Happy St. Patrick's Day!

No, I'm not Irish. But green is my favorite color.

Essie Navigate Her
Left hand - attempts at shamrocks with a green Milani nail art polish
Sinful Colors green sparkly coat

Sally Hansen real nail polish strips review

I bought a box of the Sally Hansen Real Nail Polish Strips in Teal With It a few weeks back, thinking it would be good for a trip I was going on. This brand is mostly known for its funky patterns, which do look awesome. Usually, they retail at about ten bucks each. I got mine, a solid color, on sale for about two fifty.

The box comes with a leaflet of instructions, a nail file, a cuticle stick, and two packets of eight nail polish strips each. My nails are tiny, so I was able to make eight strips cover all my nails - thus stretching the purchase to two manicures.

On the first try, I must have done something wrong, because the polish was peeling by the end of the day. Also, these aren't like stickers that you can just slap on and go - it actually took about the same amount of time as a regular mani, but without the downtime where I get to browse the Internet or a magazine as the layers dry.

I was pretty dismayed after that - peeling 16 hours later =/= 10-day wear. Maybe it happened because I didn't rub down the edges of the nail with the stick well enough? But that was tricky, because if I rubbed too hard, the strip ripped.

So, I tried again. This time, I brought out an additional tool: scissors. Each of the strips is a different size (I think they're pairs if you take all 16 strips together), but I found that I could get closer matches to my nail shape with some trimming.

I also dispensed with the instruction to file away the tips with the included file - choosing to use a finger to stretch it over the edge instead.

On the second try, they seemed to stick better. I got about a week of wear even though the very edges still wanted to curl up a bit. And about five people commented on them.

I'm undecided on these. I had better luck the second time, and I might try a fancy pattern if I could get it on sale, but I wasn't overly impressed.

Also - if you have any sort of ridges or a part of your nail that's peeled - the strips will conform to the bumpiness.

Have you tried them? What do you think?

nails of the moment - it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

OPI by Sephora Spark-Tacular looks great over my dark green Franken, too! This one's getting compliments from the adults at work.

Nails of the Moment - 2nd grade seal of approval!

I think this looks like birthday cake. Funfetti, even.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure - Lavender Cloud
OPI by Sephora Spark-Tacular topcoat
Essie Good to Go topcoat.

It's been 48 hours and so far still holding up well. Also, the girls at school were FASCINATED by it yesterday. If only my subject was so fascinating...

Happy Halloween! Nails of the moment

Happy Halloween! I did a couple nail looks this past week that are a bit Halloween-y. Aside from that, I'm not doing much for the day because my door's not easily accessible to trick-or-treaters, and my boss thinks marking the day during school hours is not conducive to learning. Both looks involve black crackle.


Milani Smoothee
Sinful Colors Charcoal
Sally Hansen Shattered Ink
Milani Glossee


Orly Bonder
OPI Tangerine Dream
Sally Hansen Shattered Ink
Orly Glosser

Nails of the Moment - Toronto sure is shiny!

This started out in kind of a weird way. I wanted to use up the rest of the glitter I'd sprinkled out from last time, so I put some Sinful Colors dark gray down as a base on my ring fingers and used up the glitter on that. Then, I did the rest of my nails with OPI Paint Your Toron-toes Rose, and decided that I didn't like the way the holo nails didn't blend in. So I did a strip of red down each ring finger. Looked bad. Milani Gems to the rescue!

Also, I'm still around - just been extra busy with work lately.

Nails of the Moment - Holo!

The webcam pic doesn't do this justice.

Orly Bonder
Sinful Colors Nirvana
Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers confetti glitter
Orly Glosser (2 coats)

I gave it a base of the Nirvana, then used a brush dampened with alcohol to apply the glitter. Then, I sealed the glitter in with two coats of clear polish. I love it. So did today's group of second-graders.

Nails of the Moment - Warm Gray

Orly Bonder
Gray franken
Sally Hansen silver crackle on ring fingers
Orly Glosser

Nails of the Moment - Black and Gray

So, my teacher training program was brutal, and I wasn't doing well at all. It was time for me to consider other options. So far, I'm a lot less stressed out overall, and I think having something between insanely stressful 11-hour days (and that's just outside the home) and minimally stressful 3 hour days would be ideal.

Since I'm no longer supposed to be available for a job interview at any minute, I did my nails up a little darker. It kind of matches my somewhat melancholy (but so much more stable) mood.

Sally Hansen Diamond Shine
Wet N Wild Gray's Anatomy
Sally Hansen black shatter
Milani Gems on ring fingers
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine (again)

Nails of the Moment - sparkle sparkle!

Orly Bonder
Clinique Fuchsia Fusion - 1 layer
Wet N Wild Waves of Enchantment - 1 layer
Milani Dazzling Diamonds - 1 layer
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine

Sad to say, this chipped pretty quickly. But while it lasted, it was super sparkly funtimes!

sparkly nails of the moment.

I took off the earlier nail look today - they'd been on since Wednesday and had started to chip. So now, I have something different. I'd mostly use the holo glitter over darker polishes before, so I hadn't known how red the base really was.

Orly Bonder
Essie Sand Tropez
California Colors sheer red with holographic glitter
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine

Nails of the Moment - more neutral fun!

Orly Bonder
Essie Sand Tropez
Sally Hansen Fractured Foil crackle
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine topcoat

Sand Tropez is going to be a big one in my rotation, I think. It'll be a way to wear sheer and clear with sparkles type colors without displaying the white parts of my nails - it seems to be a really nice nude base. I'm not sure I'd ever use it on my own, but I can't wait to put it under some holo glitter!

My nails are tiny - so I don't have much room to work with (or patience for) fancy nail art, but layering different stuff is a good way to get something more interesting without extra effort.

Nails of the Moment! lavender dream

Orly Bonder
Wet N Wild purple pastel
Sinful Colors You Just Wait (pretty pale pink with green sheen)
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine

I just took this off, but had it on from Friday to today.

Neutral yet funky Nails of the Moment

Orly Bonder
Sinful Colors Nirvana
Sally Hansen Crackle - Antiqued Gold
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine top coat

Job-interview (crosses fingers) appropriate, but the crackle gives it a bit of an edge.

The edges will clean up after I take a shower.

Nails of the Moment, and Face of the Day!

Brought to you by my webcam from my favorite café, where I am trying but failing to work on a lesson plan.


Nails - 3-4 coats of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Lavender Cloud. Sticking to professional colors in the meantime, and this was only two bucks at the CVS clearance sale. I purposely did not use a base or top coat because I wanted to see how long it lasted on its own.


Face: Frankenprimer, Frankenfoundation mixed with Aromaleigh Divine Radiance in Magnolia Blossom, Tarte Park Avenue Princess bronzer

Eyes: Lumene eye base, some sticky concealer, Aromaleigh heels on fire on lid, same color mixed with Brazen Cosmetics Jinx in crease and to line. Cover Girl Lash Blast (red tube) in some mostly black but with "silver shimmer" color.

Lips: Fyrinnae Lip Lustre - Puppy Love

Nails of the Moment fail, Nails of the Moment win

This is what I currently have on:

Orly Bonder
Sinful Colors Irish Green (neon)
Sinful Colors Green Ocean
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine topcoat

The neon green is more of a semi-gloss than the flat purple from before, and also takes a bit longer to dry. Green Ocean was the result of a fortuitous swap. :)

But before I had that, I tried this, which sounded better in theory than it did in practice:


Orly Bonder
Sally Hansen Pixel Perfect
Sally Hansen Distressed Denim
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine topcoat

This just looked like a mess. The topcoat didn't work at all - I think it would have bee better with a thinner coat - it just behaves completely differently than the silver. But it worked on my toes, so I really don't know what went wrong. I just knew it was time for the nail polish remover, stat.

Nails of the Moment!

This is what I have on my nails at the moment:

Orly Bonder
Sinful Colors Dream On (neon purple - dries matte)
Sally Hansen Fractured Foil shatter coat
Sally Hansen Diamond Shine top coat

I did these on Tuesday, I think.

Public Safety Alert

So, if you're into making Frankenpolishes, or just want to start, I have a bit of an FYI. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes.

See, I've only tried two frankens in the past - and both were adding mica to clear polish, and neither worked great. So I decided to try again, this time using only different nail polishes.

And, having recently acquired five new polishes,* I decided to make room by consolidating some stuff.

I had half a bottle of clear nail polish, to which I added the following:
The remnants of a Sally Girl dark red creme mini,
The remnants of a Sally Girl orange red sparkle mini,
a bunch of a milky pale pink,
and some creme bright red.

Things were looking pretty, but I just had to take my experiment a bit further.

I dripped in some of my white nail polish pen. Too much of my white nail polish pen. Enough so that it looked like it would overflow if I closed the bottle.

Thinking ahead, I put a ratty old towel down, figuring that if it overflowed, it would just spill out, and I could wipe it up later.

That's not what happened. Instead, the bottle shattered, and I had a mess of broken glass and spilled nail polish on my old rag, spilling over to the bathroom counter.**

DO NOT DO WHAT I DID.

On the plus side, now it's like I only increased my collection by two, instead of five.

*Wet N Wild spring collection pastel purple
and blue,
Wet N Wild Mermaid's Cove collection Waves of Enchantment
Sinful Colors neon purple
Sally Hansen shatter polish in Fractured Foil

** The ELF nail polish remover wipes actually worked ok for getting the stain out of the counter (not the entire mess, just the part that wouldn't come off with a tissue alone). Bonus for not dissolving the counter!