Welcome Back To the 80s!

It's Jem!

Kind of!



Zoya Jem, a coppery turning purple burgundy shimmery jack of all trades.

Long Live The Queen!

Or the McQueen, depending on where you buy your Butter London polishes.

A really gorgeous shimmery champagne that gets awesome opacity in three careful coats.  I really loved this shade on me because it was just dark enough to not give me weird flesh-y nails, but it wasn't so dark that I got creepy lobster hands.

Sparkle Times One Million

My favorite combinations come from just rooting around in the drawers of polish.

Zoya Kelly, a creamy, beautiful slate blue, under the total perfection of Cirque XX, a glitter of all sizes and shapes and flashes.  It reminded me of a close-up of the cosmos, or a children's birthday party table.

Little column a, little column b?

And my sunlight lamp/light box wasn't giving me the sparkles I wanted, so I took to the outside.  I had to go vertical to get the sunshine and NOT get the neighbor's chimneys and our fence.

Working The Stripes Again

Eh.

A base of Zoya Raven, striped with Barielle Enduring, OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, and OPI Glitzerland.

I added too many stripes, and Lucerne... didn't show up as well as I thought it would.  So what could have been cute quickly fizzled into not so cute.  But I worked it out for a day, and resolved to try it again later.

Can You Call Them Indies Anymore?

A-England and Cult Nails, the few that I have of each, have absolutely blown me away each and every time. The formulas are impeccable, the colors/glitters are incredibly well thought out and well placed, and the packaging is adorable.

A-England Saint George is a really gorgeous deep emerald color with a very fine holographic glitter fleck inside.  Incredible depth and so many greens in one green makes this such a stunning shade

Hey there, pretty.

You can see the depth of green in the middle of my middle and ring fingers.  So perfect.

I have a really bad habit of leaving the polishes I've worked with that week on the kitchen counter.

(Stay with me.)

So every time I walk by, I glance down to see what's out, and if something interests me, I'll swab it over whatever color is on my hands.  I spied the round black top of a Cult Nails bottle, and brought up Doppelganger, which I have used before.  It's this great milky shimmery bomb of color that I thought would look just fabulous on top of ol' George.

I was right.

On the thumb nail you can see that Doppelganger doesn't completely remove the trace of your bottom color.
It lingers.

It's one of those "sunlight hits the emerald water just right" kind of looks.

I Got The Blues

I'm really feeling this versatile shade lately.  From super light sky blue, which I won't bust out because it feels unnatural given that it's 30 degrees outside, to inky rich dark blue, which is the star today, blues are rocking my world.

I picked up Essie Midnight Cami on some can't remember it now website months ago when I became obsessed with the fall shade.  By itself, it's this gorgeous, deeply shimmered midnight ink blue.  Just gorgeous and so dark it looks black if you're not in the right light.  I've also been trying to go through my pile of hexes purchased also months ago, and I thought my giant pot of silver holo hexes would be a fitting topper to the blue.

The worst part about working with hex glitter is not getting them on, but getting them to stay put.  The method here was two thin coats of color, one thin coat of quick set topcoat, a super thin coat of non quick dry topcoat to adhere the hexes, and then two coats of Gelous for some building stay power.

Yikes.  My hands just feel heavier typing all of that out.  Time will tell, but I'd love all the glitter to stay in place one 24 hour period.  Or even just through a bout of hyper obsessive hand washing at work tomorrow, with the flu avoiding I've been trying to do lately.

Essie Midnight Cami accented with Silver Holo Hex Glitter

Forgive the alien skin tone - needed a lot of color adjustment on this one to atone for the awful shadow.

Simple and Satisfying

Is anyone finding it difficult to transition out of all the Christmas festivities?  As exhausting as they are every year, I find such a let-down when I'm putting up all the brightly colored lights and holographic tinsel.

Sigh.

I know I'll gripe about it next year, so let's move on.  I was looking for something that would look pretty and not be too much work, so I worked back to an old favorite.

Essie Go Overboard, a gorgeous deep teal creme polish, topped with Essie A Cut Above, which the site lists as pink, but I think of as a copper-y multi sized glitter.

Go Overboard is a really great single coverage shade.  A Cut Above spreads out really well, but I did two coats just to get more coverage, which really popped over the teal.

In an effort to get a few more days out of it, I thought I'd see how it looked with a matte topcoat.  Win!

The matte lightens up the background, and gives the glitter a mirror-like shine.  Flawless.