Pinterest Nail Art...Or So It's Called

I'm sad to report that I have some bad news for you today.  But before I get there, I have a confession to make:

So...I'm not gonna lie...I like having my nails done.  I love gels, but can't afford to do them...like, ever.  And I can't play the guitar very well when I have them on (yes...I play the guitar some).  I never know when I will have time to pick up my guitar, so I don't practice much, but I like to be prepared for whenever I have time.  The one time I had a really nice set of gel nails was for my wedding day, and I cherished the time I had with them.  (I was so sad the day the first one fell off!)  So the next best thing is to keep them nicely trimmed, and to paint them once in a while.  (Once in a while being maybe once every few months, usually.)  I'm not one to want anything super gaudy or trendy, but I like the idea of doing maybe one accent nail and the rest one color, or some small pattern.  Something somewhat simple.  But that's just a matter of personal preference. :)

At Christmastime, our family went up to Oregon to spend Christmas and New Years with my family.  So my sister, Chara, and I decided to pull out her stash of nail polishes and try out some ideas we had found on Pinterest for "nail art".  We were really excited!  We had all these tricks up our sleeves like holding your nails in cold water for them to dry faster, and transferring images from scrapbook paper to make it crisp and clean...we had spent quite some time doing research to decide what we wanted to do, and tried to tackle it while my kids were asleep.

Here's where the sad news comes in...we both agreed that, in this instance, Pinterest had failed us.  It hurts to say this, because we both love pinning things and trying them out.  Most of the things we have tried have worked out quite well!  But during the two week period that I was there we tried multiple times and multiple strategies to do some cute nails.  I think I can safely say that only one idea turned out even remotely close to how we expected...and it was just a simple two-tone diagonal french tip.  They really did look great, though!

Now that I'm home, I don't have as much time, or as many colors, to play with.  So I don't get to it often.  But I decided to try something else today that I thought I might be able to pull off.

 

http://instagram.com/p/aqlKUlG9SK/

Cute, right?  I'm kind-of in love with chevron...just a little.  So I thought I'd try it. I didn't have zig-zag scissors, but I had one that was almost a zig-zag.  So I went with it.  But then my scissors wouldn't cut my tape.

Dull scissors + cheap tape = no go.

So I decided to try it with paper that I just taped around my fingers.

Ummm...yeah. FAIL!

I tried again...

Closer...but still a fail.

So I gave up on that for the moment and tried making polka-dots with a q-tip.

Excuse my dry skin in my wanna-be Pinterest pic.

That was acceptable.  But I still had one unfinished nail on the other hand.  (I took a break and made lunch for my kids and put them down for naps...well, most of them...)  So I had one last desperate idea to get my beloved chevron nail.

What about the sticky part of a Post-it???

So close...but still a FAIL!

So here I sit with one polka-dotted nail and one messy, not-quite-chevron nail.  No more time or energy to fix it today.  Probably it will end up on the back-burner until my nails are all chipped and I either clean it all off, or attempt to paint them again.  So to my friends that see me this way...I'm sorry.  I tried.  :)

P.S. This probably won't stop me from trying more Pinterest nail ideas.  It's part of my nature I guess...I'm gonna be curious until I give it a go.  No matter how many times it's failed me in the past.

Next week I'll try to post about something more positive.  I love me some Pinterest!