Hearts, glass, and presentations

Aug1

This afternoon, I gave my presentation for the conference du jour. It went well; I felt underpracticed, but since this material is part of my job talk that’s really not true. Anyway, I got some laughs from the audience, which isn’t possible if they’re not engaged, and some good questions, so I was comprehensible. It was a small turnout, but it was scheduled during the very last session; a lot of people were already on planes.

C’est la travail. (And oooo I need to write about Québec so much.)

As mentioned, I recently bought a small mountain of Hearts & Glass polish. (Actually I bought three, then after quick swatches went back and bought every color I found interesting.) Here is:

Hearts & Glass Cloud Nine:

Pretty turquoise! Also, pretty French tip color for next time. Not teal, at least in indirect Pacific northwest sunlight in summer. The color’s pretty accurate, even.

I have had the worst time finding any information about this brand, even proof that it exists; this page is the best, only, thing I’ve found. And I really like them: The three colors I’ve worn so far are all excellent, easy to work with, one- to two-coat coverage, no staining.

So: here are a whole bunch of bottle shots, internet. Of Hearts & Glass Nail Polish. Polish polish hearts and glass nail lacquer polish google tag hearts and glass. So there.

Cocoa Loco <?>, Bronze Goddess, Leading Lady <?>, Daring Duchess. Doesn’t it almost actually look bronze in this picture?

Wisteria Memory, Plum Fantasy, Juliette’s Blush <?>, Perfect Kiss <?>.

Wizard of Ahs, Lucky Clover, Sexy Sorbet, Tangerine Tease. The only reason Rebel Yellow isn’t here is because I have enough yellow polish and I didn’t realize it was named Rebel Yellow. I could not have resisted that.

Stolen Moment, Lapis of Luxury, Cloud Nine, Pure Courage.

Bronze Goddess and Daring Duchess again, because maybe you want to see them from the front, I dunno?

Color names are basically guesswork, because the bottles are in boxes, because everything I own is in boxes, some of which I may see again someday. ARGH MOVING. I will update if I ever see the boxes again.

My best guess after packing, by the way, is that I have around 400 bottles of nail polish, about half what I had wild-ass guestimated a while ago. (From this one can conclude, correctly, that binges of buying 20 bottles at a time are actually quite rare.) That’s not a bad estimate, but it’s not good either. When I unpack I might actually pay enough attention to figure out things like brand percentage… or I may be swamped with the new life. Hard to know.

Red-ish coral-ish thing PWI

Jul27

At a conference in the magical land of Québec, Quebec. (I thought it was Quebec City, but like New York “City”, that’s apparently just to disambiguate.) So far it’s… been not much, really.

Remember when I said how strange it was, but coral seems to suit me, at least sometimes? It still does. Strange, because pinks don’t, oranges don’t (I think?), and it’s not a color I think of as going with my skin tone (glow-in-the-dark pale, but very neutral).

Sinful Colors Energetic Red:

Red-coral-ish? Sigh. Nice, though! My pictures utterly failed to capture how bright a color it is, probably largely because of all the overcast in the world.

The fact that this is named “Energetic Red” makes me think the people who name the colors are looking at photos. From this photo (and others), it looks red. It’s not. It’s intense red-leaning coral, slightly neon in fluorescent lightning.

And I said I would try some coral lipstick, and I did, and I’ll be damned. It’s okay. If said lipstick ever gets unpacked, I’ll show pix of that too. It looks weird to me, possibly because I mostly wear either lipstick the color of my lips or very dramatic lipstick… but not unflattering, I think? Who knew.

Anyway, now I’m pondering Conference Makeup and beauty/dressing/etc in academic in general, since I’m here for a week, more or less as a professor for the first time. <!> I’ll let you know if anything new suggests itself to me…

Plum Gold PWIs

Jul22

Have you noticed the longest posts are ones where I whine about having nothing to say? I’m going to try to back off on that. Not that I feel like whining today: it’ll be a while before the high wears off. A long while.

News from last night’s celebratory/goodbye dinner: brioche donuts are amazing and should probably be illegal for the public good. (Or, at least, my good.)

This is two colors from Sinful Colors’ current limited-edition releases, which I guess are for fall? Both have been in LEs before, so I may actually have one of them somewhere. In a box.

Sinful Colors 24 Karat:

Gold!..ish yellow. With plenty of visible nail tip. You can see clearly how nubby my nails are without the free edge; comes of chopping them down so violently all the time (or so I’ve heard, maybe it’s actually genetic).

This is a very pretty, IMO very classy, very sheer yellow gold. This is… maybe 4-5 coats? Too many, and you can still see the nail, which for this color is fine with me. I like it this way, but it’s clearly meant to add a gold sheen over something else. However, I went the opposite direction, adding French tips with…

Sinful Colors Fig:

With bonus fig-colored cuticles! This is probably the longest my nails have been in years, because I’ve been writing instead of robot-ing for the last couple of months. Poor robots.

This was made possible with nail art brushes (Thank you, Mama T!!). I still got Fig all over myself, but I’m getting there.

I really like this, you guys! I like both colors and the combo, I like the French tips, I don’t even particularly want to frantically hack off my weirdly-long nails yet. Neat!

Moving, PWIs, and making words

Jul20

Packers came yesterday. (I say “packers,” what I mean is “one dude from HandyBook,” but still. He packed.) I also packed. We all packed. Except the cats, who, mysteriously, mostly stayed out of the way. So now my home for the last n years is filled with boxes, but not so much with my belongings. It’s strange, and I’m tired.

Professional packers are interesting. They pack things. I mean, all the things. They don’t stop and wonder if a pan lid that fits none of your pans should move cross-country, nor the 1/8^th-full bottle of dish detergent; they just box it. He packed a good deal of stuff I wouldn’t have, but I bet it took him half the time.

I was reading Foodness Gracious – well, looking at the pretty pictures – and the author posted something about the writing in his blog, and wondering if it actually matters.* It so matters. I find that I only come back to blogs whose writing I think is entertaining, no matter the pretty pictures.

And this is as much a my-life blog as a nail polish blog (somehow that happened). So, I feel like I should have stuff to say? But I’m tired for so many reasons, and that’s the enemy of writing well. So here is some more nail polish, and with luck post-defense I will be less whiny (so whiny!) and more talky.

‘Til then, L’Oreal The True Diamond (over Sinful Colors Strapped):

Glass fleck goodness! Might be worth clicking to get the full effect.

Same, only over some interesting silver stickers. The effect didn’t really work, the topper just kind of swallowed the sticker.

There are a lot of possible effects and finishes for nail polish. A lot. I’ll do a post sometime, probably soon. One of my favorites is “glass fleck.” I don’t know if it’s actually glass powder, just another shape/material of glitter, or what, but I like it.

So, this is a topper that’s basically just a bottle of glass fleck stuff in a clear base. I haven’t yet figured out how to make it as pretty as the bottle, but I’ll keep after it a bit.

I need to start doing bottle shots again.

* Which links back to here, which in turns links to someone tweeting something mind-bendingly dumb.

Okay, posting again. This is me posting.

Jul19

It’s not strange for me to have binary behavior, either posting regularly or Just Not Posting. That being the case… and it being the case that I will likely be using this (or some) blog to communicate with the handful of folk I am leaving behind but who might remember me in six months… I’m aiming now to go back to the former. And boy do I have a lot of nail polish queued up.

So I wrote my dissertation. In 7 days. It should have been 6, but I turned it in a day late because I needed the extra time, plus What Are They Going To Do Fire Me. I must say, in the strongest possible terms, I do not recommend this. It was a total staple job, but even so, the level of immersion, stress, and effort involved for those 7 days left me truly, alarmingly useless for almost two weeks.* **

So… don’t do that. Honest. Reschedule your defense and make another plane ticket if that’s what it takes. For the love of god, learn from the mistakes of others. I defend Monday (fingers crossed) and so far I haven’t found the wherewithal to start my presentation.

That’s bad.

In non-academic news (ha ha), we’ve got most of the moving nonsense scheduled, modulo getting some cats to the right city (thpt cats). We don’t actually have a place to live (bah) but apart from those small details, it looks like this move is going to happen. Exciting! Or it will be when I get some wherewithal to use on being excited.

Okay, nail polish, actual posting soon. Both these PWIs are recent acquisitions, because… I was going to say my willpower is weak when I’m out of wherewithal, but in practice I don’t try to stop myself from buying <$2 nail polishes. I mean… why? It’s not like they’re full of calories. Or potassium benzoate.

Hearts & Glass Bronze Goddess:

You will see why I felt the need to check the name. I wouldn’t call this bronze. I would call it pink. But it’s a VERY good coater (maybe 1 coat?) and, despite being quite very sparkly, a reasonably work-appropriate color. And the glitter scales poorly in pix.

Hearts & Glass Daring Duchess:

This, while a creme and not sparkly, is not in fact a color I would wear to (say) a dissertation defense. But this image scaled fine.

So. Pink! Pink pink pink. They both have excellent formula, excellent opacity, ridiculously nice for being some random one-off brand.† What can I say?

* still counting.

** This is extremely consistent with studies on human work in general; you don’t gain anything over anything but the VERY short term by working long hours. You get the most work over a 2-month span or anything longer at a 35 hour week. Long hours are not helping you. Really!

† Listed in tags as “hearts and glass” rather than “hearts & glass” because the ampersand breaks wordpress’ tag system. Tsk!

Many pretty polishes, all in a row (PWI × many)

Jun20

So I missed a plane today (ARGH). It was partly my fault, partly Delta’s. And of course they can’t put me on anything until tomorrow.* Why do I keep flying Delta? Bad things always happen – starting many years ago when they stranded Mr. Fix-It in Egypt until I sicced a lawyer on them.

I am very excited about my new job, but I was at least equally excited about The One That Got Away. On the other hand, TOTGA would have required flying a lot more Delta. Maybe this time I’ll learn? Dear Self: it doesn’t matter that it’s cheaper if it always sucks horribly.

Sooo… that was bad. OTOH, I then had a very nice, laid-back lunch with a dear friend who made time for unexpectedly-present me. Also, the corner drugstore had a random display of $1.49 nail polishes from a random small brand (Hearts & Glass) that turned out to be really, really nice. So nice I went back for more…

Dear reader: I bought 22 nail polishes today.

Is PWI just some self-enabling joke? I mean, that’s, what, like ¼–⅕ of the polishes I’ve successfully reviewed? Maybe. I worried about it briefly, but then I was like “SCREWIT LOOKIT MAH PRETTIES.” I missed a plane! I deserve comforting things.

So it seems like a good time to just post a massive dump of nail polishes, as previously warned. It’s a good thing I no longer put all polish names in PWI post titles, because that would be a long title…

Sally Hansen Seasational:

I have so much trouble typing “seasational,” because it is not a word. Even for a fake word it’s kind of stupid. Anyway, it’s a nice teal cream, decent coverage, and fairly shiny.

Sinful Colors Taupe It Off:

It’s supposed to dry matte, and it does. While it’s not textured, the little bits of glitter make it look… uneven? MK described it as river silt, and he’s right. Not flattering on me!

Sinful Colors Dozen Roses:

One of my continuing efforts to find a flattering pale pink. (Mr. Fix-It likes pink.) Okay, not great; good coverage for that kind of color, though. I have mountains of turns-out-it’s-super-sheer pale pinks.

Some Essence (not Essie!) sparkly navy:

Essence doesn’t, as far as I can tell, name their colors. This looks pretty in the macro shot, but really it’s quite dark and the glitter (such as it is) is very subdued. On me it looks rather dull.

Zoya Jade:

…Jade. Right. I assume they mean as in “harlot,” but it’s still a dumb name for a tomato-red nail polish. This is four thin, easy coats; final color was okay but nothing to die for, I thought. Click for half-hidden sparkle.

This is the point where I realized I ~~can’t~~ probably shouldn’t have cherries for dinner, and went to make some curry.

So, curry in tummy, I present Sinful Colors Strapped:

Very true to color! So basically it’s a (very) matte greenish teal. Like most matte shades, it dried really fast. I think this was 2-3 coats?

I… sigh. I have more queued up. But for now that’s enough, plus it’s obviously time to go to sleep, so I can catch my super-early shuttle, so I can catch my early plane. And tomorrow I will be 2800 mi/4500 km away, posting from boring talks at a conference (maybe none of them will be boring! (yeah…)) and househunting like mad.

* Actually they were pretty gung-ho about putting me on a red-eye that left at 12:14 am. And then changed in Minneapolis midway through. Does anyone fall for that??

PWI: Born Pretty Holo Polish, plus adornments!

Jun4

Quarter’s drawing to a close. Good riddance. I’ve finally piloted my user study on the robot (thanks MK!). It still needs work but in most ways it’s pretty deployable. I really need to figure out why the robot’s verbal responses are delayed almost 3 seconds; that part’s just not working.

Stupid robots.

Anyway! I have been painting my nails, just not blogging as much. Just busy. Well, and also Tachyon discovered that if I play console games instead of sitting at my computer, I make a really comfortable lap:

I mean… what am I supposed to do? I’m no monster.

So that’s been something of a showstopper. Yeah, my life is hard.

Anyway, I got nail-mail yesterday from the Born Pretty store, a source of cheap stuff that’s based out of Singapore. (My last two packages had customs labels describing them as “cell phone case” and “electronics misc,” so that’s definitely legal.) Shipping to the US is free. All of this means it takes arbitrary amounts of time to arrive. I basically place an order and forget about it, and whenever it shows up it’s a nice surprise.*

If you’re anything like me, when presented with new toys, you have to try them out right noooww. This is how I came to be sporting Born Pretty Holo Polish:

It’s magically delicious.

This is a “linear holo,” meaning the holographic excellence shows up along lines defined by the curve of the nail, rather than being randomly spangled about. I am very excited about future polish!

Unfortunately, the above is about the best holographic presentation I got. It was taken in the weird cold fluorescent elevator of my 100-year-old apartment complex. Below is what it mostly looked like in practice.

Gray’s a color.

It was still interesting. Also, this is a rather low-end holo polish;** I may step it up to an expensive one.

In the meantime, since I still had new things to play with and less-than-exciting nails, I promptly bunged on a ton of stuff. Behold: stuff.

Indirect (and failing) sunlight. This is the closest I came to getting things in focus. I choose to believe that this is not my camera’s way of opining on the tackiness of just slapping everything on together.

Left to right:

Silver… errr… crown? sort of? stickers. They were fine, they stayed on, I’ll use more.
Silver rhinestones. Also fine. I got to use my new teeny-thing-picker-upper tool!
A black-and-clear 3D sticker. Iffy. It tore when I tweezed it off the backing, and subsequently came off the nail in blobs.
Water decal of some generic part of a clock. If you haven’t built models of aircraft or tanks or (in my case) giant space robots, you probably didn’t know that water decals are the devil. But I was prepared for it, and I love the designs on this sheet.

Then a bunch of stuff fell off. But hey, toys! TOYS. Expect rather more… er… reasoned adornment pix in the near future.

* Actually this is how I cope with almost all shipped goods. We order so much stuff from Amazon that we get several packages a week… so why track? Mr. Fix-It will ask me what’s in an incoming box, and I’m all, “Clothes? Toiletries? Electronics? Cats?”

** Actually, at $7/6ml on sale <!!>, it kind of isn’t! Should have read the description more closely. But there are companies who specialize in this nonsense and may produce shinier holographics.

Whinging, plus PWI: Sinful Colors Enchanted

May29

Posting’s fallen off lately because a great number of other things are coming to a head. I’ve been interleaving tasks, rather than trying to finish one off and take on another; this is more to do with respective timings than preference. (I’ve gotten better at task switching in grad school, but my switch cost is still, I think, rather high.) The main effect so far: I am behind or very-behind on everything. Including but not limited to:

run one final user-study on a robot
work out details for moving 2800 miles
find someplace to, you know, live
~~make conference plane tickets ×2~~ (done!)
make family reunion tickets ×2
finish thesis
defend thesis
start thesis

And probably other stuff, I dunno. Also, if you want to, you know, found a college or whatever: quarters can be good for undergrads, but grad students neeeeed semesters. 10 weeks is not long enough to explore, internalize, and do a research project on a topic. (Dissenting commentary?)

Painting my nails has even fallen off, which is unusual. But it not died! So without further ado, I present:

Sinful Colors Enchanted.

Direct sunlight. Purple! It’s only not shiny because for some reason the concept of “focus” is alien to my mind/hands/camera.

Indoor lighting. Quite dark, but purple.

Indirect sunlight. (Pretty literally. This is in my own shadow, in direct sunlight.) Now it’s blue!

This was part of a limited edition, although I haven’t the faintest when or why. It’s dark, but still purple in most lighting instead of black, although only just. It’s too muted (and a bit dusty) to be a true purple, as well as leaning a bit bluish (in some lights).

Not something I see myself thinking “Oo!” and reaching for, but it works ok! Especially on my short nails. Other people can pull it off, but when my nails get longer than about 2mm, super-dark colors make me think I look… hm. Something. Maybe just like I’m trying too hard?

PWI twofer: Zoya Shawn and Pure Ice Saddle Me Up

May23

Side note: I’m not reviewing Zoya Anne.

Again.

Why would I mention such a thing? Because I keep trying to. Anne has been, thus far, such an exquisitely balanced mix of promising color and horrid formula that I end up doing this Sisyphean thing with it. And this week (or possibly quarter or more), I do not have the patience for that kind of diva behavior. I’ve started and stripped it at least three times, maybe four.

Today was less panicked and more mildly grumpy. Mr. Fix-it’s out of town all week on business, and it definitely reduces my Fun Human Quotient. A lot.

ANYway. Please meet Anne’s actual well-behaved sister, Zoya Shawn:

Here it looks truly green, not olive. This is one of its maybe 4-5 faces. Also, between yellowland and greenland I cut my nails to nubs again. They just don’t do so well inside a robot when they’re longer.

It’s an interesting chameleon. Unquestionably muted army-olive in some lights, obviously green in others, oddly in-between and grayer or browner in yet others. But every single one of the color variations suited my fishbelly-white complexion. -_< ?

And, as usual, after a day of looking at it I was bored, so glitter happened.

Pure Ice Saddle Me Up.

Pix, showing Shawn being olive, indoor. Noticeable but somewhat subtle. Also… “Saddle Me Up”?? wha..?!

Still boring. It’s too close, color-wise! But to repeat: Every single shade of Zoya Shawn on my pasty engineer skin was amazing.

Pretty real-life accurate, which is a nice surprise!

Direct-sunlight pix are worse, FWIW.

Summary! Zoya Shawn is very well-behaved, excellent beside Autumn/Winter colors; Saddle Me Up is a very close match for it and reasonably opaque in 2 coats.

PWI: Sinful Colors Pull Over

May22

I went out for dinner with a bunch of my lab mates tonight, advisor accompanying (and paying, apparently from grants – I wonder if I’ll be that well-funded?). We went to a bar + food place, whose main attraction is bocce ball, which is apparently a game where you throw balls at other balls, and either try to hit them or try not to, depending. It’s completely one of those games where you know people were playing its predecessor with rocks, thousands of years ago.

I am not, as it turns out, good at bocce.

So I wandered off and started plying my advisor with questions about advising and choosing students, plus a certain amount of “augh what am I doing”. It was a convivial setting, with beer, so he answered pretty openly, and I talked a bit more openly about my current struggles and fears.

You guys, it’s starting to feel like I’m really doing this. It’s actually going to happen. O.O I’m going to go be faculty. I alternate between wildly giddy and feeling like I might vomit.*

So I paint my nails.

Sinful Colors Pull Over (plus cat):

~~Glossy Yellow~~ ~~Mustard~~
~~Chromium Yellow~~ Pull Over??

Man, that’s yellow. It’s… oh! Here we go!

School bus yellow is a color which was especially formulated for use on School buses in North America in 1939. The color is now officially known in Canada and the U.S. as National School Bus Glossy Yellow and was originally called National School Bus Chrome. (emph mostly mine)

Thanks, internet! I heart you!

This manages to escape the Curse of the Yellows, possibly because it’s halfway to orange (which also explains why it doesn’t look godawful on me). This is three coats, which I disapprove of somewhat, but it looked nice afterwards instead of still streaky.

* Ever bought your first house? This feels very similar.

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Love Nails and OPI Sedona Seduction

May20

Okay, this gets pretty complicated. 🙂 You see, Mama T bought me a set of nail art tools!

I find nail art intimidating. For one thing, I keep my nails SO short; for another, I fear it sneaks into an “even a grad student can’t get away with this,” even though I cheerfully wear disco balls and neon colors to work. Also? It seems scary and hard.

But… those are dumb reasons. I paint my lips non-earth colors all the time,* just not at work. And being scared of nail polish is a bit mental. I mean, really, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Thirty seconds of acetone?

So. Step 1 is yet another SC teal, Sinful Colors Love Nails.

Pretty blue glowy things! There
beginneth and endeth the joy.

This color and me, we are gonna love-hate fierce. It’s really very pretty, and it kind of has a deep internal glow that sunlight catches beautifully (and cameras don’t). But the deep internal complexity comes because this is six coats. I don’t have time for six coats! Nobody has time for six coats! >:-( THPT. I’m wondering if I could get a similar look by layering it over a more polite teal, which I certainly have in abundance.

Anyway, next up, I grabbed OPI Sedona Seduction, a cold ice blue, and a dotting tool (least scary). Also, Zoya Mosheen.

left
Right hand: Sedona Seduction dots over Love Nails; Sedona Seduction alone; dots; Mosheen
over Love Nails; dots. Left hand: dots; dots; Mosheen over SS; dots; dots.

So yeah! Love Nails is a beautiful PITA. Sedona Seduction is a very icy, almost-silver blue, opaque enough to make dots with. Mosheen is a very fine glitter; it’s hard to tell here, but it’s paler over Sedona Seduction. I need to experiment with it further before I declare it PWI’d.

And… I can make dots! ^_^

* Speaking of:

Lipstick color is true, achieved with lighting that makes the rest of my skin look grayish. I swear I’m not a Yuki-Onna.

I recently placed an order for a large number of inexpensive samples with the Portland Black Lipstick Company. This is Artificial Amethyst, which Mr. Fix-it doesn’t hate. (He kind of does hate some of the other weird ones. Sigh.) Also, their swatches are terrible, look for other people’s if you’re interested.

PWI twofer: Sally Hansen Red Carpet & Sinful Colors All About You

May19

I have to say, I picked up the red here under the belief that it was a glitter. In the fluorescent store lighting, believe me, the shimmer was a lot more prominent. On hands? No. It’s a deep, shimmery, vampy red, but it’s not glitter. I do like it; I don’t much like the three-coat minimum for opacity, but I’ve heard it layers well.

Sally Hansen Red Carpet.

After dark and taken, unusually, with flash.
Reds mostly go deep and sexy at night. Mostly.

And then, partly because I wasn’t really having a True Red day and partly because I had tip wear by morning, I did half-moons with Sinful Colors All About You:

Sorry, crap picture. It’s what I got. You can
see the red is much brighter in daylight.

This whole thing was just a mess. The red’s an insta-stainer, so where I got it on my cuticles, it stayed. (Usually I scrape it off before it sets; in this case it didn’t help.) The index finger flaked off about 20 minutes later (note clever pose above), and the gold is not remotely opaque at three coats. I like the idea of the red-and-gold combo, but… not this red, not this gold.

Nothing really terrible or hall-of-shame-worthy by itself, but I ended up taking the whole thing off pretty fast. :-/

PWI: Rimmel London Red, Steady, Go…

May18

Punctuation in nail polish names is so strange. I would have said that Ready, Steady, Go… (Brit for Ready, Set, Go!) obviously needed an exclamation point. Even a period probably wouldn’t have raised my eyebrows. But an ellipsis?!‽

And on the interrobang front, kindly allow me to share a dork poem:

  < > ! * ' ' #
  ^ " ` $ $ -
  ! * = @ $ _
  % * < > ~ # 4
  & [ ] . . /
  | { , ,  SYSTEM HALTED

Or, read aloud. (Really! Say it out loud!)

  Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
  Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
  Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
  Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
  Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
  Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

So yeh I’m a huge dork.

ANYWAY. Rimmel London Red, Steady, Go…:

A very tomato-y red, but it works! Maybe, as well as being unexpectedly coral-friendly, I am unexpectedly tomato-friendly? That would be ok. Tomatoes are delicious.

I meant to use this as a base coat for a new red glitter, but I ran out of time. This is one coat! Although a second doesn’t change the color noticeably. You can see my teeny tiny free edge (nail blogger for “the part that sticks out past your quick”), but I don’t actually mind VNL (nail blogger for Visible Nail Line).

Um… still talking but content ran out. I stop now. More red next time.

PWI: Zoya Blu

May17

I have menny menny nail polish. (I think we’ve talked about this.) And much of it suits me gloriously. Yay! Some of it, however, doesn’t. What colors I should wear is an empirical question, in my mind. Do things look good on me? Which things? Why? What are the closest choices for doing better? I am, to such a degree that it damages my publishability, an empiricist. So when Dr. P got me a rainbow of Zoya colors, I was thrilled!

Zoya, by the way, apparently names their polishes after women. I say “apparently,” because some of them are… non-obvious. Blu, Piaf, Kaufda? Livingston? Jade?! (Possibly the first ever red nail polish named after a “this means green” word? I mean what the hell.)

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that Zoya Blu…

x
Blu blu blu blu! It would lose its meaning on repetition except that’s not a word anyway. Also, rose sticker!

…did not suit me at all. The pictures, as so often happens, are deceitfully flattering. In person, this pastel looks like it was photoshopped in. I’ve said it before: a bad color match looks weirdly superimposed in real life.

But in and of itself, it is a gorgeous color,* and the formula was a nice two-coater, especially for a pastel. I may not approve of Zoya’s marketing strategy but I have to say, so far, they make amazing nail polish.

“Nail stickers” can mean two things: little stickers, or water decals. If you’ve ever made a model of any kind, you know the latter are six kinds of bitch to work with. The little rose is the former; you just sticker it on. (Things I have learned. 1, use top coat, or the gold will wear off, leaving a sort of white rose outline. 2, use peel-off base coat, or you’ll be trying to figure out how to get nail polish remover under a sticker for a long time.) I really like these, and I’ve ordered some variations… I like EASY nail art.

* On the whole “Reasons I am loathe to move” front: I spent a good 30 seconds trying to decide which part of the blue, blue sky in this fair city was the closest match for my nails. Sigh.

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Opening Night & Wet n Wild Slap the Bass

May14

This is one of those posts where I chose a color based on the glitter I wanted to put on top of it. I have a remarkable number of toppers to get through, given that we’ve established that I’m all weird about mismatched glitter. I mean… okay.

As far as I can tell from some casual research, the “nail care market” has been undergoing insane growth since about 2008, with a 32% increase in profits in 2012. Analysts were upset because 2013 was “only” showing 19% growth (I’m playing a bit loose with dates, but roughly). The market is starting to saturate, with some people declaring the nail polish fad to be drawing to a close, although in actuality if the market stabilizes at its current sales rates there’s a hell of a lot of nail polish going out into the world. In fact, since 2008, nail polish recession sales outpaced the famous “lipstick effect” that I had never heard of. (Short: during recessions lipstick sales rise, as women put off bigger pick-me-up purchases.)

Meanwhile, there are only so many colors the human eye can differentiate, and even fewer that most people care about. The number of nail colors is further limited by chemistry – there are only so many body-approved, stable, acetone-soluble, mutually compatible, etc. pigments. So, there are only so many nail polish colors. Hence, finishes. Glitters, shimmers, cremes, glass flake, flakies, textured polishes… I know I’m missing a zillion variants.

Why the economics lesson? Because there’s huge money in continuing to produce nail polishes that differ from previous ones. (Well, and also because I’m something of a pedant.) Anyway, even given my sharply limiting preferences, there’s always something interesting to buy, and often it’s new toppers.

Enough lead-in? Yeah, I thought so. Here’s Sinful Colors Opening Night.

Which, all things being equal, is a very nice, very shiny, very dark teal. I don’t think I have anything similar.

I wouldn’t call it a foil, but those are the trees outside my apartment window, so maybe I have to?

Nice, anyway. In indoor lighting it’s much darker, but not so much that you can’t see flashes of color. Chosen, as I said, to complement…

Wet n Wild Slap the Bass:

Whiiiich is actually there. Although you might have to take my word for it.

While the glitter is almost invisible, it does make the polish quite a bit brighter. Mostly it makes it look like a very well-lit Opening Night. I really liked the effect on myself, especially as the light failed.

If you’ve ever wondered why it’s sometimes Wet-n-Wild, sometimes Wet n Wild, sometimes Wet’n’Wild, and so on: it’s because they themselves are inconsistent; I mostly just copy from the bottle.

If you wondered why “Slap the Bass” is a name for a teal glitter, I can’t help you. I can tell you it’s funnier if you assume they’re talking about the fish, though.**

** Yes, this is the part of the post I spent the most time on. Do you suppose they’re actually going to give me a PhD? It seems… unlikely somehow.

PWI: Urban Outfitters Cocktail (Or, how I learned to quit worrying and love the coral))

May13

Very short post because I’m behind on bloggage. As I am on everything else, also. I am given to understand that the next year or two of my life will be like that and I should get used to it. 😛 Fortunately, this is a nail polish that more or less speaks for itself.

Urban Outfitters Cocktail:

Coral! VERY coral, showing off its pinky/orange nature. Both pix in sunlight, but it was
pretty much equally bright indoors, because you can’t keep a good coral down.
Very bright! Beautiful formula, too (2 coats).

I think of myself as looking terrible in coral? But this nail polish, one other coral polish, and a flaming coral tshirt I got from StitchFix are all weirdly flattering. And now I can’t remember why I thought that. So, experimentation is in order!

PWI: Zoya Destiny

May11

Another day, another Zoya. This one is interesting.

“Textured polish” is exactly what it sounds like: nail polish that doesn’t dry smooth. The first incarnation of it (that I was aware of) was the OPI Mariah Carey Holiday 2013 collection.* That was 18 months ago, and people are still making them. I would have sworn it was a three-week fad, but noooop. My reaction to these was always “Eeuugh,” because I don’t want to feel like there’s lumpy crap on my nails.

Well… as you may or may not know, Dr. P chose almost everything in the recent Zoya haul. She did a remarkable job. I had asked for suggestions because I tend to choose similar colors over and over; as she put it, she didn’t know what those colors were, so she went with one of everything, hence the beautiful Zoya rainbow.

I am guessing she didn’t know that Zoya “PixieDust” means “textured.” (Why on Kerbin would she?) But I kind of figured, hey, if I’m ever going to try these, why not a beautiful Zoya at the behest of someone making helpful suggestions?

Hence, Zoya Destiny.

Orangeycoral sort-of sparkles. Extra sparkles on pinky for… added effect..?

Slightly more color-accurate, slightly less texture-accurate.

As predicted, I’m not at all crazy about the texture. That said, it looks more interesting than I expected. It looks like certain holiday ornaments,** in a way I certainly can’t capture on camera.

So, for an interesting visual effect, I can certainly see myself going back to it, although I wouldn’t describe myself as a convert. I like the color a great deal, which undoubtedly affects my opinion!

*As well as having generally great formulas, OPI does lots of promotional collections. I mean lots, ranging from Gwen Stefani to Bond movies to the Muppets.

**
Untitled

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Unicorn

May8

My delightfully analytical sister asked me yesterday if formulas were consistent across brands – for example, is OPI strictly better than Sinful Colors. In my experience, mostly no? Most of my SC colors, and most everything else from a major brand, have reasonable formulas (although OPI is the queen of formulation). What IS consistent is formulas across colors. Yellows are notoriously streaky, as are pastels. Neons tend to be translucent, requiring white undies, and almost invariably dry matte or semi-matte; teals are stainers. And so on.

So I’m not completely stunned that the pastel yellow Sinful Colors Unicorn…

Five coats. Five. And it’s still a streaky mess. (Click for the full size if you don’t believe me.) I have better things to do with my time. Hobbies are, generally speaking, fun! This is not fun.

…is a total loss.

So, okay, first of all, “five coats and not there yet” is unacceptable. Among other things, the more coats I do, the more nail polish is going to end up on my cuticles. (And hands. And desk. And, in one memorable incident, cat.) I don’t do the traditional cleanup with acetone and a brush, because, 1, it’s smelly and a hassle, and, 2, errors are basically invisible when you’re not looking at macro shots. So I can’t be arsed, I guess. Second, I look weird and terrible in yellow; I have yet to find an exception to this.

Since this was already horrible, I decided to try something new-to-me. A “jelly sandwich” is a thing where you alternate layers of a translucent polish and glitter, so that the glitter shows to varying degrees. When done correctly, they can actually be really visually interesting. So I poked around and decided on a yet-to-be-reviewed polish.*

It looks worse in real life, strangely enough. I *cough* wonder if a nicer camera might fix that. Which doesn’t matter because I am not getting one.

Not an improvement. Unicorn is murky, not a true “jelly” (transparent, colored polish), so the glitters don’t glitter. You can see on my middle finger (touching my thumb) where I tried to do multiple layers. It just looks like polka dots, basically.

Unicorn, hall of shame! Hall of shame, unicorn. Have fun!

* Wet’n’Wild Caught on Sapphire, if you care. I didn’t really process how dumb that name is until I typed it out.

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Secret Admirer and Winter Wonderland, plus, Zoya!

Apr25

A bit ago, I asked my sister what color I should paint my nails, and she said gunmetal gray. This is taking a while because I apparently have too many dark gray polishes! I wanted to post these two together.

Sinful Colors Winter Wonderland:

Dark gray or maybe black, with a bazillion
little blue and gold shimmer particles.

And Sinful Colors Secret Admirer:

Dark gray or maybe black, with a bazillion
little silver shimmer particles.

Since these were taken in very different lighting, I painted my ring finger with Winter Wonderland and left the rest Secret Admirer.

Yyyyyeah.

I mean, you can kind of see the difference. WW reads as paler and a bit bluer. But come on, this is kind of ridiculous. It’s the same brand! They’re both very pretty, and they both look like macadam to me (although I don’t think of macadam as “pretty,” really, so that’s a bit weird).

Anyway. Dupes they be!

PWI Sinful Colors Gorgeous (Attack of the Teal Foils)

Apr21

Doing so much life job talky stuff is hard! SO let’s talk about nail polish, eh?

When I PWI’d Sinful Colors Aqua, I mentioned that it was insanely similar to…

Sinful Colors Gorgeous:

SC: check. Metallic foil: check. Clearly teal: check.
Obvious distinctions from Aqua: no check.

They’re not dupes; Aqua is noticeably bluer in both bottle and hand:

Shots taken while balancing weird grip are
noticeably blurrier! Or maybe I was just
sleep-deprived, who knows.

But… I mean, come on. They’re both teal foils. They’re both good coaters that are prone to showing brushstrokes. I don’t quite feel the need to get rid of one, but knowing what I now know, I probably wouldn’t have grabbed both. (And that’s actually rather saying something.)

Aqua; Gorgeous. Different, but.

PWI twofer: Essie Penny Talk and OPI Gaining Mole-mentum

Apr20

I know a lot of you reading already know this, but I have something of an obsession with copper. It’s not my fault! It’s genetic! Passed from my grandmother through my mother to me.

I like lots of copper.

I like amazingly new, weirdly super-pink copper. I like more often-encountered, beautiful oxidized copper. I even think verdigris is pretty cool, personally. Not surprisingly, this has joined forces with my nail polish obsession. I will buy pretty much any damn thing that is copper, or coppery, or copper-ish, or SAYS copper. Sadly, in nail polish as in life, there’s a shockingly lame level of access to copper things! (give me more copper earrings or give me death)

ANY way. I started seeing things on the nail-o-blaggityblog-o-sphere about a copper polish, Essie Penny Talk, which is outside my usual price range but cooopperr. So I ordered it, got the bottle, and it was clearly gold. I mean look:

Essie Penny Talk:

I even whined to Mr. Fix-It, and
he was all “Uh…hm. Gold is nice?”
So I put it on my nails.

So I put on my new gold nail polish. Which did go on gold …until it wasn’t. Like the weirdness of Push’n’Shove, over about a minute or two, it slooowly changed (cured?), until I was looking at this:

Totes copper. Specifically, the very pink color of brand
new, totally untarnished copper. *happy sigh*

What the hell, y’all, Chemistry is magical.

So I really like Penny Talk! But I didn’t top coat it, and like most foils, it chips if you move your hand through oxygen molecules, and after a day the edges were all ragged and sucky. So I added

OPI Gaining Mole-mentum:

Up close you can see that it’s made of little shard glitters in gold, silver and copper.

From a little further away you can see that
it’s just sort of… confused sparkle?

I dunno. When I did Rouge Rush, also with shard glitter, I liked the depth and the almost-flaky-level glow? So I thought I would give this a try. But I’m not so sure. Also, layering it over copper made the copper glitter vanish, which I did not care for. So I’ll try it over something else before I do anything drastic.

PWI: Sally Hansen Grape Going! Plus, JERBS

Apr16

For those who are following along at home, here’s the interview scorecard:

1 (R) – A good school, a decent interview. I wasn’t smitten, and I doubt they were. I didn’t make a fool of myself but I don’t expect followup.
2 (F) – A fantastic research fit, but a social fit that really concerned me. OTOH, they made me an offer, and they offered me the moon and the stars. If they want me that badly, I’m willing to try to make it work.
3 (G) – A fantastic research fit. A fantastic social fit. A fantastic place. I would sell… something important to work there. They loved me, too; they told me so. But they’ve interviewed some truly amazing people, and it’s all down to the shouting, now. It’s an engineering department. There will be shouting. (But please, please, please?)
4 (U) – Smaller school, less of a research fit, but I would fill some painfully obvious holes they have, and socially it was awesome. People were direct, honest, forthright, and kind. I enjoyed the heck out of my visit and I would work there if they offered. Also, the closest to Super Woman and Dr. D of anyplace I interviewed.

I expected to hear from #3 today, but didn’t. I actually managed to work myself into a state where I was womity just from nerves. Finally I said screw it and fell back to my usual reaction to adversity: sulking and nausea.

And, oh, food. Coq au vin (traditional style, so it took 4 hours), cauliflower puree, skinned drumsticks in batches in the freezer, and oven-roasted Brussels sprouts in brown sugar and bacon glaze. (Um… I have leftovers… help?) I actually managed to fight down the urge to call an impromptu dinner party and make everyone individual Cornish game hens, but it was a near thing.

And, as happens when the going gets confusing and adult, I have been painting the crap out of my nails. It is consequence free.

Today’s offering is Sally Hansen Grape Going!:

	X
Reddish purple! [hand tilt] Bluish purple! …am I more excited than this warrants?

A blue-purple duochrome,* which is pretty awesome. That said, it has some problems. One is sheerness, as this is like 4-5 coats, meaning way more chances to screw up.

The second, and far worse, is how subtle the color shift actually is. I needed this super-direct setting-sun light to get a real purple – the mildly uninteresting mid-tone blue on the right is more the default look.

Anyway! Tomorrow I will hear something maybe or maybe not! Please, um, just please cross your fingers, or pray, or whatever your superstition is and all, or nothing. Just… please.

* Two different colors in different lights / at different angles. The word is also used for polishes that shift among >2 colors, which makes Grammar Hulk aaaangry because it should obviously be multichrome. You wouldn’t like me when I‘m… using the red pen

PWI: RED. (By which I mean OPI Red, plus threefer Jane Megawatt and Pure Ice Bare It All, but whatever. RED)

Apr13

Soooo, two things about red nail polish!

1. One is always looking for the perfect, flattering, amazing red polish. (And lipstick!)
2. People* are Concerned that red polish may make one look Fast, and, perhaps, Loose.**

That said, one of my oldest polish acquisitions is…

O•P•I Red.

Red. This shot makes it look pinkish maybe? But it’s so primary,
unapologetically red. Maybe a hair blue leaning? It’s not 3-free
or 5-free or vegan or whatever, and I know there’s a newer version
that is, but this is my canonical and beloved Fast Lady red.

There’s a new post-reformulation red. I feel like I ought to try it, I guess. Because I am not completely happy with my existing, classic, vampy, and hot red.^†

Anyway! There are only about 4, 5 “nail art” things I’d be interested in? The simple ones! So I am interested in the “glitter gradient.” Basically, you take a glitter polish with medium-to-bad coverage, and paint it in receding layers, so a gradient comes out. Which is my thing!

The glitter is two things: JANE Megawatt – which is the solid glitter on my index finger – and Pure Ice Bare It All. They are identical. Weirdly so – they are both gold glitter with random copper glits. The PI BiA has thicker coverage, so that’s a difference, the only one. I’ma get rid of one, probably the Pure Ice, because it’s less usable for gradients.


My index finger is the Pure Ice. Less gradient-y but otherwise identical.

But anyway: RED.

* To a certain Type of Person, don’t you know. (The kind that sits on hiring committees.)
** …why? Red? It’s a color? I don’t… even…
^†Yeah, no, I really am.

PWI: Rimmel London Pink-A-Boo and Sunny Days

Apr10

Maaaan all that interviewing stuff was crazy. And, contrary to my expectations, it’s kind of ongoing! I had a phone thing with someone from Place #3 this morning, and I’m expecting to have another with #2 shortly… it’s complicated, is all. I plan to post more (spoilers: #4 was great and #3 was a-MAYY-ziiinng), but I kind of think I write in this blog because nail polish is easy and super fun for me, and I could so use that right now.

So here’s a thing that happened before I went off to get ~~my brains scrambled~~ interviewed.

Rimmel London Pink-A-Boo and Sunny Days:

I tried to use these colors as a half-moon mani, but everything went wrong.
…everything. I don’t wanna talk about it. (Okay since you insist the yellow is
streaky and transparent and the pink dings if you look at it funny which I did you
can see it and everything gets everywhere after like 9 coats of polish, aaarrrgh!)

The yellow, uh. Needs a lot of coats. But it’s a very true yellow! The pink’s fine, very very pink, but fine. After a complete fail of a half-moon manicure, I decided to go with rocking the asymmetry, which I kind of always love:

Mr. Fix-It took photos! With my crappy camera
phone! I do not think he cared for it at all!

Ahhh yes. That feels better than worrying about my future, yes indeed it does. ^_^

If you love me, dilly, dilly, I will love you (PWI: Rimmel London Sweet Lavender)

Mar30

Since Mr. Fix-it made me realize I have no lavender nail polish (huh?), I obviously needed to buy nail polish. Obviously! Rimmel London makes these little $2 bottles – they’re really small, actually, 8 mls instead of 18? But I have literally never once used up a bottle of polish (except, like, base coat), so I really don’t give a crap about the per-ounce price.

Rambling! Rimmel London Sweet Lavender:

Honestly it’s more lavender in person. A little bluer, a little dustier, but
it’s fine! Because I’ve sorta reached détente with my phone on color.*
* Translation: it wins, while I secretly pine for a camera manufactured by Pantone.**
** Not that secretly. Mr. F and I just talked for 20 minutes about what that would be.

I’m (semi)-unexpectedly home for a day plus a bit, so I’m screwing around… quite a lot actually. Because (1) it relieves stress, and (2) my talk is done. Done done. No more practicing, no more fussing with it. It’s as good as I can make it at the moment, I’ve practiced giving it… it’s done. Which hasn’t been true for the previous, what, two months?

I realized in the course of looking at this that I don’t really have any pastel colors. I mean maybe a couple accidental ones, but on the scale of my polish-buying, that’s odd! Also, I realized that lavender doesn’t actually suit me. The pic looks okay, but even Mr. Fix-It agreed that in person it looked off.

SO I am going to buy pastel colors and see what happens!

Meanwhile: the whole season-based color thing is a bit passé! But, because pastels are usually associated with spring/summer coloring, I decided to try a thing. I went and took every online test I could easily find about seasonal coloring…

Ok that’s not quite true. We should talk methodology. Which kind of takes us to another post.

PWI: Urban Outfitters Smush

Mar27

The other day I found that my grocery store has green olives stuffed with feta cheese, AND green olives stuffed with raw garlic, which I am now happily alternating. I thought about entitling this post “How to never be kissed again.”

I recently mentioned my random bottle-grab Smush as a dumb name for a color. But then it was on the surface, so here’s Urban Outfitters Smush:

Indoors, obv. This didn’t stay on long enough for a daytime
shot! Read on to find out why I have one weird green nail…

I was applying this, and I was thinking, “Seafoam, hm hm, seafoam… … didn’t I just do an Urban Outfitters seafoam color? Is this a PWI fail?”

So of course I looked in the box, and discovered that UO Girrl Like You is a green seafoam, not a blue seafoam. Silly me! Hence the accent nail, for comparison purposes.

I’ve a bit of a dilemma. Smush is a cool color, something I would like to have, but the formula is god-awful. It’s streaky, chalky, draggy and miserable. This is three coats, and the pinky still has a drag line; I chose the accent nail because the middle finger had the worst coverage. I did not enjoy playing with this polish, which is super unusual! Keep or ditch, keep or ditch? Either way it’s hall of shame.

Man. Now I’m out of olives.

Half Moons! plus, PWI twofer: Urban Outfitters Bandeau & Sinful Colors Frenzy

Mar26

“Half moons” (those white arcs at the base of your fingertips) are often re-represented on nails in a variety of silly colors. Traditionally this is done by masking off the base of your nails with these:

Which is, you know, pretty amusing.

I’ve tried this look before, but since I exclusively use peel-off base coat,* I always end up just peeling off the entire nail’s polish. ANY way, the other day I was reading some blog about nails (don’t remember whose, sorry!) and the blogger said something like, “Then I put hole reinforcements on my nails, being sure to stick them to the back of my hand first of course…”

Of course.

So obvious in retrospect. I mean if I had really sat down and formulated the question as “How do I make these less sticky,” I would have answered it immediately. Formulating the right question when you see a problem is, sometimes, the only hard thing. Or even realizing you should treat it as a solvable problem. Engineering is hard!

But! It means you get to see my first ever successful (ish) half moons.

Here’s Urban Outfitters Bandeau:

Indoor. I doooon’t need a new camera (I don’t) but
would a lamp be such a bad idea? …I’m doomed

Which is a fairly nice purple creme; 2 coats. In low light it reads as black, in bright light it looks about like this, satiny dark purple. In sunlight, however, it is glowingly purple, as shown below. The odd, slightly satiny finish is accurate.

With Sinful Colors Frenzy, a nice purple-and-plum glitter.

	X
Purple! Indirect sunlight/direct sunlight. Glitter’s hard to take a good picture of. I feel like I would need a star filter or something. For the camera. That I don’t need.

I don’t think this color choice was that successful. I’m not sure why, but it feels off from a bit of distance. Dunno! Maybe I’m just not used to it. Also, waiting for three layers of Frenzy to dry was kind of awful; next time I want something fast for that part. The stickers did pull some of the Bandeau up, I’m guessing because it wasn’t fully dry.

But! Still! Lookit! Half-moons! Purple ones!

* Subject of upcoming post

PWI: Island Girl Polynesian Heat

Mar23

Mr. Fix-it took my request to heart (okay, I poked him), and suggested lavender nails. Whereupon we discovered that however the hell many little bottles I have, I don’t have a one of those. Gah! The closest I could come was this, which is more like a pale pink, although I tried layering it over purple, which sometimes works but didn’t really here.

Island Girl Polynesian Heat:

Indoor lighting, because then I took it off. Please
ignore the one weird finger, that’s a failed experiment.

	X
Left: indoor; right: flash. (Oo! Flash! Whatever’s next?)

Okay, first off I’ll just get this off my chest: “Polynesian heat”? Doesn’t that make you think of something in the red/orange/yellow family? Or at least something saturated? Something not, say, delicate, frosty pinkish-lavender?

Meh, whatever, it’s a pretty color. Which is a shame, because the formula is fail. It’s everything people hate about “frost” finishes: it shows every imperfection and every brushstroke, it’s thin and runny and doesn’t stay where you put it, it’s not self-leveling. It looks mostly okay from a little distance? But it’s not really worth the hassle.

I tried rescuing it by putting a topper on it I’m excited about; the two nail polishes played together poorly, with Polynesian Heat crinkling up and going all weird.

Hall-o-shame! Shame, I say! Burn the witch.

PWI: Wet’n’Wild Through the grapevine (aka ORCHID!)

Mar22

First, a note: this article on mental illness in academia, while perhaps a bit extreme, is exactly the sort of thing that possible-academics should know and be asking themselves hard questions about.

More fun that that though:

I had dinner with my friend N the other day, and we hit a drugstore on the way home to feed our little obsession. (Okay, I did and she came along.) Towards the end I said, “Okay, pick something for me.” And then, to avoid the embarassment of spending 15 minutes saying “Already got that one… and that one…”, I added, “Pick something you don’t think I’d pick for myself.”

Introducing Wet’n’Wild Through the Grapevine:

	X
Left: indirect sunlight; right: actual sunlight hitting my actual body you guys! I think these capture the pink-to-blue variation pretty well. Under indoor lights it’s very pink.

Yeah, I would not have picked it! I actually think it’s pretty flattering on me (?), but I’m not really a FLAMING ORCHID kind of person, and this is bright. Nonetheless, I love it when people pick polishes for me, either to wear or to buy; it’s astonishing how often it’s a complete learning experience. (Black on one hand and white on the other, chosen by a labmate, was so good that I want a matching dress.)*

If you don’t know, Pantone** has always had some geek love, and they’ve realized it and decided to make a profit off it – you can buy notebooks, watches, mugs, etc. One of the things they do now is declare a “Color of the Year” (and season), which cosmetics, clothing designers, etc. dutifully note.†

This year’s color is Radiant Orchid. That’s probably why I have bright pink fingers!

* If you have an idea (that you tell me) I will do it to my nails if physically possible, and post it. This is a promise. It can also be a dare, that’s fine.

** A company whose business is “reproducible color.” You can buy physical swatches of thousands of colors, and the Pantone color number is just… that color. That exact color. No monitor differences, differences between batches, or creep: Pantone 13-1406 (“Cloud Pink”) will always be the same. For example, the University of Tennessee’s official colors are UT Orange, White, and Smokey, while the University of Texas’ orange is Burnt Orange (#159). You can see where that’s useful when thousands of people and hundreds of departments are doing their own thing.

† Update: apparently they also look at runway shows and early collections to get ideas, so it goes both ways. *shrug*

PWI twofer: Wet’n’Wild Sophisticated Lady and Sally Hansen Ice Queen

Mar20

I bought this at the same time as Wet’n’Wild Champagne Toast, from the same display and, apparently, in the same mood. Behold!

Wet’n’Wild Sophisticated Lady:

pink nail polish is pink

I don’t really get the name. It’s pink. What’s sophisticated about pink? I mean it’s too pale to be bubblegum pink, but? …whatever. It’s pretty, it’s subtle, it’s fine. I feel like if I mixed this and Champagne Toast I’d have a more opaque Nomad’s Dream. Nice to have around.

Then, because I make the same mistakes over and over, I layered on the partially-contrasting Sally Hansen Ice Queen:

Bugz! Little teal bugs on my hand! Ugh.

Big pink glitter, big teal glitter, teeny iridescent multicolored sparkles.

This does a good job of showing why I don’t really like multicolored glitter. Up close, it looks fine, but from any distance the teal glitter just looks like I got scunge on my hands and should wash them. Also, getting the big hex glitters out was a giant pain; getting this many glits took three-ish coats and a mountain of dabbing.

So I’ll either get rid of this or use it for the teeny sparkles. Meh.

Of Cats, Nails, and Robots

an engineer who loves polish, cats, typography, robots, and many, many other things

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