Creamsicle

This week's mani is 10 Creamsicle. The brand here is "10" and the name of the actual polish is "Creamsicle." I've never heard of the 10 brand, but apparently my friend got this bottle from a CVS discount bin. Alright then. So, Creamsicle is a sheer peachy pink jelly. The formula was easy to use but slightly watery, and required a full 4 coats for decent opacity. I even used a fifth coat on some fingers; oh the horror!  The good part was that each coat tried super fast, enough that I could touch the nail without smudging after a couple minutes. The result is the soft, juicy-looking color you see here. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of this. The color sort of blends into my skin, yet it's not a nude...overall just bleh. I think Creamsicle would work on people who are either paler or darker than me so there's more contrast.

Essie Turquoise & Caicos

This week I wanted to go bright and happy. I decided to go with the popular Essie Turquoise & Caicos, a  gorgeous turquoise creme. The formula was slightly watery, streaky, and sheer but I managed to get it to look nice in 3 thin coats. Unfortunately, Turquoise & Caicos dried abnormally slowly (even though the formula is thin??) so I messed up a couple nails enough to redo them. And that almost never happens. Oh well. The color is so darn pretty that I can forgive the formula. At least it's not as bad as Mint Candy Apple.

I had to redo another 3 nails on my right hand because I accidentally got nail polish remover on them. Why? So I got gum stuck on the bottom of my shower shoes, and it was not coming off at all. Using my organic chemistry knowledge, I postulated that since gum was basically a plastic, and acetone is an organic solvent that dissolves plastics (such as nail polish), acetone should be able to help get the gum off my shoe. AND IT WORKED! But I had to sacrifice a few nails in the process. I'm such a nerd lol.

I felt like doing something more fancy this week, too, since two of my suitemates had special manis on. One has a pastel skittle manicure, the other one a pastel-ish skittlette manicure. I decided to use the striping tape again and came up with this stripe design. All I did was lay down 4 pieces of striping tape vertically and spaced apart about 2 mm, then paint a single coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White (a basic stark white creme), and finally take off the striping tape when the white was still wet. Friends have told me it reminds them of peppermint candy. I think it looks like a retro wallpaper. Bottom line is that it's adorable, even better in person.

Not Like the Movies

This week, I have on OPI Not Like the Movies, which is a purple-blue/green duochrome with little bits of silver glitter. Not Like the Movies is from OPI's Katy Perry collection from a couple years ago. Formula was pretty good, but a little sheer. It took 3 coats for full opacity and a good amount of duochrome-ness. Let me say that I cannot stop staring at this. The purple and green flashes are nice and strong, and the glitter bits put this color over the top. I even got a comment on my nails from a prof lololol.

Dat blue-green color shift

Yay!

This is what it looked like under overcast sky.

Thanks to my suitemate who let me use her bottle! (Yep, this isn't mine, but I wish it were.)

Blocks of Blue

In order to comfort myself about the severe lack of spring weather, I decided to do a bright(ish) and fun mani!  I spotted some manis with color-blocking the last couple weeks, so I decided to do a skittlette with that :) I stuck with shades of blue, because that gave me the largest amount of nail polishes to choose from xD After sneaking two Essie's from my roomie, I ended up using the following shades: Essie's Go Overboard, a gorgeous dark teal-blue cream (bottle pic is most representative); Essie's Turquoise & Caicos; and Sinful Color's Aquamarine, which remains true to its name.  As for Turquoise & Caicos, the color for me was more of a sea-foam green, rather than the turquoise many other bloggers describe it as.  I don't know if it's just this bottle, but it definitely was not the famous Tiffany blue shade.  It worked quite well for this mani though!

Go Overboard (left), Turquoise & Caicos (center), Aquamarine (right)
best representative pic for Go Overboard

I started out with one coat of Aquamarine on my thumb and index fingers, two coats of Turquoise & Caicos on my middle and ring finger, and one coat of Go Overboard on my pinky.  I decided to sleep on these, to ensure that the polish was completely dry before starting to tape off areas. 

best representative pic for Aquamarine and Turquoise & Caicos :)

After waking up, I began color blocking!  I started out with tape on alternating sides of the two nails, and painted it the respective colors of the nail next to it.  I wanted to keep the full blocks of Turquoise & Caicos next to each other, to give a softer transition... if you know what I'm getting at >.< Slightly confusing, but I'm sure you know what I mean haha :) 

my tips are getting better! i think? haha

Then, I headed off to class!  Boring, I know, but as before, I wanted to give the nails a good amount of time to dry.  I came back and blocked off the final section (upper corner of the nail).  Looking back on it, it seems that my taping was a little crooked... well, practice makes perfect I suppose :) 

I decided to switch up the solid colors between my left and right hand, so each color got an equal 3 nails haha xD It made sense in my head... I suppose there wasn't a legitimate reason for doing so? I like it though, it keeps up with the funkiness! 

final effect!

I didn't include any pictures in sunlight/shade/all that... the colors all looked essentially the same to me, so figured there wasn't really a need to.  I'll leave it off at that then, I need to stare at my nails some more!! xD

Fiery Red

This week's nails aren't my favorite. I honestly couldn't pick what to wear, so I ended up using a mystery red OPI mini that I got for free when I bought Orly Snowcone. OPI minis unfortunately do not have labels, and since this looks like every other shimmery red on earth, I have zero idea what the name of the actual polish is. The formula was good; it took only 2 thin coats for full opacity. However, it looked extremely boring by itself so I tried to jazz it up with Essie Shine of the Times, an iridescent flaky top coat.

Bottle shots

The end result is an interesting scale-like effect. It seems almost reptilian to me, like dragon scales or something magical.

"Firsts"

Hello all! This post marks a couple of "firsts" for me - first blog post, OPI nail polish, first attempt to take good pictures of my nails xD. My addiction to nail polish began in college, when I finally had the chance to sit down and grow my nails out to a decent length.  Playing violin in high school meant that my nails had to remain at a short length, and I never found that length "elegant" enough for nail polish - but that changed in college! I started to buy drugstore brands, accumulating colors quickly.  But that wasn't enough, plain colors get tiring after a while. That's when I discovered nail art - striping tape, dotting tools, all that fun jazz!  Now all my "splurge" moments are buying nice brands of nail polish (that sounds sadder that it actually is!) and I have a decent sized collection.  

Before I get to the good stuff, I just have to warn you - all the pictures below are from my crappy phone cam, as I left my good camera at home... but it does a decent job of it!

In this mani, I debut my first OPI polishes ever - I Saw...U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw of the Euro Centrale collection and Which is Witch? from the Wizard of Oz collection.  I was instantly hooked when I saw swatches of these, and decided they were worthy of the price. 

I Saw.. U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw (left) and Which is Witch? (right)

I received these in the mail last Monday, and immediately removed my nail polish to put these on. Originally, I only had I Saw...U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw on my nails, but after a couple of days, I couldn't resist and put Which is Witch? on the tips!  I Saw...U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw is a gorgeous dark midnight blue, it only took one coat for opacity!  I loved it by itself as well, but I couldn't resist trying out my the other bottle xD Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of I Saw...U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw by itself, but the bottle shot does the color justice.

Direct Sunlight - the reflection from the glitter was too bright for my eyes haha

I decided to stick with applying Which is Witch? to just the tips, as it's a little too intense for full coverage. I dabbed on one coat!  As other reviews have said, it has a super pretty combo of silver microglitter, regular sized hex glitter, and tiny bar glitters.  I did notice that I didn't get very many regular glitters on, but I'm thinking that was due to bad application on my part - there are tons in the bottle.

Shade

If all OPI polishes are this nice, I may have to invest in more xD  I already have a list going, we'll see if I can resist for much longer.. 

Under my desk light, after a week of wear - see those scratches? >.<

Unfortunately, my nail shapes are a little bad >.< I usually go for square or squoval tips, but I've decided to master the round tips! So you'll have to bear with uneven tips for a while ;)  

Below are some of my old mani's, couldn't resist showing these also!  I'm just the teensiest bit narcissistic haha :)  Ideally, I should have blogged about them, but it's been a hectic semester!  Almost to the end though - I will survive! I think xD

Smokey Chic-ness

This week's mani is Ulta Smoke Screen. I got it as part of some Ulta sale that was buy 2 things for $4. Smoke Screen is a nice dark grayish purple (grurple?) creme. Formula was thin but very nice to work with, and took only 2 coats for full opacity. Maybe I could have used another coat, though, because the nail color looks a lot darker than the bottle color (in real life at least). Oops. The pics here are making it look really blue for some reason. Well...there is some blue in there but not thaaaat much...and ugh. Hard to explain.

Today, since my nails are growing out pretty fast and the mani doesn't look perfect anymore, I decided to experiment with French tips. Vivs sent me a bunch of striping tape that I haven't had a chance to use, so why not now? It worked like a dream. I applied some tape near the tips of my nails, leaving about a 2 mm space for the tip color. Then I painted on a single layer of China Glaze Midnight Kiss (a typical gold foil polish), being careful not to go over the striping tape. While Midnight Kiss was still wet, I took the tape off and voila! Perfect gold French tips. I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS. It looks unbelievably good and spiced up my old mani like a thousand times.

IT LOOKS EVEN BETTER IN REAL LIFE