Butter London's Tea With The Queen and piCture pOlish's Festival

 
This is an old NOTD from a couple weeks ago when I was first testing out piCture pOlish's Festival.  This is on top of Butter London's Tea With The Queen, which is a pinkish tan neutral.  I liked this a lot for a neutral and is probably the best nude I have that doesn't give me mannequin hands or look like I have on Silly Putty fake fingernails.  I think the mixture of tan and pink is a good combination for my skin tone.  And I love how this looks with Festival on top!  I ended up keeping this on for only a day though because this is when I was still using Seche Vite as a top coat and the shrinkage was so bad that my tips were completely exposed.  Argh!

Anyways, Tea With The Queen is a great office appropriate polish and easy to apply.  This is with a base coat, two coats of polish, Festival, and a top coat.  I always apply a top coat over Festival, even though Festival is a top coat, because I like to use a fast drying top coat at the end to help speed along the drying.  Otherwise I will for sure dent or smudge my polish within a few minutes.

Swatchcicles!

So I decided to get a bunch of nail swatch sticks since my polish collection has slowly been growing and I figured this would be a good way to keep them organized and easy to see.  My lil pug sleepily approves.

Fanning my pug.

Um yeah she was very sleepy.

Ok, pug aside, here are the swatchcicles fanned out.  The sticks are kinda crappy and the handle thing keeps coming off but meh I don't care enough to get anything fancier or nicier.  Besides I already put all the effort in doing these.  I'm not redoing them on new ones!  These are going to be super useful going forward, although the sticks with the sheer neutrals don't accurately show how they'll appear when painted on your nails.  Meh, I'm kinda not into sheers lately anyways.  These are all 2 coats.  I considered doing each one until opaque, but I kinda like having a consistent 2 coats for all of them so I can see which ones are streaky or have application issues and which ones are super awesome.

From left to right we have the following (all of them are Essie polishes unless I say otherwise): Happily Ever After, Hi Maintenance, Mademoiselle, Pillow Talk, Limo Scene, Kisses & Bises, Main Squeeze, Topless & Barefoot, Island Hopping, Chubby Cheeks, Watermelon, Meet me After Sunset, Demure Vixen, Lady Like, Luxedo, Masquerade Ball, Wrapped in Rubies, Butter London's Scoundrel, Butter London's Marrow, and Butter London's Yummy Mummy.

And below from left to right we have: Over the Edge, Fair Game, Da Bush, Your Hut or Mine, Lion Around, Smooth Sailing, Lapis of Luxury, Sew Psyched, Turquoise & Caicos, Tea & Crumpets, Buy Me A Cameo, My Private Cabana, Not Just A Pretty Face, Innocent, Splash of Grenadine, Antique Rose, Shop Till I Drop, Mambo, BBF Best Boyfriend, and Nude Beach.

And lastly, below we have from left to right: Ole Caliente, A Crewed Interest, Orange It's Obvious, Navigate Her, Tour de Finance, Armed & Ready, Go Overboard, School of Hard Rocks, Bobbing For Baubles, Size Matters, Broach The Subject, Bangle Jangle, Cocktail Bling, Case Study, Glamour Purse, Lady Like, Chinchilly, Smokin Hot.

I only realized afterwards that I swatched Lady Like twice.  Oops!  I am quite pleased with these swatchcicles and hopefully they'll prompt me to try some of my older polishes that I've forgotten because now it's so easy to see what the color is like against my skin, like this:

Well it'll work at least with dark opaque polishes.  But I love being able to see how these colors look against my skin because a lot of polishes look completely different on me than I expect from the bottle.  In case you're wondering the one I'm "trying on" above is the new Go Overboard and the polish I have on my nails is the new Navigate Her (which I am loving!).

NOTW - Butter London's Marrow

It's been a while since I've done a new NOTD, so here's Butter London's Marrow.

I really like this deep dark purple.  I put it on for the weekend but ended up keeping it on for today because I think it's tame enough for work (or is it??) since it's so dark.  Applied like a dream and this is the 5th day I've had it on for so it lasts pretty well.  This is two coats, with a top and base coat.  Sorry, my hands and fingers are a mess lately because this past week has been super bitterly cold and windy and now my hands are totally chapped and hurting.  Argh, I always mean to put on more hand lotion regularly, but somehow it always interferes with my eating, typing, petting my sensitive-skinned pug.  Oh wells.

NOT New Year and Painful Shoes

Happy New Year!  For the new year and since I have a long weekend, I decided to do something fun that I've been wanting to do for a while - multicolored nails!  I may be a bit too old for this though.  Maybe next time I'll try darker colors.  But I still loved this - every time I looked down at my nails I would smile.  

Not so much my lil pug.

These are all Essie polishes (since I am an Essie devotee!) except for my index finger.  I have on from thumb to pinky: Essie's Smooth Sailing; Butter London's Scoundrel, Essie's Turquoise and Caicos (I hate this one - so streaky!  I had to redo my right finger 3 times it was such uneven application and got goopy in weird places), Essie's Watermelon, and Essie's Lapis of Luxury.

I guess I should've done a picture with both hands so you could see that I didn't do the same order on my other hand.  I liked the look of slightly mixed up colors.  I also used these colors on my toenails and I think I'll keep that for a while since it's so fun and my toes are safely enclosed in work appropriate shoes and boots.  I'll have to change my fingernails though tomorrow.

On a random note, I've been trying to take up running lately.  My marathon-running sister has inspired me and despite my body's insistence that it is not meant to run (seriously, I don't think my body is meant for high activity), I have always had a secret desire to be able to run easily, like a gazelle!  I've been using my ugly running shoes but wanted some new more barefoot type shoes (but not those gorilla feet shoes).  So my sister and I got a pair of Brooks' Green Silence shoes.  I loved them when they arrived!  They fit like gloves and are unique and bright.  They are also the lightest running shoes I've ever tried on.

This is a really bad angle and makes it look like I have cankles.  I do not have cankles.  I do have ginormous calves, but that's a whole different issue.

Anyways, I've been dealing with some heel pain recently and so I decided to take a break from running and did a 4 mile walk.  At first the back of the left shoe hurt but the pain eventually faded and I felt great!  During my walk I saw a man running completely barefoot (in 40 degree weather too!) and thought to myself, "Damn that man is crazy!  He should get barefooty shoes like mine instead!  I love my shoes - lalala!"

I came back and took off my shoes and to my horror saw the entire back of my left heel covered in blood!  The inside of my shoe was also blood soaked.  It was horrific - so much blood everywhere!  I tried cleaning out my shoe and by the time I was done it looked like I had murdered someone and was doing a sloppy job of cleaning up.  I actually have pictures that I sent to my family, but I think it's too gross to post here.  I'm so mad at my shoes!  Argh!

I'm going to try them again after my heel has healed (hehe) from the scraped skin and the plantar fasciitis, but will be sure to properly cover that spot on my skin and will take it slowly in breaking them in.  Maybe wear really thick and tall socks next time.  But if this happens again, I'm done with these high-backed shoes!  They'll be dead to me!  But, the bigger problem at this point is my plantar fasciitis which is not getting better and has totally derailed my running.  This is not good, especially since I now eat way more than I used to.  With the inability to do any exercise that puts pressure on my heel, I am going to have to seriously scale back my eating.  Sigh.  But those potato chips are calling to me!

Flower Nail Art and New Trader Joe's Finds

A couple friends and I have been obsessed with nail art recently.  Not the acrylics and crazy nail art, but the more subtle and delicate stuff.  Then again, this could be the gateway nail art and soon we will have crazy decorated talons.  Who knows.

Anyways, I decided to try out some flowers on my nails.  I don't have any fancy tools, so I simply used an old mail opener to make four dots (very hard to get just the right amount of polish in each dot) and then I used a safety pin tip to drag lines down each dot towards the center.  Then I finished it off with a dot in the center.  See!

At first I did the flowers on must my thumb and ring finger, but then I decided to let loose with the weekend and put flowers on all of my fingers!  I also wanted to practice doing the flowers.  Some came out okay and others came out a bit messed up.  Oh wells.  Do you see my lil pug pathetically licking her food bowl trying to hint that she wants more food (and she just had a full dinner so there's no excuse!)?

And I always enjoy pointing at my pug's butt.

So the base color is Essie's Smooth Sailing (which I am really liking more now than my first few uses - lovely deep and shimmery blue) and the flowers are Essie's Watermelon with the center dots painted with Butter London's Marrow.  I love my lil flowers!  I think for the work week I'll use a neutral base and similar shades for the flowers on just my thumbs so that way it won't be that noticeable unless you look super closely.

On another topic, I found a few new things at Trader Joe's this weekend which I love!  Every time I go to Trader Joe's I try to find and try at least one new thing each time.  It helps keep me out of a groceries rut and usually provides a good sweet/salty treat for an occasional indulgence.  This week I found some delicious petite cocoa batons which are tiny wafer tubes filled with cocoa cream.

Here's the nutrition facts.

These were a lot smaller than I thought they would be.  Do you see my lil pug begging for some treats?

But they are delicious!  Love the cocoa cream inside and I'm a sucker for any chocolate wafer treats. 

I also came across these mini milk chocolate peanut butter cups.  I love chocolate and peanut butter and these are so mini and cute!  Why is it always milk chocolate that is paired with peanut butter?  I wonder if dark chocolate and peanut butter would be just too delicious of a combo.  It might be dangerous and binge-inducing.

 

Nutrition facts for the mini chocolate peanut butter cups.

These are also tiny but I feel like I can safely nosh on a few at a time before it gets to be too much.  My lil pug REALLY wants one of these treats.  I guess I am holding it in a tempting way.

They're really tiny so it was hard to bite this one in half but I wanted to show the peanut butter inside.

My lil pug was begging so much and looked so sad and pathetic I finally caved and gave her a treat but it's an unfun (to me at least) baby carrot.  She loves them so much though that she still danced around for her treat.

Do you see that intense desire in her eyes?  She loves her baby carrots so!

So to sum up, yea to tiny nail art, tiny chocolate wafers, tiny chocolate peanut butter cups, and fat pug.

My Sad First Attempt at Nail Art

So I ordered some konad supplies and while waiting I got antsy to do some nail art.  I came across this simple three dot design by kittytokaren at Polish or Perish and loved the look of the simple design.  So I decided to give it a try!

Uh this was way harder to do than I thought it would be!  I'm wearing Essie's Your Hut or Mine which is a bit too pink for my tastes but I was wanting a break from all the neutrals and taupes I was wearing recently.  Plus I figure I should give the Resort 2011 polishes a try again.  I should've gone with a red instead of pink.  I feel like this one is a bit too Barbie Pink. The dots are Butter London's Scoundrel.  I am not normally this girly with my nail colors but since I was already sporting a Barbie pink color, I might as well go full out.

Unlike kittytokaren I didn't have any bobby pins handy to use.  After a safety pin fail I ended up using a random mail opener I had from a trip I took as a kid to Niagara Falls.  Now you may wonder why a little girl who went to Niagara Falls came home with a mail opener souvenir and I can't answer that because I have no idea what happened there.

I didn't try using a q-tip contrary to what it looks like in this picture.  That q-tip is leftover from the massive pug wrinkle cleaning session I had earlier tonight.  You don't even want to know the details about that.  Disgusting.  And now my pug is pissed off at me - hence she is not in any of these pictures.

On another note, I am still loving my bracelets and here's a picture from earlier today, pre nail art fail.

But the string bits that stick out at the closure bug me a bit and get tangled.  Argh.

Ok I can't end a post without a picture of my pug!  I mean she is THE lil smug pug.  So here's a couple fairly recent ones that have been sitting in my photo gallery waiting for the right moment to shine.

This is what my lil smug pug would look like if we lived in the olden days and still used polaroids.  See how efficiently and lovingly she slaughters that lil green lamb?  Such a good lil huntress.

New Polishes and Foot Cream!

I'm wearing Essie's Fair Game again today and I am really loving this color. I hold a special place in my heart for blue polishes. It's such a pretty grayish blue. It has a bit of the metallic streaks in the first coat but they usually disappear as the coat settles. I always do at least two coats anyways and with a top coat too it ends up perfect. My evil influence is rubbing off on my mom lately. She's been trying to find a good dark green polish for a while after she realized different colored nail polishes are popular even in Korea. I asked her what colors they wear in the Korean dramas now and she replied "You know, like yours. Weird colors." Hmmm.
I also picked up a couple new polishes at Target today after I was disappointed at Ulta with aggressive yet unfriendly and unhelpful salespeople and no Essie summer collection! Seriously Ulta?! You don't have Essie's summer collection yet Target does?!  For shame, you're a beauty supply store! So I picked up Meet Me at Sunset and Smooth Sailing and am really excited to try these out! Braziliant was a bit too orange for me and the other reds were a bit too pink for me. I'm hoping Meet Me at Sunset will be the Baby Bear for this Goldilocks. And Smooth Sailing looks like a sparkly lavender blue. That'll be for my nails next weekend!
Oh and the Ulta trip wasn't completely useless. I did get Butter's Powder Finish Foot Creme. One of my friends was raving about this recently. She claims it kept her feet dry and smelling nice all day. As a regular flats wearer on the weekdays, something like this (if it works) is completely necessary and wonderful in the summer. Hope it works! I was also tempted by Butter's polishes but dang those are so much more expensive and I was good and refrained. I like to do massive amounts of internet research before I buy now (translation: I google various polish colors and ogle at the images page and then recklessly buy a ton online).
Today is H-O-T yet again and now its thunderstorming. Great. Probably will just make it muggier. Bah! I think I will lay down on the floor now next to the ac vent.

Butter's Scoundrel

I've been wanting to try some of the Butter polishes.  The colors are pretty and Butter was my family nickname (not because I love butter, which I do). I don't normally change my polish every day but because Essie's Splash of Grenadine was a bit too bright for me on weekdays I tried out Butter's Scoundrel. Now this is a color from their fall collection I believe and is a very pigmented creamy purple, but since it's almost lavendery and more muted than Essie's Splash of Grenadine I feel more comfortable with it at work and think its appropriately springy (especially with all the gloom of approaching April thunderstorms today). The one downside is that it kinda clashes with some colors in my wardrobe. So I'll keep this on for a few more days at least.
Butter's polish was very easy to apply. I did 3 coats but could have gotten away with 2 maybe. But I wanted to make sure it would be opaque enough. Definitely pleased with this one and looking forward to trying my other Butter polishes!
Oh and I added a couple pics of my fat lil pup. Life ain't easy for a pug. All the sneaking into my fridge and eating so much food exhausted my poor lil one. Hmmm, maybe I need a fridge lock.