Lacquer Lovers Weekend

I am back from my trip to Las Vegas to hang out with fellow lacquer lovers, tired and jet lagged and so happy I was able to spend time with people who get me and don't think it's at all odd to buy a dozen polishes at once.

I had a special polish to wear for this trip, a custom glitter topper from I Love Nail Polish, a Las Vegas-based indie brand. (I found the brand through etsy; the shop link is ILoveNP.) I knew I wanted to put together a little gift bag for the ladies who would be joining me in Sin City and couldn't think of a better centerpiece for that than a polish made just for us. Barbra was very easy to work with and created this beauty of a glitter mix:



Things got hectic for me in the run up to the trip, so I left for the airport with my nails practically bare. I'd managed to put on a treatment and base coat but that's it. I put some polish in my quart-size bag of liquids and gels to carry on and hoped I'd be able to adorn my digits sometime before the main events of the weekend got started on Friday morning. As it turned out, my flight was delayed for two and a half hours due to a line of bad thuderstorms coming through, and I was able to do my nails in a pay phone booth that wasn't near any areas where other people were sitting (I'm sort of surprised there were still pay phones, as it seems everyone has a cell these days).



Because I was doing this mani out of my normal space, I didn't keep track of how many coats I used or get great photos. I do know what polishes I used, of course: Rimmel Cocktail Colour Baby Bellini (I am not a big drinker, but even I know that bellinis are not purple, so why they called this that I don't know) with thumb and ring finger accents of Fergie by Wet 'n' Wild Purple Polka Dot Bikini topped with the I Love Nail Polish custom.





It doesn't show in these photos (thanks, weird airport lighting conditions) but I found that the only topcoat I brought (Diamond Dry) didn't play nicely with the ILoveNP base, causing weird wrinkles to form. I know it's the Diamond Dry, because when my flight delay went into the second hour, I bought a little bottle of remover at a big airport price and switched my left thumb to Baby Bellini plus the ILoveNP. No wrinkling there until I added the Diamond Dry. Guess that's what I get for bringing three polishes I'd never used before, much less used with that topcoat. Ah well, stuff happens, and the pretty glitter distracted from the wonky topcoat enough that I left it be all weekend.

I was having too much fun to sit in my hotel room and paint my nails, anyway. There was much polish shopping to be done, for instance. On Friday alone we hit up three or four beauty supply places, including one that had so very much good stuff on offer that it took a while before I even noticed that their air conditioning was not keeping up with the near record hot temperatures outside. Another attraction of Las Vegas for us was the fact that this is the only place to buy Island Girl polishes outside of Hawaii. When we got to the ABC Store in Fashion Show Mall, we had to move some suitcases out of the way of the display so we could get a good look at all the colors (and they were on sale for buy two, get one free—bonus!).



It wasn't all shopping, of course; we did some sightseeing and dining (everything from $2 tacos to a fancy French bistro dinner), and one night we went to the Rio to take in the Chippendales show.



I didn't manage to get a shot of everyone's nails, but here's one I did snap under the blazing desert sun of the four of us who were waiting in line together at that particular moment:



Clockwise from my nails at the bottom, it's Amy (wearing a Sally Hansen silver topped with Finger Paints Santa's Magic), then Amber (Butter London Fairy Cake), and mrsrexy (a.k.a. Canadian Nail Fanatic, a.k.a. the stamping queen). I don't believe that Amy and Amber have nail blogs—but I'm so tired right now it could be they do and I'm just not able to retrieve that information from my brain.

It was a great weekend, and I hope we get to do it again sometime, with even more ladies able to join in.

*****
Edited to add one more photo: a NOTD shot with fish in the aquarium at Mandalay Bay.