Recent NOTD: Bright Purple Candy Plus POTD

Sorry, I didn't mean to be gone from here for three days. I know you're all used to my weekend posting being sporadic, but there should have been something on Friday. I was planning to do that entry in Maryland that day, during a gap in my schedule between finishing up a business meeting and getting together with some friends for dinner. That would have worked fine except I didn't realize how much time I'd need to spend that afternoon researching and pondering my options for leaving town to avoid Hurricane Irene. I'd originally planned to stay over the weekend so I could spend some time with a friend from New Jersey but instead ended up changing my flight to get home well before Irene showed up in the area. I did still get to have dinner with my friends Friday night, so that was good. Anyway, I am back now.

Today's feature is a recent mani inspired by all the jelly sandwich looks currently showing up on the MUA nail board and other places in the nailosphere. A jelly sandwich is glitter polish (the sandwich filling) layered in between coats of a jelly/sorbet (the bread). Instead of doing exactly that, I did the candy mani variation (which I think I first saw on Nailderella, though it could have been on one of the sites she links), where a less sheer polish is the bottom slice of "bread" and the jelly is the top slice. I applied my treatment and base coats, then two coats of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Chocolatte, 2 coats of OPI Show It and Glow It, 2 coats of OPI Houston We Have a Purple, and finally one layer of top coat. Did I absolutely need that many layers? Probably not, but I liked the result.









This wore really well; I put it the Sunday before I left for my Idaho vacation, wore it through a week of work and packing for the trip, and it was still going strong nine days later. I did have some tip wear and a chip on one of my thumbs (I keep saying I'm going to stop using my thumbnails as tools and then I keep right on doing it).



I liked it this so much I tried a variation on my toes, with Nicole by OPI Give Me the First Dance (1 coat), Rescue Beauty Lounge Frugalista (3 coats), and Zoya Vegas Freeze (2 coats). That was less successful; I think the base was too blingy and the Zoya too sheer to give the proper squishy effect. It's still pretty and silvery, though, so I'm leaving it on. I didn't manage to get a good photo of it, but will share the one I took of my hotel carpet, which I found quite soothing to look at while I was stressing out about avoiding the hurricane.





Unfortunately, this sandwich experiment has made me want to go find the OPI sorbets that I passed on. Perhaps I can distract myself from that urge with something shiny.