Saturday, April 27, 2013
Growing out... 22 days of mani's and growing
So as I was writing, I'm growing my nails out. It's been going on for 3 weeks and I'm so impatient with them! I don't want them to get super long, but I kinda wanna see how long they'll get before they give in and then find a more permanent length. I figure that if I let them grow for another 4 weeks I'll have them at my ideal length.
So here they are at day 1 with Essie's Maximillian Strasse Her from the spring collection. I really love this color although I would like it a little brighter. This was an easy 2 coater, finished off with Essie Good To Go.
Ok, so I did a lot of mani's lately, ok? Here we have day 2 and 3 coats of Essie Spaghetti Strap, one of my favorite naturals. Application isn't that great though as it was streaky. Again Essie GTG on top.
Day 6 and Essie Go Ginza, also from the spring. It reminds me of a more lilac version of Fiji which I really love. 2 coats could have done the job but 3's such a magic number. Felt like the formula got a little sticky/lumpy towards the end though....
Day 9, Essie Fifth Avenue. What a great bright red, not too much orange, not too dark. Great coverage. Mmmm. Feel like Essie does a lot of very very similar (almost indistinguishable) bright reds like this one. Ie Snap Happy from Winter 2012.
Day 13, sporting Essie's Fiji! A classic. I can imagine myself wearing this in Fiji. (Yeah, that's what we call marketing I guess). Also has great coverage. At this point I have really worked the nail file (I use a glass file, I think it really help protect my nails) for the square shape. I love the square shape because I think it gives such a clean, crisp look that is easy to maintain.
On Day 15 (it was a Monday!) I felt like doing a french mani. Used Essie Blanc and the Essie protein base coat (think it was discontinued?) and a top coat and that's it. I still haven't figured how to do nice french mani's with anything than this basecoat as I do the white tips first and then paint over with the base coat - it gives the nail a nice, natural color (my nails a little stained but it still looks acceptable) without discoloring the white tips. Do I need to get started on some tape? Ugh.
Day 17. Here's my new favorite red, a real classic: OPI's Big Apple Red. As mentioned previously OPI is wildly expensive. My first investment in OPI was therefore the Best Of set with 10 colors which was a great buy at 'only' 50 francs! I really really love the OPI formulas, I will be buying a lot of OPI when I make it back to the US in a couple of months.
Day 20. Essie's Where's My Chauffeur? which I recently bought on sale from the winter collection. In the bottle it looks much more similar to Turqoise & Caicos than it is - it has way more blue and is somehow more muted - and much less jelly than T&C which I usually put on 3-4 coats of. It was very pretty, but I just happened to stumble upon an OPI sale later the same day...
Day 20 - yes, I did my nails twice in one day. Shhh, don't tell. But it was so worth it: OPI's On Her Majesty's Secret Service from the Skyfall collection was on sale and completely blew me away. This is such a refined gorgeous glittery shade I couldn't stop looking at my nails. I will wear this one a lot, I just know. It's a grey-ish smokey shade altogether but the base is a not so overwhelming grey-blue jelly packed with tiny glitter in many colors. It has a little bit of blue, green and silver, gold ish. Sorry, I'm just babbling, I'm sure there are much better descriptions of this color out there, not to mention swatches. None the less: I completely loved this color.
Day 22. So this is taken today wearing OPI Lincoln Park after Dark. My fingers are kind of at an angle that doesn't allow complete view of their true length, but I think the difference comes across - my nails grew and didn't break. :-)
Welcome!
So this is my nail blog. It's primary purpose is to legitimize my nail polish obsession in the belief that if I post and write about it it will give it more meaning. :-)
I'll write in greater detail about my path to polish obsession another day (we have guests coming over tonight so I'm really just procrastinating by starting this blog now) but this is the basic story. In high school I remember going through a nail phase that left me in great dispair. I have really thin, wobbly nails that were never good for much. I've been blessed with a shape and size of the nail bed that I'm actually really pleased with (what if one could say that about every detail on their body, huh? Haha) but the nails themselves don't seem to care to make the most of their potential. Furthermore I always had the bad habit of picking them, simply pulling off the nail whenever it would break, which they tended to do sideways. Sigh. I remember smearing all kinds of remedies on to them in the hope that it would help, but nothing ever came out of it. And so I gave up on growing my nails out.
Now, a couple of years ago I went to the US to study the last year of my BAs. Here I found access to a nail polish universe I¨d never even imagined existed, and even better, it was affordable. There a quality polish could be had for 6-8 dollars and not the 35-40 dollars they cost in Europe (where I'm from and living again now) and so I became hooked. 'Unfortunately' bf and I moved back to Europe after the US and Canada and now I'm back to the European, and even worse, Swiss prices. That means OPI goes for 23,90 francs (which is basically the same as USD) and Essie 19,90. Do I buy it? Hell yeah. But I'm becoming increasingly better at finding the weird sales where the good stuff can be bought at discounts, which is mostly the seasonal colors.
I also recently came across a couple of products that I honestly think have given my nail the strength they need to grow to a decent length. I'll review later, but they are Mavala Scientifique Nail Hardener and OPI's original Nail Envy (the green one). I have used Mavala Scientifique for about 3 weeks and haven't had any breakage (I'm a student so I don't work but do all our household chores and do a fair amount of typing). Nail Envy is brand new to me, but I have good feelings about it (maybe because I paid a whopping 39 francs for it and won't believe anything than that it works). I'll do a post where I show the progress during these first 3 weeks as I've taken pictures of my nails during this period.
Oh, and... right now my big highlight ahead of me is my trip to the US this June/July/August. I'm going on a summer school stay in Boston for 4 weeks and I hope to haul a major amount of polish back home afterwards! We're also having our summer vacay, but I don't think bf will have the patience or understanding to wait for me while I'm picking out colors haha so I'll do my shopping in advance. ;-) If anyone knows of good spots to buy polish in Cambridge and Boston let me know!
I'll write in greater detail about my path to polish obsession another day (we have guests coming over tonight so I'm really just procrastinating by starting this blog now) but this is the basic story. In high school I remember going through a nail phase that left me in great dispair. I have really thin, wobbly nails that were never good for much. I've been blessed with a shape and size of the nail bed that I'm actually really pleased with (what if one could say that about every detail on their body, huh? Haha) but the nails themselves don't seem to care to make the most of their potential. Furthermore I always had the bad habit of picking them, simply pulling off the nail whenever it would break, which they tended to do sideways. Sigh. I remember smearing all kinds of remedies on to them in the hope that it would help, but nothing ever came out of it. And so I gave up on growing my nails out.
Now, a couple of years ago I went to the US to study the last year of my BAs. Here I found access to a nail polish universe I¨d never even imagined existed, and even better, it was affordable. There a quality polish could be had for 6-8 dollars and not the 35-40 dollars they cost in Europe (where I'm from and living again now) and so I became hooked. 'Unfortunately' bf and I moved back to Europe after the US and Canada and now I'm back to the European, and even worse, Swiss prices. That means OPI goes for 23,90 francs (which is basically the same as USD) and Essie 19,90. Do I buy it? Hell yeah. But I'm becoming increasingly better at finding the weird sales where the good stuff can be bought at discounts, which is mostly the seasonal colors.
I also recently came across a couple of products that I honestly think have given my nail the strength they need to grow to a decent length. I'll review later, but they are Mavala Scientifique Nail Hardener and OPI's original Nail Envy (the green one). I have used Mavala Scientifique for about 3 weeks and haven't had any breakage (I'm a student so I don't work but do all our household chores and do a fair amount of typing). Nail Envy is brand new to me, but I have good feelings about it (maybe because I paid a whopping 39 francs for it and won't believe anything than that it works). I'll do a post where I show the progress during these first 3 weeks as I've taken pictures of my nails during this period.
Oh, and... right now my big highlight ahead of me is my trip to the US this June/July/August. I'm going on a summer school stay in Boston for 4 weeks and I hope to haul a major amount of polish back home afterwards! We're also having our summer vacay, but I don't think bf will have the patience or understanding to wait for me while I'm picking out colors haha so I'll do my shopping in advance. ;-) If anyone knows of good spots to buy polish in Cambridge and Boston let me know!
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