Hello Everyone. Today I have a fun post from Steph from At Peace with Polish that brought a smile to my face. I hope you enjoy it and a big thanks to Steph for letting me share her story.

     Today on the blog Hannah from The Dalai  Lama's Nails shares with us how she got started in Nail Art.

      I never really grew up around polish-my Mum never wore any-so I was never hooked on it when I was younger. For a while during my teens (and my semi-goth phase) I wore it occasionally, and nearly always in some combination of black, bright orange and bright green because they were pretty much the only colours I owned.

Polish collection in the Beginning

The current collection of Polish

Today is the third installment of my "How it all got started" series. Jessica the force behind Be Happy Buy Polish shares her story with us.  Enjoy!

Hello Everyone. Today I have another guest post for you. Christina of The Bubbly Brunette gives us a look into her start in the nail polish world.



Music Notes:

I used a base of Jacqueline from Zoya and then used a bobby pin to place dots of Revlon Knockout onto the nail. I connected the dots using an It's So Easy striper. After everything dried, I applied top coat!



Thank you for featuring me!

-Christina @thebubblybrunette

Today I have for you the first guest post in my "How it all started" series. Here is Samantha's story about how justonemorebottle got started.

I have been trying to pinpoint when exactly I started loving nail polish. I have not come up with a specific time frame yet. My mother always had long beautiful nails that she kept painting. So I guess it started as a tiny girl. I remember her buying me Love My Nails brand polish when I behaved well in the store. The display was always close to the register. I would always pick one I didn't already have while she was cashing out.

     Most of us have memories of our mothers painting our nails at a young age or getting our very own bottle of polish for the first time. My mom seemed to only like red nail polish so the few times she would paint my nails my color options were limited. In fact, I grew up thinking nails should really only be painted red or pink and my first few bottles were in fact shades of pink. If you've followed my  Facebook page for any length of time you will notice that my collection still mainly consists of pink polish in some form or other.

     I grew up pretty much a tomboy and only painted my nails on rare occasion. I was proud of the fact that I could hold my own against the boys in a way I still kind of am.   I was also a huge nail biter. If there was a free edge to be found I would bite it off. Not exactly a great canvas for nail polish if you know what I mean. At the age of 18, I decided that the nail-biting had to stop because I wanted nice, long pretty nails. And boy did my nails grow, but I was never good at maintaining them. They would be different lengths, if one broke I left the others. My cuticles were full of hangnails and constantly dry.

     In 2001 I got a job working at Target and had to help out at the jewelry case. I thought having nice nails would help sell the jewelry so I started a brief stint with acrylics. And by brief I men brief. I had them for maybe a month because I soon realized that my job mainly consisted of changing watch batteries and bands. the thickness of the acrylics made it really hard to work with those teeny tiny screws, especially when it came to removing links in the bands. I decided to go back to my naturally long, uneven nails. Still only wearing polish on occasion.

   It was a little over a year ago that The Girlie Tomboy  (who I grew up with) first posted a stamped manicure to her personal page, and I knew I wanted to try it myself. At that time I had maybe a dozen pink and lavender polishes in my collection and had no idea what a stamping plate was.

The image that started it all

   And so my adventure began.....

   I set out looking at image plates to figure out which ones I wanted to start with and picked up a black nail polish. The next thing I knew I had over 400 polishes in my collection in every color from orange to brown and even a few glitters. A lot of people thought I was crazy. After all, I'm the girl whose wardrobe consists of jeans and t-shirts and my hair is usually in a ponytail. I know very little about fashion and feel more comfortable on a sports field than shopping for clothes. People are surprised to see my nails let alone find out that I did them myself. I'm proud of my nail art attempts even the failed ones and I like showing them off. I was so proud of my first water marble I found myself sticking my hands in front of co-workers just to make sure they saw them, and the obsession began.


     I've enjoyed the process of looking at nail art, breaking it down into easy steps for recreation. It's amazing how some simple lines can look stunning and that you can paint flowers using only dots. Once I started to figure this out I loved nail art even more and I wanted to share my creations. Like many of you, my real life friends didn't really get it and started asking why I was sharing so many pictures of manicures. That was disheartening, to say the least. Here I had found something that I was passionate about and enjoyed doing and I felt really unsupported. Obviously I didn't give up, but I stopped sharing with my friends and family and found the nail polish community. But that's a story for another blog post.

   Did I jump into the world of nail art with full gusto? You bet I did! Did I go a bit overboard...absolutely? But I love it. I have met some absolutely wonderful ladies and a few gents over the last year and love the nail polish community. I still feel more comfortable on a sports field or out fishing with my hair in a ponytail but now I do these things with decorated tips.