Red & Silver Dotticure

My roommate's mom visited us a couple weeks ago, and in the one week she was here she bought three bottles of nail polish. She's a woman after my own heart, apparently! When she went back home, she left them here for me.

I can't remember the last time I wore a Sally Hansen polish, but here I am! I figured they were free and already in my home, so I might as well give one of them a shot. I was actually really pleasantly surprised! This is Sally Hansen Nailgrowth Miracle in Stunning Scarlet. It didn't make me feel like my nails were any stronger, but it was opaque in one coat, with zero application problems. It was actually a really lovely polish that I expect to reach for again in the future.
Over it, I dotted patterns vaguely reminiscent of octopi (octopuses?) in Zoya's Trixie.

Here we have the elusive right hand! I actually preferred this hand. Instead of trying to fit one and a half of the designs per nail, I only did one, and it looked a lot cleaner. If I use this pattern again before my nails grow out again, I'll definitely do both hands like this.

This isn't a manicure that really screams "Christmas!!" but I do think it's definitely holiday appropriate. It's only the beginning of December, but I'm already longing for more red and sparkly nail polishes!

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!

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?

Game Day nails!

Today's the big day: The Final Border War!
I graduated from The University of Kansas last spring. Our rivalry with Missouri goes back to the Civil War. Kansas wanted to be a Free State, but people from Missouri kept coming over the border and voting for Kansas to be a slave state. They burned Lawrence (where KU is located) to the ground on more than one occasion. Quantrell's raid was an ugly thing.  So when we say we hate Missouri, we don't mean in a "Their jerseys are ugly and they're geographically close to us so they're a reasonable team to choose for a rival." We hate them in a, "You wanted to be slave owners, you burned our town, and you raped our women," sort of way.
They're moving to the SEC next year, so this is the end of the Border War. If we win this game, then we are the Big 12 regular season champs, and our dominance over MU is assured for the rest of time.

It's sort of a big game.

So I went way out of my comfort zone and did some red & blue nail art for game day!!

This red is Essie Russian Roulette, & the blue is Essie Mesmerize. They're my go-to primary red & blue. 2 coats of RR, just 1 of Mesmerize!!

The stripes on index & pinky were done using a Kiss nail art striper.

I finally attempted a cloud! I mixed up the finishes: glossy red, matte black (Orly Matte Vinyl), and foil (Zoya Trixie). I think it turned out really nicely!

The middle finger, I painted the entire nail red, then half of it blue. I used the black Kiss striper down the middle & the lines coming out, and the gold lines are a gold Kiss striper that came in the same set.

My thumb is another cloud, blue-black-silver, and my left hand is a perfect mirror.

Over all, I am incredibly proud of hour this turned out! I am pretty awful when it comes to nail art, but I think this looks pretty good!

Now to get ready for the game. Rock Chalk!!

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.

OPI Manicurist of Seville

Here's a color I've worn at least 3 times in the last 5 months, which is pretty frequent for me. The first time was late last summer. The week I got back from our honeymoon, I jumped right into rehearsal for an opera scenes production. I wore for closing night; I figured if we're doing opera, then a polish named after an opera would be only appropriate!

Here is OPI Manicurist of Seville, as I photographed her in August:

Direct sunlight. Pretty color accurate.

Inside shade. Also color accurate for the lighting.

Then as I photographed her last week; these are all 2 coats, no topcoat, & in indirect sun.

I can't ever leave anything alone if it's on my nails for longer than a day or two, so I layered CND Sheer 24K Sparkle over it, and the result was seriously beautiful.

I wore this for 5 days and had minimal tip wear for me (as a pianist, I have a lot more tipwear than the average person!) and only got one tiny chip on day 5. Considering 9 months ago when I started wearing polish I HAD to repolish every day or two, that feels like a huge victory.

I also wore MoS in mid-December with a glitter gradient of Essie's A Cut Above, but my nails had a rough couple months between the two wearings pictured above, so I don't really want to subject you to pictures of it!

I know MoS is by now considered a pretty boring color, but I still love it.