Profile
I love punk rock music, wine, hiking, and kicking it with my wild family. I’ve been doing nails in Northwest Indiana for eight years. My unconventional style has helped me place in multiple NAILS competitions, become published, and earn a gold metal in a Naillympia competition. Being able to mix my off-the-wall ideas, love for bugs, weird humor, and science; is why I love my job. I collect dead spiders, plants, and rocks to use on nails, and my favorite nail art I’ve ever created is a mixed-media piece detailing the anatomy of the human eye! I’m a bit strange, and often misunderstood, but I promise once you’ve gotten past my special brand of weird, you’re going to have fun.
Week 4: Glitz Accessories & Such
Vegas Vacation
When I saw all of the textures, colors, and BLING that Glitz sent us, I immediately knew I wanted to use a little of everything! This set has 10 completely different nails inspired by 10 different highlights of Las Vegas. I kept this set eclectic- just like Sin City. There’s a lot of color combos, textures, and techniques that I wouldn’t normally put together, but since Vegas has it all, so do these nails! There’s a blinged out poker nail, an ode to the Flamingo, a microphone for all of the shows, a diver for Cirque de Soliel, a neon sign from Fremont street, a water nail with the LV logo for the canal shops, the praying mantis from container park, a showgirl, “Til death” for elopements, and the crystal curtains and lifesize Louboutin for the Cosmopolitan.
Week 3: LeChat
Nails Are My Super Power
This week LeChat asked us to bring our superpower to life using their 3 in 1 powder, Gelee and their nail architecture brushes. Since the powder has 3 uses, we were to describe 3 nail art techniques used to create the piece. I chose sugaring, liquid and powder painting, and liquid and powder sculpting since those were my most used techniques this week.
My super power is that I am a bug whisperer! I make bug friends everywhere I go and I am OBSESSED with them! The intricacies on these tiny little creatures fascinates me, and they just know it because I can always spot them right away. It’s like I’m a Disney princess. When I sing instead of magical woodland creatures, bugs come crawling and flying to me! Since the nails were not allowed to be attached to each other, I instead adhered them to a patch of “grass” and as I sing my heart out, those bug babies are coming to say hi.
My favorite crawler of all time was my sweet sweet Cheeto. She was a HUGE marbled orb weaver that lived on my deck last summer. We were best friends. I would catch bugs and put them in her web so I could watch her eat and she even let me hold her! SUPER POWER. I even had a bug land on my work station while I was filming this video because of my super awesome bug whispering powers!
Week 2: En Vogue
Star Crossed
While researching astrology, I realized that I was more drawn to the belief that the stars have a heavy hand in our personality traits, love interests, decision-making styles, etc. I absolutely loved the idea of the zodiac signs actually being the puppeteer “controlling” our fate, so fun! I am a Sagittarius, my personality traits according to my zodiac sign are optimistic, curious, energetic, and free. The Sagittarius hand has the corresponding constellation on it, the archer symbol, a bow and arrow, and the zodiac fire symbol. I chose to do the compatible hand as Libra. There I did it’s consolation, zodiac symbol, and ruling planet Venus. Libras are easygoing and social – so they’re perfect for the Sagittarius! Since the stars are controlling the show here, they are literal puppeteers controlling the marionette Libra and Sagittarius. Will it be love at first sight? Watch my video to find out!
Week 1: CND
Secret Garden
After doing a LOT of research, I was inspired by a poem by William Blake called The Garden of Love. In this self-reflecting piece, I think he beautifully describes his internal struggle with freedom and structure. Blake used the garden as an analogy for love. I believe he saw love as individual freedoms, imagination, and a child-like innocence. Since his view of love was so beautiful and vivid, I couldn’t help but choose this as my inspiration. The garden area is whimsical with all of the plant life covered in water marble details. This is meant to represent the freedom idea in the poem. Blake used a church as imagery to represent the idea of structure, social constructs, and the dogma of the church in his day. He, like most Romantics, felt strongly about emotional freedom and imagination. Since the church is embodying this concept of oppressive structure, I chose to make the church darkest part of the piece. After reviewing Blake’s poetry and artwork, I noticed that he was a deeply spiritual man who loved God, so instead of making the church an actual Christian church and possibly misrepresenting his intentions, I made it a cutie pie NAIL CHURCH. The four fully functioning stained glass windows are modeled after typical church windows of the time period, complete with lattices and for fun, hand painted with NTNA and CND details. There is also a little baby bottle of Shellac in the front for us to love and honor.