The Princess Pat Pedicure

New pedicure, using a bunch of rich colors that I love:

All the colors remind me of the "Rigabamboo" camp song I learned as a child.  Red and gold and purple too!

CND Rubberized Base Coat, Stickey Top Coat, OPI An Affair In Red Square, Black Onyx, Orly Pure White Tip, Tokidoki Stellina (gold glitter), Savana (purple glitter).

Graffiti is not about clean lines, pretty colors and beautiful blends. Graffiti is my life's turbulence exploded on a wall.

Graffiti nail!  I stayed after work today to practice doing acrylic, and my model agreed to let me polish her nails however I wanted with the polishes she chose.

They are her polishes, two from China Glaze and three from... a brand I fail to recall, but the bottles were extremely similar to China Glaze.

Sneak Peek - My Nail Space

I hate clutter.  (My roommate's opinion does not count for this post.)  Apart from the side table next to my computer, which is perpetually cluttered, I like everything else neat.  I don't leave laundry on the floor, shoes in the doorway, or makeup on the counter.
So my nail polish collection was getting out of hand, and I wasn't sure what to do!

That's what I was doing for the longest time.  The drawers were arranged by color, with red/pink/purple in one, blue/green in another, and black/white/metallic/neutral in the last.  The red drawer has been overflowing for quite some time, but even before, it was always a cluttered mess.  I bought a pretty wire nail polish rack, but when I got it home I realized that some of my taller bottles - like China Glaze and Venique - wouldn't fit, so I ended up returning it.

I finally bought one of those last week, and when I realized it wouldn't be enough space, I bought the second two days later.  Since I'm licensed, I got them from my local professional beauty supply store, but similar ones are available online.  My lover estimates that I can fit ten more bottles before I'll have to buy another - I've purchased eight in the last 24 hours!  Oh well, I can think of worse addictions!

A throne is only a bench covered in velvet.

I went to Sephora today to buy powder and eyeliner...  I got them, as well as five bottles of nail polish and three eyeshadow palettes.  One of the polishes I bought was new from Ciate - the velvet manicure.  Obviously, I had to try it immediately:

I did my left hand first, and as you can see, wasn't very good at it.  My ring finger is cropped out because it looks that bad!

My right hand was going a little better - I was faster and knew what to expect.

That's my right ring finger; the best in my opinion, and shows the texture with and without the velvet applied.  (I used tape to do the French style.)

A couple comments immediately.  1)It is MUCH darker than I expected.  Here's the box I bought:

2)I was worried about the texture, but I can't stop petting my nails!  Even after washing my hands it feels great!

I was surprised I hadn't heard about it, since I work full time doing nails, do more nails at home, and generally breathe all things nails...  I'll edit this post in a few days to comment on how it wears.  


*Edit*  After a day, (and washing my hair with the velvet on) the velvet stopped showing, and my nails just looked lumpy.  I found velvet fuzz on my face for three days, possibly because I rub my eyes a lot.
I tried it on a coworker with Shellac base and top coat - I did the Shellac base (cured), then two coats of the color -which was very difficult to apply over the gel base- and after it dried, did a Shellac topcoat, sprinkled the velvet on that before double-curing it.  I cleaned the inhibition layer off the top, and the velvet still looked good, but she also complained that the velvet got everywhere.  Even with the gel, her manicure was ruined in two days.  I did end up returning it, but it was fun for a minute! 

Here is the manicure I did on my coworker:

And she also complained that it doesn't photograph very well, but with the Shellac we thought the color was not so dark.

Deborah Lippmann Rehydrating Base Coat, Ciate Velvet Manicure (color shown).