Minty Nail Fail

I saw my migraine doctor last week, who reminded me that I have been doing something with my life: getting better. And I've finally been succeeding at getting better. That counts. That's huge. It just isn't what I thought I'd be doing at age 30, but "Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht" (Yiddish proverb meaning "Man plans, God laughs"). I just need to laugh along.

On a lighter note, nails! I finally found a bottle of Essie's "Matte About You" at the North and Sheffield Commons Ulta. The next day I was at the crazy shmancy Walgreens on State Street and spotted a bottle of Wet n Wild "I Need a Refresh-Mint." The color is completely gorgeous so I decided to treat myself (at 99 cents, this was not a major self-spoiling) and began planning things I could do with it and the "Matte About You" together.

I decided to paint my whole nails with the mint and then use my wavy scissors and Scotch tape to split them vertically between matte and shiny.

It was a good idea in theory.

In practice, you could barely tell the difference between the matte and the shiny sides, but it created a weird slightly textured wavy line down the middle of my nails.

Fortunately, it only looked stupid from up close, but I think I have to experiment more with the "Matte About You" on darker colors, or put down a layer of shiny top coat first to make a bigger difference.

I still absolutely love the Wet n Wild color. People keep complimenting it. I just have to come up with a better creation next time.


Terrible photo to go with terrible manicure:

Hating My Starry Manicure, Hating My Life

I hate what I did to my nails yesterday.

It started with a seemingly good idea. I punched a whole bunch of stars out of vintage wallpaper.

But then something stupid inside me said "oh look, the paper is gold, white and black, I should paint my nails black." I used Ulta's "Little Black Dress" and tweezered the stars onto my still-wet nails. They looked like crap.

The stars were too big for my little nails and the black didn't sufficiently contrast with the black in the stars. I smudged up one of them and repainted it gold, thinking that might help. Why I thought repainting yet another non-contrasting color would help is beyond me. I wonder if the stars would look better on, say, red or some other color not in the wallpaper.
But instead of taking it all off, I sealed it in with a hearty layer of topcoat (Essie's "No Chips Ahead") and poked and prodded the stars down as they curled up then calmed down in the stickying drying polish.

I don't like myself very much right now, so of course I don't like my nails, and maybe I think I deserve it. The migraines have been better for over two months, and while I'm still in a side-effect stupor, I can do more on a daily basis than I could when I was in pain all the time. Between turning 30 in a few weeks and these new questions of if I'm capable of having a real life again, I realize just how much I don't have a life right now. I'm wasting my time away, and if I'm in pain constantly it's just something I have to learn to accept, but if I'm not in pain, what the hell am I doing? I'm going nowhere and doing nothing and I hate it, but I can't find the motivation to make something of my days. I fight myself enough just to exercise, do the laundry, wash the dishes (and I have a friggin' dishwasher). How do I find the inspiration and the desire to forge a new path, lunge forward, do something real?

Of course I hate my nails.

Nail Art: Black and White and Schmutzed All Over

I wanted to paint my nails white with black polka dots like the super-cute ones I saw as nail stickers somewhere (Target? Ulta? I don't remember, to be honest). I was worried about how steady my hands are (thanks to my migraine medications, they shake all the time) but figured I could come up with something entertaining no matter what. I started by painting my nails the opaque white I'd gotten from Ulta, but it was so opaque and so bright I just wanted to cover it up as much as humanly possible. I let it dry over night and the next day I had very little time to do anything to my nails, but needed the white covered, so quick slashes of Scotch tape diagonally crossing ten fingers later, I used Ulta's "Little Black Dress" for an extremely fast and dramatic manicure. The white was still too bright so I went digging through my glitter sparkle collection and settled on Pink Cookie's gold, thinking it would be the least unclassy. Still, the final result is not classy or pretty or anything I particularly love. And the worst part: even though I let it dry for a really long time, it smudged and moved and squished around hours later so that it ended up looking like total crap on a few fingers before I even got a photo of it! So here are my pictures, but just so you can see what I'm talking about and not because I'm proud of it the way I was proud of my ripples or my cashmere sparkle gradients.

Tap Gala Ripple Nails

This month I attended galas two weekends in a row. My life is awesome. But two different galas meant two different dresses meant two different nail creations. This past Saturday's gala was for the Chicago Tap Theatre and I wore a royal blue slinky dress from Akira. After all my nail art experimentation, I decided on a ripple in blue and silver. I did the ripple with Scotch tape cut by decorative edged scissors. I think it turned out pretty well:

The polishes are Wet n Wild dark blue (don't know the color name, it either fell off the bottle or never existed) and Nicole by OPI's "Look at Me, Look at Me." After I took the photos I added Essie's "No Chips Ahead" topcoat.

The polish looked like it was going to last a long time until I went digging through vats of vintage door knobs.  I've been searching for four identical vintage or antique knobs that are as similar as possible to the one already owned by a client of a client, which has been more difficult than I expected. I may have finally found solutions, but my hunt destroyed my manicure with chips all over.

The chippiness made me mad last night so I took it off and redid my nails in Ulta black and white with Pink Cookie's gold glitter on top. The white is very opaque, which I like, and unbelievably bright, which is good and bad. It's very striking, but it's in no way "pretty." Still, I think I'll have more fun with the black and white combos in the future.
Photos to come.

I really want more decorative edge scissors. There's so much more I could do.

Nailed It! (Sort Of)

I've been neglecting this blog again. Oops. Best thing to do is to jump right back in where I am now.

Latest "crafting" endeavor: nail art! Thanks to the wonders of Pinterest I'm a little obsessed with nails right now. My "Get Nailed" board on Pinterest has 26 pins and 105 followers as of this moment. I'm picky about what I pin, and I want to try or steal or just completely love every set of nails on my board. I've also started following too many nail blogs to count. My next post will probably be a "Great Nail Art Blogs" post, but I'm not there yet.

This post is a "Look At What I Did!" Post. Because I've started doing. First I just got a really fabulous polish from Target.  

It's called (appropriately) "Look at Me, Look at Me" and it's silver with minuscule sparkly glitter flecks of red and blue. I loved the way it looked, so I took a photo and posted it to my Flickr and Pinterest.

Then I was craving pastel blue nails, but neither OPI nor Essie seemed to make a pastel blue polish. Once I was compromising on brand, I figured "Go cheap or go home" and went straight for NYC (New York Color)'s glorious $2 Cashmere Creme. 

Before I had a chance to repaint my nails, I found myself in the Marshalls checkout line staring down some packages of 6-for-$6 nail polishes. After some indecisive hemming and hawing, I went with the glitter overcoats package. The brand is "Pink Cookie," which I'd never heard of, but for $6 I was willing to risk it.

I found on Pinterest all of these manicures with pretty gradients, and I figured I could manage a glitter gradient. Cashmere Creme plus the teal glitter Pink Cookie overcoat and way too much time trying to perfect it and I had myself a successful set of nails:

Unfortunately, the glitter washed off in two days despite my Essie topcoat (should have reapplied).

Last night instead of, say, actually doing real work on my Etsy shop like a productive human being, I watched Bones and Glee on Hulu while I attempted a gazillion versions of basic Scotch tape manicures in three colors on my nails. 

A bit messy, a bit insane, but successful in that I now know how to do a Scotch tape manicure and I know what I did wrong and right.

I'm going to a gala for Chicago Tap Theatre this Saturday night and I'm wearing a dark blue dress, so I think I'm going to go with just two-colored dark blue and silver glittery nails. I may play around more to choose which design to do since I'm not happy with any of the two-color designs I did, so there may be another photo very soon.

Yay nails!

Migraine Day, Migraine Treasury

I'm having a bad migraine day, which is funny because I'm supposed to go meet with a disability lawyer this afternoon and I don't know if I'll make it. I wonder if she gets that a lot. At any rate, my migraininess inspired me to make a migraine treasury:

'Migraine Marches On' by jillhannah

Stupid migraine. I'm on new drugs (again) and you have been slightly better behaved, but still you torment me. It's almost March. I would like to have a good March. Please stay in February.

Out of Order - silh... melaniefavreau $65.00	Custom Pair of Matc... KaraGunter $80.00	vintage primitive i... mightyfinds $22.00	Vintage 70's Sh... Sorocco $48.00
Morning Light 10x15 jamieariela $31.00	Antique Meat Cleave... Modred12 $105.00	Glass Round Pendant... goddessglass10... $7.50	Vintage Humphreys M... Wrecklamation $8.00
Your head on Migrai... goodgosh $3.50	Anti-headache firem... Dongedyframe $27.00	Agony theshadowfarm $55.00	The Imagination of ... KatieLloydPhot... $75.00
PIN CUSHION, PINCUS... IzzyNMe $8.00	MIGRAINE DAY Button... WordForWordGre... $1.50	Migraine Journal- R... Bibliocouture $18.00	Embroidered Sleep M... LadybugsTreasu... $12.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

I dedicate this to all my fellow migraine sufferers. Though we may have different pictures of pain, I know I find some level of solidarity comforting.

Direct Checkout: Etsy Does a Good Thing Badly

Etsy is unleashing its new direct checkout system. In theory, yay! In practice, ugh!

Direct checkout should be a good thing - no more having to deal with PayPal! Buyers and sellers have been asking for this for years.

Then I read the Direct Checkout FAQs. That's where the "ugh" came in. Here's a rundown of what I think are the important details of Etsy's Direct Checkout:

1) Etsy's fees are in line with PayPal's fees. PayPal charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Etsy will be charging 3% + $0.25 per transaction. So, if you do the algebra, that means Etsy charges less on items under $50 and more for items over $50. If you mostly sell less expensive items, Etsy is the better deal. If you mostly sell more expensive items, PayPal will actually cost you less in fees. Interesting, when you think of Etsy's push towards high quality handmade and putting a high value on yourself.

2) Funds do not become available to sellers until after three days and the seller has marked the item shipped! Why? Etsy says
Even though we've created a way for sellers to accept credit cards directly, Etsy is still very much a marketplace for buyers and sellers to convene. In orde to maintain a balance on our site, we ensure that all parties in a transaction are protected. This includes the seller, buyer, and Etsy. We work hard to create a site where buyers can trust that their items will arrive in a timely manner and that the listing description is an appropriate representation of the item they recive.
What? I still don't get it. This is a terrible idea. As a seller, I no longer have any incentive to send packages faster than three days after the item is sold, and in fact it may be a bad idea to send them right away as I won't know whether or not the payment will clear. So much for fast shipping. So much for piece of mind.

3) If, in a dispute, Etsy determines the seller is in the wrong, and the seller does not issue the refund his or herself for four weeks, Etsy can issue the refund on the seller's behalf, taking the money out of the seller's payment account and refunding it to the buyer. (See Etsy's explanation here.)

4) It works on Etsy mobile! Good thing!

5) After your three day waiting period, you can transfer your funds into your bank account at any time. If you don't transfer your funds yourself, they automatically transfer every Monday.

6) Direct Checkout takes Visa, Mastercard/Eurocard, Discover, and American Express (another good thing!)

Any other questions you might have should be answered in the FAQs and the Etsy Forum about Direct Checkout.