OMG.

The rumors are true: I caved to Konad. I Kaved! More to come when I'm a little better at it. I assure you this looks highly janky IRL.


Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge with Konad Special Polish in Black.

Color Update, New Polishes

Hi there, here are a few colors that I've worn recently along with (as ever) my thoughts on the important world issue of nail lacquer.


This polish was perfection, truly perfection. I wanted Greenport for a while, but by the time I decided I wanted it, the North Fork collection was nearly out of circulation. I found Sag Harbor, but still I hunted Greenport high and low -- it was even sold out at my favorite secret squirrel beauty supply store and online. So, as resourceful women do in these situations, I turned to the vast black market of eBay and found it for the retail price (and only slightly used, as I discovered somewhat to my dismay when I received it). I really love the color: A slightly gray, slightly dusty, hint-of-minty green that looks unusual and sophisticated all at once. I got several compliments on this one. The application was great (I used two coats) and I have to say, I am really developing a soft spot for Essie polishes. I don't know if I used one in the past that was problematic or if I just thought Essie was strictly pinks and sheers, but I had an irrational thing against them for some reason. It's true that I don't own one single "traditional" Essie -- all of mine are the oddball colors like Greenport, Sag Harbor, Mesmerize, Chinchilly, etc. Which leads me to say to Essie: Moar fun colors plz!


I was a bit afraid of this one, to be honest. I'd wanted it for a long time and then somewhere along the line developed an intense dislike of China Glaze. Actually I've been sitting on the edge of a big ball of blah regarding China Glaze for some time now and I can be silent no longer.

I have been picked on (albeit gently) on the nail board for defending Butter London polishes -- a brand that is generally disliked on the nail board. But sometimes someone will ask about it and I'll pipe up that I really do like my Butter London polishes. And then I will sort of get prodded for it, which I think sort of sucks. Because here's the thing: I never talk about how crappy I think China Glaze's typical quality is, even when everyone else is raving about it. I just don't think it's all that great, consistently. (That being said I may or may not have ordered a couple recently. I'll put up with a lot of quality issues for a good color.)

Anyway, that's the most recent news -- I'll share my thoughts on my new China Glazes at some point soon, I'm sure.

Another Week Of Nails

This week's theme was Maybellines Past & Present.

Some of my earliest nail polish memories involve Maybelline polishes...polishes I wish I'd kept as they are highly sought after now. You can still find old Maybellines at dollar stores and close-out places and lots of nail polish ladies really love to find them. I think for most of us it's more the nostalgia than anything else. These were some of the first cosmetics I bought with my own money, back in the day when blue glitter nail polish was truly out there.

I have a lot of Maybellines, which, please understand, I acquired recently and all at once for literally pennies each. So I decided to go through a bunch of them at once and see if I could find any favorites.

This is actually an older picture, but it's an old Maybelline so I thought I'd throw it in. I found this at a dollar store and I actually remember having owned this polish previously, maybe in college or right after. Mattes are back again, you know. Fashion is cyclical even in nail polish.

I liked this one a lot even though "sparkly pink" isn't really a go-to look for me.

Very pretty.

This wasn't a favorite, though to be fair I only tried it on without using base coat or top coat. Browns in general don't do a lot for me on the nail, and even though this has a lot of red in it I'm not totally sold on it.

Ding ding ding, winner. This is much more my style and I actually hated to take it off. Shiny? Berry? Creme? Yes please.

I'm having a real moment with sheers and neutrals even though I generally despise French manicures. This color was necessitated by a meeting, but if I'm being honest I was happy to have an excuse to try this one. I also used two coats of Instant Artificials as a base and was really happy with the results...sigh...this is the kind of Nail Polish Crazy that I can't talk about in public. Thank you, Internet, for being my enabler.

Theme Week: Sally Hansen Salon

So, this is one of my favorite brands of widely available drugstore polish and now I hear it's being discontinued? *cries*

Oh well. In celebration of these lovely square glass bottles with their sturdy rubberized caps, I present to you: Sally Hansen Salon Week! What follows are pictures of all the polishes I wore during the week, plus a couple of bonus pics of colors I'd worn previously. What do you think? Do you like this line, are you sad to see it go? Or are you too eager to use the new Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure line to care?

This is from the Tracy Reese collection from Spring 2008. I had to find it on eBay because it pre-dated my most recent love affair with nail polish, but I didn't really pay much more for it than if I had bought it at CVS or Walgreens. I really like this polish, and it looks really sharp with a matte topcoat, too.

From Tracy Reese, Spring 2009.

Also Tracy Reese Spring 2009.

This is the first Salon polish I bought, and I think perhaps they haven't made it in a couple of years? It's my very favorite neutral/sheer polish, although when I pulled it out again last week after not wearing it in a while, it was much more stark and almost mod-looking than I remembered. I really like polishes that are seemingly neutral but still have a fashiony edge to them...OPI Tickle My France-y is another one that's good like that. Essie Chinchilly, too, though that's more pigmented, not a sheer at all.

This is a Canadian exclusive that I only recently got my hands on. They are not sold in the US (yet, anyway...one never knows), but I managed to get four of them through a fellow (Canadian) nail polish buff. I thought Project Runway would be the green version of Arabian Night, but to my surprise it is a deep green jelly with lots of fine gold glitter. Very pretty.

I'll be sad to see these polishes go, but of course, I'm looking forward to trying the new line. I haven't seen it yet around northeast Ohio. What about you? Have you seen it? Going to try it? Or does the price tag put you off?

Mother Lode

Over the weekend I met up with a lovely woman from MUA who offered to go halfs on a nail polish windfall with me. We split up the treasures and I hauled home what must certainly be more than 100 bottles of nail polish, mostly older Maybellines, Sally Hansens, Revlons and L'Oreals. There are some really neat colors, along with some good basics likes reds and nudes, and I've started cataloging them but I'm only through the first 60 or so. It's really a LOT of nail polish.

I expect to gift away some of it in swaps, and of course I know a lot of women who wouldn't be opposed to a fresh bottle of red nail polish, so I'll enjoy playing nail polish Santa for the next several months. Plus, it's always nice to know there's a nail polish ally out there...who understands your "hobby"...

Elsewhere Online

Hey, I wrote a little article about doing your nails at home. You should read it. The kind people at Pocket Change, the shopping blog at Become.com, asked me to put something together and it was a great experience. Enjoy!

Today's Color

This is Sinful Colors, Show Me The Way. The crumbum picture doesn't do much for the color, it's much more glittery than it seems here. I am warming up to this color, it's a little ho-hum after just taking another green off my nails, but that will change when I change it to For Audrey.

This polish went on okay -- three coats shown here -- but it's not as shiny as I'd like and it has the unfortunate effect of looking kind of bumpy (although it is very smooth). Anyway, I'd wear it again.

Where Do We Go From Here

I'm still wearing this god damned OPI Green-wich Village on my nails and I kid you not when I say it still looks exactly like this. Not a chip, nothing. Maybe it's the new top coat? Which I will have you know I got free at Ulta. Anyway, normally this would be a good thing but now it's bumming me out because I usually like to wait for one manicure to give up the ghost before I start the next one. Yeah, first-world probs.

So, for the next one I'm going to use the Sinful Colors Show Me The Way that was selected last time. But I'm going to go ahead and put up a poll because whee, time-wasting! The poll is in the sidebar deal there to your right.

For now I'm linking to these colors because my photos do a crap job of really capturing these colors. I use a fixed focal length lens on my camera and it's hard to get close-up shots with it, plus I am usually too lazy to put the zoom on, so...for the time being, please enjoy the pictures taken by other, more industrious people.

UPDATE: Never mind, the stupid poll widget gadget thingo won't let me include a link (which, really -- GENIUS, Blogger.com), so I'm just including the list here. Sigh. Leave opinions in the comments.

China Glaze, For Audrey
China Glaze, Purple Panic
Milani, Key Lime Shine

Oh, All That Stuff Is Here Now

It occurred to me that maybe some regular readers of my other blog were getting tired of all the nail talk, so I moved all the nail talk to its own place. So, you can ignore it if you want to, but you're here already, so stick around and see how it goes.

Now over the weekend I asked the Internet what color I should put on my nails next, and the Internet was all, "Ooh! Ooh!" and picked the color. And then I went to Ulta and it cast a spell on me and I bought a couple new colors. So I painted my nails Green-wich Village by OPI.



To be fair...the Internet picked green, and this is green, although this is more of a froggy Kermit green rather than a oh-no-you-ripped-off-my-skin-and-now-you-know-I'm-an-alien-lizard green. Which is not to say I'm not excited about wearing that green, I am. I'm just going to do it another time.

Anyway, maybe it's time to do a sort of poll thingie on the sidebar there, we can leave it up for a while and put this matter to the populace. Because it's important? No, no it isn't important. But it might be amusing, sort of.