Turning Green

There goes yet another unproductive weekend. I swear, if I don't start doing stuff I'm actually going to die under the mountain of assignments and topics I'm going to need to cover before midterms.

So here I am with another post.

I have my priorities in order, clearly.

This next manicure I did a week or two ago in an attempt to squeeze out the last seconds of summer in the first days of school. The colour is Icing Little Blue Box, which I'm assuming is supposed to refer to Tiffany, but...this colour is definitely not Tiffany blue. It's more of a blue-leaning aquamarine. It applied nicely enough in two thick coats.

What I did next was inspired by The Polishaholic, Barielle's Do Unto Others and Buddha-ful were 2 colours that I had as lemmings in the past, more or less killed with the Finger Paints Flecked collection (in the case of Buddha-ful), or forgotten.

On top of Little Blue Box, I did 2 coats of Finger Paints Flecked, my favourite green-blue flakie polish. The results were stunning -- I could not take my eyes off my fngers.

HOWEVER, not everything was nice and perfect and ocean-y. I enjoyed the blue hue of the polish and the shifting of the blue and green flakies against it. I went to bed thinking all was ewell with the world.

Something happened with the pigmentation of the polish!

When I took the above picture, I didn't notice that any colour changing had occurred. I noticed as I was leaving for school the following morning, when I realized that my nails were now bright green instead of aqua. The yellow pigment of the polish must have been drawn out by the base of the flakie polish. It looked totally different from before! I wish I would have snapped a picture to show it  to you guys,.

I kept this on for about 2 days. I would have done longer if the colour had remained true to what it looked like upon application. Don't get me wrong: both these polishes are awesome, but maybe they  shouldn't be used together without waiting for proper drying time in between layers.

This colour sure was a beauty, and I can't wait to wear it on its own next time so we can truly appreciate its loveliness. :)

101st Post!

I know that normal people celebrate 100th posts and stuff like that, but let's just say that I'm not normal, and that I totally missed that my last post was my hundredth.

Anyway, the last week has been pretty jam-packed with end of the summer, last minute hang outs and things to do. I've been out every night of the week, including Saturday when I made my most triumphant return to The Ex after fifteen long years:

 



 



The manicure you see in the picture is this one:

 

This was my first attempt at a "jelly sandwich", and I don't think it turned out quite as amazing as I wanted it to be. The contrast in colours and the choice of jelly polish weren't top notch, but I still enjoyed the look of it quite a bit.

I used 2 coats of Finger Paints Pop Rocks, followed by one coat of LA Girl Glitter Addict Explosion followed by one last coat of Pop Rocks.

Not my best piece of work, but it held up fine for my first post nubs manicure. :S

Any suggestions for what jelly sandwich combo I should be trying next?

Essie Smooth Sailing vs. Finger Paints Grape Gumball

So I just spent the entire day watching movies, each movie sharing something in common with the movie that I watched before it. I complained to my friend yesterday that all of my days off were filled with activities and I couldn't wait for the one day off where I would just get to sit at home on the couch like a fat ass and do nothing all day long. 

In keeping with my doing nothing all day, here are some comparison swatches I did awhile back! (Read: I really didn't do anything today)

Essie Smooth Sailing and Finger Paints Grape Gumball are both blue-purple shades with chunky, almost glass-fleck-ish shimmer.

In this light, you really can't tell the difference between the two. I almost didn't buy Grape Gumball because they looked the same to me at first glance.

 The differences are very subtle. Smooth Sailing is a touch more blue than Grape Gumball. They're not exactly the same, but if you have one and you're not obsessed with blurple like I am, you probably don't need both. The formula on both is similar, this is 2 coats each. There's a bald spot visible on my thumb, but that was more due to my application of it rather than the formula itself.

Finger Paints Flecked

Yay! More flakies!

Finally got a chance to use one of my prized Finger Paints Flakies, in Flecked!

So pretty! More pictures:

Blue!

I really have nothing else to say, except that I can't stop looking at my nails and watching the colour shift between bright green, teal, and blue. I layered it over Joe Fresh Hunter, which looks like a dark teal in the bottle, but it dries a lot darker on the nail, I find, so it looks almost black. I tried really hard to capture it in the last picture above. The formula was pretty good, going on in 2 coats (you could try a third if you really wanted, but...). The only thing I would say is that the dinky little white cap it comes with is pretty awkward to use. I kept scraping the nails on the hand I was brushing with against my desk.  I would post the picture of it on its own, but it just looks like black...

Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with myself for putting together this combo for under $10 when just 2 months ago it took all I had in me to resist The Wyndham at $23. :D

Back to work!

Finger Paints Flakies

I relished in my last day of Christmas break by sleeping in today until 10, which is something that I NEVER do. Furthermore, I really did not feel like studying just yet, so I decided to come on here and rattle on a little bit about random happenings and, of course, the new Finger Paints collection!

But first I must express how terribly annoyed I am that I seem to have caught a cold yesterday. Ladies and gentlemen, your mothers were right -- don't go outside in the winter with your hair wet! I called my local Sally's yesterday in hopes that they had the new Finger Paints in and went out on a whim after taking a shower to go and check them out. Of course I regret being so hasty because now I have a stuffy nose, which has recently changed to a runny nose, and I definitely won't gross you out with the details, but by the looks of it, it's not too serious, though bothersome as HELL. Did I mention I am a champ at writing run-on sentences?

Funny story: the lady who works (and I assume is the manager, as she seems to always be there) at Sally's asked me if I was the girl who called last week begging her to release the Finger Paints collection early. I wasn't, but this means that there is another junkie who probably lives nearby...BFFs! Anyway, because I obviously have my priorities straight, I picked up 2 flakies from Sally's yesterday instead of stocking up on some Advil Cold & Sinus to prepare for the inevitable:


 

Twisted (L) over Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme and Flecked (R) over Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue - Sunlight



 

Flecked is a green flakie in a cloudy colourless base that flashes blue in the bottle and thankfully that translates onto the swatch. I think it's a dupe for Nails Inc. The Wyndham, which I almost bought last month at Sephora in the Old Vic set for $23, but luckily Finger Paints came in and saved the day with this $6 look-alike. Twisted is the same base with multicoloured flakies that flash orange, green, blue, purple, and I believe red - a flakie party! I stood in the aisle of Sally's for about 20 minutes trying to decide if I wanted this or its twin, Asylum, but I ultimately decided on Twisted because it looked more densely packed.

I only got two because frankly the other ones did not interest me that much and I like to think that I can exercise some self control. Asylum seemed to be a Twisted wannabe and the other one, whose name escapes me right now, was just your average run-of-the-mill orange-green flakie that's been done to death (Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Nubar 2010, Essie Shine of the Times). As for Motley, which is a green and blurple flakie, I almost had a change of heart once I returned home. I even went as far as googling Sally's return policy, but luckily, these swatches have re-confirmed my love and decision to purchase Flecked instead. Will I go back and get Motley? Maybe...but not likely. I feel like it might be time for a near-permanent no-buy (which will be made quite difficult in the coming weeks -- goddamn Zoya, coming out with gorge colours for Spring 2012!).

So that ends my rant...I really should get back to studying.

-K