Manicure Monday: Blast From The Past

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Stacie Wacie

Welcome back, reader! Manicure Monday is a simple look this week. I’d actually planned something a little more intricate, but now that I’ve cut my nails down, I simplified it. I’m talking like there’s something wrong with just color and glitter, there’s totally not! For this look, I used Sephora by OPI’s It’s Bouquet With Me over Orly’s Rio Nights.

Originally, I’d planned a gray to purple gradient with Rio Nights. When I’ve got a multicolored glitter like this, I like to pick colors out and find cremes that match it, and that way everything is cohesive. With nails this small, though, there just wouldn’t have been room for it.

I love this mani, though. It’s making me all kinds of nostalgic. I was a hardened nail biter when I was younger — hell, until I was 23 — and this was what my hands always looked like back then. I liked wearing polish, but it was never a biting deterrent, so I always had these tiny little nails. I also feel deeply for purple glittery polish; the first nail polish that was 100% mine was a gift from my sister, and it was a purple glitter, right around the time unconventional colors and glitter polishes were getting popular in the late 1990s. I wore that polish until it was gone. This look channels that polish so hard.

I regret that I didn’t get any sunlight photos of this look. There’s been some inclement weather in the southeast, and the sun didn’t shine for more than five minutes at a time, and I could just never catch it. Also, when was the last time I wore a bow charm? It’s been ages!

The Sephora by OPI line has been discontinued; I actually found this particular one at Big Lots. Orly polishes are sold in stores nationwide. My bow charm is from Daily Charme.

I bought these polishes myself.

Swatch Sunday: Sephora by OPI’s Skinny Jeans

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Stacie Wacie

Swatch Sunday this week is a trip down memory lane, though maybe not as far back as we’ve ever been. Remember Sephora by OPI? This was a line I loved, and wearing it now takes me back to a simpler time when a nine dollar nail polish was a real splurge and top coat wasn’t yet a regular part of my manicure. This is Skinny Jeans; I’m wearing three coats with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Skinny Jeans is a turquoise polish with a greenish shimmer. Application was very easy; though the product formula is a little on the thin side, it’s still very silky and covers well. The first coat was nearly opaque, the second filled it out nicely. There are some slight brush-strokes, but they’re barely noticeable and fade into the shimmer. The drying times were good, and it dried with a smooth, glossy finish. I used top coat for extra shine and protection.

I believe this is the first time I’ve ever worn this polish alone with top coat. I think I’ve used it as a base for glitter once since I started the blog, but yeah. It’s a little weird. It’s yet another reminder that it wasn’t that long ago I was 25 and wore a lot of blue nail polish (without top coat).

In the sunshine, the blue is a lot warmer than it is in the studio, but the green shimmer is still as potent. It’s a lovely ocean blue in any lighting!

The entire Sephora by OPI line has been discontinued. You can still find bottles on Amazon.

I bought this polish myself.

Manicure Monday: Plum and Glitter Surprise

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It feels like forever since I’ve done a real Manicure Monday post. For this week, I’m wearing The Golden Age from Sephora by OPI over Essie’s Devil’s Advocate, topped with one coat of Seche Vite.

I really like Devil’s Advocate. Like really. I adore these dark, dramatic, vampy colors because you can never quite tell what color they really are. You can’t tell this is a deep plum unless you look at the very edges of it. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume it’s black. Devil’s Advocate goes on a little thin on the first coat, but evens out to full opacity on the second, and dries with a beautiful shine. It’s really easy to apply.

Unrelated: I put Devil’s Advocate on my toes when I wore Vesper earlier in the month. They’re very similar in color and I really didn’t want to experience the joys of taking Liquid Sand off my toenails.

The real star of this manicure is The Golden Age. It’s a clear glitter topper with various sizes of metallic gold and silver hex glitters. The distinction between the colors is pretty difficult to see in some lighting conditions; in my office it’s impossible to tell, but in the studio and in the sun, it’s clearly visible. It’s also very easy to apply; the consistency is thick so as to accommodate all that glitter. Also, I think this polish has my perfect glitter-to-lacquer ratio: one brushed coat is all I needed for full, even glitter coverage. It’s so easy to work with. I love it.

Sunlight! The sun came out long enough for me to take these photos. The clouds came back when I went inside.

So, there you have it: a glitter topper with secret differently-colored glitters over a black that’s really purple. I love surprises.

Manicure Monday on Tuesday: Post-Vacation Pink Moons

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’m back from vacation, and the wacie.com hiatus is over! I had a blast while I was on vacation, but I felt a bit guilty about ignoring the blog. I actually took my laptop and some polish along with me, thinking I would have time to update while travelling. I seriously overestimated the amount of free time I would have. I also didn’t take a whole lot of nail pictures while I was gone, even though I painted my nails; painting my nails while tipsy in a hotel room at 1 AM does not make for good manicures. Anyway, I’m still trying to get my groove back, so this week’s post is not only late, it’s probably also deviating some from the usual format a little. I was gone so long, I actually forgot how I normally take pictures.

I decided to do something easy this week, just to celebrate being back in my natural habitat. I neglected my usual hand and cuticle care, and also suffered a lot of breaks while I was gone, so I spent a lot of time just soaking and taking care of my nails, and after all that, I just didn’t feel like doing something intricate or time-consuming. Also, I’d had a plan for these two polishes before I went on vacation; I have no idea now what it was. This week, I’m wearing a mystery color from Maybelline, and Sephora by OPI’s Dear Diary….

I expected Dear Diary… to be much more sheer than it came out on my nails. The first coat was sheer and pretty streaky, but the second evened it out. There are still some places that are thin and bald, this is most evident on my thumb, if you’re able to see it at all. On every other nail, it’s mostly opaque.

Sunlight

I have no idea how to identify this Maybelline polish. It’s a shame, because even though it’s an oldie, it’s a gorgeous color. It’s a rosy mauve with a pretty shimmer. It doesn’t seem to wear well; I put it on yesterday; this isn’t even 24 hours later. I’ll chalk this up to my nails being so short I can’t wrap the tips.

This bottle comes from a time way back when I had a problem peeling the stickers from things, so that’s how it came to be a nameless mystery color. I’d really love to know its name. If you can identify it, please help me out!

Manicure Monday on Tuesday: Pre-Vacation Celebration in Blue

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Manicure Monday is a little late this week, what with the craziness of work, upcoming boyfriend’s birthday, and packing for vacation. I’m also going to have to re-learn how to stick with the same manicure for seven days. Anyway, I’m wearing Wet ‘n Wild’s I Saw A Comet over Sephora by OPI’s Mermaid to Order; I’ve got on two coats of each with two coats of Seche Vite.

Mermaid to Order is a gorgeous shimmery turquoise. Actually, I hesitate to call it a turquoise, because it leans either blue or green, depending on the viewing angle and lighting conditions. It goes on easily and smoothly, but with very visible brush strokes. Even adding the glitter to it wasn’t enough to hide the brush strokes. I chose this polish as an under coat because it’s the same color as the jelly base in I Saw A Comet. I wish I’d chosen a creme polish for this, though, so that the glitter can stand on its own without added effects from the base color.

I Saw A Comet is a faint teal jelly with fine iridescent glitters. As gorgeous as it is in the bottle (I admit I bought it because I was totally hypnotized by the glitter), I expected a little more of that look to transfer to the nail. Last week I encountered the extra-wide W&W brush, which gave me a horrible glitter payoff and just made a clear polish mess on my fingers. This week, I tried it again, and my results weren’t too much better. The brush is actually wider than a few of my nails, which left a lot of glitter stuck in my cuticle; you can see there are still a few bits of it I just couldn’t get off. For the minimal glitter look I got, the cleanup effort wasn’t really worth it.

Outdoors, sunlight

I’m going to try to keep up with Manicure Monday while I’m travelling, whenever I can find the time to actually paint my nails. We’ll see how it goes.

Manicure Monday: Kickass Glitter Accents and Blue

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

Today’s manicure is one of my favorites. I haven’t had a favorite in a really long time now.

My two colors this week are Sephora by OPI’s Skinny Jeans and Digital Nails’s Wibbly Wobbly. I really love how it came out. I thought the nails without the glitter would be too plain, but the colors actually work really well and I don’t feel like the rest of my nails are too plain. This is a fantastic match. Something else I worried about was the glitter going on too thick and making the nails fat. That didn’t happen the way it did with this glitter. I brushed the glitter on instead of dabbing it, so maybe that made a difference. I could have just Wibbly Wobbly as a glitter topper, but I really wanted that multi-layered glitter look. I’m pleased as hell with how it turned out.

Sephora by OPI’s Skinny Jeans, Digital Nails’s Wibbly Wobbly

So, a little something about Wibbly Wobbly: I think it’s the polish that sold me on indies. I saw a Reddit post with Wibbly Wobbly over black, and I’d never seen anything like it before: all those different glitters, the huge dot glitters… I needed it. I went to buy it immediately after, but I reigned myself in somehow, even though there was like one bottle left and it seemed like destiny. I couldn’t bring myself to pay ten dollars plus shipping for a bottle of polish. When I got a prize for being a finalist in a game design contest, all that went out the window. Ultimately, it’s this polish that led to my delightful indie polish problem.

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