NOTD: Christmas Tree Nails

Hello all!  Can you believe that Christmas is only five days away??  I still have one more gift to buy, but I'm dreading shopping.  I went to Ulta today to use up my $5 off coupon and it was a mad house.  I can't imagine how bad the mall is going to be tomorrow...

My NOTD today is actually a repeat from a few months ago.  After I put it on it reminded me so much of a decorated Christmas tree that I knew I would have to repeat it closer to the holidays.  I started with one easy coat of China Glaze Jolly Holly, a forest green shimmer...

Then I topped it with one coat of China Glaze Ray-Diant.

For some reason the first few nails I apply this polish to always end up with a denser coat of glitter.  You can see my index finger has way more than the other three.  Doesn't the multicolored glitter look like Christmas lights?

I had to take these pictures inside, because this is what it looked like outside:

What you can't see in this pic is that the wind was crazy (see the snow blowing across the porch?).  Fortunately I didn't have anywhere to go, so I watched the snow fall out the window while sipping hot chocolate instead.  ;)

The next week is promising to be a little hectic for Mr. Innocuous and I, so if I apologize if I lag a bit in posting.  If I don't talk to you before then, Merry Christmas!  Hope everyone has safe and happy holidays.

as always... innocuous

(Products featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)

NOTD: China Glaze Ahoy!

Hello again!  Sorry to have missed posting on Friday - we had some last-minute changes of plan and I ended up leaving home with naked nails.  -collective gasp-  Actually, it seems like I've had naked nails more often than not lately.  I'm desperately trying to get the white glue basecoat to work for me, because I hate removal and my poor cuticles don't need the acetone, but without fail the polish starts to pop off my fingers one by one within hours.  Eventually it gets to the point where it looks ridiculous, so I peel them all off and go bare until I paint them next.  Argh!  I've tried changing my topcoat, different finishes of polish, putting basecoat on underneath the glue (makes it nigh impossible to peel), wiping my nails with acetone before polishing...the list goes on.  I feel like I'm either going to have to give it up or decide to live with the limited up-time.  :(  If anyone else has had similar problems with the glue basecoat and worked out a solution, let me know!!

Anyway.  Today's NOTD is China Glaze Ahoy!, my favorite pink in my whole collection.  It's a perfect berry pink that's not too bright and not too pale, and it's full of gold-to-red glass fleck shimmer.  Squishy, deep, sparkly.. this baby has it all.  Lest you think I kid, I have included this in my list of Top 20 Polishes on the nail board every year since it came out.

The glass fleck finish was really hard for my camera to catch, so my lighting today might look a bit different than usual...

In the sunlight the color washes out a little, but the glass fleck shines.

That's it for today!  Hope you love Ahoy! as much as I do.  And if you have any protips for using a glue basecoat, leave 'em in the comments!  Thanks for reading!

as always... innocuous

(Products featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)

NOTD: Holiday Glitz

I headed out to the mall today to brave the crowds and try to finish up my Christmas shopping.  To get into the holiday spirit, I decided to try a festive manicure with China Glaze Party Hearty.  Party Hearty is fabulous, but it's definitely a polish that you can really only wear at Christmastime... red and green glitter isn't very versatile!  I have only gotten to wear it once (the year I bought it; last year I was in Germany and didn't have it with me), so I had to make absolutely sure I used it more this year.  I was initially going to put PH over a silver or a white, but as I was going through my stash my sister suggested gold - kudos to her, because I think it's a perfect combination!  I used two coats of Orly Luxe, a cool-toned gold foil, and topped it with one coat of Party Hearty.

It finally got cold here, so my fingers look a bit shrivel-y in these pictures.  I don't have wrinkly hands normally, I promise!

Orly Luxe is so incredibly shiny in real life!  I can't believe this has been languishing in my untrieds.

Admittedly I didn't think Luxe looked great on my skin tone... it seems I can't wear really cool-toned golds OR really warm-toned golds (OPI Goldeneye looks weird on me too).  I wonder what that means? 

Orly Luxe was an old LE, but I think it might have gone core??  Don't quote me though.  ChG Party Hearty was a holiday LE two years ago and unfortunately has become a bit hard-to-find.  I have heard that there's an off-brand dupe right now at some Wal-Marts though!

In spite of the color not looking great on my skin tone, I totally loved this look, and even received a compliment on it from a cashier (a really rare occurrence for me)!  I think it looks really festive without being too kitschy.  

as always... innocuous

(All products featured in this post were purchased by me.)

NOTD: Color Club Wild and Willing

I was going through my stash today trying to figure out what polish to wear, when I found Color Club Wild and Willing -  an LE from a few years ago that I used to love but haven't worn in ages!  I remembered it having a coppery duochrome, so I decided to layer it over OPI Just a Little Rosti at This, a burgundy creme, to see if I could get the duochrome to shine a little more.  Here's the result:

I did two coats of each color for opacity's sake.  Wild and Willing is just as foil-y and gorgeous as I remembered!  The duochrome is a little shy.. it looks primarily gold and copper in most light.

I always see duochrome effects best in my shower (haha), so I took one more picture there.  My camera doesn't do well in low light, but you can really see the copper-to-green shift here:

Unfortunately I didn't let my glue base coat dry enough before I polished, so this manicure peeled off a few hours later as I was cooking dinner.  :(  Oh well, at least I've got a clean slate for tomorrow!

Side note:  Does the name of this polish make anyone else giggle?  "Wild and Willing" sounds like a tagline for an ad in the "18+" section of Craigslist to me...

as always.... innocuous

(All products featured in this post were purchased by me.)

NOTD: Nfu Oh 51

My NOTD today was my first true lemming and my first "expensive" polish buy.  I first saw swatches of this rainbow-y bad boy on Scrangie and could not stop thinking about it!  Back then flakies were pretty much unheard of, ha.  Anyway Nfu Oh 51 remains one of my most coveted polishes, both because of the memories I have associated with it, and because it's still a gorgeous and unique color!

You can build 51 to opacity in 3-4 coats on it's own, but I usually layer it to conserve the precious.  Today I decided to layer it over Ulta Moody Blues, a dark blue creme.  

Here's two coats of Moody Blues by itself:

Then I added one coat of Nfu Oh 51:

You can see the multichrome flakes best in shade or low indoor lighting.  They look orange head-on, but shift from pink to turquoise at various angles.

Under bright indoor lighting, the multichrome disappears.  Instead, the polish looks like a purple with pinky-copper sparkle.  Still pretty!

You can purchase Nfu Oh 51 at fabuloustreet.com, where I bought mine years ago!  Hope you liked this manicure as much as I did.  :)

as always... innocuous

(Products featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)

NOTD: Gradient Tips with OPI Bond Polishes

Today's NOTD features my two picks from the OPI Bond collection.  OPI The Spy Who Loved Me is a bright red jelly glass-fleck, and OPI Goldeneye is a yellow-gold foil, with larger foil particles than most.  I liked the way these two looked together, so I did a quick and dirty gradient tip of Goldeneye over TSWLM.

Goldeneye really reminds me of actual mini gold flakes.  The foil bits are so sparkly and bright!

That's all for today!  

as always... innocuous

(Products featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)

NOTD: Taupe-a Dots

I'm still fighting this cold, so today's post will be short and sweet.  For my NOTD, I attempted a little nail art, using OPI Ski Teal We Drop and Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Fedora.

I used one coat of Ski Teal We Drop as the base for all fingers except my ring, where I used two coats of Fedora.

I don't know why the color came out so weird in these shade pictures.  I tried to adjust them to get the polish color accurate, but it did strange things to my skin tone.  :(

One last picture in the sunlight...

Okay, so my polka dots aren't the greatest, but I love this color combination!  It makes me wish I had a polka-dotted blouse in these colors.  

I picked up Fedora at Big Lots a few weeks ago on mega-clearance to fill the gaping void of taupes in my collection.  Surprisingly I'm kind of in love with it, score!  It also has some subtle silver/gold shimmer, but my camera wouldn't pick it up here.  Ski Teal We Drop is from the Swiss collection in 2010.  Both polishes have a super creamy, 1-2 coat formula that's a breeze to apply.

That's all for today!  

as always.... innocuous

(Polishes featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)

NOTD: Sinful Mint Apple

Technically my NOTD today is the same as yesterday - I caught a cold babysitting last week and don't feel like painting today.  :(  Instead, here's a NOTD that I wore a few weeks ago.

Sinful Mint Apple came out during the "mint craze" a couple years ago - anyone remember that?  Anyway I wasn't totally on board the bandwagon then (mints don't look great on my skin tone), but I picked up Mint Apple because it was unique and cheap and not quite as chalky as most of the others.  This is part of Sinful's core collection now, so it should be super easy to find.

This color really messed with my camera.  It almost looks like I'm wearing four different nail polishes above! The index finger is most accurate to color IRL.

Thanks for checking in!  

as always... innocuous

(Polishes featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)

NOTD: Jelly Sandwich Time!

When swatch photos of the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil collection came out, I originally thought I could pass on all of them.... then I found out that Creative Fantasy is a jelly - a finish I'm currently obsessed with.  So I drove down to Sally's today and picked it up (and grabbed it a friend so it wouldn't be lonely ;) )!

On the first coat Creative Fantasy looked a lot like Milani Rad Purple (another favorite jelly).  However, another coat transformed it into the deep-yet-bright true purple I'd seen in other bloggers' photos.  Yes! I then made a jelly sandwich with Essence Glorious Aquarius, a mix of light blue small and large hex glitter with a sprinkling of iridescent pink hexes, which I received as a going-away present when I left Germany.  I don't think this particular Essence polish is available in the US, but pretty much any glitter polish will do here.  I like to use glitters that have a mix of colors and sizes for more depth when I do a jelly sandwich.

Like most camera, mine freaks out when it encounters purples, so I had to do a little photoshopping to get the color accurate here.  The last photo is closest to what this looks like to me IRL.

Sorry about my cuticles again... it's been so dry here this winter I'm afraid this is going to be an ongoing problem. :(

I took these pictures in the evening, so no sunlight shots today!  

I love love love Creative Fantasy - I predict I'm going to get tons of wear out of this!  I couldn't capture how the color just glows in the right light... it is so much more beautiful in person! <3

Thanks for visiting!

as always... innocuous

(Polishes featured in this post were purchased with my own money or were gifts from friends.)

NOTD: SH-XW Lacey Lilac

I think lavender is one of the colors I wear most often.  There's something about it that's so feminine and delicate.  Today's NOTD features Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac, a polish with a name that drives me crazy (why "lacey" and not "lacy"??) but a color I love.  I picked this one up in an LE display a few years ago, but there are plenty of similar lilac colors out there (Revlon Gumdrop comes to mind).

For some extra sparkle, I topped it off with Nicole by OPI One Less Lonely Glitter, which is one of the Bieber polishes.  I'm not really a Bieber fan, but between the unique color of the glitter in this polish and the mix of dainty little hexes with tiiiiiny little glitter bits really called my name.  This collection came out almost two years ago (I think), but I feel like I still see it around every now and then.

This is two coats of SH-XW Lacey Lilac with one coat of NOPI One Less Lonely Glitter:

(please excuse my dry skin and cuticles - I forgot to moisturize before I took pics!)

And in indoor light:

What do you think?  Isn't this combination pretty?  Something about the color and the tiny subtle glitter seems really refreshing to me!

Thanks for reading! 

as always.... innocuous

(Polishes featured in this post were purchased with my own money.)