Drinking while Polishing: A Cautionary Tale

As a person obsessed with polish and committed to bringing that love to the people, I want to also educate the people so that the bad things that happen to me do not befall you. There are several things one should not do while drinking adult beverages: drive, call ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, and polish one's nails. Last night, while I was not drunk, I had a few vodka and tonics, and rather than just live to fight another day and leave yesterday's perfectly serviceable manicure on, I figured, take it off! Do something else! So I did. I could not bear to share with you a picture of what it looked like before clean-up, so we're just going to pretend everything turned out okay in the end as the photographic evidence proves. But it was bad. Bad like the first time you painted your nails and got more polish off the nail than on bad. Bad. Shiver. Anyway.

Now, I picked the combo when I was still sober, so it's no mistake that I put one of the most difficult to remove glitters, China Glaze Nova, over Color Club Gossip Column. I really did mean to do that, though I know I will pay when it comes time to remove it tomorrow. But I just couldn't resist. I had a horrible week, and I needed glitter. Big, loud, holographic glitter.

As I mentioned yesterday, I love Color Club with a deep passion, and Gossip Column is no exception. It is a lovely creme, opaque in two coats (but I had vodka, so I did three against my normally better judgment), that, when you are not blurry-eyed with drink, applies so smoothly and evenly that it makes you want to cry. This picture is actually with flash which shows better than natural light pics how sort of dark and stormy of a teal it is. I have a matte MAC eyeshadow this color, and it's really one of my favorite kinds of shades. Vibrant without being bright, bold without being loud. And Nova? Well, what can I say. It's a dense as all heck, silver holographic glitter, hexagonally (is that a word? It is now.) shaped, and a real pisser to get off. Oh well. Thankfully tomorrow is Saturday, so I can spend all day wrapped in acetone. Even with the China Glaze glitter, which I find dries very slowly in general, this was perfectly dry in 30 minutes after a good coat of Poshe.

So, yes, kids, be careful, and do not mix polish with vodka. Because you will have to get up early the next day to painstakingly remove the excess from your fingers. And you will still be secretly picking it off your cuticles by lunchtime. Until next time, Polish to the People!

Lindsay Lohan Jail Nails Inspired Nail Art!

The nail polish obsessed world has been abuzz the last several days following Lindsay Lohan's sentencing. She was sporting a very interesting manicure that garnered additional attention because one nail advertised a subtle yet profane message to the court. Of course, we all wanted to do our own interpretations, sans message. You can see a pic of the manicure here.

Obviously, my version is only inspired by Lindsay's (mine is far more pastel), which we believe was airbrushed, and also inspired by the interpretations of other lovely ladies on the Makeupalley Nail Board. This required a shocking 10 coats of polish, but hey, such are the things we do for polish! Here is a pic of the tools, in order of application from left to right:

After basecoat, I applied three coats of Essie Ballet Slippers. I could have gotten away with two given how much went over it, but this polish is so streaky, I had to go the extra mile. After that, I randomly brushed splotches of OPI Do You Lilac It?, Orly Lemonade, Funky Fingers Daiquiri on Deck, and China Glaze For Audrey. I would have been much closer to my inspiration had I used a sponge instead of the brush, but, well, I wasn't that dedicated! Then, to soften the lines, I applied two coats of Essie Tennis Corset (what the heck is a tennis corset, anyway? Wouldn't wearing a corset while playing tennis be horribly uncomfortable?). Finally, I added a little Konad with Konad white Special Polish to get something like the pattern on Lindsay's. Here is the final product:

I haven't had a chance to clean it up completely yet, so that crap around the cuticles is polish, not nasty skin. Sorry about that. Anyway, I rather like it, to tell you the truth. Hopefully it won't turn me into a crazy person. I am, of course, holding the Mean Girls DVD. I actually show this movie almost every year in the university sociology class I teach because it is filled with sociological themes, but I am holding it here to remind us of the sweet girl Lindsay used to be. What a shame.

And that's all for today, folks! I expect my next post, either tomorrow or Monday, will be one of the polishes from the Nordstrom exclusive Deborah Lippmann collection, All That Jazz. Because I just got the set and it is all glitters, and I am a glitter h00r. Polish to the People!

July 4th Mani

I know, I've been MIA and I never posted that neutral mani I promised. I just couldn't. It was.... unsightly. Then I got an airport mani on my way home from the trip that required the neutral mani because I couldn't handle the sheer polish anymore, and that wasn't really worthy of posting either. So I decided to come back with a bang!

American Independence Day is one of those great holidays that just beg you to come up with some obnoxious, over-the-top manicure with glitter and nail art. Other such holidays are Christmas, Halloween, and the first day of football season.

As such, there's a lot going on with my July 4th mani. It's got an accent finger, it's got Bundle Monster, and it's got glitter. It's also a combination of easy to find, not so easy to find, and hard to find polishes, because if I don't show you something it's almost impossible to get, how will you know to look up to me?

Okay, on to the manicure. For this monstrosity, for the majority of my fingers, I used a white base, OPI's The Ghostess with the Mostess, the glow in the dark treat from OPI's 2008 Halloween line. As a consumer, you could only get a mini of this, and only nail professionals got a complimentary full-sized bottle, so if you could find a nail professional with loose morals, you could get a regular bottle of this. Which I did. So, as you can imagine, it's very difficult to get now, but honestly the only reason I used it is that it was the only white I have. Yes, that's right: I, crazy nail polish maniac, have no white polish. Like other whites, it is streaky and somewhat difficult to work with, but it does glow in the dark (pretty well, actually), and it served its purpose.

Over the white is Untold by Illamasqua, which I bought this week when I had the chance to go to one of the few Sephoras in the US who carry it. I was always attracted to this primary red glitter when lusting after Illamasqua, and now it is mine! This is one coat, so if you wanted this to be opaque, you'd probably be looking at three coats or so. Like all Illamasquas, this was perfection.

For the ring fingers, I pulled out an old stand by, China Glaze Frostbite. It's a nice shimmery, bright, primary blue, and it actually applies and dries pretty well. I have a very hard time wearing China Glaze because of application, drying, and wear issues, but this one isn't actually too bad. The ring fingers also feature a Bundle Monster pattern in Konad white Special Polish.

Pretty festive, eh? Freedom and Polish to the People!