Monthly Archives: June 2012

A-England Bridal Veil

Whew! This week is flying by. Sorry for no updates for a few days. I had a chance to swatch all the A-England polishes that I own that I haven’t shown here yet. Oh, they’re so yummy!

So for the next few days I’ll be showing them. The first one up is actually the very last one I swatched yesterday so I kept it on my fingers. It’s what I’m wearing today.

A-England Bridal Veil is a deep black with little itty bitty specks. From far away, it definitely looks just like a black polish. Fun to apply, though! I got away with only one coat! :)

Here’s a close up shot…

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Essie Mojito Madness

I adore this green… So summery…

BTW, I had a marathon cleaning session in my kitchen tonight. I hate cleaning. Boo. Anyway, the only way my nail polish can survive cleaning is to wear rubber gloves. SO attractive, let me tell you. And I hate the way it makes my hands sweat. But on the other hand, at least my manicure comes out unscathed. :)

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Orly Skinny Dip

Loving the bright blue of Orly Skinny Dip. Perfect for summer. Lots of shrinkage on this one with Seche Vite, though. When I wear it again, I’ll have to switch up the topcoat with something else.

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Aqua Blue Polishes Swatch Comparison

It’s no secret that I’m loving all the aqua blue-ish green polishes that brands are coming out with these days. Even though all the shades I own are rather similar, I just. can’t. help. myself. LOL! So, I broke out all my aqua polishes and thought I’d show the differences.

A line up of polishes are shown after the swatches. Bottles are in the order shown in the swatch photos. Enjoy!

Left to Right: China Glaze For Audrey, Zoya Wednesday,
Eyeko Vintage Polish, Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqualily

Left to right: China Glaze Aquadelic, Color Club New Bohemian,
Dior Saint-Tropez, Zoya Bevin

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The problem with blogging about nail polish is…

it’s painfully obvious when your nail breaks super short. :(

The nail on my ring finger on my left hand always seems to break once it gets to a sufficient length. Boo. Because I hate having one short nail, I trimmed the rest down to be a similar length. Definitely not as super short as my ring finger, but generally a better length to grow them all out at the same rate…

Today I’m wearing Butter London Pink Ribbon. It’s a very sheer pale pink polish. So sheer that I had to do four thick coats to get it this opaque. It’s a pretty, neutral color. Not sure if I like it on my nails, though. I used the Butter London basecoat and topcoat as well.

I think dark nail polish looks awesome on short nails, so I think I’ll switch this out for a dark polish later today.

On a positive note, with my new shorter nails it’s much easier to type on my iPhone. :)

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Stripe Ombre Nails

A couple of weeks ago I saw the above set of nail polishes and ordered it. I thought the range of green colors was really pretty. :) The bottles are pretty small and tiny, though.

I was inspired by a manicure I saw on Pinterest and decided to do a stripe ombre design using striping tape. I wasn’t familiar with striping tape until a couple of weeks ago, too. I ended up ordering some from a seller on Amazon. It came super fast! I ordered and it arrived 2 days later! :)

So first I painted my nails with China Glaze White on White and applied a topcoat (Seche Vite). Then I cut strips of the tape and applied four to each nail. I pressed down the edges really well, and then carefully painted each of the five colors from the ombre set of polishes. I then removed the tape revealing the white polish underneath, and then applied another layer of topcoat.

NOTE: I painted one full nail at a time and removed the tape while the polish was still wet. There were a few spots where the surface of the polish had started to dry and dragged when I was pulling the tape off (see the ring finger?). I think I need to practice with the tape masking technique a bit more to master it. :)

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Traveling With Nail Polish: What to Bring? Picking Polish!

This is my second post in a mini series on Traveling with Nail Polish. Be sure to check out the first installment about packing polish for air travel, which included a video showing how I pack polish. :)

For any nail polish junkie like myself, it’s super hard to condense down what I love into a small bag for travel. As you saw in the video showing how I pack, sometimes I don’t condense it too much. LOL! In that particular case, I was going on a girls trip and I knew I would be painting other people’s nails. So I wanted to give them a variety of colors to choose from.

But when I travel just on my own where I know there won’t be an opportunity to paint other people’s nails (which I love to do!), I usually go about it this way…

Choosing Polish

  1. After choosing the clothing I will wear on the trip, I try to pick complimentary nail polish colors. When I’m at home, I generally don’t mind wearing mismatched polish and clothing, but when I’m away I want to look more put together, you know? So first I look at what I’ll be wearing. If there’s just a couple shades that would look nice with my clothing, I’ll pack those shades.
  2. After I pick out the matching shades (usually just two polishes), I’ll throw in a third that’s fun and funky. :) Sometimes I just want to wear a polish that’s fun and I don’t worry about matching my clothing. I usually pick polishes that just feel good and I know that when I’m away from home I’ll at least want the option to pick something daring.
  3. Then into my bag I throw in a basecoat (Orly Rubberized Bonder), topcoat (Seche Vite), small bottle of remover (2 oz. Zoya Remove+), cotton pads, and a nail file.

In total, that’s 5 bottles of polish. For some, that’s just too many. But for me, it’s the smallest amount I can pack without feeling completely deprived. :) In short…

The Packing List

Bottle 1: Complimentary polish color
Bottle 2: Complimentary polish color
Bottle 3: Fun color
Bottle 4: Basecoat
Bottle 5: Topcoat
Small nail polish remover
Cotton pads
Nail File

Or Keep it Simple

To keep it simple, you could also just take nail strips and a topcoat. That would be super easy to pack. :)

When you pack for a trip, what do you take?

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