Recent NOTD: China Glaze In the Mood

As I mentioned yesterday, I had to skip over some of my nails of the day to be able to post my holiday look on the actual holiday. Today I've got one of the manis I had to pass over temporarily. I wore this two weeks ago, so it's not that ancient. The polish is pretty old, though; it's a China Glaze In the Mood I picked up at a nail supply store. According to the research squared nails did, these were released around 2001. I don't know the official name of the one I used, but given that the ones I do know the names of are things like "Mint Green to Seafoam" and "Bronze to Gold" I'm going to guess this is something like "Blue to Purple" or "Purple to Blue". There were evidently a lot of these; Nails Beautiqued has a color chart that shows 48 of them. I guess that's not too crazy; China Glaze did do that massive 50-glitter release a couple years ago.

Since I've heard that some mood polishes stop working after they get to a certain age, I wasn't sure what I'd get when I put on this one. Since I liked the bottle color, a purple with scattered blue micro glitter, I figured even if it didn't change it would be pretty. But it did change, turning to a dusty blue when warm. My nails are long enough right now that I got a funky French effect most of the time.





I used two coats of the China Glaze and added a coat of one of the new Sally Hansen Hard as Nails, Ice Queen, for accent nails. Ice Queen is very, very similar to one of my favorites, NYC Starry Silver Glitter, but I can't regret buying it since it's a) glitter, b) Karen colors, and c) cheap.



Because I want to be ready if Sally Hansen discontinues the Insta Dri top coat (she got rid of my favorite treatment, so I wouldn't be surprised), I experimented this time with a new-to-me top coat, Rush 60 Second High Speed, which I picked up at Sally Beauty. It applied fine and dried fairly fast, but I don't feel like it dried quite as quickly as the Sally Hansen I usually use. What I didn't like was the shrinkage I noticed. I don't usually wrap my tips; it takes more time, and I'm impatient, and with the Sally Hansen top coat, I don't get shrink. With the Rush, I did.



It could be that the old China Glaze was to blame for the shrinkage, so I'm not going to give up on the Rush after this one try. It just wasn't love at first use.

Here's the cold face of the polish, visible just after I washed my hands in cool water (or when I was in an overly air conditioned space):



And here's the warm face, featuring the gigantic chip I got on my thumbnail. Mr. Peelies is partly to blame for this, but I'm thinking the top coat wasn't helping.



Summer is not my favorite season, since I am a delicate flower who doesn't like to be too hot, but it is a great time to wear mood polish.