Manicure Monday

Hi again! I hope y'all have had a great holiday season. I've been enjoying my time off school and indulging in some reading for pleasure (it'd been years since I'd really done that!), which has left less time for research and blogging, but whatever. It's winter break! I'm going to hibernate. And code. (I finally actually made some headway in that department, and wow, I totally understand why people do CS. When it works, you feel like a GOD. It's awesome. When it doesn't work, you want to kill yourself and everyone you've ever known, but you can't, because then you'll never figure out the puzzle of why it's not working...)

Here are some pictures of manis I've done the last few weeks; I did a green and red one for Christmas, but didn't take pictures because I felt like ignoring my duties as a blogger, but I'm sure you'll see the polishes I used at some point in the future. For now, here are these!

Winter Wonderland

Schnee! Kar! Nieve! Snow! (All the languages I speak
use the same writing system. Sorry to be so boring.)

This is a single coat of three white polishes layered to try and create snowy nails. I did it during our week of snow, when I was trapped at home, before I got annoyed with the stupid white stuff. It's Wet N Wild's white $0.99 polish topped with Orly Au Champagne and Orly Winter Wonderland. It wasn't fully opaque, but I didn't really care, because the shimmer from Winter Wonderland helped disguise it. That polish is really appropriately named! It does look like frosty magic.

Cult Nails Charlatan

YUM.

I picked this up before Christmas, when Cult Nails had a 40% off sale for email subscribers, with free shipping (I also picked up Flushed, which will be featured at some point). I layered it over...OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, I think? Sure, let's go with that (it was one of the vampy OPIs, I can tell you that much). Charlatan is awesome, super duochrome-y, and I love how big the shimmer pieces are. Definitely a favorite! And sadly discontinued. Sorry.

L'Oreal Sexy in Sequins

Looks almost galaxy-esque

I'm a sucker for a good sparkly purple, so when I saw the new LE L'Oreal Gold Dust textured polishes, I picked up this one, and a spare for an upcoming giveaway (stay tuned!). It's ridiculously opaque––this is one coat––and unbelievably topcoat hungry. I don't really go for un-topcoated textured polishes, since they're not as sparkly and I am all about the sparkles, but this requires a lot of effort to get to be glossy. A thick clear polish like Gelous would help, but I don't have any on hand currently, so I did 4 coats of two thinner topcoats (some random Sally Hansen, and Milani's gold one) over two days and it still wasn't smooth. But oh, how sparkly! I haven't tried to remove it yet, and I'm sure it'll be a complete nightmare, but it's very, very pretty. My pictures don't do it justice! There's all sorts of colors and sizes of sparkle, including some larger lilac hexes, and it's positively mesmerizing.

I'm doing my NYE mani tonight, using a polish gifted to me by Z for Christmas, so you can look forward to that next week. It's a beauty!

What have you been wearing on your nails of late?