I admit, I got lazy! I went to get a professional manicure. Let me tell you, for as much as I tend to mess up my own manicures and get polish on my fingers sometimes, this lady was no better! I even had to ask her to get some remover to take it off – she was just going to leave it! UGH. So, back to doing my own.
I’ve been spending a lot of time crafting lately (more on that after Christmas once all gifts have been opened) so I haven’t done a ton of stuff with my nails. I even let them ride without polish for a few weeks because I read an article saying it was healthy for them to be polish-free sometimes. After a ton of breaking and chipping and peeling (yes, it’s as uncomfortable as it sounds) I quickly went back to putting on at least a clear coat and they’ve started to shape up & fly right.
Like I said, I left my nails bare for a couple weeks, so there’s only 2 to share for November. Serious, this time, I didn’t just forget to take pictures 🙂
First, I wanted something that was very “Fall” without being overly Thanksgiving-y. I knew that I was going to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving and wanted to reserve my truly festive manicure for then. So after a quick poll for fall colors on Facebook, I decided on a deep burgundy from L’Oreal Paris called Breaking Curfew with essie’s matte about you top coat. I was very happy with this combination, and got quite a few compliments when out wine tasting for a friend’s birthday!
My one beef with the matte top coat is that it doesn’t seem to last as long as the standard top coats. I haven’t yet tried the OPI Matte Top Coat because this one works well enough. I keep meaning to try putting on a standard top coat first and THEN adding the matte to see if that makes a difference. Maybe I’ll do a nice matte blue in January… hmmm….
Now, to that Thanksgiving Manicure I was talking about. I had every intention on doing something very festive. I pinned MANY ideas to my Mani Mania Pinterest Board that would be easy to do. I was luckily not responsible for any food preparation or cooking for Thanksgiving, just bringing the decorations made with my Cricut Machine… and hence that took up ALL of my pre-Thanksgiving time (that and working a lot to get Black Friday deals all set up). So I literally just grabbed a festive orange and did my nails before heading to dinner. So what you get is Kleancolor in Metallic Orange, a color I went straight to a beauty supply store & bought after picking it out at the salon and falling in love.
While I may have just done two manicures, I did make a leap forward in my manicure existence by taking advantage of a sweet Black Friday Sale at Julep and buying 4 polishes: Lacey, Sharon, Oscar, & Valerie. These will be my first experience using Julep but I’ve heard nothing but good things, so I’m excited. I already have them in mind for my New Year’s manicure! So stay tuned for that and my Christmas manicure, which I’ve started already (yes, 2 day process)!