Hello everyone! I was so excited when Alaina contacted me about doing this guest post. Not only is it her first Nail Artist of the Month feature, it is my first guest post as well. Actually it’s my first blog post ever… I’m not gonna lie, I squealed when I got her message Saturday night. I am so flattered that she picked me to do this. Thank you so much for the opportunity Alaina!

I’ll start by telling you a little bit about myself. My name is Casey and I’m 32 years old. I live in southwest Missouri with my husband of 11 years Mike, and our two pets Sammie the beagle and Pickles the Scottish fold. My day job is working in the patient finance department at a tiny little hospital that I love. My biggest and most passionate hobby is, of course, nail polish. I have been in love with nail polish for as long as I can remember. I remember asking for some for Christmas when I was around 11 or 12 years old, then spending the entire Christmas vacation doing my nails over and over; painting different nails alternating colors and then adding little daisies with toothpicks. I would spend hours doing it… just getting lost in the possibilities. I stopped doing more than just standard painting for several years after that. Then sometime back in 2011 I got on Pinterest… and that rekindled the love again. I saw a pin with a quote from Essie that said “Nails are jewels, not tools” and that did it for me. After that I got sucked into the rabbit hole that is the internet searching for all of the info I could find about painting your own nails and doing nail art. I haven’t looked back since! I like to think someday I’ll grow up and be a for real nail blogger, but for now I’m sticking to Instagram. Last week I started an account just for polish related pictures so that I could stop driving my non polish loving friends crazy with all of my polish posts. And so that I could ramble on and on about formula, finish, and all those other things I love to talk about. But do so freely and without fear of being judged and teased by the people who just don’t get it. :) Go check it out! Nails by CaseyLane. 

But that’s enough about me. On to the real reason I’m here… nails.

Alaina brought up the possibility of having me do a guest post a few weeks ago and ever since then I have been obsessing about what I would possibly do for such an exciting occasion. Mix-n-Match designs are my favorite because it gives me a chance to use several techniques in one manicure, so that is what I opted for. For the dots I used my trusty MASH nail art dotting tools. For the chevron I used large chevron decals from Make It Stick Designs on Etsy. (They can be purchased from her shop here, go check it out. She’s got great stuff.)

Full Sun:

 Shade:

And a close up of London, because I've just recently discovered the amazingness that is Zoya PixieDust and I am in L O V E!!!! I've only tried 3 textured polishes, and I love them all. But I love this one the most so far.

Polishes used:

Zoya Julie (soft purple shimmer)

Zoya London (PixieDust Matte gray)

OPI Black Onyx (black crème)

OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (off white crème)

Hard Candy Black Tie Optional (black and white glitter)