Broadway imPRESS nails: TGIF

Title says it all. I had a bit of trouble with this set in that when I tried to peel the backing off starting at the cuticle tab, it tried to flare and distort the plastic along the cuticle, so I peeled the backing off from the sides instead. I didn't have to file these down at all.

Untried: OPI Liquid Sand in Get Your Number

I picked this up in the beauty shop I mentioned previously. I think they're kind of gimmicky in general, but I wanted to try out the texture. It's really fun. I'm just rubbing my nails all day. It doesn't end up looking that 'sandy' though, more like a slightly bumpy matte. This is 3 coats, no top coat.

What do you think of the unintentional gradient effect you might be able to see there? That's caused by the staining on my fingernails (Kleancolor Metallic Green: Not even once.)

Experimentation, shinies, and resolutions!

So here's the mani I wore yesterday.

Used: Urban Outfitters Silver Holo, stamped over using Shany XXL plate A and Sinful Colors Black on Black, then covered with Orly Miss Conduct.

This was testing two things:

1) Stamping sandwich! I quite like how it turned out; the pattern is there but is subtle.

2) Linear holos as undies. It really made this color POP! It helps that Orly Miss Conduct is itself a scattered holo, but it really added depth to the mani.

Shinies! I found a local beauty supply store that sells OPI for $5, Orly for $4, China Glaze for $4, Essie for $5... I ended up getting a mini-haul. That leads to two resolutions:

1) I'm on a no-buy until at least Valentine's Day. Beyond that, my goal is to never leave a store with more than one polish, unless they are very cheap/on sale and less than $10 total, and not buy more than two polishes or 1 <$10 haul a week. This may sound like a lot, but.. I.... I have a lot of polishes.

2) I am going to start using untried polishes from my stash for manis. This will hopefully trim down my collection and let me weed out polishes I don't like so much after all!

Next up: OPI Liquid Sand.

Broadway ImPRESS Nails - Wear Test

Regrettably, I don't know the specific style name, as I tossed out all of the boxes to save space and this pattern appears to have been discontinued. :( The closest is the current line's Holla, which keeps the lace-on-nude scheme but uses a simpler floral pattern and has no cheetah print.

I applied them Wednesday night. I'll give a review if anyone's interested. The sizes I wear (from thumb outward) are 0, 5, 3, 4, 9.

No flash, indoors.

Flash, indoors. Can you tell I use a camera phone?

My only complaint is that the index fingers are a little longer than I like, but this brand is flexible and can easily be trimmed down and filed. I did the dishes, washed my hair, etc. Decent amount of submersion and gripping.

Wear Test:

First nail (left index - really? left?) fell off Saturday morning. I also noticed the right index starting to get loose Friday evening. I squished it down and dried the exuded water with a paper towel, and it seems to have re-adhered. I also have consistent tip wear across all nails, with the design faded on the tips (the base color is the color of the plastic the nails are made of, so it's not super noticeable.)

Right after the first nail fell off. 

You can see the tipwear (and my real nails peeking out!), and that my nail bed was unharmed by the nails. The yellowing is a stain from October, it's unrelated to this mani. 

Sunday afternoon: I lost my right index nail in the shower (well, I know where it is, but it came off.) The rest of the nails are all still pretty securely attached! I'm willing to bet that if never removed the pinky nail it would stay on until it grew out, and that next time they will wear better if I trim down my index nails. 4 days gave some noteworthy tip wear, but they stayed pretty sturdy. I'm taking them off now for a new mani.

 I have several more pairs of these, and do recommend them. They retail for $5.99 plain and $7.99 patterned at most drugstores, though you can often find them on clearance or sale. I got the Halloween Disney Villains set (6 pairs) for $10 on a sale! Super psyched for them to arrive.

I also got my first linear holos (!) and I can't wait to wear them :O

Christmas mani '12

Materials: Color Club Berry and Bright and Ho-Ho-Holly, Pure Ice Silver Mercedes (for stamping), mini pearls and a star sequin, Shany XXL Stamping Plate A

Methods: Stamping, striping tape, hand-placed decorations

This is probably the most professional manicure I've managed to do, or at least the best looking one. (Is that saying something? Yeeeep.) I was really pleased with how this came out.