Last week of manis!

Hi ladies, sorry for falling off the face of the earth! I'm back in my last semester of grad school which is crazy in itself, but my internship decided they'd like to hire me when I'm done, so I'm building up my case load gradually... meaning lots of paperwork and new clients to meet. Also, my fellowship started up at school again so I'm doing that two nights a week. So life has been a bit hectic and I've been doing lots of 10 hour days... yikes! Anyway, here's my manis from the last weekish, although for two whole days, I didn't wear any polish (GASP) - not even a top coat!

First up, Zoya Ki. I liked this color... didn't love it. It's a purple duochrome that flashes olive. I wore it for about a day and felt iffy about it, plus this is tipwear from wearing it literally about an hour, so I took it off pretty quickly. This is two coats:

I splurged at a beauty supply nearby and got myself 4 new Color Clubs. I love them... their formula, their cruelty-free-ness, their price. Everything. From left to right: Alias, Alter Ego, Magic Attraction, and Gossip Column (a color I've been craving for a long time now!)

Last Saturday at work (we're a former nail salon, with lots and lots of polishes to use!) I tried an OPI Dim Sum Plum from their not-too-distant Hong Kong collection. It's actually more purple in person but I couldn't get my camera to capture it. Another one I liked, didn't love. This is two coats plus OPI top coat.

Next, I had a couple days off from my professional life so I knew I could be a little crazy with my polish. Well, more than a little crazy, I suppose. I decided to do straight up Color Club Magic Attraction and the results were incredible. Three coats, not completely opaque but since it's nearly nude anyway you couldn't see VNL very easily, and it's a glitter bomb. But wait, not just any glitter bomb... a HOLO glitter bomb. It was enough to make me wear it two days and well worth the pain of a removal process. 

Finally, Zoya Reece. As you can see, I did a very sloppy clean up job for this picture. My excuse? This polish took FOREVER to dry. And I kept repeatedly smudging it... not just part of it, but the lower layer of polish would completely shift leaving wrinkles. Not okay. So this is about my third time painting them and I was thinking "If I don't take a picture of it looking like this, I'll never take a picture because I'm taking it off!" Hence, terrible application. This is two coats... but if you want to count all the previous coats, this is coat probably 10 and 11. Ugh. I decided to give it a chance and I'm currently wearing it with some Konad... a feat not yet featured on my blog! That's up for next post to see my Valentine's Day mani!

So what do you ladies think? Favorite and least favorite? Issues with polishes not drying and driving you nuts? Valentine's manis or plans?!

xoxo,
Amanda

Claire's Poison Apple, in honor of my mom

Hi ladies, today I have a somewhat somber post as it's dedicated to my mother who passed away 8 years ago today from emphysema. But I don't want it to be depressing, so we're going to focus on the good things and the polish! Okay? Okay!

I picked Claire's Poison Apple out at the store not long ago because I heard it was a MAC Bad Fairy dupe. Since I can't afford MAC, nor do I really want to pay that much for polish, I thought it was worth a try. It was sitting in my unworns bin when I realized I wanted to do a special mani for my mom. Red was her favorite color, and I have a feeling she would have picked this color out herself for me to wear, so here we have it, Claire's Poison Apple:

This polish is a nice, glittery red-orange duochrome that I was at first afraid was a mistake. The first coat went on really yucky, and it came out looking like a sheer, reddish gray mess. But I decided to stick to it because if it looks like that in the bottle, there must be some way to make it look like that on my nail, right? Right! After about 3 coats it looked good, but I decided to do a fourth coat just to even out some bald spots and make sure it was even. I topped it with Seche Vite, and voila!

I hope my mom's happy with my choice, it seemed like a color she would've liked and I like it too. I feel like I need to personally rename it since "Poison Apple" as a name of a polish to remember your mom is a bit off-putting. So I'm renaming it for my own purposes to "Mom's Tulips", because tulip was her favorite flower. Hopefully I did a solid tribute to ya, mom!

What do you ladies think of "Mom's Tulips"? Do you have the MAC Bad Fairy, does it compare?

xoxo,

Amanda

Misa It's Electric & Jesse's Girl Confetti

Hi everyone! Here's my NOTD for yesterday and the day before. I started with two coats of Misa "It's Electric".

The name "It's Electric" is pretty misleading. Don't get me wrong, I love this color - but wouldn't you have expected a florescent, neon blue? I'm glad it wasn't since I'm sure that wouldn't have complimented my skin tone, but still! Anyway... This was one of those polishes that naturally dried to a satiny finish, but I'm still not thrilled about that particular finish. Matte or shiny, there shouldn't be an in-between! So I added Seche Vite for the look above and to force it to go to the shiny side.

(Side note: this was my first time ever using Seche (!!) and I must say, I was totally impressed. I had avoided it for a while as I thought my 99 cent topcoat was working fine, but now I've seen the light! ;) Shiny, dries fast, and the polish stays on FOREVER. Now I understand why everyone complained about glitter taking forever to take off, because mine always just chipped. Those days are behind me now, and I'm not the least bit sad about it!)

I wore the polish with the Seche for about a day but then I started getting bored with it. I decided to add Jesse's Girl Confetti, which was one of my Rite Aid finds. It's kind of a glittery, sheer, duo-chrome that complimented It's Electric perfectly!

In some lights it was purple, others dark blue, others light blue. Overall, very pretty! I'm not crazy about sheer polishes... I get upset because I like the color in the bottle to be the color on my nails, and 15 coats of sheer is not what I intended, nor is layering it over a different color. But this sheer was very pretty especially over this blue. It definitely gave it depth and made it more interesting, so I could wear it another day without being annoyed with my boring polish.

What do you think? Was it better before or after Jesse's Girl?

Next post will be dedicated to a very special man who passed away last evening, and I found out when I was painting my nails, so stay tuned for that (and it's a Tronica!).

xoxo,

Amanda