by Joey | Mar 21, 2014 | beauty, Loves
I get asked a lot how I paint my nails so neatly. While I wish I could say
I’m just good like that, that’s not true. I shared one of my tricks
before–you know, the pick it off in the shower method. It’s a very technical thing. While I have had a lot of practice over the years–it is rare that I don’t have anything to clean up. Here are some things to help you keep your manicure neat:
- Rest the pinky edge of the hand you’re painting with on a table to keep it steady. Keep it on the table as you drag the polish out.
- Don’t start painting right at the cuticle. Put a small drop of polish in the center of your nail and push that up to just about your cuticle and drag down. Use that as a base line for each side.
- Use long, even strokes.
- Don’t load your brush with polish. Skim one side of the brush clean. I also skim the top half of the polish side so I have a little polish ball at the base of the brush.
Pre-clean up using those tricks:
I clean up before I do a top coat. Top coat should be the very last thing you do.
Clean up tricks:
- Drag a clean dotting tool around the edge of your nail (tracing your cuticles). Warning: this can be tricky and result in messing up your mani or a bigger mess.
- Wash your hands with very warm water (or take a hot shower) long after your nails have dried. Bring an orange stick and push off the unwanted polish. Or you can be super classy and use your nails.
- The method I use: I dip a small synthetic brush in pure acetone (think eyeliner brush). That acts as an eraser and will remove all unwanted polish.
Sally Hansen: Pacific Blue
Finger Paints: Paper Mache’
by Joey | Mar 20, 2014 | Throwback
It’s Thursday. You know the drill by now.
A very candid glimpse into the world of a writer.
>> I’ve been waking up at 6AM every day. Some of you might be thinking “pssh, bitch please. I get up that early or earlier every day, too.” But I work for myself. In my own house. It would be verrrrry easy to laugh at the alarm when it goes off and snooze until 8 when J gets up. But I work best first thing in the morning. I also kind of feel like these early morning hours are stolen hours. I can focus. I can work my butt off, and by 9 AM, I’m on to the next chore or blogging business. I’m proud of myself. These revisions have been taunting me since 2010. They’ve been scaring me since 2010. And every morning, I sit in my office chair, space heater on, and I battle my fears–one word at a time. This book will never be the kind of book I’d write now, but I’m more proud of what it’s becoming.
>>Tuesday night, Bailey came into the living room smacking her lips. That’s never a good sign. Sure enough, homegirl paid a visit to the 24 hour all you can eat buffet also known as the cat box. So there I am, on the bathroom floor. J is holding her head and laughing his butt off, and I’m scrubbing the litter and
poop from in between her teeth with a tooth brush. Get a dog, he said. It’ll be fun, he said. She then proceeded to put on the best “guilty dog” show ever. If she wasn’t so afraid of the camera, we’d have youtube gold right there.
>>I’ve been eating generic cheerios for so long that now the real thing tastes funny to me.
>>I got a lesson in humility on Tuesday. I run (and by run I totally mean jog slowly in between walking intervals) this “loop” around my house. At any given point, I am no further than a backyard away from my house. I’m a worrier. And my thought is–if my stomach gets upset or if I fall (because c’mon. It’s me we’re talking about here), I could get home without a problem. Well, some athletic team had the same idea. I was getting lapped. By athletic, handsome college boys. And I just had to take it. But I finished my work out. And went home. Even if my pride was a little bruised.
>>Do squirrels make nests of some kind? There’s this squirrel outside my office window that is consonantly walking off with mouthfuls of pine straw. I mean. WHAT could he be doing with all that pine straw?
by Joey | Mar 19, 2014 | Throwback
I had this boyfriend in high school. Looking back on it now, he was just a very small part of my HS career and my overall life, but for whatever reason my teenage brain had his memory stored in The Big Things. The relationship was brief. And in the end, he pretty much broke me. I think we all had a boyfriend like that. Or maybe you didn’t. Lucky you.
Well anyway, this old boyfriend. Let’s call him Fred, shall we?
Well, Fred made some pretty poor life choices. I don’t judge him–everyone is a little lost in their late teens, early twenties. But just as my junior year of college came to an end, I learned some sad news about Fred.
Fred had an accident. Fred was no more. Fred was dead.
I got the story in broken pieces. No one ever wants to gossip about the gory details that leads to ones demise. And you all know me– I’m far too polite to go digging. So I made my peace. Goodbye, Fred.
A few short years later, I was sunning myself at my parents’ neighborhood pool. It’s the same pool I’ve spent every summer since I was a year old. Inevitably, I ran in to an old friend.
This old friend, we’ll call him Professor Holmes. Professor Holmes and I were catching up and seeing who had tabs on who from our past.
That’s when my trusty old boyfriend came up. Professor Holmes casually mentioned he’d seen Fred a couple days before.
I sat up straight in the chaise lounge, shaded my eyes with my hand and looked at him pointedly.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah. I ran in to good old Fred a few days ago.”
“Uh. No. That’s impossible. Fred is dead.”
Professor Holmes looked at me like my hair is on fire. Apparently, I had some bad information. Don’t ask me how. So for two years, I believed that Fred was dead. When really, Fred was just fine. Up to no good per the usual.
Let’s fast forward to the end of that week. I was working in a pretty big office park at the time. The building was always freezing, so I would bring my sack lunch outside and eat in my car like a loser. Don’t judge me. Being a grown up is hard.
So there I was. Sitting in the trusty old Camry with G-105 blaring eating my sad turkey sandwich. That’s when a lawn mower goes speeding past in front of my parking spot.
Holy shit.
Fred. On a lawn mower. Alive.
I snuck back inside before he could spot me. And there I stood, inside that freezing cold building laughing to myself.
If I’d seen him only a week earlier, I would have had a heart attack. Fred. He rose from the damn grave.
by Joey | Mar 18, 2014 | Throwback
>>When I accidentally finished season 2 of Scandal last week (don’t you even get me started on how pissed I was at Netflix for saying there were 29 episodes when, in fact, there were only 22 >:-O) Kristin recommended I give Once Upon A Time a try. I’m not a fantastical story line fan. I’m just not. I had to be bullied into reading Harry Potter (I know, I know–I did enjoy them for what it’s worth). But I just like real life. I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. But something about Once is done so right. I have a hard time telling myself to stop watching!! It’s really, really good!
I don’t know why this looks weird–it was a humid day, so maybe the camera lens was steamed up?
>>A friend and her little family are stopping in little old Buies Creek for a night as they pass through on a road trip. It’s not just any old friend, though. We were bffs when we were like, 11. And then she and her family moved away. We reconnected when we were out of college (thanks, facebook–I guess you were good for something). She ended up being my accountability partner and is the sole reason my first book ever got written. I saw her for the first time in 10 years the week of my wedding! I’m so so excited to get to see her and meet her little one (and maybe show her how much progress I’ve made with the book revisions)!
>>I’ll finish week 2 of the c25k program today. It’s not pretty, but I’m doing it. I even went out on Sunday when it was freezing and raining. I really didn’t want to–but I knew I’d feel good when I finished. So out I went. I’ll admit that I laughed out loud when I peeked ahead a couple weeks and saw it says to jog for 5 minutes straight. Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it–I can hardly make it through the 90 sec jogging intervals. I guess that’s the point of the program though.
by Joey | Mar 14, 2014 | beauty, Loves, Real Life
Gradient nails?
Yeah, no.
Turns out I don’t have the patience it takes.
I’ve made my peace with it, whatever.
I’m fine.
I was so eager to just be done with it–I thought slappin’ on some glitter would help.
Because glitter fixes everything.
Nope.
Not everything.
But because I always share when I actually execute a manicure–I thought it was only fair to show that I, too, am verrrrry human.
I was so annoyed with how these turned out
I immediately wiped everything off
and went plain jane.
Now, because I spent so much time trying to clean up the gradient manicure, my cuticles are so dang dry from all the acetone. I really only have myself to blame. But in case you’re wondering, my favorite cuticle cream to help combat the dryness is Burts Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. It’s worth your dollars. Promise.
Will you forgive me if I don’t feel like fishing out all of the colors I used for the gradient nails? I’m not kidding, I was really irritated when it was all said and done. So those polishes very quickly went back to where they belong.
The plain jane color–which actually happens to be a really good spring/summer color, in my opinion, is the Rimmel lycra wear 10 + minerals in 297 promiscuous. Not my favorite name for a polish ever, if I’m being honest. This is a pretty old polish–so I’m not sure if it’s still in stores or not. It claims it’s supposed to last 10 days. I’ll never know if it actually does because you all know I have nail ADD and will probably change out my polish tomorrow.
You know. Just Joey being Joey.
