Nailed It! #1 - REALLY lazy nail art

I have bitten my nails since I was a child, I honestly can't remember the last time I used anything that wasn't my teeth to cut my (hand) nails short, mostly because I didn't need to cut them, because they'd break and then I'd bite the rest off. Even if I tried my best to let them grow, I'd eventually get distracted and end up ruining it all during some more intense scene in some series or movie. After years and years of ugly bitten/broken nails, I found home made nail art. Tutorials started showing up on my feeds and I actually enjoyed watching them, so I eventually leveled up to subscribing to nail art channels on youtube. This past summer, I actually got down the nail art hole, binge watched the whole Simply Nailogical channel, followed by a bunch other nail artists, and started doing it myself.

Nail art turned out to be very relaxing and entertaining, and mostly really, really time consuming. The fact that I would sometimes take over 3 hours to get my nails done made me way more careful with them, and even if I were to go so far as to put my nail in between my teeth, the moment I felt the polish against my lips, I'd back down and just use my phone to keep my hands busy or something, because I am not redoing this. I did get my nails to grow to an all time record (which isn't that long really), but then I spent a couple days without any polish on and bye, nails! They broke, and the ones that didn't break I bit to get them closer to the others' size (I couldn't find the nail cutter thingy, don't judge me I was GRIEVING OK????). Now they're all short and shapeless and terrible, but that's just what they were like when I started this whole adventure a couple months ago, and now that I know I can't not protect my nails, I'm sure I'll be able to actually grow them to be as long and pretty as I always wanted them to be, by keeping my nail art sessions in my life.

Well, tonight I had to meet some friends from when I was in middle school and I couldn't just not wear nail polish, for all the reasons I just told you about. I had already decided to post about nail art some time this weekend anyway, so this was my perfect excuse, only I really wasn't in the mood for overly complicated nails, so I just picked one of the many lazy quick designs I could make: plain nails with a few dots on a couple of them.

Believe it or not, most of the redness on my skin came from my hair. I actually chose to paint my nails red because of that.

It took me a little over 2 hours to complete, yes, but that's just because I also had a cuticle situation to fix and I get easily distracted, so instead of just waiting the few minutes each layer would normally take to dry, I'd just leave it be while reading my friend's novel, or checking facebook; and then I wouldn't do my right hand until the left one was dry. Long story short: I'm very good at wasting my time.

I did use some tools but you really don't have to spend your money on these if you don't think they're worth it because you can use things you easily find in your household for the same effect.

Besides all the things in the picture above, I used some acetone to clean up and some liquid latex on my ring fingers. These products aren't shown because I forgot about the acetone and the liquid latex is brand free (my dad just filled a nail polish bottle with some and gave it to me). Also, I didn't notice my brush wasn't as clean as I thought until now that I saw this picture. By the time you read this, it will be.

First, I took care of my cuticles. I don't even know how long it took me, but it was just pushing them back with one end of the cuticles tool and cutting off all the dead skin afterwards with the other end. Secondly, I cleaned my nails with some acetone, just in case some polish from the previous manicure was still stuck in there and to clean all the oil my skin left on them while handling the cuticles (your mani will last longer if set on clean nails).

Because my nails are extra fragile right now, I decided to use two base coats, well one and a half. I started with one coat of Essence's multi talent ALL IN ONE complete care base & top coat (literally the 1st time I'm using it, but so far I'm loving it), followed by one coat of KIKO's BB Base Coat (you cannot fathom my love for this base coat), obviously allowing the former to dry completely before putting the latter on.

Once all the base coat layers were done and dry, I put one coat of Golden Rose's WOW! Nail Color #51 (favourite red polish ever!) on all my nails.

While those were drying, I put the liquid latex on my ring finger, which took waaaay longer than the polish to dry, but once that was done, it was pretty quick. Of course, you can use Elmer's glue instead or just not put anything on your hands and spend some extra time cleaning up your fingers afterwards, but I'm lazy, I really don't like attacking my skin with acetone, and I'd rather waste my time waiting for the latex to dry than cleaning up a major mess.

Then, I put a couple drops of Coral's 13. on the sponge and patted it on my accent nail (and yes, that is a dish washing sponge I used, or what's left of it; I wouldn't waste my money on expensive make-up sponges only to ruin them with nail polish); and while that dried, I cleaned up by peeling off the latex and using my brush and acetone to get rid of whatever polish made its way to my skin, which you can do with q-tips instead. By the time I was done with that, all my nails were dry and I could move on, so I did the same for my other hand.

Only then, I picked a drill point pen and used the larger end for the base dots and the smaller one for the dots above them. Again, you don't need to buy drill point pens, you can just use bobby pins, toothpicks, or even dull pencils. I made two red dots on my ring fingers' nails, which I soon regretted, since it's barely visible, and three dots on my index fingers' nails with Coral's colour, which actually looked way better than what I expected. Funnily enough, in that picture the red dots are much more visible than the others.

Soon as those dots dried, I put Essence's base & top coat on all my nails, got a bit more distracted by the internet while that dried too and soon I was ready to go.

Hadn't I wasted so much time in between layers, I'd probably finish this in less than 1 hour, but I really wasn't in a rush, so who cares?!

I hope you enjoyed your visit and will return soon!

Did you like these nails? What would you like me to do next? Let me know on the comments bellow ♥

Peace!