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?

Alcatraz... Rocks!

I was convinced for a really long time that I hated the textured polish trend. Then I picked up a Sally Hansen textured polish on a whim at Fred Meyer (the one that looks like Sinful Colors Cinderella, I don't remember what it's called), and sort of accidentally fell in love. 

I still don't like the textured creams, but I am apparently a sucker for glittery textured polishes.

So of course I had to pick up Alcatraz Rocks from the OPI San Fran collection. And it's freakin beautiful.

Two coats, no top coat obviously, super easy application, no balding or dragging anywhere. So sparkly! So pretty!

After 5 days, I have some slight tipwear (to be expected, with how much I type and play piano), but it doesn't seem as sparkly. Or as textured. It's like it smooths out over time; it still feels gritty, but not as gritty. It's still sparkly, but not as blingy.

Out of focus so you can see the sparkle!

In summary: this is a glittery textured polish I can really get behind.

Pink Wednesday: OPI "If You Pink So..."

Here's a pink wednesday that I don't think anyone has seen before! Or at least, I haven't found any swatches of it...
I went to Beauty Brands to kill some time the other day, and they had a shelf full of this pretty pink. Here's the display...

It's called "If You Pink So..." and it looks like it's a brand new Beauty Brands exclusive. I usually look up swatches before I buy anything, but when I googled this one, absolutely nothing came up! So here you go.

This is a bottle shot I took in the car with my iPhone right after buying it. It's got a really pretty shimmer in it! Blue & pink. (PS, on my nails is one of the OPI sorbets; Guy Meets Galveston, I think?)

These are all 2 coats with no top coat.

This isn't color accurate, but you can see the shimmer a little better.

It's a medium pink with strong blue undertones. I'm currently wearing Essie's Bachelorette Bash on my toes, and they're exactly the same color. Seriously, insanely perfectly matched. So if you know what the Essie looks like, you know what color If You Pink So... is; just imagine it with a really subtle blue & pink shimmer.

What do you think of If You Pink So...? Have you heard of it before? Will you be getting it now?

On Wednesdays We Wear Pink: OPI Cozu-melted in the Sun

I'm really not much of a dainty, pink, office-appropriate nail-color kind of person. I like greens and blues and bright colors, things that will cheer me up and get people to notice them. But every now and then I need something slightly more demure. Apparently for me, "demure" is something like this...

OPI Cozumelted In the Sun. Husband is a diver and loves Cozumel, so I mostly bought this for the name. But it's also really pretty! It's pink and silver, shimmery/foil, and when I need a break from brights, this is a great place for me to turn. It's what I wore last time I had a really bad break and didn't want to draw attention to my mangled nail.

What's your go-to Neutral-But-Not-Boring color?

Skull & Glossbones fail

A short post today. This is Skull & Glossbones from OPI's Pirates collection. I bought this one a couple months ago and hadn't gotten around to wearing it yet... and I'm not sure this really counts. I had an afternoon where I absolutely could NOT choose something to wear. I think I tried 3 different polishes before I found something I could at least tolerate. This color just does not work for me; it makes me feel like I have corpse hands. Plus, the formula was weird... even though I'd mixed it up, it was like the pigment had separated from the base. The first coat was really streaky in the weirdest possible way. I had to super mega shake it up & use a thick second coat to get it to smooth out.

Maybe at the end of the summer when I'm not (as) ghostly pale it will look okay on me, but I don't think I'll be trying it again soon.

NCAA Tournament Nails, take 1!

This past weekend was the beginning of the NCAA tournament! As I've talked about before, I'm a HUGE Kansas fan. My husband and I watched both rounds with his boss, who is a descendent of Phog Allen, and if you know who he is, let's be friends! :) So here are the nails I rocked for the whole weekend.
Yes, that means I didn't do St. Pats nails. Basketball is WAY more important to me!!


I started with 2 coats of Essie Waltz.

Waltz is a really pretty sheer. I also have Allure & Marshmallow. Allure is a super sheer wash of barely-color; Waltz is more opaque; Marshmallow is practically-opaque white. They cover all 3 of the levels of coverage I could want really nicely.

Then I reached for some blue & red glitter! A lot of people weren't super pleased with the Muppets glitter, because they weren't opaque, but that's my favorite kind of glitter. I love to layer & sponge & play with glitter, and the clear-based glitters are really great for that!

I used Gone Gonzo & Gettin' Miss Piggy With It for this. GG was actually significantly denser than GMPWI, which I found interesting... but I'm not sure if that's true or if I just shook it up a little more vigorously and got the glitters re-suspended better.

This isn't a sponge gradient; with glitter, I find it much easier to just put a large dollop at the tip, spread it across (kind of like a french!) and, after wiping all the excess off the brush, use short strokes to spread it down the nail a bit.

We played on Friday & Sunday, so I wore Waltz by itself on Thursday & with the glitter for 3 days, and when I took it off Monday morning it was still flawless. These nails made it through two games, one of which was a freaking nail biter (though thankfully, not literally! I think I've really truly broken the habit!), AND building a Melmer (pictures of that coming soon!), which I find so impressive. I really really loved how this looked. It was exciting but still very lady-like, and my nails looked incredible.

And here are a couple pictures from my dslr; I tend not to take pictures of my nails with my dslr, as I don't have a macro lens, and my point & shoot is really high quality, but for some reason I actually did take a couple this time!

Are you rooting for a specific team this tourney? And do you do your nails to show your support?

Excuse Moi!

Ok, here's the deal. I loved how this looked on my nails. It is pink sparkly girly perfection. But I don't want to know how much top coat it would have taken to make it smooth... and the removal process was INSANE. I know everyone swears by the foil method, but I just don't think I should have to sit around with tinfoil on my fingers in order to get polish off of my nails. I think I'm just not cut out to be a glitter girl. A polish like Glitter in the Air with a little bit of glitter that won't make me insane, sure. But something like this? I will think long and hard before doing that again.

But here are some pictures! Feel free to click and view large. There are a lot of colors that turn into "pink & silver sparkles" from a distance, but if you look closely you can still see a lot of them.

OPI Excuse Moi!

My right hand!!

These are all 2 coats, no cleanup.

What do you think about glitter polishes? Are they worth the removal process for you?

OPI Animalistic

My husband's favorite nail polish -- or, at least, the only one that makes him consistently say "I like that one!" with no prompting -- is Zoya Kimmy. Kimmy is a red glass fleck with a lot of gold shimmer. Animalistic reminds me a lot of Kimmy, only slightly cooler and without the gold.

Every now and then it has a bit of a pink flash that you can almost see in the 2nd picture, but most of the the time it's just a lovely, glass-fleck red! Definitely one I will reach for again.

Princesses Rule vs Sparkle

Ack! I've been slacking on the polish blog front! I spent all weekend attending a 3-day photography workshop, and a couple days fixing up my business' website, so this sort of got pushed to the backburner... sorry!! The good news is, I should have goodies coming in the mail in the next couple days, so I will be super excited to play with the new pretties & share them here!

I haven't done anything Valentine's-y other than year reds & pinks, so nothing special is coming... instead, here's a simple comparison for you!

Zoya Sparkle & OPI Princesses Rule!
PR is one of those weird polishes that I don't understand why I own them. I bought it before I was into nail polish, when I really hated pink & red polishes, so WHY would I have bought this? But it's beautiful, and I wore it on my wedding day, so I shouldn't complain!
Sparkle I got in my first humongo order of Zoyas, and I'm not sure why I got it, either... I tend to only buy polishes that I've seen a lot of swatches of, and I can't find any of this! So strange...

These are layered over SH CSM Cafe au Lait, since it's what I was wearing when I decided to do this!

They're VERY similar, but not as close as I initially thought! PR is more noticably pink, while Sparkle is really just a sparkle top coat. So I suppose I am glad I have them both after all! They'll serve different purposes for me, now that I know what the differences are!

Zoya Anaka

Anaka is so wonderful. Bright pink with a great shimmer. And out of the sun, it hovers on the line between pink and purple.

Anaka, shade

Anaka, sun

Shade

 

Sun

Then I added Meep Meep Meep from the Muppets collection on my ring fingers. I expected it to be more different, but instead it ended up being a pretty good comparison. They're very similar color-wise, but the finishes are different, and Meep Meep Meep had a lot more depth.

Shade

 

Sun

OPI: OPI on Collins Ave

I said I would be back with more pictures of this one, so here are a couple! It's a strange polish... When I swatched it, I thought of it as an orange red. While wearing it over the last couple days, it's been mostly orange-orange. But the pictures that I have of it all show it as the orange-red that I first saw it as! So I'm not sure what I think it actually is...

 This is from my camera; it shows it as what I think of as orange-red, a red with strong orange undertones.

This is from my camera phone while I was at work. When I helping teach group lessons, part of my job is to sit up front and play the 12-bar blues over and over and over and over while they learn how to improv. It's supremely boring, especially since I've been playing the 12 bar blues for 10 years, so I keep myself awake by looking at my nails.

And! I went to Walgreens yesterday to see if there was anything I wanted, and I stumbled across Sinful Colors Cinderella! I've been seeing a lot of buzz about it on twitter, so I figured I'd pick on up for myself. Then I went back after work to get one for a blog-friend and one for a future giveaway. I'm at 26 followers, and once I get to 50 it's giveaway time! I figured if I got halfway here in a month, I'll get all the way there in the next month (hopefully!) so I would start picking things up for it.

What color do you think OPI on Collins Ave is? And are you on the hunt for Cinderella?