Halloween, The Final Slaughterin'

There's no coming back from this one.

Barielle Myrza's Meadow, Zoya Mimi, Zoya Arizona, and Essie Licorice

Those cuticles have been murdered.

It was the black nail polish, in the living room, with the pigment.

Myrza's Meadow is a great pukey-green with holographic glitter.  I mean puke-y in the nicest possible way, because I love it; I just don't know a better way to describe it.  It's super sheer though, and even on these little stripes of nail, I needed three coats to provide good color.

Arizona is a fantastic orange, and is good to go with one coat.  Nice, bright, citrus shimmer that levels well.

Mimi is a color cousin to Suri, but with bold tonal shimmer instead of the vague holo shimmer.  It's sheer with one coat, and good at two.

I did one thick-ish coat of Licorice on top of the tape, then peeled and added a coat of Seche Vite.

Despite the fact that this manicure was a freaking nightmare because I did designs on eight nails, so the taping took over an hour, I love tape manicures.  They give a really interesting cohesive look to what would otherwise be crazy colors jammed together.  I'm (clearly) still trying to get a look I'm happy with  using black, purple, green, and orange, and I just don't think it's going to happen.

I'm...okay...with this, but I haven't quite figure out how to get dark nail polish out of the bed of my nails.  As soon as it touches the skin, it's there until the next time I push my cuticles back and clean them out.  It's annoying, but it won't stop the tape love.

It's National Free Candy From Strangers Day!

Happy Halloween!   

I don't engage in costume selection and dress-up now that I'm an adult. It's not that I don't want to - I see a ton of great costumes every year that I know would be so fun to put together and go out in.  The problem is that my house is awesome, and it's full of all my stuff, and I can wear sweat pants and eat mini Twix there.  So the incentive to leave has to be incredible.

Instead of a costume that might jeopardize my candy bowl obliteration, I thought - why not a costume for the nails?  How about I subject them to freehanded designs and starting over a thousand times because I don't like what I "drew"?

Nails can't talk so I did it!

 I used a crapton of polishes.
Zoya Purity, Raven, Rekha, Cheryl, Harley, Song, Tracie, China Glaze Angel Wings,
China Glaze Lighthouse, A England Saint George &  Barielle Glammed Out Garnet

Ruby Red Slipper, Witch's Sock, Dorothy's Dress, Wicked With's Face/Hat, Yellow Brick Road
Emerald City, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and the other Ruby Red Slipper.

Once I decided that I was going to do the Wizard of Oz, picking the things to be represented, and their associated colors was quasi-easy.  Deciding on the order and not messing up one wet nail while I tried to handle another was a gigantic pain in the ass.  I redid the dress nail five or six times, re-drew items for the witch a dozen times (I first tried to draw her warty nose.  awful idea.  just awful.), and I was irritated that the Tin Man's rivets smeared, but way too lazy to go fix it.

Now that I've sufficiently castigated myself for mistakes, how cute is this??  It's 100% not work appropriate, so I had to take it off that night, so excuse the crappy lighting.  My husband correctly identified every character, which left me confident that it made sense.  I think outside of my explaining it to anyone, it might just look like a mish-mash of stuff, but with the explanation, I'm pretty proud of my first foray into...ummm, interpretive nails?  Manicure fever?  I don't know. 

And for your viewing pleasure, some close-ups

    

Greasy Lunch At Tiffany's

When I was in high school, there was this guy, Eddie, who could sing and play the guitar.  Can't you just picture it?  A high school guy who sang AND played the guitar?!  How novel!  Anyway, I loved him in the way that makes you confused as to why you would get friendzoned when you were so much more awesome than the girl he started dating and, I mean, it was YOU he called and spoke to for four hours when he went on a family vacation, but then you found out that they got caught making out behind the dumpster at Cheddar's and whycouldntitbemeI'mperfectforhimmm!!!

Ahem.  I digress.

ANYWHO, one of the songs he would play, fairly consistently (don't they all) was "Breakfast At Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something.  He was really good at it and I cannot hear that song on the radio, even now, without thinking of him and that high school hallway where we all used to eat lunch.  I quickly found a new boy to develop a massive crush on, but sometimes it's good to think back on what you thought you missed out on, knowing you were lucky to avoid it altogether.  I mean, really, the dumpster behind Cheddar's?  Gross.

China Glaze For Audrey and Layla Mermaid Spell

The shadow sees all, and sucks the color from your background like magic.

The "diamond" on my ring finger is a bit crooked, and my super solar oil-y fingers aren't doing me any favors, but I'm going to call them both throwbacks to high school Eddie's complexion and smile.  Sometimes it's the imperfections that you find most endearing.

Not in this case, though.  I'll definitely correct the angle and wait a few hours after lubing the cuticles to take a picture.  These are nails, not life, and tiny aesthetic imperfections are not endearing, they are annoying.  :)

My Favorite Gem Is The Opal

Every girl has that one jewelry piece or gem that blows her mind and makes her happy when she sees it.  My wedding set is tied for number one (and not all because of sentimentality, I have to admit) with any variation of opals.  Dark, light, encased in rock or set in gold, this gem has been my go-to love for a long time.  I love the flashes of color each stone can throw, and in all the colors!  It's a dear.

So when a new pile of polishes came in the mail for swatching, I knew that I wanted to make China Glaze Smoke and Ashes a base for all of my flakes.

Smoke and Ashes is this gorgeous inky black with the tiniest flashes of blue and green.  It displays much better in the bottle than on the nail, but it's there.

Taking advantage of all of the super bright sunshine we've had, I created an opal look that I could enjoy until the next day, when I knew I'd be losing it to try something else.

China Glaze Smoke and Ashes, topped with Zoya Chloe and Zoya Opal (!!)

I don't want to sound forward, but...I love you more than anything.

This manicure got quite a few compliments, and I only had it on for about eighteen hours.  In the sun, you could see red,gold, green, blue, orange, yellow, everything except purple.  MUST.FIND.PURPLE.FLAKE.

It exactly represented what I was looking for, and the opalescent color junkie in me loved the layering.

Princess of the Cold

I follow Zoya on Facebook, sign up!  be a pal to them! and they're big proponents of showcasing designs that highlight their polishes.  They put up a photo of something at My Style where they had used an off-white and Electra, from Zoya's Ornate holiday line, to do a drip manicure.

Now let me first say that this is another new-to-me art technique that I was more than happy to spend a Saturday slaughtering.  The photo (which I now can't get to come up) was gorgeous, so I set to work.

First stop?  Basic white with Zoya Purity

So fresh and so clean clean.

Then I laid down one coat of Essie Pure Pearlfection, which I did not photograph because...why.  Then I set to work dragging piles of Electra down the nail in a rough "drop" pattern.  This is a lot harder to do than you would think for two reasons:

1.  I'm not a cyborg with perfect control of both my dominant and non-dominant hands.  One set of nails was clearly better than the other.

2.  Electra is a bar glitter, so forcing that into round shapes was a pain in the butt times one million.

It sparkles!  It sticks you with bar claws when you scratch your face!

I was pretty happy with it, truth be told.  It had a fierce amount of glitter in the sun, and it definitely had that "Winter Ice Princess" vibe to it.  But those piles of Electra that I formed to drag down quickly became never drying balls of sharp glitter rage.  It lasted about fifteen minutes before I cleaned the whole thing off.

Be well, sharp sparkles - we hardly knew ye.

Let's All Go To Bora-Bora!

So I could see, in my lifetime, water as gorgeous and lovely as this manicure:

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

This is two coats of Zoya Zuza under two thin coats of Zoya Frida.  Zuza is this gorgeous sea foam green that has some gritty glitter flecks, giving it a sandy appearance.  Frida is a perfect green jelly, giving life and shimmer to anything it covers.

I know this is one of those "summer" colors I'm always trying to avoid as we're clearly progressing into fall, but it was too gorgeous to get rid of quickly.  It's the perfect light emerald green.

Sorry Alicia Keys, But THIS Girl Is On Fire

I stripped off the Halloween manicure, after being positive that my topcoat wrecks everything, and set to thinking of a new design.

"I'll just give my nails a quick trim so I can file them down." turned into a short hack job.  As a viola player for well over a decade, long nails oog me out.  To celebrate feeling my finger pads touch they keyboard again, I opted for something simple and fall-like because it's supposed to get cold this weekend!

Barielle Pin Up with Zoya Chloe

I stared and stared and stared at these.  Like a moth to the...nevermind.

I got Pin Up as part of a Barielle Holi-Craze package I picked up a while back on clearance.  It's a little more red and a little less orange than it shows in this picture, but it is definitely not what I'd call a classic red.  It's also got a hint of gorgeous shimmer that makes it a winner all on its own.  But I am a sucker for flakes, and with all the sunshine in the forecast, wanted to exploit a little more color, so I reached for Zoya Chloe, which contains orange to yellow (and very occasionally green) flakes in a clear base.  

Voila!  A campfire on your hand!  I think tonight I'll mess with it a bit to give a new look, but I wanted to preserve this first in case I eff it up tonight and have to acetone the whole thing off.


*Update*

I was going to do this elaborate tape job, but it was time to sleep, so I opted for a black shatter instead.  My sister convinced me that it would look like embers under charred wood, and I have to agree with her.  

OPI Shatter in Black

You can almost smell the smoke.

Halloween Part Two: The Sloppiness Continues

I want to love new nail art so badly, but the perfectionist Type A creep in me is always huffy about how sloppy first attempts look.

Chalkboard Nails has a bunch of amazingly talented and creative tutorials, and as I was flipping through I saw the ruffle and knew I had to try it.  I have a dotting tool!  I have at least nine colors of polish!  I have an evening of time to kill!  This will be so great!

:-|

Zoya Storm for a black base and the Ruffles are:

Essie Mojito Madness, Zoya Reagan, Essie Licorice, Zoya Suri, and Zoya Arizona

Not quite a fail, but not quite a success.  Sucmess.

Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh why do I insist on painting before dry??  WHY WHY WHY.  That topcoat smeared the bejesus out of my ring finger nail, so after twenty minutes of quasi-careful dot application, it got all crapped up anyway.  I did a better job on my thumb, but I was still playing with pressure and surface, so it's not super great either.  The black got all up in my cuticles/skin and would not come out, so I put a topcoat on all of it and called it a night.  It is a second look, so that works for me.  I have to also say that after Zoya Aurora, Zoya Storm and its holo glitter is a bit of a disappointment.  Don't get me wrong, it's definitely there, but it's not near the gorgeous love that Aurora is, and it's a bummer.

I'll definitely be trying the ruffle manicure later, maybe using the fall greens, and really taking my time.  She does such a cute job, so I know that it's possible.

Dark Meet Light

When I first tried China Glaze Luxe and Lush, from the Hunger Games Collection, I wasn't super wowed.  It was great, but the pieces are so large and I'm so lazy, so organizing it on the nail would have to wait.  Cut to last night, after the crappy Halloween manicure, when I opted to give it another shot.

I'm so glad that I did.

Essie Bobbing For Baubles and China Glaze Luxe and Lush

So flake-y!
But in a different way than your friend who keeps bailing on you to hang out with her boyfriend.

The combination of the super dark blue of Bobbing for Baubles, and the highly reflective shards in Luxe and Lush just gives this a gorgeous look.  The flakes flash copper and gold mostly, but in the sun you'll get green and teal blue as well.  I also think that this is one of those flakes that will look different depending on your base color, and you'll need one; this is not pretty all by itself.  I tried that first, and not only is it a huge gummy mess, the opacity is shady because you have to blob it on and spread it around, guaranteeing yourself cuticles full of glitter chunks.

I promise that I will take more superepicfail pictures when things don't turn out so you can learn from my mistakes.  This blogging thing is still pretty new to me and it's not until I'm in front of the thing that I even think about it.

Confession:  I'm also using my cell phone camera.  WHICH takes okay pictures but is still the cell camera.  I'm sorry that I just let you down, Internet.

Halloween 1; A Lesson Learned

It's got kind of a horror movie feel to the title, no?

HALLOWEEN THE FIRST:  THEY NEVER SAW IT COMING

Now with more teenagers trying to get to the attic!

Always the attic.  Never, you know, the shed where they keep the garden shears or bags of fertilizer that could act as a blinding agent.

Anywho, today I have the first of my many Halloween manicure ideas, but this one is unique in that I hated it immediately.  I hate when I picture something and it doesn't come out well because not only is it a waste of time, it's a huge waste of polish.  And we can't have that!

Zoya Suri for the base and the accent nails also contain

Essie Mojito Madness, Zoya Arizona, and Essie Licorice

Meh.  Just a big steaming pile of meh.

I put the topcoat, Out the Door, on way too quickly after painting because I was involved in watching Law & Order: SVU, and I smeared it.  I wasn't crazy about the dots anyway, and that green in the marble looks like a shark fang to me.

And we all know that old internet colloquialism:

"What has been seen, cannot be unseen"

Although, speaking of unseen, these pictures do not reflect the very subtle holographic shimmer in Zoya Suri.  It's the most perfect dark purple, and that hint of shimmer really puts it over the top.  The first coat is almost opaque, and if you do thicker coats, you could absolutely get away with singles, though I always do two to be safe.  It's the first bottle I've had to re-buy, as I am already halfway through it.

After five minutes of frowning at my hands, I took to the acetone and erased the heinousness for another try.

Peacocks Are My Favorite

Doing a little upscale shopping this weekend, I came upon the Deborah Lippmann Santa Baby collection at Neiman Marcus.  Apparently, this fabulous trio is exclusive to the chain, and after sampling "Sleigh Bells", I knew I had to have it.  The trio is so new that I can't find it on the website, or anywhere really, so I'll be swatching tonight.

But first things first, let's talk about how much I love duo-chrome polishes.  Anything that's not metallic, or chrome-y, or looks like a sewage spill.  But the rest of the duo-chromes!  Like Sleigh Bells which is a gorgeous green/purple/blue (trio-chrome?) with the softest amount of shimmer:

Deborah Lippmann Sleigh Bells with Butter London Tart With a Heart

I color-corrected too much so you could see the shift.
I'm also still reaching for the stars on my clean-up jobs.

Isn't it fabulous?  I love it probably the best out of every polish shade I've bought to date - and I am not a blue nail fan.  The application was a dream - this is ONE.COAT.  I had not previously purchased any Lippmann polishes, as they are a bit out of my budget day-to-day, but this trio is worth it.  I'll have The First Noel and This Christmas up tonight so you can see the glorious shimmery goodness.

Layla Dots Make Me Happy

I have to say, I was not thrilled with the scotch tape method yesterday.  It was akin to the time I painted our bathroom and thought the blue tape would seal the baseboards from blue paint intruders.

Not so much.

I think I'll stick with striping tape from now on, though I wish I could find it a bit thicker - I'll look.

Anywho, the Layla Holographic Effects love continued last night, as I decided to use all of them and create some different sized dots on a bright pink base.  I don't want to water marble with the holos, as it uses so much, and these things are not wallet friendly, and taping and dots are my technique tricks so far.

Zoya Reagan underneath Layla Ultra Violet, Mermaid Spell, Flash Black, and Mercury Twilight

Little measles of gorgeous color.

When I look at this on the nail, it's hard to tell any of the colors apart, with the exception of Flash Black.  But with the macro(ish) shot, it's much easier to see the blue and purple tones separated.  I love it.  It's got kind of a Dr. Seuss thing going on too - like a toadstool that's seen better days, perhaps.

Holo If You Hear Me

After seeing so many flawless swatches of the Laylo Holographic Effects polishes, I knew I had to get my hands on them.  So after a little bit of time in my financial prayer closet, I pulled the trigger and purchased Mercury Twilight, Flash Black, Mermaid Spell and Ultra Violet through Zappos.com.

I began brainstorming how best to let the holographic goodness overwhelm my friends and neighbors and knew I wanted to do some kind of "reveal".  Not an entire manicure of it, god no.  The bottles are tiny, one, and I don't want to cause traffic accidents from seared corneas, two.

A cursory glance told me to use Ultra Violet first, and tape off some bits over a dark purple.  So off to the Melmer I went, and grabbed the first purple that shouted up to me.

Zoya Monica with Layla Ultra Violet in segments

Let's not talk about the edges, okay?  Plzthxbye.

It's not enough to tell you that the holo sparkles; it RADIATES.  Even with my crap camera I was able to capture some of the rainbow effect, and this is in window light.  In full sun, this baby is a diamond, and I am completely in love.

I'll be using and re-using this polish collection over the coming days, including an idea for a Halloween manicure which I have to try and will likely push on you way before the 31st.

Surprise Me

So after the disgust of the sponge gone wrong, I decided to stick with a base and glitter.  A "getting back to the roots", if you will.

My stash has grown considerably since a few months ago, so I'm having a harder time choosing new shades instead of sticking to my old favorites.  I am not the kind of person to gamble, as I hate losing money/time for what is not a guaranteed thing.  But I dug deep and found a polish I had bought a while ago and not sampled yet.

Essie School of Hard Rocks and Zoya Chloe

Man these macro shots are completely unforgiving.

If you have not gone to investigate the goodness that is the Zoya flake collection, then run to this link and grab what they've got.  Right now, they have stock of the two I have and love, Chloe and Opal.  Chloe is a gorgeous yellow to orange shift with green as well, pictured above.  Opal is a straight blue to green shift that just sparkles in every light.

Getting back to the above, how much do you love the soft forest green with the orange flake?  Because I adore it.  I'm so glad I committed to the unknown, because I have a new manicure love.  It's perfect for the green fall trends, and interesting enough that if I had to keep it a few days, I wouldn't be ready to swipe it off the second I got home.

How To Ruin Gorgeous Polish

I was a thrilled recipient of the three polishes I ordered from the Zoya Ornate collection this Friday.  I'm a huge holo fan for all things, not just nail polish, so I bought Storm (black creme base with holo glitter), Aurora (purple jellyish base with holo glitter), and Electra (clear base with holo bar glitter).

I swatched them quickly, as we were leaving for a mini cabin getaway that afternoon, and loveloveLOVED Aurora.  It's the most beautiful shade of Purple/Berry, and the holo glitter is reflective in all lights.  How did I ruin it?  Glad you asked.

Not wanting to be a cell phone picture taker, I brought out the legit camera to see if I could up my photo game with this lovely polish.  I present to you the best of what I took, which will henceforth be known as "Exhibit A":

Zoya Aurora

Like a crazy looking bird, my hand yearns for the sky.

It was my attempt to get some natural lighting and clean-ish background up in this piece, and to try and capture some of the gorgeous glitter.  Naturally, I didn't think about the fact that in order to get light, you must face IT, and not the ground.  D'oh.  You'll get to enjoy a picture of my patio/fall dead grass one day!

So that night, I'm jonesing for a new manicure, but I don't want to take Aurora off - she's just too good!  So I think "I'll sponge some black tips on, like that thing I saw on Pinterest once!".  Insert "Exhibit B":

Zoya Aurora with Essie Licorcie sponged on.

So crappy, and yet...so confident.

Yes, a massive failure in both technique of application, and photography.  This is my right hand, so you can see how I have held my pen for decades has smooshed an indentation onto my ring finger.  No amount of pushing back will help her out, poor thing.

I was disgusted and removed the awful that night, and gave myself a new paint job that I was skeptical about at first, but ended up loving.  Once I get some decent light, I'll photograph and post.

Episode 1 - The Tape Stripes Back

Please don't sue me, George Lucas.

Another nifty tool that is a "have to have" to get a lot of really cool looks, is striping tape.  Again, a lot of people cut up scotch tape or masking tape, but my laziness is wayyyyyy too out of control for that.  I turned, as I always do, to trusty Amazon to do the dirty work for me, and I found these beauties for a few bucks:

Sparkles!  Colors!  Bright Sticky Floss!

In, again, twoish weeks, they were at my doorstep, and I set to use them that night.  

What followed was a horror of twisted way too long pieces that I couldn't trim accurately, because I was using household scissors.  I will not regale you with those pictures because there are none.  I don't care how long I spend on a manicure - if it looks like garbage, I sponge it off and start again.  I get it from my Dad, I'm sure - an inability to present anything less than something I know I've done a great job on.

A few nights later, I gave it another go, this time using the tape not as decoration, but as a boundary line.

Zoya Mimi underneath Zoya Harley

My middle finger reminds me of a flag.  Or graph axes.  

I started with a base coat, then laid down two thin coats of Zoya Mimi - sparkly, but not thick.  After giving it five minutes to dry, I cut a few lengths of striping tape, and just laid them over the nail in whatever pattern I thought would be interesting.  I decided to stick to two pieces per nail for absolutely no reason other than cutting 30 pieces of tape sounded like hell.

The "trick", if there is one, to using striping tape in this manner is you need to work quickly.  You want to paint the nail and then pull off the tape to keep the lines clean.  That's why I was thrilled Harley was opaque in one coat, because I don't know how you'd tape lines in a two-coater.  So I'd paint the nail, put the brush back in the bottle, pull the tape off, and stick the pieces onto a paper towel I had nearby.

Wash/rinse/repeat for however many nails you feel like doing, then go into the world ready to thrust your gorgeous manicure into the face of strangers everywhere!

Everybody Polka!...Dot

New tools and tricks are fast becoming my favorite part of this whole "nail art" hobby.  There are so many things that exist specifically to enhance your manicure, and four months ago, I couldn't have named anyway.  I saw the billions of adorable dot nails all over Pinterest, and knew I wanted to recreate them.  Google tells you that "Hey, friend!  You can just make a dotting tool from a few things that probably aren't in your house and a hundred hours of waiting!"
I, in the interest of not driving a straight pin through my index finger, opted to just buy some for a few bucks.

I ordered my set from Amazon and they're the same ones I've seen on a lot of other blogs:

Just fall prey to the cute already

The very first night, I knew I wanted to use them for something.  They're 1) adorable, and remind me of marbles and 2) if I buy something, I have an immediate need to use it the second it arrives.  That's why I once made air-popped popcorn at 8 in the morning.  DON'T ASK.

I gathered up some colors I thought would go together, and sat down at my TV tray to work.  Remind me to show you my super (not) elaborate set-up sometime.  

Zoya Reagan / Zoya Purity for the base colors, and the dots also include Zoya Suri.

Glitzed up with a topcoat of Essie Carnival because good grief what can't sparkles improve.

TA-DA!

This was about ten minutes of effort and zero know-how.  I folded a piece of printer paper in half, dropped a dot of each polish I wanted into it, and went to work.  You can use the tools to make multiple dots at once, but don't overload the thing.

Get thee to Amazon, or get some form of pin jammed into a cork, and get dotting!

A Few Older Looks

Having only recently started my newest obsession, I believe to still be firmly in the "learning curve" section of life.  My cuticles aren't always pristine, my lines aren't sharp, and my edges are sometimes ragged...but I love it and I learn and get better every day.  Viva la nail art!

Pink - Essie Mod Squad

Marble:  Mod Squad, Essie Tart Deco, Essie Trophy Wife, and Essie Merino Cool

I loooooooooved this - my first successful water marble!  I had CUT my cuticle on the pinky finger, like a dope, and did not know what moisture was at this point.  I also apparently thought that saturated color was the way to go, which is why that pink looks like it's just this side of radioactive.

 Gray - Essie Miss Fancy Pants

Marble - Essie Trophy Wife & Essie Sexy Divide

It's Raggedy Ann and Andy's lesser known cousin, Raggedy Cuticle.

Another successful water marble!  This was for a friend's wedding, and I got a ton of compliments on the colors.  I had also just purchased the "Remove Noise" effect for my camera app.  I promise that my skin has pores in real life.

Essie Go Overboard & Essie Beach Bum Blu

My first sponge gradient, when I was using a giant eyeshadow brush to clean up my cuticles.  :-|  The colors were flawless though, and it was so easy to do!  The bottles in the back provide the brand clue, and I'm noticing that I needed to branch out in that regard.  Shout-out for the terrible lighting!

I'm really intimidated by all the fab clean "swoop" lines around the edges of my favorite nail blogger's pictures.  Not to mention the gorgeous light and angle shots that they've mastered.  But I wanted to start this blog because I love this form of self-expression, and I'm dedicated to learning more and getting a little better each time.

And if you're reading this, it means you're just as committed.  You insane person, you.

Like a Princess

I get, at this point ALL, of my inspiration from Pinterest.  Whatever did we do before this elaborate picture pinboard??

Anyway.  I saw a very pretty nude/glitter combo and knew I had to recreate it.  Having just received my giant order of Zoya, I picked the prettiest nude/pink I could see, my densest glitter, and went to work!

Zoya Avril and Warpaint Beauty White Noise

I love a good almost polished nail.

Next time, I'll do three, or maybe even four, coats of Avril to really hide all the nail lines, but I was thrilled with how this came out.  I'm still working on my image taking, so forgive the weird coloring and dark light.  

This was a completely glam and lovely little manicure, and the most complimented I've done to date.

Let's Get Started!

My recently developed adoration of all things nail polish started in August with a bottle of cuticle oil.  YES, CUTICLE OIL.
Who knew?
We decided to have a "Manicure Day" at work, so a colleague brought in her supplies, and we all sat around a conference table and got to work.  I was transfixed.  The ritual!  The process!  The smooth...ness!  Ever since that day, I have been working on my stash and my technique, hoping to get a little better each time.

So without further ado, I present my first blog mani:  matte french.  It kind of sounds like a boy I could have dated in high school, no?  Matt French.  Too bad he already, even as fiction, sounds like a douchebag.

This is Zoya Ibiza, Zoya Opal (flakie), and a coat of Essie Matte About You.

I did one coat of Ibiza, which in hindsight definitely should have been two, and I free handed the tips.  Long nails are a new thing for me, so I'm loving having the space to be a little more interesting.  

Just from this picture, I've identified two things I need to work on:  picture taking and cleaning dark polish from my cuticles.  Yee-ikes!