands!

This mani was both fun and frustrating. The fun part is that I love the design and I love the colors; the frustrating part is that I used some no-name brands, which resulted in difficulty painting as well as the polish rippling once I added the top coat.

The green nails are painted with 3 coats of Summer Brights Pastel Collection “Light Creme Green Mint” (a bottle I picked up at CVS). I have to say I’m in love with this green; the camera just doesn’t capture how the color softly glows and I love that it’s bright without being obnoxious. It applied a little uneven so it took the three coats to get a solid look. It’s topped with dots of blue Expressions “Mint” and purple China Glaze “Neon Flying Dragon. Seche Vite base and topcoats.

Sally Hansen Coral Reef, Sonic Bloom, China Glaze New Dragon (Neon), Expressions Mint

The orange nails have a Sally Hansen “White On” base, then two coats of the orange-scented Ross-obtained Expressions “Orange”. They’re topped with dots in Sally Hansen’s “Sonic Bloom” and “Coral Reef”. PSA – Don’t ever buy the Expressions brand polish – actually, if you want to buy it for a little girl I’m sure that would be great because they’re cheap and scented with pretty simple ingredients, but the polish didn’t apply evenly and when the top coat was applied it became horrible mess…it never really dried completely.

To do this design all you need is something to make dots with. You can either drop a couple dollars for an actual dotting tools set or if you’re like me and not willing to spend the $1.50, just stick some pins into the eraser end of a pencil or grab some toothpicks.

The design reminds me of something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, maybe cartoon dinosaur eggs? Even with the cheap no name polish issues I’m still happy with the way this turned out.

What’s your favorite cheap polish?