Ahhh, flakie glitter. Fun! I think it looks like magic fish food, although my brother who works with fish disagrees. Regardless, with its green, orange and blue duochrome glitter flakes this is cool top coat!

piCture pOlish hypnotic layered over Zoya Ibiza in natural light

Application was very good. Two coats of Zoya’s Ibiza with two coats of hypnotic.

piCture pOlish hypnotic

Or clumsy me! Generally my nails are pretty well behaved. I try to take decent care of them, and they don’t give me too much trouble. However, since Christmas my nails and I have not been getting along. I broke my left thumbnail on Christmas Day (I was very disappointed as my husband gave me some lovely polish for Christmas). Finally as I was starting to get to a reasonable length again, I managed to break my right thumbnail! I broke this one even further down, and after cutting my nails all the way down my thumbnail is quite lopsided. *Sigh* I suppose it is silly to be so bummed about my nails, but polishing them is so much fun and having pretty nails bring me joy. To add a bit of insult to injury my birthday was two weeks ago, and now I also have birthday polish languishing in my new polish bin.

What do you do to make your nails grow faster? Any tips for rocking shorties? Some of you do it so well! I just hate the way very short nails look on me. Thanks for reading and for letting me vent a bit!

my lonely birthday polish

Ozotic 513 is a grape purple polish with crazy, awesome  linear holo! At $18 a bottle this polish is pricy, but it does pack a sparkly punch! My husband got me several Ozotic polishes for Christmas. These were my first Ozotics, but they won’t be my last

Ozotic 513 in sunlight

Application was very good (especially for a holo). Two coats and a top coat shown.

Ozotic 513

Fashion’s Night Out is a fabulous blue-grey metallic. It looks like a silvery gunmetal with a touch of blue in the bottle, but once on the nail the blue really comes out to play. This  is a really cool color!

Nails Inc Fashion's Night Out in sunlight

Application was excellent. This polish was quite opaque and almost provided full coverage in one coat. Two coats and a top coat shown.

Nails Inc Fashion's Night Out

Androgynie is from Orly’s Holiday Soireé collection. The combination of the sheer black base and the gold and multi-colored glitter make me think of New Year’s Eve. This is a fun color, and I got a lot of compliments while wearing it.

Orly Androgogynie in natural light

Application was ok. I would have liked the hex glitter pieces to have distributed more evenly (some nails got more pieces than others).  Three coats and a top coat shown.

Orly Androgogynie

This year for Christmas my husband gave me a number of goodies from my wish list, but he also surprised me with some fun nail stuff. I recently organized my nail polish and labeled items that were “swatched,” “untried,” etc. He checked my nail polish bins and blog to determine what I didn’t already have, so he could decided what to get. He was right I didn’t have them, and I was so touched. I loved the research and thought that went into the gift! I managed to break my thumbnail pretty badly yesterday (and attempted a repair), so hopefully I will still have have length to my nails. However even if I end up trimming my nails all the way down, my sappy self is cheered by my sweet husband. I still wish I was a bit less clumsy though!

I am hoping to try my hand at a bit of frankening in the coming year. It seems like the glitter is going to make a huge mess, but it sounds like fun!

My Christmas nail goodies

Recently I tried to rescue a bad manicure by applying a glitter polish on top. Maybe I was just in a bad mood that day, but even with the addition of Color Club’s Sugar Plum Yum I still hated it. Every time I ran my fingers through my hair the chunky glitter  pulled my hair. Uggh! I had to get it off right away, and boy was it a pain to remove! I was a bad blogger though, and did not even snap a picture. After the fact I realized that I should have at least gotten a picture. I decided I should try it again, but I did not want to remove the Sugar Plum Yum from 10 fingers. I decided to try a different base color and just do glitter on an accent nail. For the base I used Color Club’s Lumin-Icecent which is an icy blue foil finish polish. Sugar Plum Yum is a scented polish for the holidays. It is a clear base with green glitter, and larger bluish-purple hex glitter. I thought this combo was pretty cute, and the chunky glitter looked a bit like bubbles I have to say I did not like the smell though. Scented polish sounds like a fun idea, but to me Sugar Plum Yum smells like one of those scented markers gone bad. The scent was barely noticeable after a while, but I would have liked the polish much better without it.

Color Club Lumin Icecent and Color Club Sugar Plum Yum in sunlight

Application on Lumin-Icecent was excellent, and Sugar Plum Yum applied very well for such a chunky glitter. I would rate its application as good to very good.  Two coats of  Lumin-Icecent with a top coat and two coats of Sugar Plum Yum on the accent nail (I also used top coat over the Sugar Plum Yum).

Color Club Lumin Icecent and Color Club Sugar Plum Yum

Izzy is a deep pink shimmer from Zoya’s holiday Gems & Jewels collection. It is such a happy, festive color. Looking at it on my nails really brought a smile to my face. Since I seem to have been infected with holiday glitter this year, I decided to add Kissy on my ring fingers as an accent. I figured that if I only use glitter on accent nails my pain will be greatly reduced when it is time to take it off! First I tried Kissy over Izzy. It looked good, but I noticed that in addition to pink and holographic bar glitter, Kissy was also full of fine red glitter. I tried it over Butter London Knees Up, and boy did they work nicely together! When it came time to take my polish off, my plan worked and I was rewarded with a fairly easy removal Please note that because  Izzy was so shimmery it was difficult to find lighting that equally flattered it and Kissy. Izzy looks much better in person!

Zoya Izzy in sunlight (with Butter London Knees Up and Zoya Kissy on accent nail)

Application was excellent. Two coats with a top coat shown (two coats of Butter London Knees Up and one coat of Kissy on accent nail).

Are you loving any of this year’s holiday glitters? Which ones?

Butter London Knees Up, Zoya Izzy, and Kissy

On Wednesday evening my husband and I had planned to go to Whole Foods and get an eco-friendly Christmas Tree. Of course getting the tree calls for a classic holiday red! Knees Up is apparently British slang for drunken dancing at a party. That sounds pretty festive! Knees Up is a lovely, glowing metallic red. Yummy! Although with my red mani I was now in a holiday mood, our tree finding mission was not a success. All of the trees that were left were either  too dry, crooked or too short and fat for the space by our fireplace. We will have to try again this weekend. On the plus side, I would say the polish was a success It reminds me of those shiny glass tree ornaments (we don’t have any to compare to though as we need to ensure that everything on our tree is fairly cat-proof or at least unbreakable). It is a beautiful color, and what says “Christmas” better than a really great red??

Butter London Knees Up in sunlight

Application was excellent. Two coats and a top coat shown.

Butter London Knees Up

Moonlight & Mistletoe is a plum with pink and blue shimmer. In the bottle the blue shimmer showed much more than the pink and the polish appeared to be duochrome. On the nail the blue and pink look like they have a similar concentration, and there is no duochrome effect. I was hoping that the blue shimmer would be stronger on the nail. It looked amazing in the bottle – especially under the bright lights in Ulta. I like it, but I wish it were more blue, shimmery and “special.” Having said this, the bottle proved to be maddeningly photo shy!

Piggy Polish Moonlight and Mistletoe in natural light

Application was ok. Somehow it managed to be a bit thick and sheer at the same time. My husband asked if this was because it was a pedicure formula, but I suspect that is just marketing. However, I did find that it wore well. I wore this for 4.5 days before I got a chip. Three coats and a top coat shown.

Piggy Polish Moonlight and Mistletoe