Sometimes less is more

With Konad sometimes it's easy to get carried away. Especially after last week's manicure gave me a false sense of confidence regarding my double-stamping skills. I love my base color, I haven't worn red in a really long time, and I like the black over top, but I am disgusted & disappointed with the final design. Even if I'd managed to get everything even (which is tricky if not impossible since my nails are varying lengths) it ended up reminding me more of upholstery than anything.

Nubar Unfaithful Red from the Liquid Metals collection, Konaded with black special polish & plate m4. I even did a pretty good job of painting neatly & cleaning up everything with an orange stick.

Usually I do my nails once a week, but I don't know that I can stand this for that long. Right now my intention is to sleep on it, see if somehow I miraculously love them in the morning & if not redo everything after I go to lunch with my parents. Like I said, I love the red & the black so I may stick with the same colors and a more moderate hand with the stamper.

Anyway, the moral of the above story, as the title says: Sometimes less is more. On the other hand - sometimes more is just more & great. And while my day ended on a somewhat sour note with a manicure that did not live up to the image I had in mind, the rest of my day was a lovely polish-buying happyfest.

Here's my cat making room for herself in between my purchases & haul from the library. She's old (17) so she does whatever & goes wherever she pleases.

I stopped several places, a couple Sallys to pick up more of the Romantique collection, where I also ran across a few clearance items that needed to come home with me, and a few cheapos at Target that were lonely. Best bang for the buck was at Dollar Tree, though. Another thing to thank my fellow bloggers for, I had never been in a Dollar Tree but so many people said they had oldie-goodie polishes I put it on my to-do list & this is what I turned up at my first stop (there are 2 other stores I know of to raid at a later date):

Top row is some nail art rhinestones, and some Cover Girl. Nailslicks: Chocolate Mint, Galactic Green, Sunrise, & Midnight Metal. & Mattalic (which I think have to be about 10+ years old because I remember purchasing a couple when they first came out) Pink Zinc & Silver Violet. Bottom Row is Sally Hansen Super Shine Naturistics Aura Pearl, New York Color Cozy Cottage, and Loreal: Brave (Bijou Crystals), B. Strong (Bijou Gems), Shocking (Crystals), Hopeful (Bijou Facets), B. Rebllious (Crystals), B. Adventurous (Crystals), Sweet (Facets), B. Impulsive (Crystals), & another B. Hopeful. Almost none of the 3-packs had the same set of colors, so I counted myself lucky to only end up with 1 duplicate. I have no idea when this line originally came out, how old they are, but you can see a couple of them are pretty separated.

So, with all the shopping I did not get around to doing anything with my existing stash except add to it. I think that's like a step past procrastination, not just putting off the task but making it a larger task at the same time! Oh well, the perils of being a nail polish addict I suppose. It's hard to go anywhere that has polish without looking, and finding at least 1 thing to pick up.

Thanks for Reading.

~Colette

Hello & Welcome

Well, I guess the short version is: I decided to start a blog.

The longer version is that about a month ago, I made the lovely discovery that there are people just as obsessed with their manicure as I am - in many cases MORE obsessed. Since then I have been lurking & reading & working up the courage to put in my 2 cents. I've gleaned so much useful info in just a few weeks that I feel the urge to contribute what meager knowledge I have to share.

I know pretty much zero about blogs past reading them. I'd never seriously considered writing one myself before I realized there was a comminty for a subject I was actually interested in. But I like to think I'm a quick learner, so hopefully it won't be too long before this page starts to look like more than a grade-school experiment.

That said - on to the good stuff! The manicure. My current NOTD, although they're really more like NOTW because to this point I've only been doing them once a week. But that was before I purchased my first bottle of Seche Vite 2 weeks ago. Quickly followed by the purchase of a glass nail file - both on the recommendation of so many other bloggers. Hopefully if I continue to follow all the good advice I can get my nails looking as good as all of you other ladies. Right now I have problems with peeling & breaking on several specific nails (which you'll see below) but because I really cannot stand having short nails I instead have to deal with uneven nails. Before we get to the real manicure, I took some "naked" shots of my nails on Sunday, here's what I'm working with underneath it all:

I believe this was taken just under the ceiling light in my room + the camera's flash. My nails that grow properly I'm pretty happy with - my thumb & index finger not so much. The right hand is in similar shape but worse ... there's a pic of it painted below, you'll see. The next piece of advice I think I'll be taking is Biotin.

So then I did 2 coats of China Glaze Romantique Harmony - which was the first color of the collection I tried because purple is always my favorite - and then Konaded (is that a verb? If not I declare it to be one from now on) it with white special polish & plate m4 twice. You can see why one of my New Year's Resolutions is to learn & practice a cleaner paint job. Taken directly under the lamp.

I've mainly been lazy & resistant to learning to be neater because with a little peeling & scrubbing, most of the extra polish comes off. Well, at least that's what I thought before I started taking close-up gigantic shots of my manicure. Good enough to the naked eye, but at this range I notice quite a bit of excess polish still clinging on. This is under my full-spectrum lamp at work:

And hours later, a little cleaner but still little stubborn specks. This next one is taken outside; it was snowing, so bright-white but no direct sun. LOL I really need to pick one good spot to take the pics, I know, but I'm still kind of in the experimental phase as far as that goes.

Anyway, those are my nails, and they make me happy. Probably my #1 simple little pleasure. If you're still with me after this ridiculously long first post, thanks for reading.

~Colette