Marble...Wednesday

Finally! A marble I like and am actually wearing! Woot woot!

I give you my uber-posh taupe marble!



Bask in the glory, readers. Bathe in it.



Aaaand the other hand. I was going to save this for Monday, but I was so excited about it, plus I've skipped Marble Monday the last two weeks or so, so I just had to put it up today.

 And thumbs. Excuse my cuticles please! For this marble, I used H&M Grey Sky, OPI You Don't Know Jacques, and OPI Glamor Game, which is the shimmery gold. First I put on a coat of Color Club High Society. Because Grey Sky is such a tiny bottle, and the colors are so close, I figured it'd be fine as a base. This marble was pretty easy to do, all three colors spread well in the water and were easy to swirl. I did notice that when my AC kicked in it got a little more difficult as the polish started drying quicker on the water. Little things like that make a huge difference! Also, I used a different method of protecting my skin this time. Usually I wrap my finger in tape to keep the polish off my cuticles and fingers. Though this works well, it's a HUGE pain in butt. This time, I used vaseline around my cuticles and on my fingers. It's very easy to do with just a Q-tip, and once your nails are dry you can wipe the vaseline along with excess polish right off. I got this tip from a fellow blogger, but can't remember who!! I know I commented how great of an idea it was, so if it was you, please let me know so I can give you the proper credit!

What do you guys think of this combo? Yay or nay?

Summer Fresh

Today I have another swatch from my H&M mini mini haul. This is Summer Fresh, and light peachy creme with a very subtle silver shimmer.



This is two coats. Application, like Grey Sky, was good, and the color is OK, but it's definitely not my forte. Though I originally planned to do a full mani of this, I only ended up doing one hand for a swatch and it came off. Good thing this little guy was only $1.95.



This was the second polish in a nail nightmare that took almost FOUR HOURS of my night people. Four hours!

My original intention was a marble over yesterday's Grey Sky, which I really loved. I used Grey Sky, OPI You Don't Know Jacques, and an OPI shimmer I can't remember at the moment. I really liked the combo, but messed up a few nails so I decided to swatch Summer Fresh instead (I will definitely do that marble again because it was really cute! Stay tuned). After deciding NO on Summer Fresh, I went to a favorite of mine that I haven't yet featured on here, American Apparel L'Espirit, and beautiful lavender/periwinkle cream that applies like a one-coat wet dream. I was good to go until I was enlisted to help the 'rents drag some luggage and other such things into the house (they just came back from vacation last night). Some terrible nicks and smudges made me bid L'Espirit adieu.

So THEN, I thought it might be good to go back to my E.L.F. haul and swatch Pearl, a shimmery white. BIG mistake. Guys, don't wait for a pic, take it from me. This is one of the worst, streakiest, brush-strokey mess I have ever applied. I can't ever promise you'll see it because I don't know if i can bear putting that monstrosity on my hands again. We'll see.

I tried to save that garbage with a coat or two of a bronze shimmer, but it was hopeless. I lost all faith in my collection then, and, deflated and downtrodden, I put on 2 coats of Sally Hansen Nail Growth Miracle (A strengthening and lengthening treatment I've used for years and swear by) and a coat of Seche and went to bed.

It's not a happy morning when you wake up and realize you have to go to work like this:



For the sake of your own retinas, DO NOT click for a close up.

Pray for a better nail day for me today, dear readers. I can't go on like this!!

H&M Haul and Grey Sky

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a lovely weekend :) I had boyfriend over for the weekend so couldn't do my normal manicure routine for fear of boring him to death lol! Saturday I took him over to the Garden State Plaza for a celebratory treat because he finally took his Bar exam. I made an appointment at The Art of Shaving for him to have the "Royal Shave" - a straight razor shave with all kinds of face masks and lotion and other goodness. Guys like getting pampered too! If your man has a special occasion or you just want to do something nice for him, I definitely recommend taking him to their Barber Spa for special shave :)

Anyway, boyfriend wasn't the only one who got treats! I dragged him into H&M and did some browsing, and picked up 3 mini polishes along with my two tops!

From left: Summer Fresh, Grey Sky, Blue Sky.

Of course the first color I wanted to try was Grey Sky, a pretty taupey-grey with a very delicate, fine silver shimmer. I really just can't get enough of these colors. They're just so classy and sophisticated!

I was VERY pleasantly surprised with the application of this polish. The bottle is teeny tiny so I was expecting a pain in the ass tiny brush, but it actually applied really well! The brush was short, yes, but the bristles were soft and the brush pretty wide which made application easy. I wasn't expecting very much from the formula either, but it was smooth and easy to work with, no cuticle drag and minimal streaking on the first coat - this is two and the color is smooth and opaque. I wish I had taken a pic of just one coat. I actually liked it a lot, it was just a sheer wash of a light mauvey color.

This shade reminds me a lot of one of my other favorite taupes, Color Club High Society. I'll need to do a comparison soon and see just how similar they are side by side. HS doesn't have the shimmer GS has, but the shimmer's so subtle that if they're the same shade, I think it'd be fair to call them dupes. We'll see!

I just thought this was fun :)

Stay tuned for swatches of Blue Sky and Summer Fresh!