Nailed it! (or not... =p)

So, in the past oh, ten years, I've been in a constant battle to quit biting my nails. Sometimes I've managed really well, stopped biting for like six months, but I always fall back into the horrible habit. I'm in a kind of in-betweeny stage just now, my nails have grown a lot (they're miniscule when I'm in Bite Mode) but I'm still nibbling the sides of them. The thing is, I LOVE having long nails! I love to paint them and look and them and tap-tap-tap them on anything that stays still for more than three seconds! So to help me grow my nails, I tend to paint them a different colour every day or do cute wee patterns to make me not wanna bite them and ruin the pattern!

I discovered Minx about two years ago, when my sister first got them done and I could only look down at my own little stumps in dispair. So as soon as I'd grown my nails long enough, Minx were my addiction! I buy them off eBay and do them myself, and when I ran out of money to fuel this addiction I switched to generic types (3 packs of foils for fiver?!).

 Real Minx (above), fake Minx (below).

Then, when my sister bought a Shellac kit and did this for me, I was also hooked! I liked my nails so much that I didn't wanna bite! Howeeever... even Shellac is starting to wear off on me now (or maybe I just need some new colours!). So I'm on to nail art.

I still have Shellac on my nails just now and since they're only two weeks in I wanna keep them on for a bit longer so I started practising my nail art on falsies! And since it's cold outside and I was sitting in front of the fire wearing cosy knits, naturally my first thought turned to Christmas:

So we have (L-R) a snow scene, a snowman, a present, a Christmas tree, and general Christmassy colours. I don't have any nail art tools eg a nail pen, so it wasn't the easiest of tasks but I think they turned out quite cute!

My next thought was that maybe I should concentrate on something a little closer, so here are my Hallowe'en nails! This time I blu-tacked them onto my nails to get a better effect.

 A scary pumpkin and a little ghosty! I stupidly didn't let them dry fully when I stuck them on my fingers, hence the smudges where I've pushed down on sticky polish.

Then, and by this point my family were starting to worry for my sanity, I decided to work on a season-free design. I settled on some cute cupcakes.

They look a bit odd with the blu-tak sticking them on cause they were glittery clear at the cuticles but have a blue-ish tinge because of how they've been stuck on.

So here's my finished hands!

What do you think?? Hopefully when I take off my Shellac sometime in the next week I can do some designs on my nails for real!

~ Lauren ♥