...but nail polish will never hurt me

Damn, my blogging hiatus really did a number on my creative-title-writing abilities. Sorry bout it.

These nails may not seem that exciting, but they were a huge deal for me. Like, get-home-at-3-am-and-do-your-nails-with-your-new-polish huge deal. Indie nail polish--that is, polish made in small batches by regular old guys & gals and sold on sites like Etsy--has taken the nail world by storm over the last few months. Unfortunately, do to the limited quantity nature of indie polish, it's usually expensive and hard to get. So I mostly just admire from afar, but there was one polish I needed--Ninja Polish Sticks n Stones. Long story short, one of the first indie polish sellers, Lynnderella, made an incredible black & white glitter polish, but her poor business practices resulted in sky-high prices and scarce availability. So the lovely ladies at Ninja Polish decided to pay homage to Lynn's coveted polish, at a much more reasonable price.

However, because there are a frightening number of nail-obsessed people just like me all around the world, Sticks n Stones also proved incredibly hard to get. I kept signing up to be notified when it was back in stock, but was never near a computer when I received that magical email--until a day in July when I was on family vacation. I didn't have my computer, actually, but I needed the polish so desperately I managed to order and pay for it from my BlackBerry. Five days later, when I got home from vacation, it was in my mailbox, and I've never been happier about anything.

Except that one time I saw six pugs all running around a plaza in Madrid. That was maybe the happiest moment of my life.

ANYWAY this nail polish is great and I'm a crazy person aaand onto the photos!

This is two coats of Sticks n Stones over two coats (over white) of China Glaze Shocking Pink. Sticks n Stones is a bit of a stubborn glitter, and the large glitters definitely do need to be placed. As you can see I only managed to get one jumbo hex glitter out of the bottle, and it ended up looking real weird on my pinky.

I got tons of compliments from customers at work on these nails. Well, mostly people were just like, "Wow, those are...bright." So maybe they were just trying to nicely tell me I just gave them a migraine. Oops.

Sticks n Stones is currently out of stock, but you can request to be emailed when they restock. It's worth it.

opposites attract

Oy. Let's just pretend I haven't blogged for an eternity and a half, why don't we? I started my senior year of college and came down with mono all in the same week, so it's been a bit of a rough several weeks for me. However, now I've got schoolwork under control (okay that's a lie buuut...) and my tonsils are no longer the size of grapefruits so I hereby swear to blog like a NORMAL PERSON. A normal blogging person. Which is to say a lot. So don't leave me, please, I LOVE YOU!

All right all right onto the nails--

I love me some serious skittle action. This one was particularly obnoxious and thus beautiful. The white is Essie Marshmallow; light purple is Essie Lilacism; medium purple is OPI Do You Lilac It?; dark purple is NYC 006; gold is Wet n Wild The Gold & The Beautiful; and orange is Sally Hansen Sun Kissed. 

These photos were a huge triumph for me because they were the first successful set taken in my new apartment! Over the summer I was using the skylight in my bathroom for some lovely diffused natural light, and was panicking over how I would take photos once I moved (because my priorities are totally in order...) Thankfully, my apartment has this weird loft thing that isn't good for much (it doesn't even have electrical outlets...seriously, 1970s architects were rull weird) but it does have three lovely windows that make nail painting a breeeeeeeeze.

I'll have posts queued up every other day for the next couple weeks, and also some reader requests to fill! Just try to contain your excitement...