Movies and Manicures

Am I blue? Am I blue?

Published on May 11, 2015May 21, 2015 by moviesandmanicures3 Comments

Ain’t these tears in my eyes telling you?

All right, I got that from an episode of Justice League – that’s right, my superhero obsession goes far beyond The Avengers, and truthfully far beyond Marvel. Here’s the YouTube of Batman singing. I still laugh every time, proving that I am not the most mature of the 24-year-olds.

Anyway, yesterday my mom and I went out for an absolutely lovely Mother’s Day brunch, and we followed the day up with shopping for…new corporate clothes! That’s right, I’m moving a step up from business casual and starting a new job at a very large company in my area. I put in my two weeks’ notice today, which has fueled my anxiety to no end. I’m leaving my first “big girl” job out of college, and while going to a new company is a great step in my career, it’s also an end of a saga in my life that I enjoyed to no end – I met The Boyfriend at this company, I networked and learned from amazing people, and I met great friends who I hope to keep in my life even if I can’t see them every day anymore.

The blue, then, is twofold. I’m a little bummed to be leaving my job, so I could say I’ve got the blues. However, more importantly, on my shopping trip I acquired the Baby Beats set of mini bottles from China Glaze’s Electric Nights collection, which are some of the most gorgeous summer neons I’ve had the privilege of owning. Seriously, every single one of them makes me think of dancing the night away to some techno music under blacklights, or eating a snow cone on a boardwalk just as the sun begins to set. Basically, picture a hot summer evening full of color and energy, and you’ve got this collection.

At the register at Charming Charlie’s (not where I got the collection – that was at Ulta – but I knew at the time I would be painting my nails that night), I asked an employee to pick a color, any color. Between all the craziness in my nail polish collection, I could have worked with anything. But she said blue! I think it was a sign – blue was exactly the color I was feeling.

I started with DJ Blue My Mind, one of the Electric Nights polishes in my new mini collection. It’s GORGEOUS, and I’ll definitely be featuring it in some upcoming summer nail art – it’s just such a cool, pure blue that makes me think of skies and seas.

But then…I was struck by some inspiration. Why paint one blue when you can paint two blues (and sound like Dr. Seuss!)? I scoured my collection for one of my favorite Essies, Aruba Blue. While DJ Blue My Mind reminds me of skies and seas in the daytime, Aruba Blue reminds me of the two at night – the vibe together is fun, funky, and perfect for a party feeling to take away some of the stress I’m under with the job switch. I used a technique I saw in a magazine sometime in high school, before my nail obsession began, and painted a dark blue stripe down the middle of each nail.

The final result:

Since I probably won’t be allowed to have such crazy colors on my nails at my new job (don’t worry; posts about spicing up neutral nails are already being drafted!), I’m taking advantage of being fun and funky while I still can. I’ll worry about maturity in a couple of weeks; for now, I’ve got the blues and I couldn’t be more proud of them.

Have fun, guys,

Mary

“I’m Not Really a Waitress” this Mother’s Day

Published on May 10, 2015May 21, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

Hi all!

It’s a bit of a somber Mother’s Day for my family – in the year 2014, I lost both of my grandmothers. Don’t worry; they both had great lives and were well into their 80s and 90s, respectively. They had families that loved them, lots of grandchildren (don’t get me started on my cousins), and overall full and happy lives. Losing them both in the span of a few months was rough, what with the family drama that always comes with a death, but I’d say my family and I made it through, and we’re stronger for it.

The purpose of bringing this up on Mother’s Day is this: my grandmother on my mom’s side, my Nonna, Marcella Sciamanna Brehm (and for all you non-Italian speakers out there, that’s mar-CHELL-ah she-MAHN-ah), loved nail polish almost as much as I do. I remember her taking me to the nail salon right before Christmas or other family events so that my nails could look half as good as hers.

I change my polish a LOT – you’ve figured that out by now – but Marcy (I couldn’t say “Grandma” as a kid, so we decided that we were on a first-name basis from the time I was a year old) had one singular color that she chose week after week. It was a deep, vampy, sophisticated red: OPI’s I’m Not Really a Waitress. We used to play a game based on this funny polish name:

Marcy: The color is “I’m Not Really a Waitress.”

Me: Yeah, Marcy, I know you’re not a waitress. But what’s the polish color?

Marcy: “I’m Not Really a Waitress.”

Me: I never said you were a waitress! Could you just tell me the polish name?

…and so on. We found it far more amusing than we should have.

Her funeral and burial were held in Florida, her home state of over 20 years, in August, 2014. My sister and mother and I all decided that, between the tears and many glasses of wine, there was one thing we had to do to pay our last tribute to the force of nature that was Marcy. For the funeral, all three of us painted our nails in I’m Not Really a Waitress.

If you can, give your mom the biggest hug in the world, and give anyone else – grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts, other maternal figures of any type – a call, an email, a card, a gift, or anything to say you care. Let’s celebrate the wonderful women in our lives today and be eternally grateful for everything they’ve done for us. I know I am.

Lots of love,

Mary

I believe whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes your nails…stranger.

Published on May 8, 2015May 21, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

It’s been a rough week.

I’m sure I’ll talk about why it’s been a rough week later (Eek, major changes in the life of a twentysomething? Call the authorities!), but if there’s anything I like to do when life’s been a little crazy, it’s slow down, take a few deep breaths, maybe do a little meditation or go for a nice long run, AND THEN PAINT MY NAILS THE CRAZIEST COLORS I CAN POSSIBLY FIND.

I feel a little bit like screaming right now, but since my apartment has very thin walls and the neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate the high-pitched shriek of a Soprano I (who totally nailed the high B at her last Christmas concert, but I digress), I’m going to let my nails do the screaming for me. Usually, to me, this means neon, but I’m feeling contradictory. There’s only one possible solution: GLITTER.

I couldn’t choose between my two favorite solid glitter polishes for this week, and because I get reckless when I’m upset, I decided that I didn’t have to pick one or the other. That means that I’ve done one hand in glitter teal and the other hand in glitter purple. Any resemblance to the Joker is intentional (and if you’re as into comics as I am, let’s talk about the Joker in comments! What do you think of Jared Leto??).

Please ignore my middle nail - I broke it in a desk drawer and it hasn't forgiven me. — Please ignore my middle nail – I broke it in a desk drawer and it hasn’t forgiven me.

I didn’t intend to use yet another Julep for the blue-green hand. The blue-green I wanted is a Butter London in Henly Regatta that I picked up for $7 at a South Moon Under last summer when I was a little tipsy after a dinner with my friend. Thankfully, the nail polish was the only impulse buy she let me get while we were there – SMU is expensive! Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. I remember the first couple of coats going on so perfectly last summer, although it took three or four to get the full opaque effect, but this application was just awful. The polish was barely a liquid and wouldn’t go on smoothly no matter what I did. I had to switch to a similar Julep I had, Julep Jennine, which did the job nicely in only two coats.

The purple, China Glaze’s Tail Me Something is, strangely enough, a gift from Rachel in Minneapolis. I have never met Rachel, but she was my Santa in the Redditgifts Makeup and Nail Polish Exchange last year (which was a blast, and which I highly recommend if you’re a Redditor), and sent me so many cool polishes and tools that I’m still thanking her about a year later despite not knowing her last name.

The Roommate and I also had a blast shooting these photos of my nails – I usually take the pictures myself, but in this case I wanted to show off the crazy, glittery mess of a contrast. At one point, she was holding a standing lamp in one hand and the camera in the other. I finally laughed a little after my rough week (this time the Joker reference wasn’t intentional at all) and we were able to get some cool shots:

Well, anyway, I’m off to a crazy weekend – it’s Mother’s Day Weekend, so I’m taking my mom out for some nice things and hoping she doesn’t comment on my mismatched hands. In my opinion, it’s the best form of therapy.

Wishing you a great weekend,

Mary

My Friends Do Cool Stuff: Volume I

Published on May 6, 2015May 21, 2015 by moviesandmanicures2 Comments

Welcome to the first edition of “My Friends Do Cool Stuff,” a series I’ll hopefully be able to keep up every Wednesday. Let’s face it, I’m surrounded by too many awesome people not to showcase them, and you could all use a break from my fingernails every once in a while.

Anyway, without further ado, I’ve been best friends with Helena since we were 13 years old.

There’s a story behind it – Helena was the shy new kid looking for a place to sit in the crowded middle school cafeteria, deciding if she would sit with the Cool Asians, Girls Who Don’t Eat Anything, or the Plastics (Mean Girls reference? Anyone?), and somehow she wound up at the table that hosted yours truly and my crazy friends. She sat down, we got to talking, and we warned her that we were pretty much the clique that the rest of the school raised their eyebrows at whenever we started laughing at a fruit roll-up or something. She informed us that people called her weird at her old school, but she took it as a compliment. We informed her that we got a lot of compliments.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Helena, unlike me, has always had a vested interest in politics. She pays attention to world news to the point where I don’t actually have to watch the news in order to know what’s going on – she keeps me up to date. She can tell you just about everything there is to know about pop culture (which I can do only to the extent that it relates to an upcoming movie release). And, not to put too fine a point on it, her taste in music is AMAZING, and I get at least >50% of my recommendations from her. And she’s happy to do the same for you.

Behold: HELENA’S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER!

That’s right, you too can be amazed by her world news knowledge and, honestly, kickass music recommendations. I highly recommend you subscribe – seeing the newsletter in my inbox every Friday is a highlight of the day and a great way to wrap up the week.

CLICK HERE to subscribe!

Have an awesome day everyone,

Mary

We can’t always be as cool as the Avengers…

Published on May 4, 2015May 21, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

So today, my nails are bedecked in one of my favorite spring/summer polishes, Essie’s Bikini So Teeny. The way they describe it is “Cornflower Blue,” which always makes me think of a line from Fight Club:

It must’ve been Tuesday. He was wearing his cornflower-blue tie.

BUT NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT THE AVENGERS!

Overall, I thought it was…pretty good! It wasn’t as good as the first one, but few sequels are (a notable exception is one of my Two Very Favorite Movies of All Time, which I’ll talk about later). I’d rank it about in the middle of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – better movies include the original Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Worse movies include The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor: The Dark World.

The action scenes though? If you’re in a movie theater to see something with explosions, robots, magic, and flying people (as I often am), you will not be disappointed. The fight choreography was just phenomenal, and the scenes that they teased with the Hulkbuster were pretty much everything I had hoped for in my wildest superhero dreams.

I won’t spoil too much more of what happened, but the new characters and the character development they brought in made me so happy too, despite the changes to the canon. The character that surprised me the most, though, was Hawkeye. I had read a study a few years back where they determined that Jeremy Renner’s character had only had 12 minutes of screen time in the first Avengers movie. Let me tell you, they more than made up for that one in Age of Ultron. He completely stole the show.

The only thing that kind of got me down? The villain, Ultron, started out warped from Day One. He just kind of…appeared. And BOOM, he was evil, despite having been created for “world peace” or something. I didn’t quite get the whole logic behind his destroy-the-world plan – usually you know something more of the villain’s motivation than “puppets.” I might have gotten caught up in the action of it all, and the character development, and the way that they tried to ramp everything up from movie one with mixed-to-positive results, and therefore I might have missed something important about his character or motivations…but still, Ultron rubbed me the wrong way.

Either way, though – Avengers: Age of Ultron is a part of the MCU, and it’s better than many of them. I’m probably going to see it again. And again. And again.

AVENGERS (AND NAIL FANATICS) ASSEMBLE!

Published on May 1, 2015May 21, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

Hi guys!

Welcome to Movies and Manicures, which is a blog that may or may not focus on those things in the title. Unless you live under a rock or are nowhere near as nerdy as me (both likely options; I won’t hold either against you) you know that the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron is coming out in the US TODAY, Friday, May 1.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

I’ve been waiting for this movie since…well, I suppose I’ve been waiting for it since Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out last May. No, wait, maybe since Guardians of the Galaxy last August? Either way, I’m a Marvel movie fanatic. When I was seventeen and only had a crappy Internet connection on a computer that was older than I was (and which I pretty much used only to read/write horrible fanfiction…ah, the teenage years), I waited up to 15 minutes (a LIFETIME, I tell you!) for the Iron Man trailer to buffer so that I could watch it again and again and again.

Well, now we’ve come to the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 2. I think we’ve all done some growing up in the meantime. I sure have – I’m a college graduate now, and I bite my nails way less than I did back then. However, that doesn’t stop me from doing some crazy things to them, and this weekend was the perfect opportunity.

Please ignore the terrible claw position I had to use.

Okay, okay, I’m new at this nail art stuff. While I got into painting my nails pretty consistently a few years ago, I stuck to solid colors with the occasional glitter or accent nail. I’m just happy you can read the letters, to be honest!

Anyway, AVENGERS. The Boyfriend and I are going to see the movie tonight (Friday) because a) we’re old fogies now and can’t handle midnight premiers when we both have work at 8:00 the next morning and b) I absolutely have to see important movies on their opening weekends so that I can guarantee a seat in a packed theater. Empty movie theaters make me sad – the collective laughs and gasps and overall energy of a crowded theater make the movie-going experience infinitely more fun. In fact, my very favorite movie theater moment was when I saw Inception on opening night and the entire theater gasped in unison at the ending.

The picture above is of my right hand, which I based off of the Marvel Studios logo. I’m right-handed, so I’m not even going to attempt complex designs if I have to paint with my left. Letters, luckily, are easy enough. I started with one of my tiny brushes, but I found that it made too thick of a line to accurately get a letter on my nail (see my wonky M for an example). I switched to my smallest dotting tool, which did the trick…passably. One of my goals from now on is definitely to work on my left-handed stability.

I wish I could tell you the name of the red polish I used, but it is a few years old and in a mini-bottle I got in a kit from Sephora. It’s OPI by Sephora, so I’m going to guess it has some relationship to OPI’s Big Apple Red, but I may be mistaken. The white lettering was done in Julep Brigitte (link below).

Want to see what I did on my left hand?

Check it out!

In order, we have the Avengers logo on my thumb, Captain America’s shield on my index finger, Iron Man’s arc reactor on my middle finger, Thor’s hammer on my ring finger, and Black Widow’s hourglass on my little finger. They’re a little iffy – Cap’s shield in particular – but for a beginner, I think the idea comes through.

This took forever, just so you know. I knew it would be complex, so I broke it up over the course of a few days – I did all of the base coats on Wednesday night so that they could completely dry, and I did all of the designs on Thursday with my set of tiny nail brushes and dotting tools. The colors involved are as follows:

White: Julep Brigitte
Black: Julep Ledi
Blue: Julep Bailey
Silver: Julep Aurora
Gold: Julep Mahima

If you couldn’t tell, I’m a Julep Maven because they just send me nail polish. It comes in the mail. I don’t even have to pick it out or anything. I’m sure I’ll talk about my undying Julep love in future posts, so stay tuned.

I’ll be back this weekend with my thoughts on the movie. In the meantime, send me links to your own Avengers (or other superhero) nail art in the comments!

Talk to you soon,

Mary

P.S. I also wanted to show off my shirt. I got it at Target for way less than I usually pay for clothes, so I’m pretty proud of it.