Home Sweet Home

I have had an amazing month!! I know I was apprehensive about camp but this year I had the best dorm I've ever had. They were so wonderful and fun. All the campers were. :) I'm thrilled I went this year. I drove to camp (in Washington) with friends and had such a great time, the day camp ended, hanging out in Portland for the afternoon with more friends from Arizona then caravaning back with them. It was a really long trip (we drove straight through back to Los Angeles) but we switched passengers and drivers between the two cars all the time which made for quite the awesome drive. I love those guys.

OK so get ready for pictures!

Alysia and me in our H&M roadtrip sunglasses:

Here was my pretty view while sitting on the soccer field at camp:

They have forests everywhere! I love the fairytale-ness of it. :) Looking up:

So the day after I got back from camp, I got back in the car -- this time with my family -- and headed out to Colorado for my best friend (and other really good friend)'s wedding. Here's a pic I snapped a pic while driving. Not sure what state we were in:

We made sure to get there a few days early so I could attend the bachelorette party. It was a fun night filled with various shenanigans. ;) Here were my nails for the occasion using my precious new Zoya Ali with Konad m3 and m57:

Bride-to-be Madeline:

Here we are at the wedding: :)

Bride and groom after the cake-cutting hamming it up for other BFF Jen and official photographer (check out some of her amazing pictures on her blog):

Me with Jen and Madeline. Love them!! I so very much wish they lived [much] closer.

Here's a picture I snapped on the drive back home. I like the colors and clouds:

For the wedding, I did my nails with Trixie by Zoya (ahh the most amazing ground-up tin foil silver!) and then on the trip home found LA Colors nail art polishes at the Dollar Tree (!) so I had to test them out. One of my very first hand painting attempts:

Here's my current manicure which I really like. Zoya Avril (agh -- the formula drives me mad but thankfully it's so nude you don't really notice the unevenness) with Konad m77 stamped with Revlon Chrome:

That's it! I'll leave you with a picture I took during a most memorable stop with my family at a rest area in Colorado (involved my mom accidentally kicking my little shih tzu into the rushing river. All ended well, thankfully, and now we find the situation rather hilarious). I only changed the overall tint of the photo to a violet color. All the variations and such were already there. It's currently my background picture. :)

Well that was a brief summery of my past few weeks! I hope you guys are having a summer as nice as mine!

July Festivities

So I leave tonight for camp (I'm driving straight through to Washington with friends) and have SO much to do before then. I wanted to leave you with a post before I left since I will be absent for 3-4 weeks (camp and best friend's wedding).

Here's the Urban Outfitters polish I mentioned in the last post. This was three coats over a white base, but next time I'll definitely try it without the white. I gave up on making it even; the consistency is so runny and streaky! Boo -- I hate sheer polishes. :(

Urban Outfitters Green 6 (Yes, that's a chunk out of the thumb. With the white underneath it reminded me of a green M&M!)

I only had this on for a day but it was cute while it lasted. Nothing too fancy!

Here's my fourth of July manicure featuring the ever-delicious (and quite American) Mike's lemonade:

Konad stars and [my first ever] freehand stripes

My friend let me use her Essie Matte About You the next day for my first ever matte mani (though I know it's hard to see a difference on here).

This is one of my favorite shots from the amazing fireworks show my friends and I saw at a high school. Mm, I love my new camera.

My birthday is July 5th (which might be why I love fireworks oh-so much!) and two of my best friends were nice enough to surprise me at 9 in the morning and take me out for breakfast! They were hoping to find me in my pajamas but thankfully I had already showered and was just getting dressed. :)

They took me to a cute little french bakery that I've been wanting to try out. We all ordered the same thing -- strawberry and banana crepes! They were garnished with DELISH and rich whipped cream and chocolate drizzles (and a tooth-shaped strawberry. haha). Yum! Thanks, ladies!

OK well that's all for now. I'll blog again in a month! I hope everyone has an amazing summer. Oh, and a huge welcome to my new followers!! It's awesome to know people actually read this thing every now and again. :) Have a good one!

Happy Spring!

Yesterday was the first day of spring which brings us one step closer to summer. Summer is my favorite season, but I have so much planning to do before then. Summer camp or not to summer camp, look for work or not to look for work, look for an internship or not look for an internship . . . Meh. I need to get on that!

So in honor of spring, I went a little crazy with the Konading. It was a nice opportunity to experiment with stamping non Konad polishes. The nails are nuts (a little too chaotic for my liking) so I'll probably remove it tomorrow.

Zoya Creamy as a base with Konad m3 and m60

Some of the colors I stamped with

In other news I went to a hoedown at my church last month and was able to borrow an authentic square-dancing dress for the occasion. The square-dancing was honestly sooo fun. I was pleasantly surprised!

Photo courtesy of Lis and her awesome iPhone

The first couple of songs involved the kids. It's hard to do-si-do with someone three feet tall! Here you can see the crinoline which continued to fall down on my every step, but my mom was nice enough to let me borrow her shorts so I could ditch the crinoline and get in on the real dancing.

Of courseee, I did themed nails to match.

Maybe Essie Really Red or CND Fireberry, I can't remember! Konad Special Polish White, m60

My newest Konad plates arrived but I've only used one of the designs so far. I'm trying to pace myself because I probably won't get more plates for awhile. I do have 11 now, which is actually quite enough for me.

Wet N' Wild Precious Metals 14K over Milani Ms Milani with Konad Special Polish Black, m71

Here's m77, my favorite of the new plates. The necklaces, bow, and feather designs are so girly and cute!

Oh, so last night some friends and I piled into a truck and headed out to find Pink's (of hotdog fame). I entered "Pinks" into my Google Maps app on my phone and ended up somewhere in Koreatown. I guess "Pinks" is different from "Pink's Hot Dog Stand". haaaa. Thankfully the real Pink's was only about three miles from us so eventually got there. The line was long and the wait was about . . . an hour? Hour and a half? It was worth it though. There was lots of people (and hooker and car crash) watching to keep us entertained. I got the veggie dog because I just can't bring myself to do the ground-organs-stuffed-into-an-intestine thing. Their guacamole is pretty odd -- can't say I like it. Their fries, however, are heavenly!!! Oh mannn.

OK, I'm off to finish weird paper-folding homework for my 3d art class. I'll leave you with another nail pic that I did a couple of weeks ago. (If you read this blog, I do hope for your sake you're at least somewhat interested in nail art. haha) The colors in the picture are sooo off. :( It's way more magenta-y red with really subtle shimmery flowers.

Zoya Vanessa with Zoya Salma flowers with Konad m3

Thanks for reading. :)

Oh, and shout out to my new followers! There aren't many of you, but the number has significantly jumped since my last post. Thanks for the follow!

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

In the end, the clothes swap didn't end up happening. It was just too much of a hassle for all three of us (I still can't believe that out of close to 30 people, only two were going to come)! The fires here in So Cal were in full swing and the smoke at my house was unbelievable, both inside and out! With the smoke, the anorexic guest list, and everyone's busy day, the party just wasn't in the cards. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the boxes of clothes I had set aside for the party. I'm thinking a garage sale might be in order.

A few weeks ago there was a 30% Konad sale that I, of course, had to take advantage of! :) I bought image plates m19 (plain french tip), m56 (tip decorations), m73 (sheet music, a cool square geometric pattern, others. . .) and the brand's top coat (everything else smears their "special" polish).

The tips take PRACTICE, let me tell you. Those are so hard to get on straight! I still can't figure out how to use the decorative tips over the original since they are two different shapes! I'll work on it some more. Some of the decorative ones probably look better alone.

After many reapplications, this is my first official Konad french manicure. I had to cover it with glitter to mask the imprecise tip placement and replacement. The bow placement was suggested by a friend, and I quite like it. :)

I've decided that every post from now on will have at least one picture, whether one I've taken or one I've "borrowed" ;) from the internet. Life is so much more interesting when visually expressed.

OK, well I'm going to enjoy a margarita my mom whipped up (panic not, my friends, it's legal) and then eat with the fam! I hope you have a great weekend. (Highlight of mine will be a Gossip Girl catch-up get-together at my friend's house. Ooh baby! Only three more days until the new season! I haven't seen it for over a year. I hope it's as interesting as I remember.)

Up next. . . pictures of my recent thrift store finds!

Chocolate Vodka . . .

. . . that's what I bought for my friend's party this weekend in honor of him completing his bar exam this past month. (I'm not usually a fan of "rubbing alcohol" but in this case it really does taste like chocolate!) Everyone at the party dressed up in "legal eagle" attire (judges, lawyers, criminals, etc.). It was really fun! The next day my family went to our friends' house for a nice gathering in which ample eating and music making took place. :) It was a great evening!

Sunday morning, I had time to play with my Konad supplies for the first time!! It is soo much fun. Here are some pictures of my very first stamping experiments. Yes, it does take some practice - especially the tips and full nail designs!

Here's my first official manicure with the nail art.

Revlon Lily Chrome over Revlon Va Va Va Bloom

Before I could play with Konad, I had to run out to get pure acetone to clean the image plates during use and stopped at the 99 Cent Store to see if they had any. They didn't, but I did find three fun items that are normally a lot more than 99 cents each! I scored a Revlon eyelash curler (with replacement squishy thing), a cool Revlon set of loose eyeshadows built into a compact, and a Princessa 7 texture nail file. Fun fun.

Oh hey. If you're a fan of food and of "free", then be aware that today Jack In The Box is giving away free tacos again today! Just go to their website and print the coupon.

Happy Tuesday!