NYE!

I woke up this morning and could NOT decide what to wear on my nails! I knew I wanted to play with the Muppets glitters, but I couldn't decide which! So I did some quick skittles so I could see some combinations on first.

Here we have China Glaze Flyin' High under OPI Gone Gonzo, which is a perfect combo; Meep Meep Meep under Excuse Moi; Animalistic under Gettin' Miss Piggy With It; and Wocka Wocka, which was an afterthough, under CND Sheer 24K Sparkle. I fully expected to want to wear the pink combo, but once it was on my nails, I decided that it was actually my least favorite. Husband voted blue, but I'm wearing a blue dress this evening and I didn't want to be totally monochromatic. That left red. Animalistic was just too close to the reds I've been wearing lately, so I went with Wocka Wocka, which is just a little darker.

It's really pretty! Plus, this was one coat with practically zero clean up. Love!

Then I put Gettin' Miss Piggy With It over the tips. The two look absolutely fantastic together! After top coat, WW is rich & glowy, and GMPWI blends right on. My favorite glitter gradients are definitely when the two polishes match like this.

I am really excited to wear it this evening, and then in the next couple days I plan on putting Matte About You over it. Matte glitter is the best.

And a pretty picture in front of the Christmas tree.

I hope you have a happy and safe New Year's Eve!

I am not a shrimp! I am a king prawn, okay?

Here is what's been on my nails all week: Pepe's Purple Passion!

My mother in law got me the entire Muppets collection for Christmas. I had red on my nails for Christmas (Zoya Kimmy, my husband's favorite), and I didn't want to deal with glitter, so I decided to go for the one color that isn't red or glitter!

It has a really interesting texture, as others have said. It didn't bother me, and I think I sort of ended up enjoying it. The above pictures are with two coats of top coat, but this next one is with just one, and you can really see it. Feel free to click for detail.

The first two pictures are also in direct sunlight, but in most lights, this is a more accurate depiction of what the color really looks like. It's sort of the color of raisins: somewhere between purple and brown, and much darker than I expected. But I really like it!

These pictures are all after 3 days of wear, and there is zero chipping and practically no tipwear! I'm actually sort of sad that I'm going to take it off tomorrow!

Silver & sparkly!

What better time for sparkly nail polish than the week of New Year's?! This is Zoya Trixie with OPI's Crown Me Already!

The sun made my finger all sorts of weird colored, but both polishes are a true silver.They go together perfectly. This is actually exactly what I wore to my brother's wedding this fall!

Of course, I can't show my silver sparkly nails without including my silver sparkly ring! =)

And here's a close-up of Trixie. I got her in their big sale this last fall, and my order got held up because she was sold out for a couple weeks! Apparently she's a popular one, and I can understand why!

I haven't decided yet what I'll do for new Year's Eve -- I'm not even sure what our plans are! -- but silver is definitely a contender!

First!

After 9 months of obsessively following nail blogs and finally taking care of my nails (after 10 years of biting & chewing & peeling & picking), my husband is encouraging me to take my own nails onto the internet. So here I am! A short introduction is in order...

I'm Laura! I graduated from the University of Kansas with a piano performance degree in 2011. Now I'm teaching piano to elementary-middle-high school students, accompanying at the university, and starting a photography business!
I bit my nails from the time middle school until the last year or two. I got engaged, which meant lots of pictures of me and my fingers, & I got really self conscious about it. As a pianist, I had to keep my nails short, but I made a real effort to stop. It got better, but I didn't really succeed until after graduation when I stopped playing all the time. My nails are slowly regaining strength, but they're still very prone to breaking. It seems like they always break all the way down at the quick, too, and negate all of the hard work I've put in. But it's a battle I am slowly winning.

Photo courtesy of http://www.glowimagery.com

This is me and my husband on our wedding day, about 10 minutes after saying we do! We have been together for 5 1/2 years, and we finally committed ourselves to each other on July 31, 2011. Yes, 7/31 is Harry Potter's birthday. Yes, that was part of why we chose that date. We are pretty awesome. He was also a music student in college, but he is waayyy too into computers (in fact, he just recently got certified as an Apple technician), so I tolerate his tech obsession and he tolerates my polish obsession. I just don't let him count how many bottles I have...

Here is the very first polish I took pictures of! This is after a few weeks of working my butt off to try and get my fingers into a semi-respectable state, and my application was awful... This is Essie Turquoise & Caicos.

This is a much more recent manicure! My nails need a little shaping here, but it's a long way from that first picture up there. This is a layering nightmare... it's Orly Mirror Mirror, then China Glaze Frosty, then Essie Waltz. A couple days later, I added OPI Crown Me Already!, and it was pretty much pure awesome.

And here we go!