I Less-Than-Three You

When people stop to ask me what colour I'm wearing, you can bet that I'll always have the answer on hand. Which is probably why I expect nothing less of others when I see them wearing a particularly interesting polish. So when a girl walked into the pharmacy wearing an electric blue metallic number, I needed to know.

**number of digits not 100% accurate

Me: That's a nice colour you've got on your nails.
Girl: Oh thanks!
Me: ...so, what is it called?
Girl: Um...I don't know.
Me: ...
(awkward pause)
Me: Have you used this medication before?

Okay, so the exchange may not have happened exactly like that. Maybe. But nevertheless, it sent me into a frenzy, as usual. I needed to know. (It's not completely lost on me how crazy I must sound.) Lucky for me, I am a master googler (google-er?) with a photographic memory specific for nail polish.

I narrowed it down to China Glaze Frostbite, a bright, almost electric blue shimmer. I wanted to use the word "frost", but I don't think this polish is quite the right texture to be calling it that. I associate "frosts" with nightmarish brush strokes, and that didn't happen with this. This is 2 coats -- it applied flawlessly.

The index finger is 2 coats of Sally Hansen White On with a heart drawn in with OPI Danke Shiny Red. Funny thing was, I put in the heart nail because I meant to do what I thought was an Asian peace sign showing off this nail in my funny grad photo, but right before somebody informed me that doing the peace sign with the back of my hand facing outward is actually some sort of offensive gesture, so I quickly decided against it. In the end, the most you see of the heart is the top of it peeking out from under the fake diploma they made me pose with. 

Frostbite is definitely one of my favourite blue polishes in my collection, and I've worn it a couple of times since getting my hands on it last fall. I love it when polishes that I have come with a great story attached to how I got it or when I wore it, and Frostbite is definitely no exception.

An Ode to St. George

On the first day of Frosh Week, back in '08, my rather inattentive (looking back) leader informed us that we should specify on our resumés that we attended U of T St. George, which was obviously far more impressive than any other University of Toronto campus.

I won't say that I disagree with her comment, but I am pretty biased of course. I had a pretty tough time that year, so when I came out on the other side I made sure that everybody knew it. Actually, If we're being completely honest here, I will admit that when she said that to us, I didn't actually have a resumé. Oops. 

(This is a no judgment zone. I was seventeen.)

Anyway, when A-England first appeared on my nail polish radar, I had some pretty strong lemmings for their holographic shades. However, since they were only available from e-tailers that charged a hefty sum for shipping to Canada, I stayed away. But when Nail Polish Canada started carrying A-England, I knew the time was right. And if you know anything about me, you know that I am a fiend for teal. 

I ordered A-England Saint George a few months ago, but it had been sitting in my drawer for awhile, waiting for the right occasion. In my books, any occasion is the right occasion for teal and holo, but with my impending graduation, the beginning of June seemed like the right time.

Saint George is a deep teal shade with a scattered holographic effect. The picture above shows it to be a little more blue than it is in real life. 

The holographic effect is really subtle. I usually don't go for scattered holos that much, especially if they are priced similarly to an A-England polish, but I really enjoyed this one. I ended up wearing it for only 3 days because I felt like the colour was way too dark for me to be wearing during the summertime, but I did love it. The formula was also fantastic -- I could have probably gotten away with a single coat, but I did 2 to make sure everything was level. I will say that the topcoat seemed to diminish the holo effect a tiny bit, as topcoats usually do, but since the holo wasn't that in your face to begin with, you can't really tell the difference.

I love it, I love it, I love it! 

A-England polishes go for $13.50 on nailpolishcanada.com, but shipping is free for orders over $25!

Celebrate

I will confess that I googled "prom nails" a week before I did this manicure, and I watched a prom nails tutorial on cutepolish's channel which may or may not have influenced the outcome.

PROM NAILS. For my "adult prom", as I had described it to my co-workers.(Prom as an adult, get your mind out of the gutter, there's hardly enough room in there for mine.)  Prom, as in that dance that people have when they graduate, which is what I just did.

I needed it to go with my dress, and I needed sparkle. Oh, and it had to be lazy-proof.

I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Grey Area as a base. My dress had a purple-toned silver bottom with a pearly off-white bust. I know that my description doesn't help much, but trust me, this worked. For the sparkle, I used Hard Candy Celebrate Sequins, a clear base packed with tiny holographic round glitters mixed in with larger hex and square holographic glitters. I wanted to get a glitter gradient effect, so I dabbed the glitter on the lowest quarter of my nail nearest the cuticle. After that, I went in for additional coats going higher up the nail, making sure to scrape off the larger glitters on the lip of the bottle.

This was a fun look for me to wear, especially with the holo glitters reflecting the lights on the dance floor!

And of course, the dancing was fun too. :P

A New Beginning

Remember that time when I said I would be posting more?

Okay. So I lied.

But it's for real this time. (Hopefully).

After my last post, I threw myself into studying. And then when it was all over, I figured out that I really enjoyed doing absolutely nothing. Including writing up things for this blog. But now I'm back (again), and I thought it would be fitting for me to open up this "new beginning" with the nails that I had while I was celebrating the end: my graduation from university!

I had gone back and forth in my mind over what exactly I wanted to do with my nails on that day for months. Yes, months. My original plan was to painstakingly paint on the initials of the people without whom I couldn't have survived the last four years. To up the sap factor, I was going to pick out the letters "LOVE" and paint them in a different colour.

I don't know what it was that ultimately changed my mind. Perhaps I didn't actually have enough friends to fill up my nail space. Or maybe I was afraid of missing people. It could have been that I actually do not know anyone who has "O" as an initial -- or if I do, I really don't care about them all that much (LOL, for real, I don't even know). I'm lazy, and that is probably the most likely explanation.

I ended up going with a simple french tip, mostly because I had put off doing my nails until the last second, and also because I figured I would also regret seeing something like neon leopard print in photos 20 years from now.

I started off with 2 coats of Wet 'n' Wild Sugar Coat. For the tips, I used 2 coats of Storm by Zoya, and then I lined them with a silver polish (a really ancient one in my collection whose label has rubbed off) using a striping brush. On my ring finger, I used a dotting tool to create a tiny heart with China Glaze Snap My Dragon from the 2013 Avant Garden collection. Finally, I used my smallest dotting tool to etch on the year of my graduation next to the heart. LOVE!

Sugar Coat is a little bit of a streaky nightmare. Looking back, I probably should have chosen a better base polish -- every other time that I've worn Sugar Coat, I've needed at least 3-4 coats to level it out, and when you're doing other designs on top, it's really not an ideal situation. Zoya Storm was opaque enough in 2 coats, but it would have probably benefited from a third...

All in all, I was pleased with how this all turned out. It had just the right amount of sparkle: classy, yet with that something extra.

Overall, I'm pleased with how everything has turned out, really. Today actually marks 5 years to the day that I graduated from high school, and I can't believe how fast the time has gone by. I'm in a period of my life right now that feels like a transition phase and it's really given me a lot of time to not only reflect on the past but also think about the future. I had a lot of regrets coming out of my first year at university, and I feel like I've spent the last four making sure that I would leave this place with very few. And I think for the most part, I've done that.

This is a really exciting time for me, and I hope that this comes through in my posts from this point forward. I've only got about 9 weeks or so left before I have to enter the real world as a full-fledged adult, so I hope to entertain you all with some pretty wild colours and nail art while I can. :)