Don’t Be a Makeup Chicken

Hrmn, I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s Metro Chic (a fabulous drab from Sephora by OPI) with Liquid Vinyl from Orly.

It’s good to try new things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t - but you won’t ever know unless you, you know, TRY. *grin* Nail polish remover is a beautiful tool.

Zomg, it’s like Zoya saw me procrastinating, saw me sighing with half-relief that the end-date for the original polish exchange had ended! Because they have extended it.

If you didn’t catch it the first time around, Zoya nail polish has an exchange program - for every bottle of old, crusty, unloved polish that you send them they will send you a beautiful new lovely bottle of Zoya polish for free.

Well, they say free - but there is still a processing fee, which is $3 per bottle. Still, for Zoya, that’s a good deal. Which is why my little cache of unfortunate shades is going to wind up being packed off to them good and proper.

Just as soon as I finalize what shades to trade for….

Check out the Zoya Polish Exchange - and tell me what colors you’re swapping for. I could use the ideas. *grin*

So, I read about this manicure on my friend Phyrra’s blog Decorative Diva. She linked to Nail Juice’s tutorial, which I followed.

This is one of my favorite parts of how blogs work. Spread the love, and the nail polish. At least in this instance.

It didn’t take long. I used China Glaze’s Bermuda Breakaway (that color is getting a lot of screen time in my world right now) for the tips and Sinful Color’s Daddy’s Girl (a sheer but buildable purple microglitter) for the layering of color.

It’s far from perfect, obviously. But that’s okay because this is the first time I’ve tried this. It looks totally passable in person - in fact, this might be one of those things that you just cannot capture adequately in a photograph.

Maybe I need a paler sheer….

How ’bout that unplanned hiatus, huh?! Sorry about that, y’all. I think we  all got so keyed up about the election that makeup, for once, took a back seat to all sorts of other things.

To get back in the swing of things, I thought I’d share my manicure routine. I paint my nails, at this point, every three or four days. Not necessarily because of chips or flaws in the polish, but because I really enjoy the process. It gives me a little time in which I HAVE to sit still and concentrate on myself, which is always a good thing.

It’s actually been a bit longer this time around so my nails are showing a lot of wear.

Chipped nails, oh noes!

That’s China Glaze’s Shower Together, a fantastic blue-green color that reminds me of pool water in the movies. Though, I suppose, if pool water were really that color, we’d be in trouble. More like, the tiles that are used in a lot of underground pools. Good times.
My nails always wear at the edges where my nail meets the edge of my finger. This is a problem, and not just because my manicure starts to look ratty. My nails are pretty strong but they tend to peel and if I have exposed nail like that, that’s where the peeling starts. And that, you know, pretty much sucks.

So, what should you use to remove your nail polish? You’ll find tons of different answers. I use this:

Just the basics!

This is generic brand nail polish remover. Sometimes I use the stuff with acetone, sometimes the stuff without. What works best for you is going to depend entirely on what kind of nails you have - nature or acrylic, dry or brittle, whatever. I don’t find that it makes a huge difference for me. And while some people use pieces of felt (ESPECIALLY with glittery polishes), I am happy with plain old cotton balls.

These are my clean, natural nails:

Clean and naked!

Can you see how my nails are slightly yellow? That’s because sometimes, when I’m in a hurry, I don’t use base coat. Nail polish will leave your nails yellowed if you don’t have something between your nail and the layers of color. The yellowing doesn’t bug me - I’ve generally got nail polish on so you can’t even tell. *grin* It’s also something you can buff off, by removing a thin layer of nail, but that thins your nails and weakens them.

You can also see that my nails have some ridges. That’s okay. It’s perfectly natural and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. You can use ridge filler but I haven’t found any need for it.

Before I do anything else, I use an orange stick to push back my cuticles. This should not hurt. If you’re at the salon and it hurts, they’re being too rough. Tell them about it. At home, I like to wrap the tip of my orange stick with a little bit of cotton from a cotton ball. That helps blunt it a little bit.

And then I use this:

Magic hydrating treatment of magicalness.

OPI is a moderately high-end nail polish brand. It is very commonly found in nail salons. Sephora is a super fantastic makeup store that carries tons of different brands. They teamed up and came up with Sephora by OPI, a line of nail treatments and awesome colors. I haven’t tried any of the colors, but I love the Hydrator. It was actually a mistaken purchase - I ran in and grabbed what I thought was a very light grey creme. It does go on clear, though.

My favorite base and top coat are both by Seche. Seche Clear and Seche Vite:

Seche Clear and Seche Vite - the best base and top coats ever.

So, you’ve cleaned your nails and you’ve applied a treatment (or not) and then a base coat. Your nails are prepped for color! You HAVE chosen your colors ahead of time, right?

Yeah, I said colors:

Pink and black for punk rock fun.

I chose to go with TWO colors. China Glaze Liquid Leather (the black) and Rose Among Thorns (the neon pink). I’ve been having a lot of fun doing more frivolous manicures lately and black is a good color to incorporate into multi-color manis.

Okay, so, here’s the deal. You put on your base coat and, before it is totally dry, you need to apply your first coat of color. Don’t freak out about making it perfect - you can always clean up later. Ideally, you’ll apply the color in three strokes (one down the center and one on each side) but hell if I can master that and I’ve been painting my nails for, like, 24 years. Practice will help, even if you don’t have a steady hand.

Give the 1st coat of color a minute or three. Maybe even 5. Then apply a second coat. I went for a third coat of the pink because you could still see through it just a tiny, tiny bit - that’s a problem with neons.

Before the 2nd (or 3rd) coat is dry, go ahead and apply your top coat. This sandwiches all the layers of polish together and helps bind them together and to your nail. I promise, it’ll help your manicure last longer.

What I did, for my left hand, was to paint my ring and middle finger nails with the pink and the other nails with the black. For my right hand, I painted only my index finger nail pink and the rest black. It’s colorful without being all neon, all the time, and it’s also pretty fashion forward, if you care about that sort of thing.

Now is the time, if you have any fun decals, to have a little fun. I have some silly Halloween decals so I pulled out a little black skull and crossbones to put on one of my pink nails. Decals work in different ways so just follow the directions on yours.

And, lo, you’ve got a fantastic manicure:

Gar! Pink and black is very piratical.

You can see, I took that picture before clean up. For clean up, you can buy nail polish remover pens specially designed for just such use or you can wrap cotton from a cotton ball around one of your orange sticks and dip that in nail polish. However, and here’s the embarrassing part, I don’t generally bother to do a clean up. I can clean the edges of my nails in the shower or something.

And keep that in mind - water is going to loosen and, ultimately, destroy your manicure. This will stand up to regular showering but if you still do dishes the old-fashioned way in the sink, you should probably invest in some rubber gloves. Good times.

Now, go have some fun with color! And, oh, yeah, check back soon - I’m going to be running a small contest. And who doesn’t want to win free eye shadow?

How did I resist this shade for so long?

The Emerald Sparkle lasted a good long while but it was totally time for a polish change. I was in my local Sally Beauty Supply looking for something else when I, as I have every single other time since the Rodeo Diva collection came out, started eyeing Cowgirl Up. And, yeah, I signed up for the Sally Beauty Card ($5 but you get a $5 coupon to use in the next month) so I could buy it at a discount.

This is my manicure before cleanup. It’s a fantastic and rich purple. I’m in love.

I’m also more and more in love with my base coat and top coat. I’ll do a better review of those later. A good base and top coat will MAKE your manicure.

You can also see that my nails are shorter. Had a little thumbnail accident and wound up trimming them all down. I can’t handle it if one nail is significantly shorter than the others, for all my nails never wind up that long any way. If they get too long, I can’t zip my pants!

Deeply pigmented enough that one coat will suffice. But two coats plus Seche Vite top coat equals magic.

I don’t actually ever get tired of painting my nails and talking about it.

This is Emerald Sparkle, one of the holiday colors from China Glaze. I didn’t even have time to clean up the edges of my manicure before taking a picture - it’s much cleaner today (I usually paint my nails before bed so that is from last night). *grin*

I’m really, really glad I jumped on this and ordered it so quickly. It is sold out and the people on the MUA nail boards are sad sad sad.

Meanwhile, as I type, my fingernails glitter greenly and it makes me happy.

Rumor has it that Sally Beauty Supply will be getting bottles of thhis around the 1st of November. Keep your eyes open this one i