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!

Zoya Lara

Zoya Lara. Bright blue-toned pink cream. I bought it because it's almost my name (one letter off!), and I wear it because it's the perfect barbie pink.

Day 1.

Day 5!

Day 5.

I went lipstick shopping while wearing this, and it's a pretty good match for Maybelline Color Sensational Vivid in Fuchsia Flash.

Essie It's Genius

Here's a quick phone swatch of a 3-day-old mani. It's Genius is a really pretty purple shimmer that's opaque in 2 coats.

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!

No H8.

Conveniently, I had a purple waiting to be worn! Zoya Carly, two coats.

Misa Live Without Knowing

My husband got a raise last week, so we both decided to splurge; he bought a couple football video games and I placed a huge order at Transdesign. Have I sung their praises before? If not, I should have. I adore them. Cheap Essie and China Glaze, plus Misa and Sation and Orly and other brands I can't find anywhere around here. They even started carrying OPI again (here, as they haven't updated their polishes page to show it). I'll show you what my haul included later, but right now I'm too excited about the first pretty I put on!

Misa: Live Without Knowing. 

Two coats, no top coat. It has a lovely formula, just like every other Misa I've tried; I had minimal cleanup. At one coat it could have been fine, but I added a second to make sure there was no VNL.

Live Without Knowing is, at it's core, a taupe. It's just what I want this time of year. But it's so much more than that! Look at that RIDICULOUS SHIMMER, people. It's incredible. There's a fair amount of purple hidden in there, and a whole lot of gold, and I think I see a little pink, too.

Hello.

I haven't posted in forever and ever and ever. We moved, I went on vacation, I started teaching again, and blogging (or even doing my nails!) stopped being a priority. But I miss y'all, so I'm going to try again.
I'm blogging from my iPhone, but hopefully these are still alright photos. I'm pretty sure I will be a lot more likely to keep up if I don't have to deal with getting photos from my camera, editing, uploading, and all that jazz. I do that enough in my real life!

This is one perfect coat of Sinful Colors Rain Storm; I got it on sale for $1 and the formula is glorious. Then I did a sponge gradient from the cuticle with Sinful Colors Neptune (which I have posted about before). It was a great look that lasted all weekend; it even made it through the KU football game, and that's saying something (we really suck),