i never get tips, or wraps or extentions, or any of
the other fancy stuff they have for nails.

I never do these things either....Mind you, I saw but the coooolest set of nails on a young student today! a French manicure, she said it was, only with black tips instead of white - but with a thin line of white between the black and the pink.

I've always thought a French manicure was a bit of a waste - doesn't it just do what your nails do naturally? (ie, pink on the pink and white on the white? - what's the point?) But this pink-white-black combo was very eye-catching indeed.

I never did the "snakeskin" look either, though I read about it in some girly mag in a moment of weakness...! It was popular a few summers ago. You painted your nails, with pink or whatever, then put irregular splotches of another colour over the pink so some pink still showed, and then while the polish was still wet, you took a piece of small-holed fishnet (like an onion bag, only with much smaller holes) and pressed it on each nail to get the scaly effect. Too labour-intensive for me....

I like the colour names for polishes, too. Some companies use numbers, rather boringly, but among the actual colours I have in my cupboard at the moment are:

Nightlife (dark purple with a bit of sparkle to it)
Fabulous Fuschia
Carnelian Chrome
Topaz Chrome
and, perhaps appropriately enough:
Goddess (! it's a dark brown....very handsome actually, but it chips like stink)