Channeling Winter

>Today I took OPI Natural Nail basecoat under Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in 850 Pumping Iron. For an accent nail I used Nina Ultra Pro in 709069 Silver Slipper. The effect is super cool and wintery, like I am channeling a snow goddess of all things cold and frozen. This is my contribution to the snow gods in hope they take pity on us and give us snow instead of rain.

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The Silver Slipper sparkle is, oddly enough, a color I keep trying to get rid of. I put it in the pile of things to donate, and then it finds its way back again. It has done this for a couple of years now. I had a streak of trying to find the perfect silver, the gunmetel silver I used to have. And instead I’d come home with these weak sparkle silvers. I have found a new joy in glitter polishes though. Having them as an accent nail takes away 4/5ths of the agony of trying to remove it later!

Trying drying drops

I got Nicole by OPI drying drops for my birthday. These drops are a highly viscous liquid, much more like a cuticle oil than any nail polish. They come with a little dropper, and the idea is that you drop a drop in the center of the nail and it spreads all around. Miraculously, this works! I was amazed at how thoroughly and completely the drop immediately reaches to all corners of the nail on contact. It’s pretty fun to watch.

To test the efficacy of these instant drying drops, I decided to do a polish that requires a lot of drying time- American nails with black!

I used my standard Sally Hansen Double Duty Base Coat/Top Coat for the base, Rimmel London French Manicure Pro for the nail and Sephora by OPI in Inkwell for the tip.

I timed the drops and, as advertised, at 1 minute they were most certainly dry to the touch.  At 5 minutes the product advertised to be completely dry, which, sadly was not the case.  After 5 minutes had passed (I even used a timer to test them with!), the nails seemed dry…mostly.  I put my faith in the advertising and started poking around the house.  Soon enough, a  one of the tips got a little smudge. When I went to bed not long ofter, I got the subtle imprint of sheet on another one of the tips. By the end of the next day, several tips had chipped. I am not certain this can be attributed to a failing on the part of the drying drops, or if it was a result of the black tips having to be very thick. I freehand my tips, and somehow they always end up getting very thick unless I use the white polish designed for french tip nails. I could try harder to make a thinner coat, but, again, I don’t want to spend hours on my nails every night. The next night I touched up the chips and re-applied the drying drops, giving them a good 40 minutes or so before I touched anything. So far, so good. I’m going to try the drying drops next with a more consistent polish job and see if that makes a difference.

This just in!

Carrie gave me earrings and a bracelet that happened to perfectly match the nail polish I was wearing! It’s hard to tell with the lighting of this camera, but I swear you, they are a perfect match. I am going to show them all off at work today.

Blush Gifts Nails #2

I was very excited about this color! I love the teal-ly blue-greens. I have a color very similar to this, but it’s a little to bright, and I just can’t bear to wear it during the dark and grey winter. This color, manages to capture the fun bright color, but also seems an appropriate hue for winter. Given that the first Blush polish of the trio I got from the boy’s mom was extremely thick, I was surprised to find this one super thin. It was translucent at one coat:

Luckily the color dries faster than you can imagine, so I was quickly able to add two more coats.  Awesome!

Blush Gift Polish

This Christmas, the boy’s mom gave me a cute little trio of nail polish. The adorable bottles have pictures of butterflies on them, but no color distinction.
The first color I tried was a brilliant forest green. I love green nails, in fact, second to blue, green is my favorite nail color. It’s incredibly difficult to find a dark green that is not sparkly or glittery. This is one of my ongoing searches, I bet she had no idea of that. This color came on very thick, but smooth. One coat is all the nail could take. The presentation was dark enough that the nail could be mistaken for black. This turned out to be a dark, gothic look, even with the butterfly bottle.