Roses over Revlon "Electric"

This is one of my favorite nail art manicures to do, mainly because it is fairly simple and people are always impressed. This manicure reminds me of the wallpaper that was in the Betsey Johnson store at the Garden State Plaza. Yes, that is a weirdly specific reference.

China Glaze "Instant Chemistry"

One of my first forays into magnetic nail polish. I really do like the effect, but the magnet for the China Glaze polish is terrible. I don't know if my nails are too long, or too curved, but I would wind up with a small patch of the design in the middle of my nails, which looked pretty stupid. I had more luck with the magnet that came with some drugstore magnetic polish.

OPI "Pirouette My Whistle" over OPI "Steady as She Rose" with a matte topcoat

Despite the ridiculous name, "Pirouette My Whistle" is one of my favorite glitters. It looks really delicate, for lack of a better word, and works over a lot of different colors. Making it matte gives it an almost lunar look.

Ninja Polish "Sticks and Stones" over Sally Hansen "Blue-Away"

While I never fully bought into the Lynnderella craze, I really really wanted "Connect the Dots." Alas, it was impossible to get and I wasn't willing to put myself on waiting lists or stay up into the wee hours of the night refreshing and waiting for a restock. Nor was I willing to spend $50 (literally) on eBay. So when Ninja Polish released this dupe, I was more than happy to spend my dollars their way. It's a great polish and it is easy to get a variety of shapes on your brush.

Essie "A Crewed Interest"

Nice peach/coral creme that is perfect for summer. Not much else to say.

China Glaze "Rich and Famous"

Very bright and very pink.

Essie "Pretty Edgy"

Perfect grass green borderline-jelly polish. I love this color.

OPI "Don't Touch My Tutu"

Another attempt to make these milky polishes work for me.

Layla "Flash Black"

Who doesn't love a holographic polish? This is everything I wanted OPI "My Private Jet" to be.

China Glaze "Gothic Lolita"

I don't know why it took me forever to wear this polish. I like that this is a warm toned purple, which for some reason are harder to find. This picture doesn't show the subtle pink and blue shimmer.

Yep, here I am.

Oh hi, I didn't see you there. I suppose I should feel bashful about this vowing to blog more often, posting once or twice, and then going MIA for the better part of a year thing I keep doing. I will blame it on the part of my personality that immediately turns a task into something insurmountably dread-worthy. So what I am going to do is to post 10 swatches every day (or nearly every day) until my back catalog is empty, and then give blogging the old college try.

Easter Manicure - Various polishes This was a favorite of mine. It was surprisingly not-that-difficult to do and my students went nutty for it. I saw a picture on Tumblr that inspired this, but it didn't link to a blog, so I have no idea who to credit.

Essie “Go Overboard” with Pure Ice "Heartbreaker" on top. "Heartbreaker" is a cult favorite topcoat and I bought mine over a year ago but never used it. It did a great job of sprucing up a basic dark teal polish. This looked especially pretty under water, but alas, it is impractical to live life with sinks running on your hands at all times.

Glitter Gal "Light as a Feather" Major, major, major disappointment but I can't really blame the outcome of this manicure entirely on the polish. I did this manicure the night before I left to chaperone my school's Washington, DC field trip. I painted my nails, but in the interest of time I used Seche Vite to top coat them. I have heard that quick dry top coats (or maybe top coats in general) dull the effect of holographic polishes, but I needed to do to bed and my nails needed to be dry for that to happen. The holo effect was average at best and the Seche Vite darkened the polish and made the tips look dingy. I was seriously tempted to stop at some DC drugstore for remover and cotton balls. Does this Seche Vite darkening/dingy thing happen to anyone else? It usually only happens with light colors and it is quite distressing.

Revlon "Calla Lily" A better in theory than in practice. This is a white jelly base with lots of gold shimmer. I always want this kind of polish to work for me, but it always winds up thick and/or streaky.

Cult Nails "Crusin Nude" It was hard to capture the pink sheen in photos. This is a great understated but not old lady color. I had forgotten how much I liked this color until this blog post, so huzzah blogging.

Zoya “Bevin” I am pretty sure I got this in a Birchbox. It is a nice, but standard teal/jade creme. Nothing to write home about.

Butter London “Disco Biscuit” I like this polish, but I wish it looked more like it did in the bottle. Which is more blue, less pink. It should probably be noted that this dried to a matte and somewhat blah finish. It top coat really makes this.

Cult Nails "Living Water" The base is a bit too dark and overpowers the shimmer. This looks fantastic in the sunlight though.

OPI "Just Spotted the Lizard" One of the many Chanel "Peridot" dupes that have come out over the last year. The formula on this was pretty good and definitely less streaky than I feared. This was also a big hit, which confused me until I remembered that I don't live in a world populated exclusively by nail bloggers and sometimes people are just impressed with an unusual color. A nice realization.

Rescue Beauty Lounge "Chinoise" Classic, true red. As is the case with every RBL polish I own, the application was flawless and was nearly a one-coater.

Nails: February and March 2012

Oh right, blogging about nails and books and life. Manicure #9: China Glaze "Dance Baby"

Not the greatest picture (hi toilet!) but it was the closest I could come in terms of color accuracy. This is a medium, bubble-gum pink creme polish. I loved this polish, and strangely enough, a lot of my male students complimented it as well. Manicure #10: China Glaze "First Mate"

The absolute best navy blue creme, hands down. It is bright enough so that it is clearly blue, but dark enough to be a true navy. Flawless application and little to no staining when I removed it. Manicure #11: Valentine's Day Owl Manicure

I was inspired to do this manicure by Chalkboard Nails. I was looking for some idea for Valentine's Day and came across this idea, deemed it too difficult for me to do, and moved on. I wound up not coming up with anything I liked better and decided to give it a try. The base color was Zoya "Caitlin" which I love for the color and because it is my namesake polish. After a childhood devoid of anything personalized, I will basically buy anything with my name on it. This could have turned out better/neater, but overall I thought it was cute and appropriate for the holiday. Manicure #12: Nerd Lacquer "Entirely Unlike Tea"

This polish has beautiful rainbow micro glitter in it that is very difficult to photograph. The base is a little sheer, so I may try layering this over a similar colored creme polish next time. Manicure #12: China Glaze "Aquadelic"

Not too much to say about this polish. Another A+ creme polish from China Glaze. It is a smidge greener than my picture, but these bright colors always do wonky things to my camera. Disappointing side note: this is one of a handful of polishes that do not play nice with fast dry top coats. By day 2 or 3 the polish had darkened significantly, with the worst of it being near the tips. Ugh, hate that Manicure #13: China Glaze "Sweet Hook"

I completely forgot that I even wore this polish, so it obviously it a very important polish. Again, China Glaze creme, so it was good. It leaned a little warmer than most of my lavender polishes, which is more flattering on my warm-ish skin tone. Manicure #14: Essie "Navigate Her"

My apologies for the awful picture, but it was the only one that semi-accurately showed the color of this polish. It is a brightened pistachio, and probably the closest I've come to finding a green grape hued polish. I really loved this color. Manicure #15: Finger Paints "Grape Gumball"

Glass fleck blurple. Not terribly unique but it called to me at Sally Beauty Supply. Probably because the sales associate let me go into the back room to look at the polishes they hadn't put out yet. Manicure #16: Wet n Wild "Sugar Coat"

I was skeptical about the opacity of this polish, but I read good things online so I took the $3 risk. These super pale pinks (think OPI Bubble Bath) are always a streaky mess for me, so I've stayed away from them. This is three coats and it isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. Manicure #17: Galaxy Nails

Definitely one of my favorite manicures. This is black creme (maybe Wet n Wild?) with a neon purple no name brand polish and a yellow from Revlon sponged on top. I finished the whole thing with "Fairy Dust" by China Glaze. "Fairy Dust" is one of those polishes that instantly spruces up a manicure. I've used this over several imperfect water marbles to mask my mistakes. Manicure #18: Essie "A Crewed Interest"

Not much to say here: standard peach creme. Application was nice, but I often worry these kinds of colors make me look like an old lady. Manicure #19: China Glaze "Agro"

Love the color but it was a little on brush stroke-y side. This is a very December color to me, so wearing it in March (and North Carolina March) was causing mental discord. Manicure #20: China Glaze "Dress Me Up" with China Glaze "Medallion"

Oh hey, bathroom at work. Is that, or is that not the epitome of a public school bathroom? Anyway, I loved this manicure so much. The browned pink base of "Dress Me Up" benefited from the jazzing up the polka dots and chunky gold glitter brought. My students loved this one too, which is always the mark of a good manicure. Manicure #21: Butter London "No More Waity, Katie" over Zoya "Caitlin"

I read that this was pretty sheer, so I layered it overly the similarly colored "Caitlin". I kind of wish I hadn't, as I felt it wound up a little too dark and dismal looking. Manicure #22: Essie "Turquoise & Caicos"

This was my first non-untried polish this year. I wore this for the first time last summer and I loved it then. No change this time. It is very similar to "Aquadelic" but definitely less bright. If I had to guess, a non nail polish person probably couldn't tell the difference between the two. And at long last, that is it for February and March. And once again, just in time for April's post. The school year is winding down and I have all kinds of grand plans for how I will spend all those summer hours. I also recently passed the halfway mark for my 30 Books in 2012 goal, and it is well before the halfway mark for the year so I feel pretty optimistic. A book post is forthcoming, for real this time.

Nails: January 2012

Here I am, ready to get the ball rolling on this resolution and talk about nails. I don't know whether these posts are going to be weekly, monthly, per manicure or some combination of those. But seeing as it is the last day of the month, I'll just do a round up of all my January manicures.

Manicure #1: Nerd Lacquer "Don't Blink" This was a surprise Christmas gift from Taylor and I loveloveloved this polish. It's a gorgeous dove grey with small silver and black glitter and larger hexagonal silver glitter. The black glitter really makes this polish and gives it a great speckled effect. Right after I took this picture, I broke half the nails on my right hand while trying to open a stuck sliding door. Ouch.

Manicure #2: Essie "Very Cranberry" with Finger Paints "Twisted" on top

My first manicure on my newly short nails. "Very Cranberry" was another surprise polish from Taylor. I know that red is probably the most common color for nail polish, but it is the color I have the least of. This polish leans a little pink and has a definite sheen to it. I wouldn't say it's a full on shimmer but there is definitely something that keeps it from being a creme. The shimmer is very, very subtle. I purchased "Twisted" the same day this picture was taken, so I had to throw it on top to see how it looked. "Twisted" is a top coat with blue, red, purple, orange and green pieces of iridescent flake glitter in it. I love flake glitter and it didn't disappoint over this mid-tone red. I am looking forward to trying it over some darker shades.

Manicure #3: Nerd Lacquer "Cold and Calculating"

Shock and surprise, another polish from Taylor. A deep purple with silver glitter and larger hex pieces. I don't love this one as much as "Don't Blink" but I still really liked it. For some reason, I had a hard time getting the glitter pieces in this polish to lay completely flat, which made the finish rough even with a top coat.

Manicure #4: Zoya "Yara"

Yep. Taylor polish. I swear, I buy 96% of my own polishes, but I got a bunch for Christmas and felt compelled to wear them one right after another. I wish I had taken more pictures of this polish, because it's much prettier than this photograph would leave you to believe. "Yara" is an olive green that is loaded with gold shimmer. The shimmer really glows when the sun hits it, but unfortunately this picture was taken indoors, near my desk and in a rush.

Manicure #5: MAC "Blue India"

I bought this polish! I picked this up at a CCO in Charlotte over the summer. It was limited edition from MAC's Liberty of London collection and I had admired swatches of it online when it was released. I never purchase MAC polishes at full price because they are kind of expensive and the formula is not that great. This was also a little difficult to capture in a photo. It is a deep greyed blue that tends to photograph too bright or too dark.

Manicure #6: China Glaze "Sunset Sail"

This was a manicure fail. I should probably mention that I am trying to work through all my untried polishes this year as well. As I was looking though my stash, I pulled "Sunset Sail" thinking that I had never used it. Wrong. As soon as I finished my manicure, I realized that I wore this back in September and I hated it. This polish looks fine at first, but the longer I had it on, the more and more I felt like an old lady. The color goes from peach to dirty band-aid in like, 15 minutes. I'm sure this looks lovely on other people, but not me.

Manicure #7: China Glaze "VII"

"VII" is a pretty straightforward raisin colored creme. It was nothing spectacular, but It applied nicely and I probably could have gotten away with one coat. I always feel like an actual grown up when I wear colors like this, which is simultaneously nice and no fun.

Manicure #7: Essie "Fair Game"

I wasn't a huge fan of this polish, but I liked it more than I thought I would. Does that make sense? I was talked into buying this polish nearly a year ago, although I wasn't totally sold on it. I pulled it out for a manicure and then looked at a dozen streaky, frosty swatches of it online. Fortunately, it had enough shimmer to keep it from looking like a complete 1980's frost nightmare. I think it would probably look better on shorter nails, so I don't know how often I'll be reaching for this one.

Manicure #8: Orly "Androgynie"

This polish was somewhat of a letdown, though I still like how it looks. The bottle looks amazing, but that amazingness doesn't translate to the nail quite as well as I would have hoped. The main issue is that the black base is sheer enough to require several coats, but opaque enough to completely cover the glitter in previous coats. Next time, I'll use this over a black base to maximize the glitter. Okay folks, there you have it. All my manicures for the month of January, including the one I am currently wearing. Hopefully I can get it together and make an collective January book post sometime this week.