Thanksgiving mani!

We have a Fakesgiving earlier this week while my roommate's mom was here. My husband has to work today, so we'll probably have a Friendsgiving on Saturday. But my nails are rocking and ready to celebrate!

I'm normally not a skittle-y person, but lately I've been feeling it. One color can be so boring, but a color scheme is so much more interesting!

Index and ring fingers are both China Glaze Riveting with a dotty gradient (OPI San-Tantonio, OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys, and China Glaze Harvest Moon). Middle finger is China Glaze Harvest Moon. Ring finger is OPI San-Tantonio plus a layer of China Glaze Electrify.

Since Catching Fire just came out this weekend, it felt appropriate that I used so many polishes from last year's Capitol Colours collection. And by the way, I saw the movie last weekend and it was phenomenal. See it!

You can't see it in any of these photos, but my thumb matches my ring finger. My right hand matches my left hand, and I think I wish I had mixed them up. Using the same patterns, but in a different order. Next time I'll know!

I'm excited that it's finally the holiday season. I love having excuses to be with my favorite people, even though this year it'll be more friends than family. I'm looking forward to many more holiday manis in the next month. Do you match your nails to the season?

KU nails

Post number who knows out of way too many about red & blue nails. I just gotta rep my school spirit!

These are both China Glaze, both from the Wizard of Ooh Aahs collection. I miss Kansas, so I figured this was as good a way as any to fight my homesickness!

Ruby Pumps is darker and more blue than I expect it to be. It's also quite jelly, so it takes a third coat and more drying time than I'm prepared for. It also doesn't have great wear time on my nails, and I don't understand why...

Dorothy Who? is a gorgeous shade of blue; not too light, not too dark, not tooooo primary (though it comes close!). The silver glitter in this is awesome, but I have to be in a really blingy mood to wear it!

China Glaze Cirque du Soleil

I've been DYING for this collection! On our first family vacation, my parents and I saw La Nouba, and it completely opened my eyes to what performance can be. It was seriously life changing. We've seen two or three shows that have travelled through our state since then. There was even a point in high school that I almost auditioned for a part in a show that was going to travel through Asia. Cirque is pretty much one of my favorite things ever. So the day that this collection showed up on Transdesign, I didn't even wait for any swatches to show up. Add to cart, check out, wait impatiently for them to be delivered!

I only ordered the "interesting" half of the collection, and they're all beautiful.


To start, here's Bend Over Backwards. This is just one coat, no top coat. It's a really pretty, shimmery red that feels very holiday appropriate.

Here it is with an accent nail of Whirled Away. Whirled Away is obviously related to Connect the Dots (what would Lynnderella have to say about this, I wonder?! haha), but as I've never seen it in person... I can only speculate, but the white hexes seem larger to me, and the bar glitter is only black.
Speaking of bar glitter, I actually don't hate it here! I think it's because it's just black, instead of shiny and obnoxious.

And here it is over all of my nails! This is over Zoya Carly, which I just recently showed you, because I slapped it on as soon as I got the box open!

Applying Whirled Away was not my favorite experience in the world, and here's why. Check out that brush: NOTHING ON IT. I had to fish around to get anything out of the bottle. Then dabbing seemed to be the best application for me. Your milage may vary, of course.

This is Get Carried Away. Silver micro glitter, the same black bars & hexes as Whirled Away, silver hexes, and hexes that I feel are supposed to be red but instead come out a little pink? Index is one coat over black; middle is one coat over gray (Orly Mirror Mirror), ring is 2 coats and pinky is 1.

 I think this is best as a layering polish, but I don't think I'll ever layer it over black. You lose the black glitter and it makes it much less interesting.

Running in Circles is a densely-packed green shimmer, and when I say dense I mean it: this is one coat! It falls somewhere between Zoya's Ivanka and Apple in terms of color. From some angles, there is some VNL, so I might layer this over a green, or do two or three thinner coats.

Water You Waiting For is small blue glitter and slightly larger purple glitter in a clear base. It dries really gritty. I put a thick coat of NYC top coat on these and took photos before it had dried, and by the time I was done taking pictures it had already started to eat it up.

I see myself wearing this as a really pretty gradient. I also see myself using peel off base!

Index is over black; middle finger is over gray (Orly Mirror Mirror), ring finger is two coats; and pinky is just one coat.

It's a Trap-eze! makes my little nerdy heart go all aflutter! Even if I didn't care about Cirque, this polish would have been mine JUST for the name! Ah, China Glaze, thank you for this.

This polish is sort of like making a jelly sandwich with a DL Happy Birthday dupe. I'm not a connoisseur of all those glitters, but I've been seeing some talk from The Polishaholic saying that this has white glitters that the others don't.

One coat:

 And two coats.

Overall, I can't say that I can see this collection as "inspired" by Cirque du Soleil, but I'm really glad I got these! I'll wait until I see swatches of the "boring" half of the collection before I decide to get any of those.
I hope this helps you decide which ones you will be getting!

Flip Flop Fantasy

I don't think it's possible for a camera to accurately capture Flip Flop Fantasy. It wants to show up like this first picture: peachy.

But that's not accurate in the slightest! This polish is practically radioactive. I wore it on my toes last summer. I got in the pool one evening, and after my feet were deep enough I couldn't see them, I could still see my toenails! It's seriously BRIGHT.

This next picture is in dark of my apartment late at night, lit just by the tv and maybe a computer screen. The polish still stands out!

China Glaze Traffic Jam

This is a quick post today, because I am really unhappy with these pictures. China Glaze Traffic Jam is really lovely. It's a mid-tone berry; not light, not dark, just perfect. But these pictures are way too pink.

The sweater I'm wearing here is brick red, but my skin tone here is pretty much that pale, so I have no idea how to accurately edit this. Just... try to imagine the polish a little less pink and a full shade darker.

Bah. Displeased. Sorry these aren't better.

China Glaze Stone Cold

I love the Hunger Games polishes. Have I said that enough yet? Because I do. They're amazing. Stone Cold is no exception!

Named for District 2, it definitely has a look of granite. And I love a good shimmery matte! Plus, 1 coat for opacity? I'm sold. The only tricky part of this polish is that it dries SO fast! I was rushing, so a couple fingers didn't level out correctly, and I got a little messy in a couple places. I left these with no clean up or photo editing so you can see what it actually looked like for me!

And then, top coat:

I liked it matte, but I loved it shiny!

As a matte polish, it read to me "gray & shimmery," but shiny it read to me "black with a crapton of shimmer." I'm not sure why it felt darker after the top coat, but it definitely did. And the shimmer is seriously gorgeous. This is definitely one of the HG polishes I highly suggest you pick up.

China Glaze Hunger Games Riveting

I know there have been a million swatches of all the Hunger Games polishes, but I have to share this one. I've shared several others of the shades I really liked, and this one shares their formula. So easy to control that these pictures have absolutely zero cleanup; so shiny that I don't feel the need for topcoat; opaque in a coat or two (depending on how heavy-handed you are). But somehow either I wasn't paying attention, or none of the swatches were quite accurate, because I was completely surprised by how orange this polish is. Orange. ORANGE. Orangey orange orange orange. It doesn't look bad on me, and it's beautifully pigmented, and the shimmer is gorgeous, but orange is my least favorite color. Period. Done. I own absolutely zero orange clothing, there isn't a single thing in my house that's orange. I am absurdly, irrationally against the color in any form.
Basically, my high school rivalry is the oldest on this side of the Mississippi, and we HATE each other, and their school color is orange. This hatred goes back generations of my blood. Orange and I will never be reconciled.
But this polish, I might be able to tolerate... for a little while.

Just like I told you: ORANGE, incredibly shiny, flawless application, amazing gold shimmer, and so, so, so orange.

China Glaze Hunger Games: Foie Gras & Fast Track

Foie Gras was fine. A nice enough taupe. It has a lot of purple undertone, but I saw a whole lot of brown most of the time. Two coats, no top coat.

These aren't my best pictures ever. Forgive me. I only wore it for a couple days, and then I switched it up for Fast Track. I had a job interview on Thursday (which went well, but also made me not really want the job that much...) so I figured I should go with something a little more "normal."
Again, two coats, no top coat.

I ...think? I like this color? I still haven't quite decided. It's nice enough, but in some lights it looks really awful on me. And sometimes the gold shimmer pulls a little green? Maybe that's just me, but it weirds me out.

I promise a non-Hunger Games polish next!

China Glaze: Hunger Games - Smoke & Ashes

Let's be honest: If you're a Hunger Games fan, you will get this polish, even if you think it's not your cup of tea. Who isn't supporting District 12?!

I thought this was just a black with a little bit of shimmer, but whoa. The shimmer is seriously incredible.

All of these pictures are 1 coat, no top coat.

Here you can see the shimmer looking a little bit blue but also a little bit green. It depends on the light!

Formula is absolutely spot on. Yet again, this is one perfect coat. Dear China Glaze, I love you.

Smoke & Ashes really does mostly just look black probably 85% of the time. If you look at it from close up, you can always see the shimmer, even in low light. But then in the sunlight... well, you've seen the picture! Some seriously gorgeous blue shimmer.

A lot of people have said that this is a blackened blue base, not a true black, but I'm going to disagree. Even if it is something like #00001D in hex, with just the slightest amount of blue, my eyes sure can't see it. They just see black with pretty blue shimmer. Yes, when the light catches it, it sure looks blue, but I really think that's just the shimmer.

So to sum up: crazy opaque black with crazy beautiful blue shimmer. Yet another Hunger Games polish that I love so much more than I expected to.

China Glaze: Hunger Games - Agro

I have so many other manis to show you (I'm a couple weeks behind on here vs real life), but I got my China Glaze polishes yesterday, put on Agro, and FELL IN LOVE. So here are some pictures, because I don't want to make you want to see them!

Agro is a mossy green with a great shimmer. It's almost a metallic, vaguely frosty shimmer, but not at all in a brushstrokey way.

First, here are a few pictures in the shade.

These are all just 1 coat. There is a little balding going on at the base of a couple fingers -- see the ring finger -- but that is all entirely my fault. My brush was a little wonky; it was a little fluffier than the China Glaze brush I'm used to, and it had one piece that went out a bit to the side, but it wasn't bad enough to be a hindrance. One coat that looks this good this easily is an A++ in my book.

Super gorgeous, right?! It makes me think of a mossy, shady forest in the sumer. I love it.
But wait. It gets better.

Super shimmery in the sun! And look at it out of focus:

Some of that shimmer looks a little holographic to me! It's all sorts of pretty colors.

All of these pictures are clickable to make huge, but this is the one you absolutely HAVE to see large! The index finger is in focus, so you can see how pretty the polish itself is, but the closer fingers show you some of this seriously amazing shimmer! I haven't seen anyone else mention this, so I was not expecting it, and it is INCREDIBLE.

To sum up: I love Agro! Now to choose which HG polish to use next...