Work Safe Wednesday - Thursday Edition

ok, we all know i was super bitter about how badly my EUT accent nail turned out yesterday. so i decided to keep the Amanda and jazz it up a bit. i redid the ring finger with one coat of Amanda and added Set in Stones. I did my best to use a light hand with SiS, but all of that glorious shiny silver glitter has a mind of it's own. i have read some complaints about the flat nature of the silver glitter, but i happen to love it. the shine is phenomenal and i get so many compliments every time i wear it. it truly is eye-catching. 

also if you can't tell from the massive dent in the bottle, i love matte top coats, they dry so quickly and especially combined with glitter it adds an unexpected element to my manicures. there is also something so pretty about the combination of a nude + glitter + matte...

i am resisting the urge to take this manicure 2.0 and make them all matte. 

oh, excuse the broken pinkie nail. i got a little manic with the cleaning yesterday and in my enthusiasm i apparently lost a little soldier. it ripped low so it'll be a little hidden for the next week or two.

Work Safe Wednesday - Amanda meets Entirely Unlike Tea

so Zoya Amanda is like my all time favorite neutral. and i am slightly sad to admit it took seeing it on Rachel Zoe at one of her fashion shows to see the potential in this gorgeous rosy nude. either way, it is my dearest love. i've worn it with a little silver sparkle and a matte top coat (i'll try to find pictures) and when i found NerdLacquer Entirely Unlike Tea (EUT), i thought they were a natural pair. Amanda is a dream going on, with a steady hand it is pretty perfect at one coat. i did two coats just to smooth out a few problem spots (watching Game of Thrones while i do nails is such a bad idea). my problem came with adding top coat to EUT. you can see on both pictures that i had issues with some wrinkling on my ring finger. now, being that i have so little time, it'll have to do. but it is still annoying as hell. i did a coat of Gelous and then SV on all of the nails. (btw, this totally cancelled out the shrinkage problem i normally have with Zoya + SV) the shine on the Amanda is GORGEOUS, but i am plagued by the desire to redo my ring finger...

i just know that EUT is stunning, i just have to figure out the right way to wear it.

natural light (even if it was cloudy outside)

by the light of my lamp (and tv)

now, i'm linking to MyPerfectPolish's Work Safe Wednesday, which i love the concept of. keep in mind however, that i wear all of these nails to work, wild colors/glitters included. *but* this one falls into the Work Safe category for most people...i think.

NerdLacquer Fun Week!

After Resolutionary, i decided to go ahead and play with all of my NerdLacquer haul :) i still have two more to go, but here are Hyperspace Bypass, Crunchy Frog and Cyance Friction.

So, i have had so many issues with Zoya Pippa. I love it in the bottle, LOVED it on a girlfriend of mine...but on me? not so much. once i get it past the streaky phase, it looked really odd on me. so it has just sat in my box staring at me wistfully... so i combined it with Hyperspace Bypass and then spent the next two days wiggling my fingers around just to catch glimpses of the silver hexes and black micro glitter. it went on super easy and the picture above is lamp light (sunlight was almost impossible to capture) with only two coats of Hyperspace Bypass. I do have to note, that i'm currently rereading the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe so the nerdgasm level on this right now is officially at SQUEE!!

This is two coats of Crunchy Frog over Zoya Dea. it dried super smooth, compared to my other NerdLacquer purchases, but i still did a coat of Gelous and one of SV over top. The name is super silly, but the combo is so unusual that i can't help but love it. The base on this somewhere between caramel and chocolate, so it made the Dea (which is totally milk chocolate) a little less meh for me.

MyPerfectPolish swatched this last week (find it here) and had a hard time getting those gorgeous champagne colored flecks off the sides of the bottle. my super technical fix for this was just to screw the top entirely back on between each nail, shift the bottle back and forth a bit and then lay the brush lengthwise down each nail (More Nail Polish did a really good video on the technique here, using The Glittering Crowd by Lynderella *LE DROOL*) . technique worked pretty well and this is only *one* coat of Cyance Friction. The base of the glitter was speckled with tiny coppery glitter so that mellowed out the Hard Candy Frenzy a ton. only issue, it totally gobbled my Gelous+SV combo which is annoying the hell out of me. i am a sucker for a glassy shine.

Birthday Party Nails

needed something somewhat fun and girly for a girlfriends birthday party, hence the China Glaze Purple Panic topped with NerdLacquer Resolutionary. The CG Purple Panic is so pretty, i think i actually have pictures of it on it's own that i'll have to dig up, but it is kind of chalky and matte. no more so than any other neon though. The NL Resolutionary is so much fun, though there is more tiny glitter than my other NL's. but it did get a lot of comments, including one from my man describing it's beauty as "JUST LIKE A FISHING LURE!" 

i'm taking it as a compliment.