Haute Taupe Patina Manicure

My untried nail polishes are set up in vertical rows by brand, and then I choose from the horizontal rows my next polish. This helps me to get great variety of brands and colors and finishes. I do make an exception to the order of things when I layer polishes, as I did in my Haute Taupe Patina Manicure below. I pick the base color from my order of things, but choose the topper or complementary color by my mood.

My base color was Haute Taupe, by Finger Paints, apparently sold exclusively by Sally Beauty. I received this polish in a trade that I did on makeuptalk.com. (I trade on there often with several lovely ladies who participate in various subscriptions of beauty samples.) My personal idea of taupe involves more grey than I see in this polish; this is a brownish purple version of taupe.

For my glitter topper, I chose Patina, by Hit Polish. This was one of my mini polish bottles that I was so excited about in my post Hit Polish Haul. As the shade name implies, the main glitter is copper colored. Then you have various sizes of greenish turquoise glitter for the other half of the patina feeling. Tiny darker brown glitter gives depth to the polish, in my opinion.

I blurred the photo above because the true colors of glitter in Patina were more apparent that way. The photo below is a better representation of the base color, Haute Taupe. Sadly, I did not have time for daytime photos on this mani, so I made do with what I had.

What do you think? Do you like to layer nail polishes? I used Poshe quick-dry top coat to smooth out the texture. Do you have a favorite top coat?

Yoshi Eggs Manicure

I was in the mood for some cartoon-ish nail art, simple but fun. The end result reminds me of the eggs associated with Yoshi in the Super Mario Bros. world.

 

 



I used a Seche base coat. The dark green is a shade called Hoch, from Julep's Trina Turk 2012 Fall Collection. (Julep is a company that offers a monthly nail polish subscription service: http://www.julep.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/25580/) I used my large dotting tool and White on the Spot by Milani for the dots. Next time, I would use a different white polish. White on the Spot is a quick-dry polish, so it tended to leave behind strings as I pulled away from making dots.

 

This is a cheerful manicure for me. I did like Hoch by itself, a gorgeous green creme, but I wanted something more fun today. Beware, though, that greens and blues are notorious for staining. Usually a good base coat prevents the staining from becoming a problem for me. 

I've been sick for a week and have had bare fingernails. BARE NAILS, NO POLISH! Oh, wait, that probably isn't worth all of those capital letters to most people. However, I am an obsessive compulsive person. As much as I love the look of nail polish, it also serves a practical purpose for me. When my nails are not painted, I have a terrible compulsion to pick at them. If I keep them painted, I let them grow out healthy and undisturbed. You will find that many current nail polish addicts used to be nailbiters, and nail polish helped them to break the habit or helps them to resist it. I don't have a nailbiting problem, but the principle is similar. So...it feels great to have polished nails again!

Also, Hoch was a shade of nail polish that was in my large section of "Untrieds". If you are an addict of any kind of beauty product, it can be quite helpful to separate the products that you have not tried yet from the others. This way you get a nice visual reminder to help you to buy a little less of whatever your addiction feeds upon.