New Manicures!

I'm slowing going through my stash...and acquiring new polishes too, I bought one last week and was gifted a few others, egads.

This one just glows amazingly, doesn't it?  One of my all-time favorite combos for sure.  Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Fairy Teal with two coats of Spoiled Use Protection.  I could write an entire post on oddly named nail polish.

Ulta Pink Flamingo with Julie G Light it Up on top.  Fun and glittery.  I was feeling young this day.

Again another duochrome because I never tire of them.  This was gifted to me, OPI Just Spotted the Lizard from their Amazing Spiderman collection.  The new thing is for lots of new movies to have nail polish lines too.  Being I love Spidey and nail polish too, this works for me.  It's a dupe of a million other colors one of which I already own, Jessica Iridescent Eye.  It's green and flashes to teal.  Beautiful!

All the nails!

More untried polishes.  I was tempted to participate in a nail polish challenge, a different theme for each day in February, but really I just don't have the energy and gumption to accomplish such a feat.  Plus I have two knitting tournaments just starting (more on that in another post).  Wet nails and knitting do not a pair make.

To maximize the number of polishes I'll be using while hanging on to a bit of laziness, I'll be doing a polish change those couple of times a week, then finding a suitable, similar shade that I can layer on top without having to do a whole acetone deal.  Above is Pure Ice Alter Ego.  Pure Ice being that awesomely cheap Wal-Mart brand that only costs $2.  It's a chocolate brown with silver flakes.  Too bad my photo is horrible otherwise you could really gaze at its greatness.

Look upon the beauty that is Barielle Elle's Spell!!!  No, really look!  A deep red jelly with golden flakes.  The website's picture, as well as mine, does it no justice.

Whoa, grab your shades.  Here's Zoya Kimmy which is a foil finish and this just glows, doesn't it?

That's it for now.  I'll be back in a few days with more untrieds.  If I can stop buying polish perhaps I'll make some headway.

Manicures for the new year!

Here are two of my first manicures for 2013!

Club Color: Port-folio

This is a duochrome that flashes between purple and green.  I love duochrome finishes, it's like a two-for-one special of nail polish awesomeness.  I have plenty more in my collection of (won't say the number because it's ridiculous) polishes.

Pure Ice: Touch Me Softly

One cannot go wrong with the Pure Ice brand.  So many colors and finishes at only $1.99 per bottle.  This one was pretty hard to find as part of a collection of velvet finishes.  Normally I love my polishes super-shiny, but this velvet (a.k.a. matte) finish is a nice change of pace.

That's all for now.  More (many, many more) manicures to come this year.

Manicure Madness!

You know how I do. I'm a geek by nature and once I get into a hobby I dive head first and don't stop. Come to find out that nail polish is a certified hobby and as with any hobby there are avid enthusiasts. I'm not talking about ladies who like to go to the salon, get acrylic tips or a pedi. I'm speaking of women who enjoy collecting nail polish, searching for hard-to-find colors, trying to "catch 'em all". In this subculture the focus is on the DIY manicure, keeping nails healthy, doing one's own designs by freehand or with stamping. There are countless blogs devoted to new collections and individual polishes that feature swatches, reviews and tutorials. Well, seems at though I am now one of those fanatics.

I won't even get into how many bottles of polish I've acquired in a relatively short period of time, but my collection now encompasses the full ROYGIBV spectrum. Since I've seemed to run out of colors to buy and not wanting to purchase duplicate shades, I'm now focusing on different finishes:


Mattes - dull finishes with no shine, but very rich in color
Duochromes - polishes that show two (or more in a multichrome) colors depending on how the light hits it, for example it could be a purple finish, upon angling the nail a strong blue color will show
Jellies - shiny and translucent shades, with a squishy-looking finish
Holos - these are really interesting, metallics with almost a 3D effect, showing the full spectrum of the rainbow within the glitter when the nails are angled.

Also, unique glitters and independent specialty polishes and themed collections. China Glaze just released its much-anticipated line based on The Hunger Games books/movie. OPI has a Spiderman inspired line coming out in a few months (you think this geek isn't getting one or two of those?).

Nail polish can be some serious business. Check out Lynnderella's Connect the Dots or Chanel Peridot on E-bay and you'll see how much money women are willing to spend on a single bottle of polish. Nerd Laquer on Etsy, who sells cool colors named for every aspect of sci-fi geekery you can think of, recently updated her shop and sold 1,500 bottles in 18 hours ($10+ a pop, you do the math). Stocks of Lynnderella polishes have been known to sell out in minutes with all kinds of drama surrounding when and how to buy these gems. Heck, I've been tempted to head to Michael's and try to start my own line.

I've found that this new love of mine can be, as with any hobby, as expensive or inexpensive as you'd like. I buy lower end lines that can be found at various drugstores with coupons, during sales, at online discount stores that often have selections at greatly reduced prices. Those expensive independent lines often sell mini bottles at a fraction of the price of a full size, so I've gone that route as well.

Women from all walks of life, mothers (who's hands are in water all day..it can be done), doctors, office workers, even truck drivers have been drawn to this sparkly nail craze. For most it's not just an exercise in vanity, it is just as much about the fun of the hunt, the admiration of color, the expression of a bit of art on the hands and much needed pampering and relaxation after a crazy day. Since I'd been neglecting the caring of me for quite sometime, it's a refresing and fun addition to my roster of hobbies. Nope, knitting and crocheting isn't going anywhere (plus, the combo of knitting and pretty nails is a fierce one)!

Here are some of my latest manicures. You know what I might get into next? Photography. These photos leave much to be desired.



Sinful Colors Mint Apple, with a poor attempt at Konad stamping on my accent nail




Essie Vintage Wine with NerdLacquer's Data Squirrel on the accent nail. By the way, I'm a huge fan of the accent nail. It seems to be a bit more work/age friendly, a way to wear a glitter-tastic color without going overboard.



China Glaze Techno Teal from the Tron-inspired Tronica line (geek alert!). This is actually a holo polish, a more subdued version though. Hopefully you can see that scattering of rainbow glitter from this pic.l




China Glaze Fast Track from the Hunger Games line. Another themed polish collection.

With the sheer amount of polish now in my collection, my color changes will be every three to four days so there will be more many more future manicure posts to go with the knitting and reading ones!

New Manicure Pics & Stuff

My Nails

I'm still keeping up with my nails and with all of the polish I've accumulated I'd better be doing two manicures a week for the next year.



This one was from late last week/early this week. Wet 'n Wild - Disturbia. Meh. It's a blackened plum color that I thought had some shimmer. Well, there's shimmer, but it's not discernable unless I have my nails all up close to my eyeballs. It's a perfectly nice color that suffered from not meeting my high expectations. (Am I excited about The Amazing Spiderman? Why do you ask?)

I must say though, WnW's Megalast line lives up to its name. I did all kind of work, cleaned the fish tank, you name it without nary a chip.



I like this one much better. Wet 'n Wild - Ebony Hates Chris, a shiny black creme, with two coats of Revlon - Scandalous, on top. I'm in love with Scandalous! A black jelly base with fuschia hex and round glitter. The glitter give it a pop without it being over the top. (Yes, my photo skills suck.)

Audio Books



I finished listening to Rob Lowes Biography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. It was a great read! I didn't know much about Rob Lowe except from the impression he made with his Brat Pack fame, but I learned that he's more than just a pretty face. He's insightful and very grounded about his looks and stardom. He goes as far as to say that some of his interactions with fans, such as being mobbed by a group of girls, made him feel crappy instead of elated as he'd imagined it would. It's not that he doesn't love his fans or appreicate the adoration, he does, but he attributes some of these encounters to media hype, being the "it" actor and in his earlier brushes with fangirls, "group think and hormones being whipped up by Tiger Beat". He prefers real interactions with his fans and if I ever got a chance to meet up with him, I'd feel perfectly comfortable doing so as I wouldn't be trying to rip off a piece of his clothing or ask for an autograph while one of his loved one lays sick in a hospital bed (which happened...ugh).

The book glosses over a few of the more scandalous parts of his life, the sex tape scandal, his infidelities and his stint in rehab, but that was OK with me. I don't need sordid blow-by-blow details in order to get the full flavor of a person's life story.

Equally enjoyable is his recounting of how he got his break into acting, especially the audition process and shooting of The Outsiders which was one of my favorite movies in the 80's. So many crushable actors in that movie based on an amazing book (I read just about all of S.E. Hinton's books in my teens). Anyway, I enjoyed hearing his experiences on set, as well as general information about the audition process, how child actors are handled, how negotiations work, etc. I also though the story of how him and his wife, of now 20-years of marriage, started their journey together.

I seem to really enjoy biographies on audiobook, there's something about this format that works for me with this genre. Rob did the narration himself and has a uncanny ability for doing voices that made me laugh.

Let's see now I'm listening to Stephen King's time-travel thriller, 11/22/63. I loves me some time-traveling books and I love Stephen King's non-scary-giving-Iggy-nightmares books (I'm am NOT a horror fan), so I have high hopes this will be a good one.

Crafts

It's time for the new rounds of knitting games. Somehow I got mixed up with the Nerd Wars sign ups, so I'm not participating this tournament and am a little salty about that. But it's all a go for the Starfleet FAC and I'm working on chemo caps in colors for men. Actually I'm currently looking for the one I started as I've misplaced it somehow.

That is all for now...until next week!

Manicure of the Week & Stuff

Nails

So far I'm keeping up with my reinvigorated love of keeping my nails cute. Here's this week's manicure:



(I know this pic it crazy small. I did something funky with the editing and will fix it later.)

There, that's better.



I love this look! It's two coats of China Glaze Icicle topped off with the excellent China Glaze Crackle color Black Mesh. I remember first seeing crackle polish over a decade ago and I guess it didn't quite catch on then. It's in full swing now, or it might be getting played out. I'm old enough to only care if I like something, not if the masses think that something is still cool.

Being busy and all (have to still do housework even with pretty nails), in order to maintain my manicure I put a clear coat every other night and touch up the color as needed. I do a cuticle oil massage every day and the entire process only takes minutes.

Books
On the reading front, I'm currently listening to Rob Lowe's autobiography.



I only selected this book because of the great reviews and several recommendations. Rob does the reading and so far it's a very cool "read". Rob has never really been a blip on my radar because he's impossibly handsome and I like my guys to be less traditionally gorgeous (y'all know how I feel about a slight overbite, or long nose). In fact, I think I preferred his brother, Chad because he had a little goofiness mixed into his looks. So other than starring in some great "Brat Pack" fare, I wouldn't have gravitated to his biography.

But again, I'm finding it interesting to learn how he got into the business. I'll post a proper review later.

Crafting

My mojo is a bit off right now but the wax and wane of feeling like crafting is normal. I'm still trying to finish the gift for my latest yarn swap which was supposed to be mailed by Saturday. I'll throw in some extra goodies to make up for my tardiness. I also committed myself to knitting some chemo caps in colors for men, because they often get forgotten about when the call for caps is made. Men undergoing chemo lose their hair too, so a nice, soft cap should be a nice charity knit.

That's all for now!

I'm Fancy, Huh? Hair Done, Nails Done, Everything Did...

Look at me all up-to-date with the Drake lyrics, lol. My daughter would be proud, or embarrassed one or the other.

Alrighty, I got my hair done in kinky twists with extensions:



It goes without saying that I hate this picture. What am I doing with my mouth? I can't stage a photo if my life depended on it. However, I love my hair. The girls used a different color this time, a mix of reddish-brown and black. They layered it quite nicely too.



(Is that a look of sanity? I don't think so. Plus, Photobucket did something weird with the picture, but whatevs)

After my hair grows out of this style I'll be giving it a rest from the braids to prevent hair loss. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I'm researching now.

On my lips is some Cover Girl lip stain. I don't know exactly which line because I got it out of the clearance bin. Somehow my lips evolved to kind of hate the feeling of lipstick or lip gloss but I love the stain. I can't feel it on my lips, but they are soft (which they always were even when I wasn't wearing lipstick. No crusty lips here)and have color to them.



I'm totally flipping out on the nail polish, I'm picking them up whenever I shop, I'm checking out the blogs on the new colors. You know a geek has to go all the way with whatever they do. It's fun! I've worn tips before but I prefer my own relatively short nails and I have some crazy colors on the way.

I'm wearing China Girl Ruby Pumps with an Orly Bonder basecoat to prevent yellowing and chipping (which didn't stop the chipping) and a Seche Vite top coat, that is supposed to be fancy, but seems like just another top coat to me.

I recently bought those silver stackable rings at a great discount from a co-worker. I think I'll buy more, you can get lots of looks from stackables.

Ok, until next time!