Shabby Peonies wide

Sunday, January 22, 2012

NOTD: About as boring as I can do

This is about as ordinary as I can do. (It's pretty darn "normal" of a polish color, huh?)

Revlon Top Speed in Cheers--one of the free Walgreens haul from last month, brought to you by the kajillion trips I made for Nyquil and cough syrup for my boyfriend. (He's better now.) 2 coats--on the last few nails they ended up being on the thicker side, because I found on the first few that thin coats caused some dragging for me. I don’t usually use quick-dry polish, so I haven’t gotten the hang of timing the drying time between coats correctly. Perhaps this one could have used more than the less-than-a-minute I gave it.


The other day I jazzed it up by using a Sally Girl mini--it's a duochrome white called That's Fresh. In the bottle it flashes purple and green, but over this all I could see was a bit of fuchsia and an even smaller bit of gold. It did make the overall color look a bit more mauve than pink though. All and all, not a fan of the combo (and it refused to photograph, so no pics). (Also, that's 2 untried polishes down on one manicure! Should've glittered it up at some point too.)

Monday, January 16, 2012

NOTD: Good season, Pack. See you in September.

Yesterday, my newly adopted football team was playing their first playoff game (Green Bay Packers--they were the #1 seed in the NFC, so they had a bye the first week), so I decided that it was time to do what I'd wanted to do all season and do a Packers manicure. The full mani didn't work out so well (coincidentally, neither did the game), but I took a picture of the base color before I messed it up with failed stamping and less-than-optimal accent nails. It's already been removed.

This is Sinful Colors Let's Meet. 3 coats, and I still had some VNL that aren't really visible in the picture. Next time I wear this, I'm going to put it over white and see how that works (suggested by someone in the Ravelry nail group I read). It really is a damn near perfect Packer gold.

So I decided to try to doctor it up by stamping with the closest thing I had to Packer green, Zoya Suvi. (It's a TINY bit too blue, but it's the closest I've got.) Two fails: 1) I totally misaligned the stamp, and 2) it's way too sheer for stamping. So then I tried to do an accent nail (3rd fail: over the existing gold) with the Suvi. 3 coats and it was still see-through enough that it looked more olive than forest. (Yes, I should have taken the gold off, but this was during the really horrid part of the game, so I wasn’t really thinking clearly about nail polish.) I didn't even take pictures of the final result before I took it off this morning.

The good news is I get to cross one color off my untried list. (Technically Suvi was untried as well, but since all I did was failed stamping and a failed accent nail, I'm not sure if it counts enough to be crossed off the list.) I don't want to admit how many more are still on the list...

Thursday, January 12, 2012

NOTD: One Down, *mumble*ty More To Go...

One of my informal, not-really-stated New Year's resolutions (I say I don't believe in them, yet I make them anyway) is to use a certain number of my untried nail polishes before I let myself buy a new polish. (Yes, I see the problem immediately: It's January 12, and I haven't yet decided what that certain number is.) Today's polish is OPI's Cozu-Melted In The Sun. Google tells me that it came out in 2006 as part of the Mexico collection. I'm not too sure how long I've actually had it, but I do know it's one of the first ones I bought after my interest in nail polish was rekindled a couple of years ago.



Not gonna lie--when I look at this polish in the bottle, my first thought is not "let's put it on!" but rather "why the hell did I buy something so frosty and 80s-looking?" But today, when I asked my spreadsheet which untried polish I was going to try next (more on this another day), this is the polish it gave me. I could have grumbled and reloaded the formula and gotten another polish, but since the point of this whole endeavour is to actually WEAR unworn polish, I sucked it up and did my nails.

Y'all, I was wrong. This polish is LOVELY. Lovely to work with and lovely on my nails. It was a 2-coater, and would have worked with a single coat if I wasn't the type of person who can't abide ANY hint of VNL. It's thin, but goes on evenly and doesn't flood my cuticles. Didn't really pay much attention to drying time, but my topcoat is still a bit tacky after a couple of hours. I can still go about my business though.

And on my nails (next New Year's resolution: improve my photography skills):


This is 2 coats of Zoya Get Even basecoat (my nails have been staining easily lately, though it's probably more the fault of wearing blues and yellows, but I'm not taking any chances), 2 thin coats of Cozu-Melted, and a (thickish) coat of Poshé fast dry topcoat. Weird lighting courtesy of the first more-than-minor (it's not a major snowfall, but it's actually sticking) snowfall we've had this winter.

Until next time!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Testing....

Testing Twitterfeed.

Same name, new blog.

So I had a blog a while back on my own webspace. Then life happened and (1) I stopped posting regularly and (2) I couldn't afford to continue paying for the webspace. So back to Blogspot I come.

My original blog by this title was a makeup blog, and I had a knitting blog named Plays With Yarn (which was the first blog I ever had, in its various locations/incarnations). However, I'm thinking the name Plays With Color is relevant to both makeup and knitting in my life. So we'll probably see both around here.

Well, that is that.