Claire's - Hollywood

First of all, I'm sorry for my unexplained lack of posting lately - I've been working a lot more than usual lately, and although I've still been polishing my nails regularly, it just hasn't been possible to find the time for taking photos, editing them, and blogging about it. Hopefully, things will be slowing down a bit now, and I'll be able to resume regular posts.

Although, if they're all as lackluster as this one, that may or may not be a good thing! ;) This polish completely freaked out my camera and this picture does not do it any justice at all (though it was the best of the lot). Plus, I'll be the first to admit that this is a spectacularly lousy manicure. That's what I get for rushing it too much - polish flooding my cuticles.

Despite what it looks like here, this is actually a very pretty polish: fine silver and holo glitter in a shimmery silver base. It's sparkly, but not overly flashy.

It applied very smoothly and dried a bit rough, as glitters often do. I used an opaque white base coat and three coats of polish plus a top coat. It held up well on my nails without chipping or tip wear, and was a bit of a pain to remove (but I expect that of a glitter polish, so no biggie.)

All in all, I think it's a good option for when you want a bit of sparkle, but nothing too in-your-face.

Thanks for reading, and happy polishing!

Claire's Ocean Breeze

Blue skies and butterflies...

I admit, I bought this polish purely out of curiosity. I had never tried a layered polish before, and I wondered how it would come out on the nail. It was also part of the ten-for-ten-dollar polish sale I lucked into a while back at Claire's, so for a dollar I figured I'd give it a try.

Well, it came out blue. I'm not sure why; as a sticker on the top of the cap instructed, I did not shake it, and I tried to be careful to dip the brush all the way down into the bottle to try to pick up some of the layered colors. It still came out blue.

It is, however, a very lovely blue, a color that makes me think of cloudless summer skies. Here it is in the shade:
And in the sunlight:
Although the polish seemed a little thick (I'm guessing maybe it has to be to maintain the layered effect in the bottle instead of all mixing together) it went on very smoothly, dried in a perfectly reasonable amount of time, and was completely opaque in two coats. (The fact that it's flooded onto my cuticles in the pics is entirely the fault of my shaky hands, not any flaw in the polish consistency itself.) The wear is good, as I've found it to be with all of the Claire's polishes I've tried so far - no chipping, smudging, dinging, or tip-wear after two days.

Before I took the pictures, I decided to fancy it up a bit with some pink and white butterfly and flower nail art stickers on the middle finger (which is usually where things go horribly, tragically wrong for me because I'm apparently sticker-challenged and always end up with the darn things stuck firmly somewhere I don't want them, and then ruin my manicure trying to pry them off and re-stick them. That's why I only did one nail on each hand; it turned out pretty well this time and figured I'd best not push my luck!)
I absolutely love this shade of blue! :)

I wonder, though, is there a trick to applying layered polishes that I just don't know? Has anybody else tried them and gotten a multi-colored effect?

Claire's 14 Karats

First of all, I must apologize for posting pics of this one pre-clean-up; I was in a hurry to catch the last of the sunlight before yet another sudden summer thunderstorm came rumbling through.

I'm finally living up to the title of my blog; my nails are indeed gilded!

I really liked this gleaming golden color. For some reason, it reminds me of ancient treasures, like a golden statue that might have been discovered in the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh, perhaps...(I know, I think of odd things sometimes. :-P) It was a bit more prone to brushstrokes than I expected, but on the plus side, it only took two coats to be perfectly opaque, and I wore it all weekend with no major chipping.

And it matched perfectly with the gold embroidery on a dress I wore this weekend:

I wish I had thought to take a picture Of my nails while I was still wearing both the dress and the polish...Why do I always think of these things just a little bit too late?

I was lucky enough to find this one a few weeks ago when Claire's was having a ten-items-for-ten-dollars sale, so it was an amazing bargain at a dollar, but I would have been happy to have paid full price for such a pretty gold polish!

In full sun:

In shade, no flash:
All pics are two coats, plus base and top coat.