Wednesday Manicure: Rainbow Brite Sprite Nails & Tutorial

I did a very fun manicure this week! Hopefully you 80's girls will recognize this little guy ~



It's Twink the Sprite from Rainbow Brite!

The glitter topcoat you see in the picture was the inspiration for the manicure. I fell for this "Rainbow Brite" polish when I saw the swatches on ThePolishAholic. I've been wanting to try some matte glitters & the colors really did scream 'Rainbow Brite', a childhood favorite, so it was added on my very short wishlist.

The polish has since changed names to "Double Rainbow" (I'm sure we can all guess why!), and you can see the colors are much more vibrant than in my picture. I'm not really sure about the matte glitter, everything but the blue seems shiny to me? The polish also had a chemically smell, but it applied easily & is a lovely topper!

While thinking of Rainbow Brite, I realized that the Sprites from the show could easily be created with a nail dotter. I tested it out on a nail wheel & then took step-by-step photos for a tutorial!

For this manicure you will need ~



Nail dotters and polish in blue, a rainbow colored glitter topcoat, white, black, khaki/flesh colored (or some sort of brown), yellow, and red. The exact shade does not matter that much, but pictured above is Color Club "Cold Metal", Black Cat Lacquer "Double Rainbow", Milani "White on the Spot", Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Black Out", an unlabeled coppery polish, Color Club "Daisy Does It", and No Miss "Palmdale Paprika".

For the nail dotters I'll be referring to the sizes as XS, S, M, L, and XL. We'll be using XS-L.


1) Paint your nails with a blue base coat on all nails (and clean up edges). Add your rainbow glitter to all but the ring fingers. Coat everything with a fast drying top coat & let dry for a while.

2) On the ring fingers ~ Yellows tend to be a bit transparent, so we're going to lay down some white first for the stars. Use the S dotter to draw two tiny white stars at the top of the nail. (Dot the point of each star and then drag in towards the center) Use the L dotter and create a row of dots curving down.



3) Using the XS dotter (or a small striping brush/toothpick), draw a thin black line from each star to the curved line. Fill in the area below the dotted curve with a coat of white & let dry for a minute. Add a second coat (or more) as needed and let dry all the way through.



4) I did not have a good khaki/flesh color for his face, so I mixed a coppery color and white half & half and it was perfect! With the L dotter, add the khaki color to create the face shape ~ two humps at the top and extended on the sides for the cheeks. With the S dotter, go over the stars with your yellow & let it all dry.



5) With the M dotter, add two white dots for the eyes. With the L dotter, move back & forth to create an oval shape underneath for the nose (let dry).



6) With the S dotter, add black pupils to the eyes. Then, using the XS dotter, finish it off by drawing on the mouth. Let this all dry for a while before applying your fast drying topcoat to keep it from smearing.



The sprite turned out so cute on my left hand! My right hand looked a little wonkier, but it's definitely doable with your 'off hand'. I hope you'll give this a try!

Monday: Getting Things Done

This was a really productive week! I finally got around to a lot of organizing that needed to be done (of course there's always more to do!). This week I....

♦ Tackled the bookshelf in the kitchen. First I just straightened up the shelf of my Japanese books, where there was a lot of stuff stacked up on top of the books (photos to frame & hang, a giant coloring sticker book, etc.). I also removed the Japanese children's books & put them with Orson's books since they were not really helpful for language study but fun to look at. Here is the after shot (click on the pic if you want to see notes about what everything is).



♦ Later I confronted the shelf where we've been sticking Orson's craft supplies & other toys he uses in the kitchen (like bubbles & jigsaw puzzles). I've been picking up new craft stuff and there was way too much for that tiny area!



I cleaned off some junk that was on the the top of the bookshelf (seen in the first pic) and moved the wok & steamer up there to make more room. The Dollar Tree has lots of small totes/containers 3 or 4 for $1, so I always keep some of those on hand for organizing things. It looks a lot nicer with everything sorted out ~



Ideally I would have the craft stuff in something with high sides & dividers, more like this, to reduce some of the visual clutter, but this will work for now! Here is the whole shelf, if you were curious (there are notes on the last two pics too) ~



I also....

♦ Labeled some of totes in the kitchen cabinets (spices, mix packets, etc.).

♦ Popped open two mystery moving boxes in our bedroom, re-taped & labeled them & moved them to the basement storage.

♦ Went through my necklaces & sorted them into "wear" or "play". It is all just cheap-o jewelry I bought in high school or college crammed into a tupperware (pencil box?), and Orson loves to open it up & play with them ~ they get very tangled! For now I just put the stuff I might want to wear in a ziplock so Orson can't tangle them up with the rest.

♦ Went through my make-up drawer & threw out a bunch of stuff.

♦ Followed this blog post for cleaning stinky towels. We don't have any problems with our towels, but the washcloths I use to clean the kitchen often sit around damp for a long time & have been smelling mildewy, even when clean. I think it worked well! (I wish I had not thrown in the dish towels we use for drying though. I don't think they were stinky, and they got very linty for some reason)

♦ Made some octopus crafts & food for Orson

♦ Taped up some TP rolls like this for marbles & pom poms. It did entertain him, but not for very long.

♦ Took a *giant* pile of plastic bags in for recycling, like a whole cart full. I'm so glad we got the new re-usable tote bags!

♦ Went through 4 more boxes of baby clothes to sort out anything that might be neutral enough for the baby girl. Then I went through the whole pile of neutral clothes (a hamper & box, overflowing) with Justin to see if I had pulled out anything too boyish. Anything borderline will probably just be worn around the house, but he did pull out a few shirts that were mostly blue. The boy clothes are sorted by size in labeled boxes that will be taped up & stored in the basement. I thought I was done... then I remembered the boxes in Orson's closet!

♦ Mixed this multipurpose cleaner (the "Cure-All") yesterday, but haven't had a chance to test it yet. I'll report back next week! I mixed something like the "Blessing in a Bottle" before & it works great. After comparing prices I want to try a few more of these concoctions.

Sunday: Recent Recipes

This week we made...

► Pad Thai (2 dinners) - I missed this so much! I really need to figure out how to make a good sauce though (this stuff is a little pricey). You can also find the noodles as an Asian mart for much cheaper!

► Bratwurst with Pan-fried Cabbage

► Toasted Sandwiches (lunchmeat) with Veggies & Dip - For the dip I use 16 oz. sour cream, Knorr's Vegetable Soup mix (not Spring Vegetables!), toss in about 1/4 cup of Parmesan and a sprinkling of Garlic powder.


And one new recipe...



► Penne Rosa with Shrimp (2 dinners, pictured above) - When I stirred in the final ingredients for this recipe I was a little disappointed. The sauce was rather thin & looked nothing like the creamy tomato sauce I was expecting from the photos. The taste was good, but a little mild. So I doubled the yogurt & marinara, and once I mixed that in the dish looked & tasted a lot more like we expected! (the photo was before this step)

With that change the recipe was definitely a winner (we also only needed 1 tomato to reach her 1/2 cup estimate). The best part, it only took about 15 minutes to throw together! This ended up making 4 large servings. Next time I would't mind a little more shrimp, but a full pound might be too much.

Octopi & Mountain Climbing

Orson is finally old enough to enjoy crafting and cute food! Thursday Orson was interested in some toilet paper rolls that I recently put aside for crafts, so I thought it was a good time to make an octopus like I saw here.

I told him to color the roll all over with markers, but he only added a few scribbles (and he normally loves to color!). I added the legs anyway to get him more excited ~ you just cut about halfway up on two sides, then repeat halfway between those cuts two more times to make 8 legs, wrapping them around your finger to curl them up. I also popped on some google eyes, which he hadn't seen yet, and he loved the octopus but constantly wanted to pull those eyes off! I'm sure we'll make more of these in the future.



At lunch I was thinking of making him a hot dog, and remembered those could make an easy octopus too! I basically made them like this, but used half a hot dog for each octopi. I knew the legs would separate if you boil them, but was happy to see it worked well in the microwave too!



I cut in some faces too, but those ended up a little creepy looking! You could draw faces on with ketchup, a food marker, or cut tiny pieces of food to form the shapes.


Yesterday Orson watched a show that involved climbing a mountain and was very excited about it. He laid his blanket over the back of the couch and pretended to climb that, so I went and got a long jumprope & ran it down the stairs & we had fun climbing up & down that. For lunch I cut a grilled cheese in half diagonally and then laid them on a plate to form mountains. He wouldn't eat his green beans, so I laid them along the bottom to form grass & threw on a few Cheerio flowers. (I still had to take away a mountain and make him eat the beans before he could have it) Orson also wanted some people climbing the mountains, so I added a few raisins. I'll have to take a pic next time!

Keeping a Functional To-Do List, pt. 2

This is the second half of my "To-Do List" post, where I wanted to share more about how I arrange my lists. Part 1 covers some general tips and can be found here. You'll want to keep #3 from that post in mind when reading below, "Find What Works for You". There is no 'rule' on how to create your list, but hopefully sharing what I do will give you some ideas!

 

I keep my list on Google Drive (previously called Google Docs), which is basically an online Word Doc I can access and edit anywhere. I prefer keeping an electronic version so I can move things around as needed, and I can always delete a finished task & easily see what is left to do.  

Today ~ At the top of the page are things that need to be done today. I have a short list that repeats every day ~ things like take pills, 12:00 - Orson’s nap, 1:00ish - Check mail, etc. I like to break my list into a few sections for general times of the day (morning, mid-day, evening) to help me focus on what needs to be done right away.

I use a text expander program (FastFox) to paste that in everyday but you could always copy & paste it from somewhere else. If you prefer to hand write your list, you may want to keep a separate file for each day of the week and just print as needed.  

Days of the Week ~ I also have a few tasks for each day of the week. Some tasks are obvious (Tuesday night we need to take out the trash), but this is also a great place to mark down things that you’d like to do regularly to keep them from getting out of hand. For example, Wednesday I file new work orders away into my database. Thursday I go through webpages that I recently bookmarked and file some away, delete some, Pin some, etc. (I never seem to make it all the way through the list, but it keeps the list whittled down!)  

In the future ~ Anything that needs to be done on a definite date or way in the future gets marked on my calendar (Google Calendar). Need to change your filter every three months? Write it on there. Maybe you want to put away some of your child’s toys for a few months so they’ll seem new later. Write down a reminder so you don’t end up with a box forgotten in the garage.  

Week by Week ~ Below the "to-do" today section, I have the next week or two roughly planned out. On Monday I write out the days for the following week and copy any info off of my calendar. My orders are due one week after payment, so I mark those down as they come in during the week. This is just a quick summary so I can see what is coming up, only a few items per day. In the morning I cut the current day from that list, paste it at the top of the page, and then I add in the "Today" and "Day of the Week" tasks mentioned above.  

Other Lists ~ I do keep a “Projects” list (mentioned in part 1), though I know I don’t make very good use of it. (Since it is stuff I want to do sometime in the future, so it usually gets skimmed over quickly & ignored) I also have some random lists in Google Drive like books to read, things we want to buy for the house, or blog posts I’m working on. I don't want that type of stuff clogging up my main list, but I can pull it up to reference whenever needed.


So what about you? Do you keep random to-do lists, or have a bigger system? I know writing down & sorting everything like this has really helped keep me and my family on track ~ suddenly I'm the 'responsible' one in the family, hah!

Wednesday Manicure: Neon Crackle Heart

This was a fun manicure to create, but it required a lot of layering!

First, to make your neon polish really pop, you want to lay down down a base of white polish. For this I used 2 coats of Milani "White on the Spot". Then I added about 3 coats of Sinful Colors "Pink" for my neon (great name) ~ not the best polish, but I didn’t want to spend much on a color I’d wear so seldomly. I covered this with topcoat and let everything dry for a while.



For the ring finger I followed this tutorial to add a heart, though I folded the tape in half & cut out a heart instead of using a hole punch. I filled the heart in with OPI “Black Shatter”, but did not brush it on like normal. A while back I saw a girl use many colors of crackle polish for a manicure, painting tiny brushstrokes in various directions all over the nail. I thought that would be fun to test with one color, and it definitely did mix up the crackle pattern a little. (The crackle would normally look a little more like this.) For a nice crackle you'll also want to use a thin coat.

For the rest of the nails I blocked off a section of my nail with Scotch tape & filled in the rest of the nail with the same crackle technique. From afar this looked a little too much like leopard print for me, but it was pretty fun and I got a ton of compliments!


And apparently I've been a bad influence on our little boy! He colored his nails with marker & then came over to me saying "Take picture", haha ~

Monday: Getting Things Done

This week I...



♦ Got Orson to make Valentine's Day cards for his grandparents. I got the idea to make a heart stamp with a toilet paper roll from this blog, but it didn't work so well for us. It was hard to make a full heart with the stamp, so I had to help with most of those, then Orson made some partial prints & smeared things around. Then I cut out a few construction paper hearts and he glued them on. Not too bad!

♦ Tried 2 new recipes.

♦ Used Goo-Gone to get the label gunk off Orson's "I Spy" bottle and a jar I keep pens in.

♦ Removed the labels from the new recycling bin & our trash can (one of those needed Goo-Gone, but the rest came off smoothly).

♦ Made a heart garland for Valentine's.

♦ Tried a new Japanese restaurant, about 30 minutes away (also for V-day). We tried a few new foods there too ~ jellyfish and pork belly!

♦ Searched all through the moving boxes full of craft supplies & finally found a mail sorter that had been used for shipping supplies. I had been planning on buying a new one for our current mail, but I realized the old one wasn't being used & would at least work for now! (This took a spot in the kitchen, clearing off the table by the front door)

♦ While searching for the mail sorter I finally found my missing label maker! I labelled a few containers on my desk and re-labeled some of our cords ~



Whenever a new cord comes in the house, I stick a label on it! We have too many old cords that we have no idea what they go to. I had been using some white paper labels and then covering them with tape (to water/stain-proof them), but realized these would work even better! Normally I just write the item the cord is for, but for phones and game systems I've started adding our names as well in case we leave them at someone's house where there were a lot of visitors.

♦ Bought new batteries & tested the baby swing we bought from Craigslist. Works great!

♦ Finally remembered to use the re-usable grocery bags we bought a week or two. We used to be in the habit of taking them every trip, but our old bags started falling apart & we went months without any. It's sad to see how quickly those plastic bags accumulate!!

♦ Re-took the pictures of eBay items (15+ items).

♦ Created a comparison list for cable/satellite & internet costs from the local companies. I really want to drop the TV now that I watch everything online but Justin is reluctant. Know anywhere we can get local channels only? We are trying to cut back costs for next year when I am not working.

♦ Started carrying stuff from the nursery to the basement... Our future nursery (2nd floor) is loaded with sewing & office stuff and I've been really dreading moving it into the basement. After carrying stuff back & forth a few times beofre, I knew how exhausting it was going to be to try to do it all at once. I took a tip from my recent To-Do List post and realized I should break up the task to make it seem more manageable! Currently the goal is just to make one trip a day. It will take a week or two to empty the room, but moving everything will take little effort at all.