February Empties

Studio 35 Beauty Acetone: works great, cheap, effective. I usually mix in some glycerin and water. I think Sally's has even cheaper acetone, though.

Softsoap Juicy Apple body wash. Good if you like dry, itchy skin and bright pink bubbles. I mixed this with a minty body wash and liked it more that way.

Butter London Hardwear topcoat: The first half of this bottle worked pretty well. The second half got thick and required lots of thinner. Even then, it left brittle strings trailing from my nails to the bottle. An $18 topcoat should not do that.

First Aid Beauty Facial Radiance Pads: These are Holy Grail for me. I tried a cheaper alternative and the jawline acne started to come back. I'll continue with what works, thanks. Now, I'm on my third jar of these.

E.L.F. nail polish remover pads. I still have one more of these sitting unopened. Now that they're two bucks instead of one, I won't be buying more.

L'Óreal miracle blur finishing cream sample - I liked this enough to buy a full size, but I'm starting to question why. I need to work with it some more.

Repechage samples: I actually really liked the mask. Maybe not quite enough to pay full price, but it did seem to decongest and brighten somewhat. The scrub was so-so. I have definitely tried others I liked a lot better.

Random lotion samples: Meh. I am glad they're out of the house!

Hot Pink Disco Half Moons

Still working on manicures utilizing some sort of sticky paper thing to block one color off before applying another. I'm getting better at keeping the edges neat, but need to work on my patience. I always want to put the stickers and second colors on before the first color's dry! This, I am learning, is a no-no.

This time, I used Julep Rose as a base, and butter LONDON Disco Biscuit as the top color. Disco Biscuit is a cooler hot pink, and it really warms up next to Rose's warmth.

I did this during a mild obsession with Milani's green nail art polish (a.k.a. the only nail art specific polish I own), but my recent acquisition of a double-ended nail art brush/dotting tool should really open up some possibilities in this arena for me. The lady at Sally's told me to use acetone-free nail polish remover to clean it. Do you concur?

Salvaged Manicure in Blues

So I had a good thing going a few weeks ago with China Glaze's For Audrey (the lightest blue seen above). It's truly a beautiful color, and I'll definitely use it again. And then I used my fingernails to remove a bajillion staples from my bulletin boards at school. I expect absolutely no nail color to last through that - when I got home the tips were chipped, cracked, and awful looking. Incidentally, if anyone knows where to get the awesome staple removers designed for bulletin boards, let me know!!!

Enter a Q-tip dipped in enough nail polish remover to smooth out the chipped edges, a fresh coat of base coat, and butter LONDON's Slapper applied in a funky design from mid-nail up to the free edge. I'm looking pretty good!

I must've gotten cocky or overconfident or something, because after some mildly aggressive cleaning without any gloves on, I had chips again. Q-tips, nail polish remover, base coat, repeat.

So I repeated the pattern with some Revlon ColorStay Midnight, and some Zoya Indigo.  Because enough wasn't enough, I threw on a coat of a Wet'nWild glitter polish before my topcoat.

What do you think of my layers? Great salvage, or unmitigated disaster? I am so very, very new at nail art.