Color Craze

Perhaps I was able to be so restrained on my shopping excursion the other night because just before we left on vacation, I went a little crazy at CVS. The object of my outburst was the other Wet 'n' Wild summer collection, the Craze ones. I wasn't going to buy these. I first saw them in May at the same time as I saw the Wild Shine candy-licious ones, and compared to those, these were smaller and more expensive, so I passed. I continued to pass as I hunted earlier this month for the Wild Shines to make up the second prize set. Then CVS had a sale on Wet 'n' Wild, which weakened my resistance some, but by that point the stock was really picked over, and I didn't want to just buy whatever was left, so I kept passing. Except then, while the sale was still on, I came to a store that had an almost full display. I'm not made of stone; I stopped. I picked up a bottle. I noticed there were pairs of colors: two green, one creme and one shimmer, two blue, one creme and one shimmer, and so on. When I got to the oranges, it was all over; they were named Copa and Cabana. Barry Manilow singing in my head, I scooped up one of each of the eleven colors left and bought them. Then I went to the next closest CVS (in some parts of metro Detroit, there's a CVS every mile or so) and lo and behold one of the five bottles they had left was the color I needed. It was fate.



Top row, left to right: Kauai, Sumatra, Barbados, Bora Bora, Cabana, Cozumel. Bottom row: Maui, Bali, Aruba, Tahiti, Copa, Cancun.


I've been so busy since we got back that my nails have just been sporting clear treatments, but yesterday morning I decided I'd be a little late to work and do some color. (One great thing about my employer is no one freaks out when I roll in a bit past my usual arrival time. I do have to stay a little later to make up for it, but that seems fair.) My first thought was purple; it usually is. But I had just worn purple (muted, but still), so I thought I'd do blue. But I wear a lot of blue, too, so I decided on pink. Because Mr. Karen did not spend his youth acclimating himself to the smell of nail polish remover and lacquer as I did and thus thinks it's objectionably stinky, when he's around I try to do my nails outside or near an open window with a fan drawing air out or, as I did this particular morning while he was eating breakfast, in the garage. Yes, it is possible to do a manicure standing up, working by the light of one 60-watt ceiling bulb, and holding the polish bottle in the hand that's being painted. It's not ideal, but it's not the worst conditions I can imagine.

For a base coat, I tried Salon Sciences Instant Artificials for the first time. A lot of ladies on the nail board like this one, so I'd picked it up at Sally's a while back. I was impressed; it applied very nicely and leveled out my ridges almost as well as my old favorite, Seche Base Ridgefilling. Time will tell if I get the same wear out of it as my usual routine, but so far I'm liking it.


Product lineup, left to right: Salon Sciences Instant Artificials, Wet 'n' Wild Tahiti, Wet 'n' Wild Bora Bora, Sally Hansen Insta Dri.


I did not like applying Tahiti, the creme. The short brush didn't bother me—I like minis—but the wide cap did; it felt very unwieldy to me, and I couldn't see any way to remove the cover to reveal a more reasonably sized cap underneath as one can with some bottles (I still bless the person on the nail board who clued me in to that trick). Two coats was all I could stand to do; I still had VNL at this point but hoped the shimmer would disguise it. (I did not take time to do clean up before taking a picture of Tahiti alone since I was mid-mani. Compared to how I used to slop polish on my cuticles, I'm really very neat now.)



Bora Bora, the shimmer, went on more easily. Maybe I was getting used to the wide cap, or maybe it was because it had a different consistency so I could spread it better. After one coat of Bora Bora on top of the two of Tahiti, I could still see my nail line, but decided to stop anyway since I dindn't want to be crazy late for work. Next time, I'm using an opaque nude under these. There won't be many next times, though, because the bottles are tiny: .22 fl. oz./65 ml. I was really pleased with the look of Tahiti; it's one of those shimmers that has a lot of sparkle to it.



If you're looking for these, here's what the display looks like; I came across this one yesterday on my "stores near the nice post office" trip (didn't take a display picture when I bought them because I didn't have my camera with me and my phone's camera is sucktastic). The words behind the bottles in the top row say "fun. outrageous. vibrant."



Outrageous? Maybe not so much, but definitely fun and vibrant.