Thursday, May 22, 2014

Julep-Iona

This month, I received my third installment of the Julep Maven boxes. My style that I got from the quiz was "Classic With a Twist," but I was not feeling the plie wand (http://www.julep.com/pliewand) and got the box with three polish colors instead. One of these colors was Iona, an "It Girl" polish that is a darker blue leaning towards indigo/periwinkle. I love the color. It's pretty unique and I certainly do not have a dupe in my collection.
However, I am just not sure what to think about the formula. It is really, really thick. My other Juleps are this way too, and even though this was the thinnest one, I still kept managing to load up way too much polish on the brush and dripped a lot.
I took my white Sally Hansen nail striper and added some abstract designs to give it a little bit of a nautical vibe.



Monday, May 12, 2014

Wedding Nails

My friend just got married on Saturday (Congratulations Maggie)! and I got to be a bridesmaid. I did all of the nails and makeup for the bridal party that day. My color palette was pretty simple: we stuck with silver, blue and white. All of the girl's nails were those colors, but everyone's manicure was different from the pedicure and nobody had the same design. I'd say the nails that got the most complements were my silver and white glitter gradient nails. I used a very cheap white polish from Jordana that I still have in my little purple caboodle at my parent's house and I picked up Essie's "Set in Stones" for the occasion at Walgreens. 
The white Jordana polish actually really impressed me. Sure, it is streaky and a little uneven, but with a glitter top coat and a regular top coat (I used Sally Hansen tough as nails for this look), it all evens out and looks good. White even makes your skin tone look darker in contrast, which is nice at this stage in spring. 
Set in Stones is a really nice one in the Essie luxe effects collection. I like that there is a variety of glitter sizes, ranging from big hex glitters to very fine glitters less than a millimeter wide. It is perfect for the gradient look I was going for. 
To recreate this look, paint your nails one solid color (like white) and then once that dries, do one coat of glitter on the top 2/3 of the nail. Then go back and concentrate more glitter at the tip of the nail.