Nails of Previous Days: Blue Matte with Chrome Accents

As you may have guessed if you've been reading this blog for any length of time other than just starting now, I've been absent from here due to having too much fun on other things. This time it was drving cross country by myself from Idaho to Illinois to meet up with friends at a conference over the long Memorial Day weekend. I'll be doing a bit more wandering before I head back home in a week or so. Right now, I'm holed up in a public library recharging my batteries from so much people-ing over the last five days. Seems like a great time to share some fake nails I wore a while back. These are from Dashing Diva; the Brave New World design of MagicPress nails pairs matte navy with iridescent pewter accents.



The shape of these gets along very nicely with my nail beds; they're self stick with the adhesive tabs already attached to the nails, which makes application go more quickly than ones where the tabs are separate. Here it's just a matter of verifying fit, peeling off the backing, and sticking the nails on firmly. Ideally, I do this just before bed, or when that's not possible, at least at a time when I won't need to get my hands wet for a few hours. Water on freshly applied self-stick nails definitely seems to make them more prone to popping off before their time; giving the adhesive a chance to "set up" undisturbed makes a difference. (I put these on at night in a hotel room on a previous trip, thus the lighting in the pic below.)



Here they are the next morining in mixed daylight/hotel overhead light; you can see some of the green to blue iridescense on the accent nails along the edges.



Six days after I'd put them on, the accent nails were showing a lot of wear, with the chrome coating rubbing off the black base underneath. Considering how hard I am on my hands, especially on road trips with all the shifting luggage around (often I stay in a different place each night), I wasn't surprised. It actually looking kind of interesting, similar to distressed denim. You can also see the matte finish had moved into satin territory thanks to nearly a week of hand lotion applications.



Instead of taking off this set at this point, I just removed the accent nails and replaced them with extra matte blue ones; they weren't quite as good a fit but worked decently well. I then wore them another two days (the gap at the base of my nails shows the difference between the ones that were matte blue all along and the replacements).



I really am liking fake nails these days; they're so easy and if I use the adhesive tabs, they're not hard on my natural nails and aren't hard to remove. I don't think they look any more fake than a lot of the acrylics out there, and so what if they do look fake ... nails aren't naturally colored blue and chrome so even if I used polish to achieve the same look, that wouldn't be any less fake. My philosphy: it makes me happy and hurts no one, so I'm going for it.