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.

Nail Art Is the Best Medicine

This specific attempt at something resembling nail art has been cooking in my head for awhile, ever since a coworker at the pharmacy mentioned that it would be awesome to have a nail polish that was the same colour as the capsules she was currently counting out. Sometimes I think my friends support me and my addiction too much. BUT THANKS GUYS, I LOVE YOU ALL!

Considering that I spend most of my time in the summer working around prescription drugs, and most of my time during the school year [pretending like I'm] learning about prescription drugs, it was only a matter of time until this found its way into my nail obsession.

It's an idea I've had for a VERY long time, but I wanted to wait until my nails were the right length/shape for them to resemble capsules. I did these by painting on 1 to 2 coats of the lighter or least opaque colour of the capsule on each nail, and then painting on the second colour on the other half. I was going to use scotch tape to guide painting on the other half, but I was much too impatient for  that and ended up free-handing them. The numbers were put on using a toothpick.

I also had a ridiculously hard time deciding which capsules should be represented. I wanted to have those which were common enough to recognize, but also something unique enough that one who knew what these were would be able to distinguish it as such. A few of them could be a number of things...but I tried.

I'll let you guess. Don't scroll down just yet...here are some lolcats to entertain you while you scroll.

Here they are, if you were actually attempting to guess instead of attempting to care. :P

Colours used:

• Orly Mint Mojito
• Zoya Cho
• Joe Fresh Crush
• Orly Wild Wisteria
• Color Club Almost Famous
• Wet n Wild Black Creme
• Wet n Wild Through the Grapevine 

Colours used:

• Orly Mint Mojito
• Sally Hansen Wet Cement
• Wet 'n' Wild Candy-licious
• Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme
• Color Club Almost Famous
• Sally Hansen Cherry Red
• Sally Hansen White On
• Zoya Breezi

Now, I'll be completely honest. As much as I enjoyed this manicure, I only wore it for about 2 hours before I decided that having all these colours together in one manicure was just...ugly. It was a novel idea and something that has been on my mind for awhile, so I was glad that I did it no matter how brief  the wear time was. :)

Flashback: Prozac

The delay between posts can totally be blamed on Daylight Savings Time. I'm all for having long summer days and all, but the time change was such a bitch this time. In case you were wondering, we lost. And now I'm back to my normal hating U of T (though secretly harboring a glimmer of may be school pride, or, heartburn).

As part of my green series, I am posting a manicure that I did in the summer, prior to writing the Jurisprudence exam. This is Orly - Mint Mojito.

No, my hand is not really that yellow. I very unskillfully altered the colour of this picture to reflect more closely what colour this polish is. The formula was a little thin, so this is three coats to acceptable opacity.

The story of how I acquired this colour is such a saga, which began with my very first post on this blog. I mentioned that I had completed my quest to find a colour that matched the green half of a Prozac capsule. This was all due to one of my lovely co-workers musing that it would be nice to have a nail polish colour like that, fully aware of the extent of my craziness, knowing that her very statement would send me into a frenzied hunt...

The hunt led me to the internet, of course, where I stumbled upon swatches of this Orly beauty after failing hard with Four Leaf Clover and almost getting there with Mermaid's Tears. Sadness overcame me when I realized that I had never seen Orly being sold anywhere and would likely never see the chance to swatch Mint Mojito. I forgot about it for the next few weeks.

Enter Sally Beauty Supply. The first time I walked through the door, I bubbled with excitement when I saw the rack of Orly polishes. It was meant to be! I asked the lady there if she knew if there were any bottles of my much coveted Mint Mojito from the Summer 2009 collection in stock. Of course, she scoffed at me and said no...as a nail polish noob at the time, I did not understand the concept of "collections" and other "polish fiends". In desperation, I turned to e-Bay.

That's right. Mint Mojito was my very first online purchase, and I do not for a second regret it. Green is my absolute favourite colour. You can never have too many green polishes! 







Smells Like School Spirit

Now, I am willing to bet a moderate-sized amount of money that if you were to ask 10 students who trudged down St. George St. on any given weekday morning if they loved (and the word is loved) U of T, at least 8 of them would hesitate, kick the toe of their shoe against one of the various potholes in the sidewalk/crosswalk/you name it, and give you a very half-hearted, "I guess..." (emphasis on the ellipsis).

I would also be willing to bet a significant amount of money that if you asked 10 students inside a certain glass building on the corner of University Ave. and College St. if they loved U of T, 11 of them would tell you a flat out "NO", and then go on to talk about how much they loved wherever it was that they came from. (Unless, of course, you went to U of T before, in which case you never knew what you were missing and instead you moan about how difficult your life has been up to this point, the robots you interacted with in your x number of years in undergrad, yadda yadda yadda.)

There are a number of inexplicable reasons for the results of the first thought experiment, and a truckload of perfectly good and solid reasons why the hypothesis of the second experiment is true -- in fact, it's not even a thought experiment anymore...it's 110% tested and true.

But, this reverses once each year in March, when every man, woman, and child-like individual in said glass building (or, at least the ones who have a pulse and actually have a social life) suddenly gets their school spirit on and believes for just a few hours that they are #1. (Not second rate, like the stuff they've been learning over the last few years has caused them to feel.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, today is the OPA Cup.

This is me and my friend, Susan, who I am going to blog about on another day, since I have managed to turn her over to the dark (nail polish) side. I would post another picture that conveys that the OPA cup is indeed a hockey game, between U of T and Waterloo, but all the ones that I have either don't have me in it (since I took them all), or involve shirtless men who may or may not approve of me posting the pictures up here. :P

In preparation, I did a manicure, of course:

Left hand, with flash

Left Hand, no flash

Right Hand, no flash

This actually is my first manicure using my Konad kit. The stars are from the M3 plate, using Konad Special White Polish on top of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Red. The ring fingers are painted with a base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Thinking of Blue, and the Blues logo is painted on with acrylic paints. I felt as though Konad was a lot easier than I thought it would be, but then again I wasn't taking care to align any designs perfectly, and I messed up my right middle finger, so it's hard to tell. Additionally, acrylic paints are the best!! You can make a mistake and it just washes off. Sally Hansen Nail Art pens do the same, but they are less flexible in terms of design, and they also go for $5 each, so...

Also, is anyone else impressed by how I can seemingly draw maple leaves better with my left hand than with my right?

So, I guess that's all for now. Come tomorrow night at this time, I'll be back to my hating on U of T self, so I'd better enjoy it while it lasts. I know that last year Waterloo thrashed us like they're probably going to do to us in the future with their knowledge and general preparedness for LIFE, but...here's to hoping. Go U of T! :D

17 days down, 23 to go!

Number One

Hi!

I haven't written a blog since high school, so right now I feel pretty lame, recalling all the dumb things I used to put up on my blog -- codenames and anecdotes about high school life that I thought only my close friends and I read. Clearly I was misinformed (or just super naive) about how public the internet really is. But anyway, here it goes.

I started this blog mainly because I thought about the multitude of my facebook friends that might be getting annoyed by my posting blog-like captions to my nail pictures. So I'm going to post them here instead and maybe provide a link? I haven't really thought this one through enough, except for the fact that I LOVE painting my nails and thought maybe somebody other than myself would get a kick out of it, too. :)

Or, whatever. You don't have to read on. I'll just keep this blog for purposes of polish posterity.

This is the manicure I'm currently rocking, OPI Mermaid's Tears with tips done in Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On. The left side is with Joe fresh's matte topcoat -- a heck of a lot cheaper than the other matte topcoats, and I think it still does the job. On the right may or may not have a normal topcoat, I can't remember. I did it just before I left for work and a couple drops of Sephora Dry Drops (miracle product, btw) seemed to do the trick. I'm going to say no topcoat, since the white tips seem to be rubbing off from peeling off price stickers at work. It's been three days so far, and only minimal chipping since I've washed the dishes quite a bit. YAY!

I LOVE this colour. I've actually been on a little bit of a crazy hunt for a number of different colours, the first being China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le and the latest being Orly Mint Mojito (swatches to come!). Mermaid's Tears was actually one of those colours that I passed over the first (and second, and third, and fourth) time in the store because I didn't think it was unique enough. I was actually on a wild goose chase for a colour that resembled the green half of the Apo-Fluoxetine 20mg capsule, thanks to a lovely co-worker of mine commenting that she wouldn't mind having that colour on her nails -- I'm not a junkie, if you're wondering, just a pharmacy student. :P

 My wallet's been taking quite a hit recently, so I might have to enforce a "no buy" for awhile. I've been working 9 days straight, though, so once my paycheque comes in, there are no guarantees.