Essie Tart Deco + Cute as a Button Gradient + Hard Candy Black Tie Optional and New Camera!

Hello nail polish addicts! I've abandoned my blog for far too long... pretty much an entire month! :( I went on vacation for 2 weeks and then just couldn't really get back into blogging. I was pretty jetlagged for the first week or so that I was back... and now I'm currently having a quarter-life crisis. I'm seriously thinking about going back to school. I currently have a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Psychology and am giving up hope of finding a decent job with it lol. I am thinking about going back to school for accounting but I'm worried it will be too boring and I won't like it....

Anyway I'm sure you're here to see my nails! I'll post vacation pictures later maybe... would anyone be interested in seeing them?

Essie - Tart Deco (3 coats)

sponged with Essie - Cute as a Button

Hard Candy - Black Tie Optional on top

This did not photograph well at all the colors are all off... It's a coral/pink gradient in real life not an orange gradient... ugh cameras... this was actually taken with my new camera (keep reading) but still didn't turn out well

Also I kept getting weird random pieces of lint on my nails while trying to do this gradient... I think maybe small little hair/lint pieces were coming off the sponge I was using? So I decided to just put Black Tie Optional over top to hide it which made this mani look even better anyway :)

Unfortunately... somehow after 2 days this is what my left hand looked like...

The polish on my left hand just lifted off in huge chunks. I also chipped my middle finger nail :(

And my right hand....

Somehow still perfect. No chips or tip wear. The polish on my thumb did peel off somewhat but it was still much better than my left hand. I am right handed... so this is very strange. I think maybe the polish was too thick from trying to build the gradient... but still strange that my right hand was fine...

The new camera! Sony NEX-5R birthday present from the bf :) It's pretty compact. The same size as a normal digital camera but with a huge lens sticking out the front. The lens is interchangeable but so far I only have the stock lens. It's doing a decent job focusing so far. I don't think color accuracy would be improved with another lens sadly. I haven't really figured out how to use the various settings yet. So far it's just being used for point and shoot lol it's kind of a waste. But I don't really know how to use camera settings and I'm barely keeping up with blogging so I don't know when I'll get around to figuring out my camera... 

It's really useful that the screen flips up... 16.1 megapixel selfies! This would also be really useful if you wanted to film a video of yourself

And just for fun.... The first picture I found on my new camera. My boyfriend mocking me doing the hand pose... There were seriously 10 pictures like this in different hand poses and different angles... Silly boy... And those nails and cuticles are atrocious haha