What I did in December...

Wow, that went fast!  This month I learned how to do Gel Nails (different from Gel Polish or Acrylic Nails) and I did a few sets of Gel Nails and one set of Acrylics.  I REALLY like doing Gel Nails - they're easy, you just brush the gel on the nails.  They're quicker, not nearly as much sanding as acrylic nails and I think doing designs with Gel Nails offers many more possibilities than with acrylics so I'm looking forward to playing around with them more!

Here's my month in pictures, in random order:

Gel Nails!  Allie, one of my co-workers came in to school and let me practice on her - thanks Allie!

I am LOVING Gel Nails because I can put embelishments like the stars and glitter between the layers of Gel!  For Allie I used white tips and my own clear gel, stars and glitter.

Acrylics for Jill - note the glitzy gold tips for Christmas, whoo hoo!

Jill is the first client I have worked on who wanted longer nails - I was so excited!  I used the darker Pink powder and my own gold glitter with a clear top coat.

This is my very first set of Gel Nails - I practiced on Stefani, a classmate.  I used the schools gel (a pearly, glittery gel) and my own blue glitter.  The white circle on her ring finger is actually a snowflake... we learned that it's important to put the snowflake a little closer to the surface layer of gel than the foundation layer of gel when using a pearly/glittery gel because it went from being a snowflake to a circle, lol!

Another set of Gel Nails for my daughter Rachel.  She prefers the rounded corners and I used white tips, my own clear gel and silver glitter.

I'm finding that the glitter tends to go all over the nail as I brush the next layer on.  So far everyone likes it but I'm going to have to find another way to deal with wayward glitter for the people who don't want it!

And last but not least I did my own Gel Nails!  I used natural tips, my own clear Gel and rhinestones for a simple, elegant and natural look.

I really like how I was able to use the gel to cover the rhinestones leaving the surface of the nail smooth!

Nails, Nails, Nails Everywhere!

Wow, so it's just barely over a week since my last blog but it seems like a lot longer than that!  For Thanksgiving I got a four-day holiday from both work and school and  it was absolutely fantastic.

Here's what I did (or didn't do):  I slept in and cooked Thursday for Thanksgiving, I slept in and did a little shopping on Black Friday for the first time in probably 10 years but I'm not sure it really counted as "Black Friday" shopping because by the time we got there the stores are nearly empty, making it the perfect time to go!  I slept in and  did acrylic nails and toes and two gel polishes on Saturday, I slept in and went to church then did two more gel polishes on Sunday.

Out of the five people who live in my house four of us are girls and we all have pretty nails now!  So here's what I did in the order I did them:

MY FIRST PINK AND WHITES:  I did my very first set of pink and whites on my daughter Rachel, which was also my very first set of sculpted acrylics.  They didn't seem as hard as I thought they would be and yet they didn't come out quite as good as I hoped they would be either, lol!

Reusable forms and beginning the white tips

To sculpt the nails I used a set of reusable forms that I got at a beauty supply store near my school and they were sooooo much easier than the sticker forms.  Those were definitely a great purchase...  I used the white powder for the tips and formed those first.  Even though I thought I made them too thick on some nails the smile line wasn't very difficult - except for the pointy ends, ha, ha.  They were uneven but that's why I need the practice, eh?

The first finger has the pink powder, the rest of the fingers
only have the white tip

After completing the white tips I filled the rest of the nail in with a pink powder, which was probably one of the easiest things I've ever done, yay!  Although after I was done I realized that I didn't make the white tips thick enough after all and had to go back over them, which  made a couple of them look funny after I filed them because they had a white layer on the bottom, a clear/pink layer in the middle and another, very thin, white layer on the top.  Hmmm...




This is also the first set of nails that I did almost all of my filing with my dremel.  Awesome!  I picked up a box of medium and a box of fine sanding bands and a carbide bit on Black Friday and got to use them Saturday.  :)  The result was the sanding took a lot less time but I was left with some flat spots so obviously I need more practice with the dremel and neither the sanding band nor the carbide bit gave me the silky-smooth finish I was looking for so I still had to do the fine buffing by hand.  I'm hoping there's a finer carbide bit out there somewhere that
will give me a super smooth and shiny finish.  Has anybody used the buffing bits? I'm wondering if that would be a good investment as well.  Hmmm...

At any rate, the dremel and bits made the sanding faster for me and more tolerable for Rachel.  She didn't say "ouch" nearly as often as she does when I hand-file her nails, yay!

The finished product - my very first set of Pink and Whites!

I topped the nails off with a clear coat of gel polish and voila!  Rachel loves her nails, yay!

Now we'll see how long they last...  ;)

MY ACRYLIC TOES:  I have sad, strange little toenails and have put acrylics on them a couple of other times in my life using those little acrylic kits from Walmart.  I've even tried to get a professional shop to put acrylics on my toes a couple of different times and they always say no because my toenails were too small!  I, however, remain undaunted and continue to do it myself from time to time but this is the first time I've ever applied them with professional products and real training under my belt!  Although my timing may be a bit off because it's not really open-toed sandal season right now but that's never really stopped me from wearing sandals either, lol!

Yes, I wore my pretty sandals to church on Sunday
so I could show off my cheery, holiday sparkling red toes!

I used the sticker forms because the reusable ones weren't big enough for my big toes and it was just easier to use the stickers on the smaller toes too.  The acrylic I used was a pink/natural color and then I covered them with a sparkly red gel polish.  The shape of the acrylics are not perfect, I see several spots I should have done better and that's in part because I'm getting old and my eyesight isn't so good, trying to look clear down to my toes and also because my "girlish figure" prevented me from leaning over for extended periods of time so I just got the job done and wasn't able to do the best job I could do.  I know I would do a lot better on someone else's toes so keep me in mind for spring and summer, eh?

See the stars on her big toes?

Sara and I have matching toes now!

SARA'S TOES:  My daughter Sara wanted acrylics on her toes too but I talked her into just getting gel polish instead as she wears tennis shoes most of the time.  She chose the same sparkly red gel polish that I had used on my toes and we put some star accents on her big toes just fun!

Putting the stars on her toes was interesting and I need to figure out a better way to do it.  Gel polish has a sticky inhibition layer after being cured and so the stars stick to it just fine when I'm placing them but when I try to cover them with the top coat to seal them in they slide around so I had to do some rearranging before putting her feet into the UV lamp to cure.

My  fun, color-
changing hearts!

MY FINGERS:  I tried to soak the gel polish off my acrylics but they were so overdue for a fill that they just popped off.  Sad.  I'm sure I could apply acrylics to my left hand but I'm afraid my right hand would look like a bunch of lumpy globs at the end of my fingers, ha, ha, so I went for gel polish instead.

Stepping outside of the box so far (for me anyway) that I couldn't even see there was a box anymore I chose a granny-apple green gel polish and color-changing hearts that go from blue to green depending on which angle you're looking at them.  Please realize that this is waaayyy out of my comfort zone, seriously!  I rarely put wild colors on my nails and if I'm going to wear green clothing I like more of a classy, emerald green - this light green is much too close to neon for me - and I would have never gone for hearts like this (I'm not a big fan of decorating with hearts, don't know why) but I'm purposefully pushing myself to try new things and I'm finding out that it's kind of fun... and not as scary as I thought it might be, yay!



SARA'S FINGERS:  Sara can't wear bright nail polishes at her job so she wanted a natural colored gel polish - and then picked some gigantic black and white bows to put on her thumbs!

These things are crazy, they are absolutely straight and do not curve at all so only the very center is attached to the nail and the sides stick out.  I used a dot of superglue to hold them on and then tried to fill under the sides with gel topcoat and then cure it.

Hopefully they stay on...

Update - while she was at work last night one of the bows came off, bummer!  Now I need to file the nail smooth and re-apply the gel polish to match the others - but that will probably be tomorrow.





And my final nail-related activity of the weekend:


MARIYA'S FINGERS:  Mariya picked a pretty pink color of gel polish and then some light purple rhinestones to accent the tips.  So pretty!

Having learned from putting the bows on Sara's thumbs I tried something new with the rhinestones on Mariya's fingers - I put each rhinestone on the sticky layer, just dabbed them with the top coat and then cured them, then went  back over the nails with a complete top coat.  The rhinestones did not go anywhere so I think that really helped.  The only thing I noticed was that on a few rhinestones I used too much top coat in my "dab" and it made a little mountain around the rhinestone.  The final top coat did smooth the mountain out a little bit but the next time I do it I will try to dab just enough to cure the rhinestones in place and not make a mountain so the finished nail will be smoother.

And that was my Thanksgiving weekend activities, lots of fun!

Part Time School, Full Time Work and Gum Past Flowers,,,

Okie dokie, so I started my new job on Monday and it is just after midnight on Friday morning and yes, I really need to go to sleep but I'm finding I need some time to unwind after I get home.  Thank God for Farmville, eh?

Orientation is from 12:30 pm to 9 pm, M - F for five weeks and I have to say that even though I'm a night owl this takes some getting used to, wow!  I have to say though, Citi is off to a great start as far as impressing the heck out of me with their employee benefits.  As someone who has been a receptionist for most of the last 20 plus years I have to say that Citi recognizes the fact that the "little" people who answer their phones ARE the face of the company to the general public - and they are treating us accordingly.  This is a great place to be, seriously!

School has slowed way down to accommodate orientation and while I know it has to be this way I'm both kind of sad about it and relieved - I'm so weary by the time I get home from part-time school and full-time work, I can't imagine how those young whippersnappers can manage full-time work, full-time school and some of them even have families on the side!  Not for me, I think my heart would burst from being overwhelmed after about two days of that, lol!  I went in to school late on Wednesday and not at all on Thursday (yesterday) just to sleep a little longer...  I have to go today (Friday) because it is test day and because I've already missed four school hours out of the possible fifteen this week, ugh!

Now I know this is totally off subject but just for fun and because I like having pictures in my blog I'm going to back up to a week ago and share what April taught me.  I figure it's only fair, she lets me practice my nail stuff on her so I went to her house and she taught me how to make flowers out of gum paste.  It was tons of fun and I wound up with two calla lilies, two carnations and two roses, whoo hoo!  Here are the pictures - enjoy!

...and for some reason I didn't take a picture of the calla lilies - oops!  I'll try to add those later...  Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

April Gets Gel Polish and I Get Re-Browed!

Monday my friend April came in and I was going to get a fill on her acrylic nails... except that I didn't do a very good job <ooops!> when I applied them so we wound up taking them off completely.  :(  But that's OK because I also need practice removing "nail enhancements", as the book calls them.

We started by soaking off the acrylic nails in acetone but then my teacher, Ana, showed me a quicker way which I will describe once I've done it a few more times and know more what I'm talking about, lol!  It worked pretty good though and April said it wasn't pleasant but it wasn't really painful either so yay, right?!

To give you a little bit of background I should say that April has never in her life had any sort of artificial nails (and doesn't need them, honestly,) yet she has wholeheartedly thrown herself into supporting my schooling by being my guinea pig whenever I need one - God bless her!  It's been mostly fun and games for April, free mani-pedis every week for six weeks or so but it was time to pay her dues, so to speak, when the acrylic nails came out...  On Halloween for 3 1/2 very long hours <I was so embarrassed it took that long...> she endured having the superglue I used to apply the tips sticking the entire end of her finger to the plastic tips for days until the glue wore off, the seemingly endless filing by hand that was uncomfortable and harsh on her cuticles and I even drew blood twice (yes, it was on accident!) at different points in the whole process.  Everybody give April a hand!  <loud, thunderous applause - can you hear it April?> 

And back to the present... April came in Monday and we wound up taking off the acrylics and applying just gel polish to her fingers and toes, which will help strengthen them from the (minor) damage caused by removing the acrylics and I think she will like a lot better :P  We used a different brand of gel polish than the Gelish I had bought previously, it belongs to the school and the brand name is Cuccio - I have no idea how to pronounce it...  Coo-chee-oh?  All the colors the school has seem to be very sheer so it takes a minimum of two coats and I've done up to four coats to get the color right but other than that the Cuccio seems to be a pretty decent product.  Once I've used them both a little more I'll do a post about Gelish versus Cuccio and decide which one I like best.  At any rate, I did a translucent, pearly polish on the entire nail and then what was supposed to be a vibrant medium-deep purple line on the tips.  On the toes we tried some nail art with the Cuccio polish and it was OK to work with but again, the colors were very sheer so I didn't feel like the nail art was as vibrant as it should have/could have been but check it out!

Tuesday/yesterday the esthetics students shaped my brows by giving them an arch.  I feel like I look more interesting now... or maybe it's that I look more interested in what I'm looking at now... and today they tinted (dyed) them again!  I love my "new look" and am sooooo excited!  Here's photos of the journey my eyebrows took:

The eyebrows I was born with...

Shaped Eyebrows

Shaped and Tinted Eyebrows.

It's kind of hard to tell the differences between the tinted eyebrows and the un-tinted ones but when I look in the mirror I can see they're darker now :)   Fun, fun, fun!

Nail Art for Cathy!

Today was a fun day, I received a pedicure from Cathy, one of my fellow students, and gave her a polish change.  She found a picture on Pinterest that she wanted her nails to look like and so we gave it a shot, and yes, they're random on purpose!  Here's what we wound up with:

The picture of the light pink-ish nails aren't very good but we used a skin-toned glitter polish as a base and then used a clear top-coat to stick multiple layers of tiny bits of a clear, holographic plastic on the nail.  It came out really neat but apparently those nails were shy and not very photogenic, lol!

You can kind of see it a little better here but trust me, it's waaaay cooler in person!

Getting Ready to Work Again, My First Fill and Third Full Set

Wednesday of this week I went to Citi to get fingerprinted and get my badge for employment.  I arrived on time, walked into the building and introduced myself to Tony, the security guard.

Me:  "Hi, is this the building I need to come to for fingerprinting?"
Tony:  "I don't know where they do the fingerprinting."
Me:  "Are you serious?  There wasn't a location on the email, I don't know where else to go!"
Tony:  "Don't know what to tell you, I have no idea where you should be."
Me:  <shocked look on face>
Tony:  "I'm just kidding, you're in the right place, sign in here."

The man just about gave me a heart attack!  I think we're going to get along just fine, lol.  So after the adrenaline rush I go sit in a chair in the lobby, set my purse on a table next to me and the Very Important Paperwork I was required to bring with me I set on the table next to my purse.

A short time later I hear my name called so I stand up, grab my purse and walk towards the security officer who called my name.  Yep, we get alllllll the way back to his office where he asks me for my Very Important Paperwork and I realize that I left it in the lobby.  I am so not starting off on the right foot here, phooey!  This very nice young man goes back to the lobby to retrieve my paperwork, comes back with it and we continue as if nothing happened, bless his heart!  I get my picture taken, spell and re-spell my name, address, etc. and even get close-up shots of my eyeballs taken several times to be stored in my system because that is, after all, how I will enter the building in this highly advanced technological age.  Badge swiping is for getting past locked doors on the inside of the building, eyeball identification is required to enter the building itself... I'm impressed!  Besides that, the close-up pictures of my eyes were really quite pretty, I wonder if I could get a copy?  <giggle>

Friday I filled Stefani's nails as it had been two weeks since I applied her full set.  We used the Pink Powder #2 and Stefani wanted only the tips of her nails painted in a french tip style using gel nail polish.  The ring fingers were a beautiful, metallic red color with red rhinestones arching from the smile line to her cuticle and the rest of her fingertips were black, I thought it came out very classy, check it out!  I personally wouldn't have done those particular rhinestones because they weren't the same red as the polish but she seemed pleased with them and that's what matters.  Also, we tried a new brand of gel polish, Coucci(?) so I'm looking forward to seeing her nails again on Monday and see how they handled a busy weekend.

Stefani also filled my nails, since she had given me a full set two weeks ago and she did a good job.








I also chose a gel polish but we tried something new, putting glitter on the tips of my fingers and then covering it with the top coat.  I should have taken a picture but I didn't do it at school and in between school and home the part of the polish with the glitter in it peeled off :(  So later Friday evening I filed my nails until all of the polish was off and then I put fresh gel polish on my nails in a different color.  Since I was doing it all by myself I decided to go simple - I probably could have pulled something fun off on my left hand but having my left hand polishing my right hand was enough of a challenge that I didn't want to try and match anything cool I might have managed on my left hand, ha, ha.  Here's what I came up with as far as polishing my own nails.



By the way, I am really loving gel polish, especially the Gelish brand.  It goes on just like regular polish except you cure it with a UV light between every layer.  Base coat, cure in the light.  First color coat, cure in the light.  Second color coat, cure in the light.  Top coat, cure in the light.  Wipe nails with rubbing alcohol and brush cuticles with oil, done!  At this point your nails are touchable, you can even bang them into the wall, tie your shoes or reach into your purse and get your keys without damaging your polish!  It's amazing and comes in all kinds of colors now, yay!


Today, Saturday, I gave my eldest daughter, Rachel, another full set of acrylic nails and she also chose a gel polish.  After the first round of acrylic powder on the plastic tips I filed her nails with the Dremel and the acrylic layer was too thin so I did another round of acrylic and then hand-filed her nails with four different grits until they were silky smooth.  Here's what they look like with the polish she chose:

...and that picture is not horribly flattering, either of her hands or the nails I put on her.  Hmmm...  Maybe it's the color?  It's much prettier in real life, honest!

At any rate, it was a fun, productive week but I'm glad it's over.  I did a lot of relaxing today and to be honest I'm a little nervous about my upcoming full-time job AND going to school before I go to work so I'm trying to rest as much as possible.  I'm afraid I'm going to burn out and have to quit school, but I love school and would rather quit work.  But work pays the bills and let's me stay in school...  Oh the circles life is made of!  One thing I know for sure, everything is going to be OK.  God brought me here and He will bring me through it, all of it!

Friday's Wild Ride

OK, so I totally forgot that I had started this post and then never finished it so here's a run-down of  my crazy day last Friday:

9 am:  Heather comes in and gets a full set of acrylic nails.  She chooses a French Tip polish with a sheer pink glitter over the top - love it!  I'm going to paint a demo nail tip with the same color combination and call it the "Heather's French Tip Special"  I took pictures of her nails with her phone because I left mine in my car and she was going to send them to me but hasn't yet - I'll update this with the pics when I get them.

12:15 pm:  Go to lunch with hubby at the Great Wall of China Chinese Buffet - yummy!

1:30 pm:  Give hubby his first ever mani-pedi.  Again, he took a picture with his phone because mine was in my car and I don't have it...

4 pm:  Seven teen-aged girls came in for gel polishes as part of a birthday party.  I worked on 5 out of the 7 girls.  We had four UV light boxes for curing the gel polish going at one time and I was using three of them!  Put a coat on one girl, hand in the box to cure and then move on to the next one while the first one was waiting for her light to go out (it has a self-timer), repeat for a third girl and then go back and do the next coat on the first girl.  That was seriously  insane, wow!  I took a group photo of the girls and another one of all their hands with my teacher's phone and don't have that one yet either, lol!

5:30 pm:  Done with birthday party girls!  Clean up station.

6 pm:  Go home.

Friday wore me out, what a busy, crazy day!  It was lots of fun though and gave me a little taste of what it might be like to work in a beauty salon after I graduate - can't wait!  Also I learned a lesson - Stop Leaving My Phone In The Car!

A Miracle!

Yesterday I had a 2nd interview at Citi Bank for a Customer Service position.  I met with a really nice guy named Mark and had a delightful time answering his crazy questions.  I walked out of there feeling really good about my chances and good about the company.  Today they called with a job offer and it's a total answer to prayer - I start on November 18th, benefits start on Day One, I can still go to school in the mornings and the wage isn't far off from the job I left... I'm relieved, excited and overwhelmed all at the same time because once again I have proof that God sees me where I'm at, He heard my prayers and cares about me enough to provide for my every need!

I just wanted you to know because He loves you just as much as He loves me :)

Today at school was actually kind of boring.  I did book-work in the morning and went to visit a beauty supply store with the other students (but I was a good girl and didn't buy anything because payday is tomorrow!) and after lunch I organized and numbered all of the school's nail polishes.  Uh huh, party time, right?

Tomorrow at school I will give an acrylic fill to Stefani and she will give me an acrylic fill, hopefully I can get some pictures to post throughout the process.  I didn't take any pictures of when I gave her the full set of acrylic nails last week because I was disgusted with the quality of the job that I did, although comparing the nails she gave me after a week to the nails I gave her after the same amount of time, well, let's just say that I don't think I did so bad after all and I regret not taking pictures before <sigh>.  But such is life, eh? 

Unfortunately, once I start this new job I will only be able to go to school for 3 - 4 hours a day so it will take me a lot longer to work up to the 600 hours I need to graduate and I'm only at 180-ish hours so far... but that's OK.  I'm very interested to see where this journey will take me and who I will meet along the way - it's going to be fun!

Speaking of which, if you're in the Boise area you should come by Murano Beauty Academy and let me give you a mani-pedi.  I have one more week of being at school full-time and then mornings will be the only time you can catch me there so come on down!

Mommy-Daughter Pedicure and Sticker Polish

My friend April was looking at My Nail Fairy Tale blog and said something to the effect of "How come I'm not in your blog?" (her most recent trip to see me at school) so I looked in my phone and lo and behold, there are several pictures in there of April and her daughter's fingers and toes that I never blogged about!  Uh oh!  The busy life of a Nail Tech, I guess...  :P

Hannah's Nail Art from their Mommy-Daughter Pedicure

April after her Mommy-Daughter Pedicure

 Next are pictures of my first experience applying, for lack of a more imaginative designation, Sticker Polish.

The Pro:  They are beautiful!  Amazing Nail Art with no design experience necessary and there are soooo many designs to choose from - when April picked out these pink ones she found me some fantastic butterfly ones (but I want longer acrylic nails before I try them on myself).  We got these at Cosmo-Prof Beauty Supply store but they're available at nearly all box stores now and it a clever, relatively simple idea.  Peel the sticker off and stick it to the natural nail - how hard can it be, right?

And that was the Con:  I had a hard time getting it to look as great as the pictures, lol!  The Sticker Polish is thin and flexible and I think my biggest problem was that the sizes were not exactly the same size as their finger and toe nails and the only way to trim the Sticker Polish was while it was till on the plastic sheet it comes on in the box.  You could hold the stickers over the nail to estimate the size but it was difficult to get the sticker just the right size.  Another Con is that you have to be really careful about filing the extra sticker off the end of the nail.  I ruined the very first one because I tried to file it off at an angle, which cut the sticker shorter than the nail, grrr...  I wound up having to try and file it off at an angle going under the nail to be sure that the entire end of the nail was covered and the toes were especially tricky along the edge of the cuticle and sidewalls. Oh look - one more Con, the stickers are flat in the box and the natural nail is curved so two of April's fingernails were left with most unattractive creases in the Sticker Polish  :(

All in all I don't think that Sticker Polishes are a product I will be encouraging anyone to buy, it took a lot of time and I don't think either April or I were sure it was worth the effort, which is sad because there are so many beautiful designs out there and it looks like it should be super easy.  Not!

My first experience with Stick-On Nail Polish

April and Hannah after Sticker Polish

Close up of Sticker Polish