Hey guys! I'm Leah. Panacea's best friend. She was so kind as to ask me to join her in doing this nail blog, knowing how much I LOVE nail polish I'm sure. lol Anyways, like I said, names Leah. I am a wife and mother of two little boys. Ezekiel (Zeke) is 3 and Elijah will be 1 on December 1st. So they keep me pretty busy, and I don't really get much time for myself. Some nights, no time at all. So when I do get some free time, one thing I enjoy most is painting my nails, trying different techniques and designs out. You could probably say that I have a bit of an obsession with nail polish. I don't have millions of polishes, but boy do I wish I did. I probably only really have about 60, but someday hope to have LOTS more! lol
As Panacea mentioned earlier, we are all about cruelty free polishes, however from time to time you may see us using one or two from our collections, but ONLY because we had them before realizing they were NOT cruelty free. Sally Hansen, which is one of the brands I am actually using in this tutorial claims on their website that they do not test on animals, however they are NOT on PETA's list. As for the rest of my colors in this tutorial, to the best of my knowledge are all cruelty free.
Seeing as Halloween is coming up, I of course wanted to do something for the occasion. My son Zeke is going as Frankenstein this year, so I thought why not do that. I am sure since today is only the 25th, I may be doing one more Halloween inspired nail, but we'll see. Cool side note... Did anyone else know that Frankenstein is not the name of the actual monster? Frankenstein is the name of his creator, but everyone just kind of turned it into being referred to as Frankenstein.The creator is
Victor Frankenstein and if you click that link, you can read for yourself about the rest. For now here is what I did.
First I started off by cleaning up my cuticles a lil. I admit, I am a picker and I pick at the sides of my nails. Never been a nail biter, but picking at them is just as bad, if not worse. I am trying to break that habit however and they're looking pretty good compared to normal.
Second thing I did was put some Sally Hansen: Hard as Nails Hardener on them. I have thin, weak nails that like to chip, so a friend gave me a bottle for free and since I actually starting to give a crap about my nails, I thought I would try it out. Personally, I think it works pretty good! Been using it for about a month, but not very frequently and I like the results so far. I like to use it as a base.
Recently I read somewhere... I wish I could remember where... that if you put some sort of greasy lotion on your fingers around the edge of your nails, it will help to remove screw ups. So if you suck at painting your own nails like me, this is great for you! Make sure not to get it on your actual nail, because then it's hard to paint over it. I like to use Aquaphor by Eucerin. I had some already for my kids, so why not use what you already have! Vaseline works great too. So not only does it help you keep nail polish off your skin, it will keep your fingers moisturized!
For the green for Frankenstein, I used Innocent by Sinful Colors. I had to do about two coats of this. I really love Sinful Colors and am so glad to hear that recently they have stepped up and admitted to doing wrong by some other nail bloggers. They have some great colors, but this one for me seems to be a lil weird. Its almost like its trying to be matte, has that weird texture, but is still semi glossy. I could just have a defective bottle too, who knows. Anyways, put two coats of that on and let it fully dry.
For Franks hair, I used Ebony Hates Chris by Wet n Wild in the Fast Dry line. If you are looking for a cheap black polish with gloss that goes on GREAT then this is your color. I absolutely LOVE this black. I have been using it a lot lately too. To apply it, you don't want to use the brush in the bottle because it creates too thick of points. Unless you're like super talented, then I guess you could try it, but I did and failed horribly. lol So I went and bought myself a set of painting brushes. They were $4.99 at Meijer in the craft section. I bought a variety, so that I could use them for other designs. What I did was just dab some of the Ebony Hates Chris onto a paper plate and then dipped the brush in with only a little on the brush. You don't want too much on there, because then it will just be a mess. You can always go over it later if extra coats are needed. The rest is pretty much self explanatory from the pictures. I didn't do any fancy tricks to make the jagged edges, just free handed it. Which btw is a lil difficult for me because I am shaky. I think they turned out pretty good though!
After finishing all the black hair, I applied a top coat of clear "Super Dry" which I have no idea where my mother bought it from. (My mom bought me some because I kept stealing hers!) Its fantastic however! On the bottle it has a website, for anyone interested...It is
Diamond Cosmetics.
I hope you guys enjoyed my post. I am quite surprised with myself on a few things. 1. I didn't screw up my nails. I even had to stop mid painting, because Elijah woke up and wanted a bottle. So I fed him, and changed him, and played for a lil bit, and they're still completely intact, which for me is a pretty big deal. GO ME! 2. I was having second thoughts about doing this blog ONLY because I kinda suck at words and coming up with things to say, but look at how long this is! I think I did good. Hopefully I kept it interesting enough and nobody left because they were bored. So yea, I hope that you guys will come back every week to see what new ideas Panacea and I have to come up with and what colors we have to share with you!
Peace out!
-Leah
