And the award for Most Infrequent Posting goes to…. ME!  I apologize for my absence.  I’m sure it’s left a gaping hole in your summer.  I’m here and I’m fine and I’m still painting my nails.  I’ve just been busy.  It’s summer, so I can be outside doing stuff.  In a few months it will be cold and miserable and I’m sure I’ll be posting much more regularly then.

I thought I’d just highlight a few manicures that I’ve sported over the past month or so.  Here we go…

Turquoise and red with white polka-dots.  Aren’t these cute?  I really liked them.  I didn’t know until I did them how retro-looking they would be.  And they were so shiny!  These were super easy, too.  You only need a dotting tool.  This is such a fun way to try out different color combinations.  I wish I had a dress that looked like these nails.

Glittery plaid print.  No picture could do these proper justice.  The base polish was Funky Fingers – Sand & Stilettos which is a crazy sparkly holographic micro glitter.  It’s like camping… It’s in tents.  (Intense.  Get it?)  The pink and blue polishes were both jellies,so the glitter was still visible.  So, so sparkly.

Dry brush tie-dye.  I started with a white base and then just did a little dry brushing, starting with the yellow at my cuticles.  I just made sure that each of the colors overlapped a little.  The dry brush technique is super easy, by the way.  You just wipe almost all of the polish off the brush on the neck of the bottle and then drag the “dry” brush over your nails.  No tools or artistic skill required!

Neon orange citrus nails.  I should call these neon orange orange nails.  The base color was Orly – Tropical Pop and the darker orange was a Sally Girl polish from Sally Beauty Supply.  To pull off orange polish, I always have to wait until I get a little bit of a “tan”. I don’t really tan.  According to my foundation, I go from “fair” to “light”.  These were so bright, but you know how it is to photograph neons. 

Oh, I also took a picture of these nails while riding the Sky View at Hersheypark.  I really, really liked these nails!  By the way, Hersheypark is where I spent a significant amount of time in June.  It’s an awesome place to go before the crowds get really heavy in July and August.

Metallic butterfly nails.  I’m not sure who came up with butterfly wing nails originally, but ever since I first saw them a year or so ago, I’ve wanted to try them.  I finally got around to it.  These were a little time-consuming, but not really too bad.  I was going to use a pink/purple/blue neon gradient for the base, but I opted for a softer, more realistic green/purple gradient instead.  I also went with a matte top coat to make it a little more true to actual butterfly wings, also.

Wavy teal nails.  These nails just sort of happened.  I thought they might look like lace of maybe fish scales, but they ended up looking more like waves.   I pretty much just used a doting tool to make rows of dots that touched each other.  I started at my cuticle, and then just picked a contrasting color and overlapped the next row of dots.  I didn’t love these at first, but they sort of grew on me.  

Jaunty Juli recreation.  I can take no credit for this design.  Jaunty Juli came up with it, and lots of people have recreated them.  I had to jump on the bandwagon. Super cute, right?  That Jaunty Juli is so creative!

Matte pastel with gold glitter.  These are pretty much a recreation of some nails that I did last summer and really liked.  I just love how gold glitter looks under a matte top coat.  Its just so frosty and beautiful!  This is another fun way to play with color combinations that requires pretty much no artistic skill either.

So, Those are a bunch of my summer nails!  Between fancy manicures, I love wearing obnoxiously bright neon polishes.  Someday I’ll be too old and they will be out of style, so I’m going to carpe diem.

Thanks for reading, following, liking, commenting, sharing, and whatnot!