The return & 16 manicures!

Hello readers, if there are any of you still out there!

I disappeared for a few months here, and with good reason: I was writing my Master's thesis. I thought I might be able to keep up with my blogging, but with two jobs and various life-craziness-health-related things going on, it just wasn't possible. But: on Friday, I turned in my thesis, and now I'm trying to remember how to resume a normal life! I just turned 25 in October, and finishing my Master's degree is a big deal for me. I finished my Bachelor's in 3 years (I was already a year ahead in high school, too), and after that I sort of lost my way. I turned down a full scholarship to do grad work at Emory University (after driving all the way down there with my stuff, no less). I took some time off and went back to the University where I got my Bachelor's. I did 3 semesters of grad coursework and then... never wrote my thesis. The university gave me a lot of trouble, they kept "forgetting" to notify me about course sign up and advisement.... and I inadvertently took a (calender) year off. This made it harder to get the project going, as to do your thesis it's good to have a current relationship with a professor, so they can serve as your advisor. I seriously considered abandoning my grad work. I was 23, burnt out on school, and feeling drunk on freedom. But... in the end, I opted to go back and finish, and I'm so glad that I did. It was a huge accomplishment, and I graduate on December 5th (finally!). I've considered going back to do Ph.d work, but that will be for another time in my life, I think. My Master's is in English, my focus being American literature, specifically Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Over the months, I did manage to take a few pictures... My nails have been of varying length over this time, tending towards the nubbin side of things... they're still kind of finicky. I hauled a lot too: Burlesque, NARS vintage, RBL sale, ChG holiday, and lots of Old OPI's that I've been acquiring... But anyway... what I have to show you isn't representative of everything, to say the least, but it's something.

Random spam for the last few months:

OPI Wing It!

Barielle June Bug (wore this for 4th of July... that's how old this is!!)

OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous

Sephora OPI Midnight Mambo

China Glaze Foxy

OPI Diva of Geneva

China Glaze Midnight Mission

China Glaze GR8

Streetwear FX Flash (green) (awful pic, sorry... hard to capture)

Borghese Nero Magico (seriously gorgeous... underrated)

MAC Bad Fairy

OPI Show Bring on the Bling

NARS Midnight Express (I think this was day 2 or 3, looking a bit worn)

Color Club Pucci-licious

Orly Galaxy Girl

My Current Nails: China Glaze Zombie Zest (a bit late, I missed Halloween!)

The varying lengths are kind of amusing. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things here! Not sure I'm up to posting every day or anything, but I'd like to keep it up :-)

Thanks for looking!!

China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy & Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure

First, friends, the nail polish gods have been kind to me lately!!

My Zoya exchange arrived today (minus Ivanka & Charla, which were backordered but are ALREADY on their way!). Last night, I found Hidden Treasure. Yesterday, I went to Sally's because my 15% off coupon was about to expire, and the SA allowed me to use the B2G1 promo on treatments: so I got Gelous to experiment with (I'm devoted to Instant Artificials but Gelous is cheaper by almost $3 and easier to find), a new Seche Vite (on sale for $5.99) and a lone Finger Paints polish in Blissfully Blue (my freebie, I have no true pale blues). This was all for like $10. Today, I got a NEW Sally's coupon for 20% off (check your mailboxes!) and on my way home from a meeting with one of my thesis advisors, I stopped at a Sally's I don't usually go to. Jackpot! They had China Glaze Poolside out AND the new Finger Paints (which was exciting because the B2G1 is only for April and I think these weren't supposed to be put out until May 1). So I got 3 new China Glazes (Flip Flop Fantasy, Towel Boy Toy & Sun Worshipper) and 3 new Finger Paints (Sketch N Etch, Scenery Greenery & Easel-y Entertained) for something like $14? SIX of 'em!

Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure & Gelous.

L to R: Sun Worshipper, Towel Boy Toy & Flip Flop Fantasy.

My thoughts on the Poolside collection: I bought the three most unique to my collection (I'm satisfied with the pink/green/yellow neons I have now, so I skipped the other three). I hope Sun Worshipper is everything I wanted Color Club Explosive to be. Towel Boy Toy seems like it might be in the realm of Color Club Pure Energy or Zoya Tallulah (I got this one mainly because I like these bright shimmery neon blues). My thoughts on Flip Flop Fantasy are below.

L to R: Easel-y Entertained, Sketch N Etch, Scenery Greenery, Blissfully Blue.

The new Finger Paints look wicked! I'm glad they're permanent because that means I can get a few more and don't have to get antsy about it. LE's are a bitch. I swatched the cremes--so smooth and opaque. Shimmers look nice too. Not sure about the glitter but we'll see. I've never bought a "core" line Finger Paints polish before, only LE, so I'm glad for these.

L to R: Mimi, Alegra, Nidhi, Gilda.

The Zoyas, which I swatched on paper look INCREDIBLE!!! The only one that looks slightly lackluster (due to sheerness issues) is Gilda. Can't wait to get Ivanka & Charla. I'll be wearing these soon to show ya'll.

Anyway anyway anyway... PHEW after all that craziness, what did I pick to wear?? Well, obviously I wanted to try out Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure seeing as it's hotter than sliced bread lately. I found it the first place I went! And because I was itching for something bright, enter Flip Flop Fantasy--a neon pink that is slightly orange toned, like a neon salmon/coral. Unique, I think. The application on that one was about what I expected for a neon, but a GOOD neon... 3 thin coats (over 1 coat Barielle Natural Nail Growth Activator & 1 coat Gelous), didn't get gloopy. Topped with 1 thin coat of Hidden Treasure & Seche Vite. And it actually dried.

So, not to add fuel to the fire, but I really like Hidden Treasure... yes, more than my Nfu-Ohs. The consistency of the polish itself is so much better... I find Nfu-Ohs to be a tad gelatinous, even with thinner... and the flakes were so thin and not clumpy... gorgeous rainbow iridescence (though it pulls very orangey over FFF). Anyway... snap if up if you run across it.

Thanks for looking!

American Apparel Mouse & Konad M65

So, here's Mouse. As I look back on this, I really wish I left Mouse alone and wore it as you see it below: un-mattified and un-Konaded. But I didn't because I wanted to experiment with a technique I saw on Laquerized's blog.

So this is Mouse, my second favorite taupe color (first is Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge). It looked so divine and classy with shiny Seche Vite. Here's 2 coats (and no clean up, whoops):

Don't you love it? I happened to wear this polish on a day I saw my friend Amanda, and it made me think of her. Amanda and I very different and if you saw us together you might wonder why we're friends. I'm a tattooed, pierced, kinda "bad girl" looking chick (though I am not!), with a penchant for stuff that leans heavily on the rock'n'roll side of life. Amanda has this elegant, polished way about her I've never been able to pull off. She always looks classy in an understated sort of way, from her chic haircut to her elegantly understated wardrobe--we are as different as different could be. But we get along because we're both kinda bitchy! I think that is what attracted us to eachother (we used to work together), a mutual understanding. BUT, anyway, when I wore this color, I felt so... elegant... which, though I am many things, elegant is not one of them. I was totally pleased when I saw her the day I wore this, and the first thing she did was grab my hand and profess her admiration for my nails.

Digress much?? OK, back on topic. So, I mentioned above that I wanted to use a technique I saw on the Lacquerized blog that involved mattifying a color and then Konading a design over it in clear polish. Hers came out way better than mine, but I was pleased with the understated look that I achieved. This is from M65 and I used Barielle Manicure Extender for the clear.

It's kinda hard to do because even "slow dry" topcoats seem to dry wicked fast when they're scraped over a Konad plate. So give it a try but don't even bother attempting Seche Vite--that's a joke! (Trust me, I tried).

That's all for now :-)

BB Couture For Nails Dragon's Breath

The premiere of what hopefully will be my shortest nail length for the time being. I just want 'em to growwww. I think what's happening is that I filed my nails down, but I was still growing out a bit of buffed down damage. So the shorter nails were also thinner and weaker than the parts I filed off. Make sense? Now they're chipping because they're thin, and they need to sort themselves out. Barielle Natural Nail Growth Stimulator and Salon Sciences Instant Artificials work your magic! You have not failed me yet.

Enough babbling. This is my last new BB Couture that I have to share and why I saved this for last I have NO idea! Dragon's Breath, an awesomely named awesome looking polish. I am coming to understand that nobody does glitters like BB. This one is a gorgeously deep berry jelly with red, blue and silver glitter in it. The camera actually did a decent job of capturing the glitter colors, if you look closely, but this is one you have to see up close to believe. I used 3 coats, which is usually a lot to me, but the formula was (good) thin and perfect. It's super beautiful in person!! I may even keep this one on for a while....

Hm, what will tomorrow bring us? I do not know. Lots of pastels lined up here and all I can think about is glitter!! Maybe Mendocino Midnight, another BB polish, which, it occurs to me now, I wore but didn't photograph for this blog. So maybe that'll reappear for photographic posterity. Anyway! Thanks for looking!

More V-Day featuring China Glaze Heli-Yum, Konad M56 & M80, RBL Grunge

So today I'll share another semi-failed Valentines look, along with what I ended up wearing on the actual day. I hate girly-girl crap. I hate pink and hearts and lah-di-dah stuff, but I seem to have recently acquired a bunch of pink polish (Winter blahs, no doubt), so it was the perfect chance to justify my insanity.

The first look was an excuse to play around with Konad plates. I love Konad. It's just simple genius and totally whimsical. I have a ton of plates (30-some-odd, don't judge me), and I go through phases of how much I use them, but holidays are always an excuse to break it out. Plus, I just ordered almost all of the new ones (plus a few non-new ones) from OC Nail Art, a business I highly, highly recommend for all your Konad needs.

I started out with China Glaze Heli-Yum (2 coats), from their new Up & Away collection. The formula on this was fantastic (the best of the set so far that I've tried, I'll be posting a few more from this collection soon), the color was pretty saturated. Very cool. I wore this for a day with the heart French tip on plate M56, which I stamped using Konad Black Special Polish. Then, in a stroke of genius/stupidity/itching-ness to try out my new Konad plates, I added the heart design from the new M80 in Konad White Special Polish. I was aiming to have it go across the base of my nail.... except... my nails aren't all that long and... the design itself is quite thick... so it was pretty much an all-around fail....

Unfortunately, I only got pictures of the final product, which I finished off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Second for today, is Rescue Beauty Lounge's Grunge. This is one of my absolute favorite polishes and I can't describe why. It just rocks. I get a million compliments on it. It's this bizarrely perfect non-color, it's almost nude on me (it's less so than in the pictures). It's basically the perfect all-occasion polish. It's not garish enough to call attention to itself, but subversive nonetheless. I wore it, as I mentioned earlier, on Valentines Day, because I had to attend a wake and needed something subdued.

Love this one. As you're probably already aware, RBL polish is pretty much amazing. This is 2 coats (over my two wondrous, holy grail base coats, Barielle Natural Nail Growth Stimulator topped with Salon Sciences Instant Artificials), and it applied itself. I finished off, as usual, with Seche Vite. You get the drift.

Yeesh, I talk a lot. Thanks for looking!