Essie Armed and Ready and Orly Solid Gold

Hi everyone!  Today I have a simple and fun mani to show you.  I've been pretty rough on my nails lately unfortunately.  I filed them down pretty short and still managed to have more chips and breaks in the last three weeks than the last six months!

Let's not dwell on that though!  On to the manicure!

Essie's Armed and Ready is another one of those shades that I resisted buying for a long time.  Though I definitely liked it every time I saw it in the store, I didn't buy it!  I ended up caving in and picking it up when I went to a discount beauty supply store with my BFFs last week.  It's a great olive green with a slight golden shimmer to it, which was being shy in these photographs.  In any case, I thought it would be a fun pairing with my new bottle of Orly's Solid Gold.

Both polishes are super easy to work with and apply.  I put down two coats of Armed and Ready.  It was a nice consistency and covered well, leveling nicely.  I did the stripe with the regular polish brush from Solid Gold.  It's such a great matte!  Not only is it gorgeous, but the formula is pretty darn amazing.  It dries quickly as mattes normally do, but it is really easy to get even coverage without streaking or getting too thick.  I had to do two coats of each stripe.  I then threw on a coat of top coat and called it good.

Thanks for reading!

Blogging Outdoors

So oddly enough, today I find myself sitting outside, enjoying a terrified dog on my lap and some rare Washington sunshine. My husband is splitting wood for his mother and I'm definitely one of those people who is better off not helping. Think the girl who is completely used to the city meets the lumberjack mountain man. On top of the fact that I don't want to break a nail because it's a nail blogger's worst nightmare!

In any case, I'm trying to pretty much stay out of the way so I don't hurt myself or someone else, but I forgot my book (Currently reading Clash of Kings because my hubby is obsessed with Game of Thrones, btw).  So I've decided to get a post going for you lovely people and talk about my current mani.  But! I don't have pictures, so I am bringing you a special edition with phone photos! Don't be too scarred though, my phone has a really good camera!  And Instagram!! Can't go wrong with that!

The polish today is Orly's Royal Navy, which I am using to test how Butter London's top and base coat combo works for me.

Nubar Reclaim and Orly Sec 'n Dry

Good day, everyone!  I hope you all had a nice weekend.  I had a great one with the hubby because I very expertly conned him into adopting a hamster with me.  She's a gray dwarf and is currently sleeping, but her name is Prudence and she's pretty laid-back and used to having a hand stuck in her cage already, so we're hoping she'll be tame soon enough!  She likes to bite my nails though, just little nips of curiosity I think so far, so I'm going to have to offer her my right hand and not my left one!  She got to run around in her ball for about ten minutes last night and chased my little chicken dog around the house already.  D'awwww.

As much as I'm sure you love to hear about my pets, I do have some nail polish to talk about.  =)

I'm really excited to show you this weekend manicure for two reasons: Green Holo [!!!] and these pictures were taken today, as in, this afternoon, on its third day.

This is the third Nubar polish that I got for my birthday last month and probably the one that I wanted most of all.  I have Glitter Gal's Lizard Belly, which is a dark green holographic polish, but Reclaim is much lighter and more affordable.  Reclaim is also a linear holo, which you can see in the pictures.  The rainbow effect is really fine and just gorgeous.

These pictures show three coats, though I could have stopped at two, but I went with three because I wanted to see if the holo effect would intensify with a third coat.  It didn't, so just two coats next time.  The formula on this polish is so good, it's creamy and smooth and very easy to apply.  They also have one coat of Orly's Sec 'n Dry, which I was testing in my search for a toluene free top coat that works for me.

And well, Orly definitely worked!  As I previously mentioned, I wore this all weekend and come Monday, I have a manicure that is still looking almost perfect.  I noticed in a few pictures, though not in real life, that there's a tiny bit of tip wear starting.  I didn't bother to wrap my tips this time either, because I actually counted on having time to repaint on Saturday or Sunday.  However, no wear on such a fascinating color made me put it off both days.

I'm actually kind of debating whether or not I want to repaint them tonight or not.  I do want to show you some swatches of my custom blended polishes and Butter London's Disco Biscuit, but this is just so pretty!  It's the weirdest feeling in the world, NOT wanting to repaint my nails.  I think maybe I'm ill...

Thanks for reading!