NOTD: Fall Swirls

Today I have for you my Thanksgiving manicure!  This picture is the best example of what I was doing over my thanksgiving break... working hard on making a big black wool peacoat for the boyfriend as a Christmas present.  All the sewing took a toll on my nails... the polish didn't last very long (as you can see!) ... these pictures were taken on day 3 of wear I think.  I kept scraping my nails with pins, too.

For this design, I used ORLY Space Cadet as my base color and stamped with Essence Pixie Dust and the swirly design from Bundle Monster Image Plate BM-201.  I have to give credit to Bregje over at Oooh, Shinies! for the idea... she used Pixie Dust as a stamping polish Thursday morning, so I put this on my nails while I was getting ready.

This manicure ended up looking much more Christmas-y than I expected.  I'll have to give the design another try later in December, and maybe this time I'll take pictures before I totally destroy my polish!

All opera, all the time

I may have mentioned (once or ten times) that I've been kind of busy this month.  Sunday night was the end of Sacramento Opera's production of Pagliacci (Wikipedia synopsis), and yesterday was the first of my school's opera scenes performance.  We're doing the scenes again tonight, and if you are so inclined, apparently it will be livestreamed (8pm Pacific time) so that anyone can watch it.  Which is pretty nifty, but also rather intimidating!

A few pictures from backstage for Pagliacci... above are the black beaded gloves I wore... I'd like a pair, please!  And some of the general dressing-room hubbub.  Our costumer was going for a late 1920s/ early 1930s look.

And here is my own costume.... which I loved!  I want a dress like this now.  Perhaps I can make one?  It had buttons up the front and back, high side slits, and lots of dangly fringe.  My hat, on the other hand, was a bit bedraggled... you can see a few sad little pink feathers sticking out.
On a related note:  Isn't the stage makeup a shade or two darker than actual skintone a good look? :p

Okay.  Back to our regularly scheduled nail polish soon!

Swatch: ORLY Luxe

ORLY Luxe

I realized Thursday night that I could, in fact, wear nail polish even though I'm in a show.  Why?  Because part of our 1920s - 1930s period costuming is gloves.  Nobody will ever see my hands while I'm onstage!  Just my sparkly black beaded gloves.  (Also, I now want a pair of beaded gloves, please.)

All pictures taken with compact fluorescent lighting

I'm still kind of pressed for time (this post is serving as procrastination from a 3-page state report...  I feel like I'm back in high school!) so I just did the color alone without any art or other fancy business.  Thankfully, I picked a color that didn't need any help!
I also am trying making my blog layout a little wider and bumping up to the next size of photos.  Opinions?

ORLY Luxe

For my conveniently hidden manicure, I decided to try out ORLY Luxe from the Foil FX collection of Spring 2010. (right?)  I've been on a hunt for the holy grail of gold polishes, and this one sure comes close.  I used my Sinful Colors Basecoat as always, and followed it up with two medium-ish coats of Luxe.  I topped everything with a coat of NYC Grand Central Station.

ORLY Luxe

The finish on this polish is really fun.  Instead of being all one color, Luxe is made up of tiny gold and silver particles, which give it much more depth (and wearability, for me!) than a solid gold polish.  I really love this polish and I can definitely see myself wearing it for the holiday season and beyond... I'm hoping it will play well with some of my royal purple polishes for nail art, and I have yet to try it for stamping, but a preliminary Google-ing looks encouraging.

OK.  Back to my paper!

In the interest of disclosure...

This is what was on my nails yesterday morning. Yes, I had the presence of mind to remove it (it was 2 coats of OPI Rumple's Wiggin, not quite enough to be opaque, and one of OPI Black Shatter.  The goal was to match my outfit/ my boyfriend's tie when we went to the opera.  Needless to say it was done in a hurry.) and I have yet to put on anything else.  I was about to type that I can't even find my basecoat, but I looked to my left and it's sitting on this table under a short stack of papers.
So... I'll post something eventually.  I think I still have unedited swatch photos for at least one color in my computer, but that's about it.  I can't even paint my nails over the next weekend because I'm in two opera productions.  Although the second one has yet to be costumed, so maybe I can?  Anyways, I digress.

If you've been reading my rambling so far, here's something shiny as payoff.  I was in ULTA 3 or 4 weeks ago (I'm such a bad blogger) and found a handful of ORLY's Cosmic FX polishes right in the middle of a Mineral FX display.  I picked up Galaxy Girl and Lunar Eclipse, since I didn't have either.  And you know what?  ULTA didn't even have the shame to put year-old collections on sale!  I still paid full price for them.  I think they're worth it, though.

SO... when I have time to sit down and paint my nails again (ha ha!) I think I'll start with these pretties.  See you on the other end of tech week!

NOTD: Party Time

All photos outside, open shade

I keep sitting down at my computer with good intentions to paint my nails/edit pictures/work on a blog post, and invariably I get distracted by some other pressing and important task and suddenly it has been five whole days and no posting has happened.  So, as I sit down with my breakfast of cheesecake, I will write a post.

I really should introduce some new tag for pictures that have been sitting around, unposted, for this long.  I painted these about a month ago, when I was throwing a 21st Birthday party for my boyfriend.... but then of course it was October and time for Halloween type things and not so much time for an explosion of glitter.  My nails were remarkably sparkly, and they wore quite well considering how much glitter was on them.

For this excessively glittery manicure, I used....

• Sinful Colors Basecoat
• ORLY Glitz and Glamour
• Essence Circus Confetti
• NYC Grand Central Station (quick-dry topcoat)

 After applying my base coat, I used two coats of Glitz and Glamour, followed by a thin coat of Circus Confetti.  Over that, I added two more coats of Circus Confetti, the first from just below the cuticle and the second to the tips only to create a slight glitter gradient.  And that was that!  I just threw on a layer of topcoat and, voila!, incredibly sparkly nails.

Gratuitous blurred picture

 I think this sort of glitter bomb nail design would be perfect for a party or New Year's Eve.  What do you think?  Do you love glitter?

NOTD: Green Glitter Gradient

Outdoors, open shade

Well, they aren't exactly "Halloween Nails", but this was what I had on my fingers for Halloween.   I went to SF Opera on the 28th with a few friends to see Don Giovanni, and I wanted to do something to match my dress. (This dress, which you may have seen before...)

I wanted my nails to match my dress, kind of, and I love the way glitter gradient tips look.  Unfortunately, they chipped really quickly, probably because of the big chunks of glitter around the tips.  And they were kind of a pain to remove... I just opted for the foil method.

I used my Sinful Colors Basecoat, as always, followed by two coats of ULTA Professional Green With Envy.  I made a glitter gradient with Forever21 Love & Beauty in Green (what original names!), which (in this case) is a mix of green small glitter and green hex glitter.  I dragged a very thin coat across 2/3 of my nail, and then I put another coat on the tip-most third of my nail.  To finish, I used NYC Grand Central Station as my topcoat.

What do you think of this combination?