Nifty Nails

Fingernails, or more precisely, funky polishes and manicures, seem to be all the rage at the moment. I see them everywhere on Pinterest. Most of them are really cool to look at, but not something I would ever actually do, certainly not if I have to do it myself! I don't really even paint my nails that often, but I get on a kick every few months. Plus I'm a little picky about my nail colors (greens and blues don't generally do it for me, or really dark shades of any color). There are even whole blogs devoted to cool manicures. My favorite is Chloe's Nails. Lots of inspiration there!



After seeing so many pretty nails over the weekend on Pinterest, I decided on Monday to paint my nails. I had bought a few bottles of polish several months ago, and I knew there was one I hadn't tried yet: Pure Ice Purple Reign (262CP). In the bottle, it looks like a dusky purple with tiny gold specks in it (not really glitter the way I tend to think of it, but definitely shiny gold; I'm sure there is some sort of official nail polish term for that!). It looked much darker on my nails than I expected, and the gold flecks didn't show up nearly as well as I hoped. It also wasn't very shiny (not matte by any means, but not glossy either), which was disappointing.

Now, I will admit, I had a "duh" moment while poking around on Chloe's nail blog. Other than the "clear with glitter in them" type polishes, it had never occurred to me to layer nail polish colors! That was a complete revelation. All those nail colors that I've thrown out over the years because they were so sheer that even 3 and 4 coats didn't cover as well as I'd like! All I had to do was put them on top of something similar in color that is more opaque to get a truer representation, or use them to alter a different color that has better coverage and make something new. I felt like an idiot! So when I didn't really like the purple as it came out, I went fishing around in my bathroom drawers. I put on a coat of Wet N Wild's Crystalic in Psycho (477B). I don't think the predominantly green, yellow, and orange iridescent colors worked super well with the purple, but it upped the shine quotient and made it better, so I lived with it.



Then this afternoon, the chips were really starting to show, especially on my right hand, so I prepared to start removing it. Just before I did, though, I thought "you know, before you take it off, you might want to play with layering some other polishes." So back to the drawers I went, and I dug out three more that I hadn't been happy with as straight up polishes, just to see what would happen. From left to right, they are: Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Lavender Marquis (57), Wet N Wild Shine in Sparkled (435G), Milani 3D Holographic in Hi-Res (514), and the Wet N Wild's Crystalic in Psycho (477B) that I had already used earlier. Here are the results:



Fingers are in the same order as the bottles above, and remember, each one started out the same, with two coats of the Pure Ice Purple Reign. I'm not loving the first one; need to find a better "under color" for that one. I think the holographic (third one) is great, it's just not what I was in the mood for right now. But the second one, with the pink glitter? I *love* it! I wasn't sure the pink of the glitter would work with the dark purple, but I think the overall effect is awesome. It is much more sparkly than even the picture shows. I can't stop looking at it! I was planning to put on something completely different when I take off the polish later tonight, but I love it so much I may just redo all the nails that way! It is way hard to get a good picture of your own nails, by the way. I don't know how all you ladies do it! LOL

So, that was my fun little polish experiment. (The only reason I can even do this is because nail polish dries *so* much faster than it did when I was a kid.) If I do any other fun or amazing things with polish, I'll let you know, though I don't really expect it to become a "regular" feature on my blog. But if you have any good polish colors or websites to recommend, I'm listening! (And before anyone recommends the Seche Vite top coat, I have a bottle sitting in my Amazon cart, waiting for my next order.)

Currently feeling: girly