Saturday, July 21, 2012

Skittles Kick

I've been on a real "skittles nails" kick lately, using a bunch of different colors for each manicure.  I think I just enjoy looking at all the different colors/finishes of the polish, plus a skittles manicure means I don't have to pick just one polish!
My right hand features a bunch of different golds.  From thumb to pinky: 
  • LA Colors Antique Gold: a butter London Wallis dupe!  This is one of those ugly/beautiful green golds that are just neat to look at, even if they are really weird.
  • Julep Sienna: possibly the best gold polish ever.  Opaque in one coat, good wear, and a really neat white gold look to it.
  • Wet n' Wild The Gold and The Beautiful: a greenish leaning gold glitter, it doesn't have as much visible nail line in real life.  2 coats.
  • OPI Rising Star: from the Burlesque collection, which may be OPI's prettiest collection ever.  I only have a mini, and I wish I could get my hands on the full-size set, but scouring eBay for it doesn't seem worth the time when I have all this other polish to use.
  • Zoya Tiffany: this is such an unusual orangey pinkey goldey glassfleck polish.  It looks a lot like Zoya's Rica, but leans way more pink and gold, while Rica leans more orange.  2 coats got me to opacity, which is really nice for a polish with a moderately sheer formula.


 Silver on the left, to go with the gold on the right! On my left, from thumb to pinky, I've got:

  • Zoya Trixie: great formula, 2 coats
  • Nicole by OPI Make a Comet-Ment: A scattered silver holo, slightly thin but no visible nail line after 2 coats
  • Zoya Harley: A tricky formula, I had to use 3 coats to make sure this wasn't patchy, and I'm not sure the final result is flawless, but the color is just beautiful.
  • Essie Power Clutch: I just got this in a 6 polish set from Ross (for less than $18!!), and thought it'd be the worst color on me, but I think it actually looks fantastic.  I did 3 thin coats to make sure there were no bald spots, but it dried like a dream and was a great consistency.
  • Color Club Magic Attraction: Another Ross find, this one has holo silver glitter and small pinkish glitter in it; I don't have a lot of silver polish, so this was what I went with in a pinch, but it has great coverage after 2 coats.  It is still a little gritty to the touch after a coat of Out the Door though, but that doesn't bother me much.

So much more fun to look at than just one color!


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy 4th of July!! (And farewell to 1/3 of my right thumbnail!)

I love the 4th of July.  I hope you all have a wonderful day of grilling, relaxing, parades, fireworks and fun!  I'm celebrating with a pretty simple 4th manicure:
I finally busted out the FingerPaints magnetic polish, and used the China Glaze star magnet to make little stars/fireworks on my nails!  I don't have striping tape, and for some reason couldn't find any actual tape, so I used OPI's Pirouette My Whistle over Nailtiques Moscow for my thumbs.
Why did I photograph my left hand for this?  Because I broke my right thumb nail on a gate at work.  Not just broke, practically obliterated it.  Here's the damage:
You can actually see how far down the nail a layer broke off; I'm super, super lucky it wasn't worse though, as I didn't even bleed.  Here's my thumb compared to my whole nails, to show how I like to keep my nails (when they aren't polished!).  

Fingers crossed that it grows back soon.  Field work is rough!