High Maintenance

For this mani I wanted to highlight China Glaze High Maintenance, a gorgeous true blue-based red that I previously swatched in this post. The upsides to swatching on a plastic display circle are that I don’t have to use a truly headache-inducing amount of acetone in one sitting, and I can easily see what colours I have for future manicures (and I feel fancy like I’m having a salon experience). The downside is that sometimes a polish doesn’t look the same on the display circle as it does on the nail. This was the case with High Maintenance, but in a very good way.

Indirect sunlight, indoors. A tad darker in reality.

On the nail High Maintenance remains sanguineous and vampy goodness, but even more so. It is richer, really a blood red, and a bit darker than my camera wants to capture. The finish on the nail is also a little different, being somewhere between a creme and a jelly — juicy, intense and definitely blood-like. It’s such a gorgeous shade I was tempted to wear it by itself. One of my all-time favourite reds.

Taken with flash, and I've messed around with the light and contrast to try to show a more true-to-life blood-red colour.

But I can’t leave well alone so continuing with a bloody theme I added V-shaped french tips in another shade I love, Kleancolor Bite Me. Bite Me is a rich red glitter that flashes black. Being so full of micro and regular glitter it works great as a nail art polish, becoming opaque over another shade in one coat and by itself in two. This isn’t a red glitter than looks inappropriately Christmasy on the nail (Christmas begins and ends in December for me), and looks beautiful by itself. It’s not a very rough-finish glitter.

Bumblebee Nails

Some summery nails today. My husband says they remind him of the transformer Bumblebee (original not Michael Bay, he adds) so we’ll go with that. These are polishes I bought from BeautyJoint. I will get around to showing you swatches of what I bought but for now I can say that I was very pleased with my shopping experience.

The colours for this manicure were Kleancolor Concrete Gray and Pearl Silver, and NYX Girls My Sunshine. I found Concrete Gray and Pearl Silver to be a bit thick and difficult to neatly apply, the grey particularly so. I’ll be adding a few drops of polish thinner to both. The grey creme has a blueish tint and comes up distinctly dark grey as in the bottle, rather than drying to almost-black. The silver is a standard silver foil that can show brushstrokes if you’re not careful, and has a slightly blackened shine toward the sides of the nail. My Sunshine is a summery yellow creme that shows mustard in some lights, which I love. It has a thinner formula and is a 3 to 4 coater. Most yellows are at least slightly frustrating and patchy to apply so this isn’t anything particularly unusual, but it does mean that this won’t be a polish I use frequently.

Sunlight indoors. True to colour.

I am now the happy owner of a bottle of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat (also from BeautyJoint) so drying time was significantly shorter. It also seems to smooth out any small lumps. Seche Vite contains toluene which I know many people avoid, but it doesn’t bother me (though it does have a strong odor). It does what it says on the label and has a really glossy finish. Kleancolor polishes are also pretty foul-smelling in general, particularly the holos (the holos are headache material). They might smell like Beelzebub’s own arsehole but it fades as the polish dries, and I like Kleancolor‘s range.

Stats: base coat of Orly Top 2 Bottom, 3 coats My Sunshine (4 on thumbs), coat of Seche Vite before taping, coat of Concrete Gray, coat of Seche Vite before taping, coat of Pearl Silver, top coat of Seche Vite. I’m never the person to talk to about wear time as I change my nails every 3 to 4 days, but no chips so far.

Left (dominant) thumb.