Where I’ve been…

Hi everyone!

Yeah, I’ve been gone for a really, really, REALLY long time. Given that my last blog post was in February, I haven’t been back here in almost a year – and I thought my LAST absence was long! While I have continually been mulling over when I should write another post, a recent comment prompted me to write this update now.

Anyways, I’m fine overall, nothing especially bad in my life has been keeping me from blogging. On the contrary, I’ve been pretty occupied with a bunch of work stuff, plus I’ve been having more fun this year! I can really tell based on the number of phone pictures I’ve taken in the past few years: this year I already took triple the number of photos than in 2014, and double than in 2015. I’ve been lucky enough to go on some trips this year: Las Vegas, Israel, Washington D.C., Disneyland, and planned holiday travel. Despite some unpleasantness at work earlier this year, things overall have been looking up. If you guys are curious about life stuff, I’ll tuck the highlights towards the end of my post.

But of course I’ve still been painting my nails! Just less elaborately than before. Since I haven’t had a lot of time or energy for nail art (although I did a few designs this year), I’ve mostly been sticking to single colors or layered combinations. Here’s a grid of all the non-nail art photos I could find; I’ll post the individual photos in another post with info about the polish(es) and my thoughts. Probably I’ll tuck the nail art into other posts too, since otherwise this one would be too long.

End of 2015 Update

Hi everyone! So I haven’t been around for a while (haha October…). Anyhow, I wanted to leave a short update about life things that might explain why I haven’t written a blog post for the past 2-3 months, and what I have been doing in the interim. The jist of it is that, while I do intend to keep blogging and continue writing posts, that hasn’t happened for a while for a few reasons, and blogging in the future will be similarly difficult for me to keep up with.

Emi’s Manis Turns One! Part Two

Hi everyone! I apologize for keeping you all waiting for longer than I expected, but I got kind of burned out for a few weeks and didn’t feel like I had enough energy for blogging. Now that I’m feeling better, I present to you: the second installment of my first blogiversary! In the first part, I talked about how much the past year has meant to me with this blog, and in this post, I want to do a couple of commemorative things to really celebrate the personal significance of this occasion.

And what better way to do that than with nail art? Since I figured this was supposed to be a post commemorating the first year that I’ve been blogging about my nails, I decided to do some nail art styled after the very first mani I blogged about. I didn’t want to do exactly the same thing, just mimic it. Plus, as a bonus, I’ve got a special something for my readers – a GIVEAWAY!!! My first one ever! I hope you like it 🙂

Emi’s Manis Turns 1! Part One

Hi everyone! Today is a pretty special day on the blog because – guess what – it’s my 1 year blogiversary!!! As of today, I’ve been blogging for one whole year, which is completely crazy for me to think about. I’m absolutely thrilled to have made it this far with nail art-ing, and the past year has been so rewarding for me. To celebrate my blogiversary, I’m going to write up two blog posts! Partly because I don’t have time to write one really long post, and also it’d probably be more fun to break it up into two posts anyways. I’m timing this first “reflection” post on the exact day of my blogiversary so that I can commemorate the occasion properly.

I’m trying to remember what was going on in my professional/personal life a year ago, and a LOT has happened between then and now. Ever since May 14th, 2014, there have been an incredible amount of changes and challenges that I’ve had to deal with, and this nail art blog has followed me through all of them. It’s been an activity that entertains me when I’m bored or lonely, a hobby to channel my creativity, an outlet for my frustration, and an awesome way to connect with people with whom I share an interest. When I started out blogging, I didn’t have any clear intentions in mind of what I wanted to accomplish, so I can’t really say how well I met my expectations for myself (other than me succeeding at keeping this blog going for a whole year). I definitely did manage to do quite a lot in the past year, though, so l wrote up a look back at the past year on my blog!

LLAP

Given yesterday’s very sad news, I thought I’d share a little about the rather odd intersection in my life of Star Trek and painting my nails. I talked about it a little bit before, but I think it deserves another mention.

Valentine’s Day Mani Swap with @fishnails on Instagram – My Design!

Hi everyone! I’ve got something special today – a mani swap! The super awesome @fishnails on Instagram and I decided to do a Valentine’s Day-themed mani swap (each person comes up with a nail art design and then copies the other person’s design) and it was so fun! I had never done a mani swap before, and now I’m absolutely stoked to do more in the future!

Since this is really two nail art designs, I’m going to divide the mani swap up into two posts! This one will be about my design for the swap, which features a glittery, electrocardiogram-like heart rhythm on top of a subtle gradient French tip. While it may not be the most original design (there are a lot of heartbeat nail designs on the internet), I really like the heartbeat pattern for Valentine’s Day because it’s a bit offbeat and nerdy, but still relevant. Of course, I couldn’t waste an opportunity to talk about science on my blog, so I have a small bit at the end about the parts of a “heartbeat” on an electrocardiogram (also known as an EKG or ECG). Before I move on to technique, here’s the pic of the mani swap! AAHHH SO CUTE!!!

The Great Nail Polish Stash Organization Project (What I’ve Been Up To)!

Hi everyone! I suppose I’ve been away from blogging for a while…oops…I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to leave my blog alone for this long! Things just got really busy for me, and blogging kind of fell by the wayside. If you’ve been checking my Instagram, you can probably tell that I wasn’t doing nothing all this time. Somehow, though, I didn’t have quite enough energy to post everything on my blog. To make up for it, I’ve prepared a whopping 5 posts that will come out in the next few days, so you readers have something to look forward to!

Anyways, I thought I’d update you on my progress with my New Year’s Resolutions, specifically the first one: destash! My goal is to get rid of 100 bottles of nail polish by the end of March, and I’m well on my way there with over 60 bottles in my destash box already. While deciding which bottles to get rid of, I realized that I’m beyond the point where I can rely on my memory to tell me what I have, and I should probably develop a system of cataloging my stash so that I can prevent getting lots of dupes. After thinking about it for a little while, I’ve figured out how I want to get organized, and I’m making progress!

Reflection Post: My Right Hand (Cinderella Hand)

Hi everyone! I thought I’d take a look back today at the pictures I have of my dominant hand, which usually isn’t seen on the blog. As you can probably tell, I am right-handed, and so almost all of the pictures I take and post on the blog are of my non-dominant left hand. Obviously, this is because it’s easier for me to paint and photograph my left hand than my right. All the same, I usually do the same nail design on my right hand because I wear my manicures for on average around five days, and it would bother me if my hands looked significantly different from each other. If I did a really difficult design on my right hand, then I’ll take a picture of it as some sort of “proof” of my triumph. Over time, I’ve collected a bunch of these pictures and now have enough of them to post. I’ve decided to show them side-by-side with my left hand so you can see the differences.

I’ve heard that some nail bloggers refer to their dominant hand as their “Cinderella hand” because it does all of the work and gets none of the glory. Well, here today, my Cinderella hand can get the glory it deserves!

Blog Readership Polls!

Hi everyone! Today, instead of a nail art post, I’d like to hear from all of you lovely readers! I was thinking about where I’d like to go with my blog in the future (and have lots of ideas!) but I’m not sure what you would be interested in seeing. So I made a couple of polls in the hopes that you’ll answer them, and I can get feedback on what to do. Please take the time to answer; it would really help me a lot! Of course, if you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments!

Blue Morpho Butterfly Nail Art for Thyroid Disease Awareness Month

Hi everyone! I’M BACK! With new content 🙂 The end of my vacation means that I got back to my polish stash and tools, and now can get around to all the nail art I’ve been dreaming about! I decided to begin with this manicure, which was inspired by a very deserving cause.

During my vacation, fellow Instagrammer @citruseyes sent out an invitation to do a nail art collaboration in honor of Thyroid Disease Awarness Month, which is January, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled to participate! Thyroid disease is very pervasive in my family, and so this is a cause that is especially important to me personally and that I feel deserves more awareness. My manicure was inspired by some symbols used to represent Thyroid Disease Awareness (TDA) – butterflies and the blue awareness ribbon – and is dedicated to my mom, who is affected by thyroid disease (and also loves butterflies!).