Snowy Night Sky

It's a very rare day that my husband has any opinion about what I should put on my nails, but I give all of the credit to this manicure to him!

This is the finished product. He wanted something that would be blue and black, like a night sky, with snow falling. I think I got pretty close to his vision! Getting there was pretty messy though...

I started with a single coat of white. This is Formula X in White Matter, and you can see it's not an opaque one coater. But it was good enough to act as a base for what was to come.

Doing a gradient with black is CRAZY MESSY, everyone. Trust me. Use liquid palisade, or tape, or something. Don't be an idiot like me and let it get all over your fingers.

Because even after using way too much acetone to try and clean it up, it's still not actually tidy.
This gradient was done using Formula X Dark Matter and Omni.

Over the gradient, I added a coat of Formula X Wham! I had a little trouble with the bar glitters (what's new?), and actually pulled one off a little later because it was so annoying, but I love the look of it. I just really don't like bar glitter.

This all-Formula X manicure is actually what I wore to an interview at Sephora that went quite well, so thanks to my husband for such a fantastic idea. :)

Smooth Sailing Away

I'm usually much too lazy for nail art, but I've had a lot of free time lately so I'm trying to get better at it. So when my Portland bestie came over for Thursday morning mimosas & manis, I decided I'd be a little adventurous (possibly helped by the champagne!) and do a gradient. I've always done it the lazy way of only sponging on the second color, but it doesn't turn out as smoothly that way, so this time I actually dotted both colors and swirled them together to sponge. It turned out pretty fantastically if I do say so.

I started with one coat of Essie Smooth Sailing, then sponged a gradient of Smooth Sailing and Milani Sailing Away.

Over the gradient, I put a thin layer of Hard Candy's Black Tie Optional.

I ended up really loving this look! The gradient was subtle and that kept it feeling classy, but the glitter made it interesting. And it was so easy to do, I don't know why I'd been half-assing it this whole time. Never again!

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!

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),

Milani Sail Away

I have a serious love affair with shimmery blues. It's ridiculous. Someday I'll have to do a comparison of them all... But I'm about to move back to my parent's for a month while I play for a theatre this summer, so I probably won't have time for a couple months! Just don't let me forget. ;)

Today's shimmery blue is Milani Sail Away. It's freaking gorgeous. They released this and Beach Front in the same collection this spring, and I just died. 

It's a perfect cornflower shade of blue with the most incredible silver shimmer. And the shimmer is not at all shy!

I think this is probably very similar to Sinful Colors Neptune. Unless you're like me and need every shimmery blue ever invented, you'd probably be fine with just one or the other.

Zoya Charla

I love Zoya polishes. They're so lovely. And they do this sparkly, glass-flecked, almost-foil-y finish better than anyone else. It's pretty much my favorite thing. Ivanka, Apple, Kimmy, Charla... yummy goodness.
Charla is well-known. She's pretty much the same as OPI Catch Me In Your Net, Orly Haley's Comet, Essence Choose Me...

And an extreme close-up for your viewing pleasure!

Sweet 16!

Yet another weekend of the NCAA tourney is upon us! KU plays in the Sweet 16 tonight, so hopefully I'm in for another weekend of red & blue nails!

I started by painting all of my nails solid colors.
Essie Russian Roulette
Nina Ultra Pro Like Butta
Zoya Tallulah

My thumb I painted like a ref's shirt.

 The red is more jelly than cream, so it took a couple coats. I used a really thick coat of Like Butta, and it evened itself out surprisingly well. And Tallulah is absolutely gorgeous in one perfect coat.
No clean up or top coat to be found anywhere here.

But of course I couldn't leave them that plain.

Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!

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?

Sinful Colors Neptune

Ah, Sinful Colors. I love you so much for being insanely affordable with amazing colors. I have a love/hate relationship with your formula because it's so hit or miss, but thank you thank you THANK YOU for making Neptune pretty much flawless.

These pictures are 2 coats of Neptune. Slight tip wear, because it's day 2 of wear, I am always too lazy for top coat, and I play piano. But it was chip-free on day 4 when I took it off, so it's definitely getting my approval.

The last picture is the most color accurate. It wants to photograph really BLUE, and it's not. It's a little more cornflower-y than most of these pictures show. I tried to correct the next-to-last photo, but I think it's a little too purple, though still fairly accurate. The last picture shows that it is darker and a little richer than that electric blue in the first picture.
The first coat was streaky & ugly, but the second evened it all out. And what a GOREOUS shimmer. It's like the big brother of Essie Coat Azure or Smooth Sailing. In fact, I bet the three of them would make a gorgeous ombre!