Adventures in Dotting Tools

I broke my ankle at the beginning of January, and the true boredom set in when I passed 2 weeks at home on short-term disability. By day 18, I was lonely and bored literally to tears. I knew that this wasn't going to fly for the rest of my limited-weight-bearing time... so I asked my husband to spot me while I learned how to back up the stairs on my butt, and I began spending my afternoons in the polish room!

The first of many flowers, and the scarf that gave me the idea

I did the above on January 23 and was inordinately proud of myself. The base color is Orly Shockwave, which I bought at Sally's forever ago; the orange flowers are Essie Braziliant, which I know I got at Marshalls but well after the collection was out. The yellow dots are a Finger Paints from Sally's called Lemon Sour, which was part of a fruit/candy collection a couple of summers ago. I had to mix Orly Lucky Duck with some white from a Sally Hansen striper to get a bright enough green to show up; I've since learned that none of my greens show on a dark field, so I've ordered additional greens to try. (The scarf came from the clearance rack at J. Crew last fall, because I fell in love with the pattern; they had pants in that print as well, but... no.)

Not a great manicure shot, but Ronan wanted to be my model

This metallics-over-nude is one of the better ones I've pulled off in the last week. I started with a base of Orly Pure Porcelain, which I had forgotten I owned but is a great nude for pale people. I used Butter London Wallis for the middle row of dots, which I was pleasantly surprised to find still on BL's website. (I don't know why I'd assumed it was discontinued.) The gold dots are OPI Glitzerland (bought when the Swiss collection went half off at Sally's!) and rose gold are Sally Hansen Insta-dri Style Steel, which probably came from either CVS or Target.

Two accomplishments: still fit in my jeans, made a cool pattern

Finally, I'll share last Friday's manicure, which is the last good one before I broke both thumbnails and had to cut all my nails down. The base color is Essie Sand Tropez; the dots are Essie Gym Dandy, Essie Jiggle Hi Jiggle Low (amazingly easy to dot with, and the only one I have purchase information for, because it's still got a Marshalls label stuck to it) and China Glaze Mimosas Before Manis. I shared this on MakeupAlley and someone said it gave them a mid-century modern vibe.

I started out with a double-ended dotting tool that came in a Red Carpet Manicure nail art set I bought a while back; subsequently, I got a 5-pack of different sizes from Amazon and have been using those. I'll be continuing to experiment as my immobile time drags on!

Re-launching the Tour

There's no explaining my extended absence other than "I'm terrified that I'm not a good enough photographer to have a blog." And if that's what's holding me back, then there are two things I can do: get better at it, or stop caring.

I think we're gonna do the latter while working on the former.