Polished: Spot-On Leopard Print Mani Tutorial

RAWR! I know I've been gone for ever and a day because of MCAT, but I can't resist putting up a new post and fighting stagnancy. I finally finished all the review materials, have 4 compositions full of handwritten, painstakingly-taken notes. Right now I'm just blitzing through the 1001 Problems books, which means over 5000 problems by the time I'm done studying. Is this all possible within 14 days? I sure hope so, because ready or not, the MCAT is coming. Dun dun dun! It makes me feel better that a potential failsafe school only requires a mere 21 for admissions ... so at least I can get into SOME med school : )

Also, I've changed up things a little bit while I was gone. I added links into the linkbar, wrote an About Angie page, shortened my posts on the main page with Suzy's help, and made the "Click to see more photos" link more noticeable by fixing the background colour (thanks to Jean and AN). Blogger friends really are the best :D Coding wizards to the rescue! What I want to know is what you guys think of the shortened posts. I know I'm the queen of picspam, but I think that was a characteristic of my blog. Lots and lots of huge pictures and building up your scrolling skills. However, it does clean up the site a lot. Please vote in my poll above - I'm considering changing it back to unshortened because I personally am too lazy to click the "read more" button most of the time if I'm not at the direct post. I've left this post unshortened for testing. Please see my main page for a feel of the shortened posts.

I first got the inspiration to do this mani from Lisa of LisaDrivesaVan (see her version here). I haven't really been into leopard prints because I think they look kind of tacky and too club-goer for daily wear but who says you can't put a little ferocious feline into your nails? I was going to do a makeup look to complement this mani but that day it was a sauna outside - at that temperature it'd only melt off. I've been doing random looks though and taking pics : ) They will all be posted after 8/5, Judgment Day. I will also get back to all your sweet comments too.

Wet n Wild Craze in Goldmine, 3 coats

Maybelline Express Finish in Mink in a Moment (dots)

Wet n Wild H2O Proof Liquid Eyeliner in Black (squigglies)

Sanofi Aventis Topcoat, 2 coats

Sunshine:

My crazy leonine hair

 Shade:

At first I was afraid that I didn't have the right colours and that the base coat would be too yellow, but it turns out a nice and warm gold when opaque. If you like what you see, try your hand at it by following the picture tutorial I made :D It was so hard trying to take pics with my left hand while not smudging the polish I just painted on the right hahaha.

Spot-On Leopard Print Mani Tutorial

Step 1: Start off with clean nails. Remove your nail polish, let the acetone dry, wash your hands, etc. If you want, apply base coat. I'm not that fancy though.

Step 2: Apply base colour until it becomes opaque. I'm using Wet n Wild Craze in Goldmine, with 3 coats for it to become the opacity I wanted. It's a very yellowish gold colour.

I absolutely love these Craze nail polishes because their brushes are so short so you don't have to flail around to apply. They deposit polish evenly and the formula dries fast. Perfect! These are only $1.99 USD each at drugstores - super awesome deal. I just love cute packaging too!

Step 3: Apply dot shade randomly. You don't have to be perfect! Draw kidney shaped little things or dots or hearts whatever you want - it's going to be covered with the black polish/eyeliner later. I'm using a super old bottle of Maybelline Express Finish in Mink in a Moment I got with a magazine subscription in like ... 7th grade HAHAHA.

Now it looks like giraffes!

 

Step 4: This is easier than it looks! I'll break it down in the pictures below. Draw squiggly C's around the dots you made. Be messy! I'm using Wet n Wild H2O Proof Eyeliner in Black (yes, waterproof eyeliner - a tip from Lisa) because the tip of the wand has a lot more control than flimsy nail art polish brushes. If you have the pro materials, go for it. Otherwise, you can choose a cheap eyeliner you don't use anymore and use it as an alternative. I suggest you don't use that eyeliner on your eyes after this.

 The top nail is in the process. I just made a C wrapping the brown dot I made earlier.

 And I made another C on the other side. Leave some gaps!

I really love this eyeliner too ... I'll have to pick up another one because I used it for this mani and plus it's drying out xD The tip might get destroyed after you use it on your nails.

Step 5: Be very careful! Gently glide topcoat over the nail. Use a super light hand and let the first coat dry before applying another layer. It will smudge a little but that's okay! I'm using Sanofi Aventis topcoat .. very random one I found in the drawer. If you press down hard with the brush, it will smear like on my pinky nail and end up not-so-pretty. Barely touch the brush to the nail and let the topcoat kind of drip down.

From a distance, you can't tell there are smudges or smears at all : ) After a few days the eyeliner will start to wear off if the topcoat chips. My nails have lasted for over a week now and they look fine. Enjoy your new hot leopard print nails! Feel free to use different colours. I went for a conservative (if you could call it that) colour palette. I've seen cute snow leopard ones, or hot pink and turquoise, etc. Have fun!

I leave you with some art I did years ago. Very suitable for this post, eh? I titled it "Savage" - animals were and probably always will be my favourite to draw. I'm going to run along and get back to cramming! Please tell me what you feel about the shortened posts in the meantime. Muah! ♥

Thank You Mary! California Mango Hand Care Kit

It has been boiling hot in SoCal recently. There's no air conditioning in this apartment and opening windows actually makes it warmer (yay for radiation and convection). I woke up ready to take pictures and the sky leered, a moody grey. So on top of the occasional earthquake, the cool 60s weather we were sporting last week, and the recent blaze, it's been pretty exciting from a meteorological standpoint. Enough about the weather. You're probably thinking, "Wow, Angie ... you're taking time out of cram season to post about the weather?" Psyche! : )

I promised to feature the rest of the items that Mary of Body & Soul Beauty sent me from her Friday Follower Giveaway. The prizes were a Mango Tango Hand Care Kit from California Mango and Sally Hansen polishes in HD DVD and the oh-so-elusive-and-craved Hidden Treasure. I featured the polishes on my last post. Thank you so much, Mary : )

I'm a terrible person who doesn't moisturize my skin enough. I don't really like the feeling of heavy creams on my skin, weighing me down. The California Mango set features all sorts of rescue creams and lightweight lotions that relieve desperately dry skin. The only turnoff is the smell of the packaging or something. The actual products all smell like mango and other fruits. I played around with most of the products but not to the extent that I can do a review on them right now. I should really use these consistently so my hands don't look as scaly and filled with dry lines as they do.

I am wearing Delia's Mint Nail Polish, my favourite : )

Cute meshing on the bag, filled with 6 products that pamper your hands with some TLC. I might use this bag for as a cosmetics bag for my makeup too : )

Mango Extreme Hand & Body Creme 2 oz: this is a thicker white creme

Natural Hand & Body Lotion 2 oz: More lightweight thin moisturizer. Yes I write on my hand all the time. That was a shopping list xD

Mango Buff Natural Exfoliating Scrub 2 oz: I haven't tried this out but it should remove dead skin. This will be great for elbows, kneecaps, and feet for summer silky-smooth skin.

Mango Miracle Cuticle Remover 0.5 fl oz: I tried this out but don't think I left it on long enough. It's supposed to make your cuticles softer so they're easier to push back or remove. I personally think that's not immunologically sound because bacteria can enter your body more easily. Always thinking medicine, eh? Though all the pros remove their cuticles for picture-perfect manicures. It also makes your nails seem longer by just trimming that centimeter of soft skin.

Mango Mend Cuticle and Nail Treatment Balm 0.25 fl oz: Mary swears by this. You can basically put this wherever you need the most moisture rescue and the oil takes care of the rest. She uses a thin layer before bed and lets it sink in while she catches her beauty sleep.

Mango Magic Cuticle Treatment 1/8 fl oz: This softens cuticles and treats dryness

Sally Hansen HD in DVD: You can kind of see the purple on the sides of the bottle being reflected. It's such a pretty blue-purple micro-sparkle polish!

Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure: I just love the bottle shape too, on top of it being so pretty and amusing

Thank you Mary for your generosity and beautiful polish swatches! Check out her blog and stay cool in the summer heat, lovelies!

I posted a hiatus notice under Bamboo Digest saying I'll be out of the blogging loop for about 3 weeks until after my MCAT exam August 5th. But being as blog-obsessed as I am, I've already crumbled. If I'm not commenting as much on your posts, it's because I'm tearing pages out of my Physics book and trying to prevent that awful nightmare I had about it today xD My subconscious is telling me to go slave over some serious practice problems right now. I am most likely reading your posts and enjoying them : ) Commenting time adds up (I sub to over 200 blogs) and detracts from my goal score. I am going to spend this time to take quality pictures for more outfits, makeup looks, and product reviews when I am finished. I may make an occasional post or two : ) ♥

Polished: Sally Hansen HD in DVD + Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure

Thanks to Mary of Body & Soul Beauty and her super generous Friday Follower Freebies, I was able to try out two hot polishes: Sally Hansen HD in DVD and Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. I will feature the other goodies in a post tomorrow. I really like the High Definition polish because the micro-sparkles are so amusing! This pretty shade of dark blue with tinges of purple makes it so mesmerizing to stare at. I have to admit, I usually wear polish so I can amuse myself with my nails - I need to get a life, right? xD

If you're into nail polishes, you're probably already wide-eyed at the mention of Hidden Treasure because this baby is so hard-to-find! I'm so lucky to be able to try this out : ) The wide brush is really cool because it covers a lot of my nail at once. This polish looks like a bunch of white-ish flakes from a distance, but when you put it on, it reflects a rainbow that reminds me of goldfish! A lot of it is this beautiful coral-orange sheen while the other side is a brilliant light green. I put on about 3 layers of this over bare nails. I can't wait to layer it over all my other polishes too! It transforms any old polish into something new and different.

Also, to try to cure my nails of their peeling at the tips (and my OCD peeling off the chipping), I've been taking Omega 3 Fish Oil pills. I think they're working great after 2-3 weeks! The gel capsules are a little sweet so I don't have to taste the icky oil (which I did once because of absentminded chewing). I take about 2 a day, once in morning, once at night, and my nails feel stronger, I don't get chipping anymore, and my hair even feels softer! My hair grows pretty fast anyway (I can tell from my roots) but hopefully this will speed things up! I'm glad SoCal isn't that hot in summer or else I would have chopped off my locks a long time ago xD I do miss my short hair. Why can't I have my cake and eat it too D: Cake is yummy ... ♥

HD in DVD. My camera doesn't pick up the purples : (

 Bright sunlight:

Indoors:

Hidden Treasure!

Bright sunlight: (doesn't show the spectrum as well)

Indoors: (Isn't that so cool? I'm easily amused xD)

Thank you Mary for these awesome polishes :D Have you tried any supplements to help your hair grow or have a new fave polish? Enjoy your weekend, lovelies!

Ke Qin Ke Jian

Sometimes it's more relaxing to write up a post in Word and post it later, when it feels right. Right now I'm panicking and I'm panicking hard. I have something like 26 days left before the MCAT, before the exam that is the gatekeeper to determine if I'm worthy to continue on the long tortuous path that is the life of medicine.

I have to be honest with myself. I work better under pressure. Of course it's nice to work at something bit by bit and never feel rushed or stressed, but I live for epinephrine flowing through my veins (and arteries I suppose?). Arteries go away from the heart, veins go towards the heart. A for away. This has become my life. Every mention of a word and I will immediately begin to draw out maps. Wonderful, but my Physics is still suffering. I really tend to avoid my problems until the last minute and choose something more comfortable, something easier to do while I'm busy avoiding. That's how I became so good at anthropology, psychology, languages, and now biology. Ack.

I have Animal by Neon Trees looping indefinitely on iTunes. I really need to listen to all the random crap on my iPod more. I'm so anal retentive, typing that appropriately with the capitalized P. It does bother me when my MCAT prep books misspell things. You would think with all that money they're robbing students of, they could afford spell check and a cooler mascot than a crazed saltine named "Salty." Upbeat music drives me. Without it, I'd move at the pace of the earth rotating through our lives, wearing us down so that before we know it, no anti-aging cream will fill the cracks on our faces.

"Writing in a pressure cooker" is how my Power of the Pen coach describes creative writing. I really miss those days when I thought I was a hotshot writer. For 8th grade, it wasn't bad. As I reviewed my pieces in high school though, I laughed at my childish syntax and floundering between stylistic decisions. Now I'm comfortable writing. It's soothing. It's the stability that glues the pages of my life down into one cohesive entity.

My hands are sore from writing up notes. I have this bad habit of taking notes, taking notes, taking notes until my ink runs dry but never reading them again. Of course the few times I manage to, I can cram in an hour before the test and get 98%. In anthropology, that is. I'm not trying to be an arrogant braggart, but I do have a nice photographic memory. What I lack are application skills. Thus, I suck at chemistry, physics, math and rock languages, humanities, artsy things. But I can't let that bog me down. Flipping to the back of the book to only discover you're wrong makes a huge dent in your ego, especially if you've been at this since May. There goes my summer. Sometimes I want to push back my test date from August 5th but that would mean I really won't have a summer. I've been depending on those two weeks before school to keep me afloat in this self-torture. I've made my hopeful list already. It's all I have to look forward to.

I hate standardized tests. And I can't stand people being nice to me, including myself. One minute I pat myself in the back and the next, this whole week is gone. From watching the Office to I have no clue what I've been doing this week (killing my future on the internet probs), each day slips through my fingers like sand. I've always wanted to just grab a handful of sand and keep it there. Physics is always kicking my dreams down with a force of mg.

I kind of like thinking nerdy things like this. And writing about them. Of course at school whenever I make a joke like that people give me disgusted looks and walk away. I hang my head defeated. But I am a nerd, not a genius, but a quirky geek who doesn't get worked up on the difference between nerds and geeks. Heck I'm a dork too.

I have to beat myself up mentally. I have to panic. I diesel on stress. I work best in a high pressure cooker. I have to say mean things in my head to motivate myself. It comes from growing up with Chinese parents who always expected too much. Only when I started thinking did I realize that grades were pish-posh, all these achievements disappear when we die, and there's nothing worth living for except life itself. If you wait for something cool to happen, you've wasted your only chance. I may be bleak, I may be a born pessimist, I may just be honest. I know on my blog I pose as a nice, cheerful girl who wants to cater to everyone, but I'm pretty selfish. Blogging is my guilty pleasure. People won't say mean things to you here. It's my own little corner of the universe. It's not like Youtube, where people pride themselves on how hateful they can be. I admit, sometimes I want to say something nasty, like "Wtf MP, you're promoting panda eyes? You look like you either got beat up or took over the title of Miss Pandaphilia." I also remember the time that I made the mistake of posting a review on a Facebook fan page for some product and a bunch of people wrote things like "She's so ugly" and "She needs more than that product to fix what's wrong with her face." Thanks creeps. Btw, now I know where to find you, where you live, and your name. Smartass.

Now I've got myself all down. There's the fine line between saying mean things to keep you going, keep you writing, keep you learning and outright defeatist thoughts. I often find myself slipping, with no one to talk to, no place to go. Yes, I am whining but my family and my life weren't built for excitement. I'm the caged bird but I don't sing. Sorry Maya Angelou. I want to travel everywhere but I don't want to move. It's the great paradox of my existence.

Today I learned something cool about my family's history. I was talking to my Dad about something after watching the Jay Leno Show (which was outright brilliant jabbing at Lebron and featuring finally a Vice President who has a sense of humour). He was talking about the origin of family names and said we're lucky to have the last name Chen because it's quite common and Americans can pronounce it most of the time. I would rather have a cool eccentric last name but I think I would be bashing heads together too if people mispronounced my identity all the time. My Chinese name means "Pretty Jade" and it sounds almost exactly like my English name. My parents were all prepared when I was born for my transition to the United States. How thoughtful of them. 'Cept it's a hugely popular Asian girl name here. I'm going to name my kids something crazy. They might hate me but someday they'll be cool and unique and glad they're not like every Sarah and Emily out there (don't worry, I have lots of friends with both names and I love them). I hate it when my cool idea was also everyone else's cool idea. That's why when I wear something weird 5 years ago and it JUST becomes hot, I want to say, "Hey, I had dibs on that trend. Suck it losers!" That is the catty world of fashion.

Anyhow, I found out that one of my dad's ancestors was one of the top civil service bureaucrats during the Qing Dynasty. He was pretty rich and had lots of land, but some relative of the Manchu Emperor wanted to take it and there was a long lawsuit that drained a lot of our ancestor's money. So when the Commies took power, they kicked my dad's family out of the countryside into Beijing. Isn't that odd … in most places that's like being promoted. They were left with nothing and they're still pretty poor.

We saw something on CCTV and my Dad suddenly pointed and said, "Hey look! 克勤克俭 ! (ke qin ke jian)" That's his name and his brother's name. The phrase means, "Be hardworking and frugal." I guess my Dad was stuck with "Be frugal" and he is. He never wastes. He doesn't waste food, he doesn't waste money, he doesn't waste much time. He is also hardworking but he claims his brother is more hardworking. I don't know. My Dad managed to work as a farmer for two years during the Cultural Revolution and study for only two weeks before getting into the top medical school in the nation. That was at 21 or 22. I feel like everything's been handed to me in my life on a silver platter. I haven't had to haul my butt around and work like that one day in my whole existence. I admire who my Dad is and where he came from. He's really lived up to his name. So can I live up to mine? I'm not really pretty and I'm not sure what to think of Jade. If I were a piece of jade I'd probably be one with little black dots that decrease the value anyway. I'm not exceptional. Maybe that's what my name really means. I'm not special to begin with, I'm no genius, so I've got to make a name for myself. I've got to defy limits, prove the universe wrong. I get emotional now because I have no idea how I haven't thought of this before. It's like my life purpose fell out of the sky and hit me. It sounds so simple but the flow of logic makes it all come together.

This revelation makes me happy. My boyfriend's Chinese name has a character that means "middle, or medium." He says that he would have rather his Mom named him with the character "dragon." I think he's spent a lot of his life trying to push his boundaries, trying to become much more than average. And he his so brilliant, so motivated, and pretty much unstoppable. I guess we're just two people that somehow bumped into each other on Planet Earth and ended up compatible. I guess this could be why. We're different in so many ways, yet similar in others. Now I'm just being cheesy and speculative.

So this is a look inside my head, the evolution of my thoughts. Uncensored.

[written at 4:37 AM]