Nails of 2021

Nails of 2021 I looked back at the writing I did here this year and see only a few nails of the day posts. I wasn't suprised; my photo folders are stuffed with pictures I've taken but not posted, and most of those are NOTD looks. Between polish swatching/play sessions, I've almost always been wearing fake nails or nail strips from my stash because those are so easy (and the fakes are so protective). To kick off this year, I thought I'd share some of last year's NOTD, lest all those photos go to waste. Back in the day, when Meijer carried MOB (Ministry of Beauty) fake nails for a short time, I scooped up multiple sets when they went on clearance and wore several of those in 2021, including these blue Ultra-Reflect ones, sibling of the orchid ones I wore in 2015 and reviewed .

 

I wore several different sets of Maybelline Nail Falsies (most of those grabbed on clearance, too), including the Keep It Red reverse french set. I first wore this brand of fakes back in 2013.

 

Not all of my looks came from stash, though. I bought a set of the imPress Color nails that I first saw at Walgreens early last year. I tried a shimmery shade called Peanut Pink when my nails were in a shorties stage that these imPress would cover. These have the adhesive already applied to the nail which is easier than having to use separate tabs. I got good wear from them, too. I liked them so well, I bought and wore a couple more sets over the course of the year (Paralyzed Pink and Taupe Prize). They're good basics if the length works for you.

 

I wore L'Oreal Colour Riche Press-On Nails for the first time last year. I bought them in Canada back when going to Canada was still a thing that was possible (I think it is again, with proof of vaccination and a PCR test, but testing is such a mess right now I don't need to burden that system so I can go see what nail polish is a Shoppers Drug Mart). These fit my nails well though the length was on the short side so had to wait until I had a break that made me cut down my natural nails. The adhesive tabs were good and I got about 10 days of wear from this set.

 

I wore these Kiss Gel Fantasy medium length ones at Easter time because the colors reminded me of a bowl of candy, those pastel mints specifically.

 

I liked the wear I got from the one set of SinfulColors Claws I wore last year, these beige with slightly see through red tips, though this shape left the corners of my natural nails exposed so that wasn't great from a protection angle.

 

I tried Clutch Nails for the first time last year, having bought them at Target on impulse when I was there looking for something else. I got the Natural Nude set, and immediately after putting them on, cut them shorter so they felt more natural. These are glue ons, and I had a lot of trouble with nails just popping off and having to be reglued. That can happen with adhesive tabs, too, though those often get loose first so I have a warning.

 

My Halloween look was a pink and black set with spiders from Magic Press.

 

One issue I had with fake nails this year was some of the plastics would change color from my hair dye (it's been blue for a while now). I use semi-permanent dye, and when it's fresh, there's a fair bit of excess dye that comes off. Look how the pink and taupe (from another set I wore) went grey just from me having my fingers in my hair to braid it. This doesn't happen with all sets and fortunately the color change is even rather than streaky when it does happen.

 

I did a couple different sets of Fing'rs Prints nail when my own were short enough. I wore the plaid and black Rock Rebel ones around Thanksgiving.

 

I finished out the year in a couple Christmas sets, including this red and green glitter from Kiss.

 

At the moment, my nails just have a treatment base on them, as I couldn't decide what I wanted for the new year. Happy 2022 everyone! May we all have more joy this year.

Various Fake NOTD

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I've been wearing fake nails a lot. Some of them I don't have much to say about: I put them on and they looked nice for around a week and then I took them off. So today I have a handful of those looks. (The sets I do have something more to say about I'll save for other posts.)

These lilac and silver Textured Foil nails from MOB (The Ministry of Beauty) have been in my stash for a while; I only ever saw them available at Meijer stores for a brief time in 2015. Depsite having them all that time, I'd only ever worn one from the Ultra-Reflect series before (starting with a dark and mysterious set.) Here they are after a few days wear, nicely coordinating with my t-shirt for the day:



I'd worn a set of China Glaze purple iridescent pre-glued nails from the Chic Physique collection last year but had another set on hand that I'd gotten on clearance at Sally Beauty. These were labeled "short round" on the box; I'd call them medium oval myself.



The NailBliss Magic Press set called Up, Up, & Away had solid nails in lilac and pastel teal as well as glitter gradient accents. I used only the lilac and glitter ones when I put them on.



I do have a little more to say about these; as they wore, the lilac ones revealed pastel teal underneath, which I wasn't expecting.



The NailBliss Magic Press Check Mate set had navy solid nails with white accents that had a grid pattern where some of the squares were filled in with a pink/gold iridescent coating.



I'll wrap this up with the China Glaze white iridescent set from the Glam Finale collection; these were labeled "short squoval".



As I type this, I'm wearing yet another set of fakes, so look for more posts like this one. I do also have some new polish I want to swatch, and even have time booked on my calendar to do that, so look for polish posts, too.

Summer 2017 NOTD: Strips & Fakes

It's officially fall now, so it's past time for me to clear out my nails of the day folders from summer. I probably won't quite be able to do that all today, but I'm determined to make a big, big dent by cramming as many of the strips and fake nails into this post as I can before I run out of steam.

MOB (Ministry of Beauty) Ultra Reflect nails in the iridescent white colorway were one of my attempts to save my nails from the trauma of travel. Yep, same story as other times I've worn these: they're still not sized or shaped to be a perfect fit for me, but the finish is shiny and pretty and gives me something to look at when I need a micro-break.



If you thought the MOB nails looked ultra-fake, these Maybelline Nail Falsies in the Plum Sunset design are going to require even stronger language. Really truly ultra-fake, maybe?



The last set of fakes for summer were leftover imPress ones; I hadn't kept the box so not sure what the design is called, if it even had a name.



After the fakes, it's strips all the way down. One of my favorite Sally Hansen Salon Effects designs, Ring Toss, took a turn on my nails. I need to find and buy a stamping plate like this; I'm sure there is one.



My nails were doing pretty well length-wise when I wore Salon Effects in Fly With Me, a nice summery design of butterflies. I thing I added clear top coat to these to increase wear time, though since I didn't take notes, just photos, I can't be 100% sure. The top coat bottle could have ended up the photo for some other reason, like I didn't put it away after doing a pedicure.



When I put on Salon Effects in Cut It Out, I had every intention of coloring in some of the flowers before I took them off, but alas, I didn't make time to do that. The design is still good in its original black and white mode, just would have been fun to add my own color as I have before.



The quilt-like Salon Effect in Geome-trick had its own colors, no adding them necessary.



I wore the glittery Frock Star Salon Effects strips while the family was here for the reunion—all the colors meant they didn't clash with any of my clothes and I have enough multi glitters that I could touch up any wear and tear easily. I put clear topcoat on these to add to the wear time.



I had Frock Star on when I did my first color run; my skin got a bit stained by the color powder but the mani looked fine.



I'll wrap up for today with Salon Effects in Out of Line, which I put on after a few weeks of sporting nubbins thanks to all the manual labor involved in doing the final clear out of my mom's house.



I found some socks that coordinated perfectly with these strips; almost bought them then remembered I won't be wearing this design more than a few times more, unless I find some huge stash of strips somewhere and buy them up.



I am in no danger of running out of strips or fakes in the near future, so will keep turning to them for NOTD looks, as I like being able to finish up my manicure while watching tv with Mr. Karen in the evening, and liquid polish fumes aren't his jam. (Hi, I'm old and use lingo from years ago.)

Recent NOTD: Ministry of Beauty Ultra-Reflect Nails, Take Three

When I came back from vacation last month with those two broken nails (as documented in this post), I filed down the others into shorties, which meant it was a perfect time to dip into my stash of shorter fake nails. I turned for the third time to Ministry of Beauty Ultra-Reflect nails, which I stocked up on back when they were sold at Meijer stores. I wore the olive multichrome and white iridescent earlier this year and didn't want to repeat, so chose the lavender iridescent this time.



Because my own nails were shorter this time, I was able to snug the base of the fakes closer to my cuticles, which minimized the gaps from the squarer shape of the base on the fakes.





The above two pictures were shot in regular room light next to a window. After a day's wear, I got out my lightbox and took the two shots below.





I got so many comments and compliments on these; they're very eye catching. I like the adhesive tabs that come with them because they're very thin, but they aren't quite as sticky as I'd like; I had to reattach a few nails during the week I wore them (to be fair to the tabs, the nails that came loose are the ones I most like to use to pry and scrape at things, which I know I should not do but I need to have some bad habits to keep me from being too perfect, right?). The iridescent finish is a thin coating that will start to come off if you use your nails hard or scrape your nail against something sharp. Below see my right thumbnail after four or five days during which I packed many boxes of stuff in the I hope ending soon quest to get our house ready to list for sale.



To wrap up, here's a shot I took at Home Depot, where we went to look for new carpet for some of our rooms, again with an eye toward getting the house ready to sell.



It appears that ebay is the best place to get these now that they've disappeared from Meijer. I wish I could tell you more than that, but the Ministry of Beauty Twitter feed hasn't been updated since 2013 and their website I'm not even going to link because trying to go there makes my antivirus software pop up an alert. The back of the package says the nails were made in Korea, so that's a lead I intend to follow up more on at some point. So far, that just lead me to a shopping site which offered various beauty products, including a whole category called "Hairs".

Recent NOTD, Fakes Edition

The quick strip nails of the day looks I shared yesterday were interspersed with a couple of even quicker fake nail ones. (They're quicker because there's no smoothing needd or filing off of the excess strip material.) Since I'd liked wearing the Ministry of Beauty Ultra-Reflect artificials before, I turned to that brand again.

First I tried a set from the Dramatica collection; the box said they were "short & very glamourous" (The only other time I've seen MOB Dramatica nails in a retail store, they were all long and some were pointy; see this display post from 2013.) This particular design had a mix of motifs rendered in dusty peach and black with gold, pearl, and iridescent microglitter accents.I had the same issue with these as the earlier set, in that the base curve of the nails didn't match my own, which left crescent shaped gaps, and since these were shorter than the others, I also had to place some less close to the base in order to cover my natural tips. it was a little frustrating that I couldn't mix up the motifs the way I would if I were painting this mani, as I had to put nails where they were a reasonable fit. My left hand had two dots and two glittery half moons with a metal and pearl charm accent.



I failed to notice that there weren't more just dotted nails in the right sizes, so my right hand has four glittery half moons with a pearl and stone accent. I wish I'd planned ahead better.



I wore these for a full work week. When I took them off, they were mostly in pretty good shape; the charms had stayed on tight (and I didn't really notice them catching on my clothes or hair as much as I'd feared, either). Some nails did have some scratches where the peach part had scraped off to reveal the transluscent plastic beneath.



The other set I wore was from the Ultra-Reflect line, this time a pearly white with a multi-pastel multichrome effect. I had the same fit issues at the base, but these were longer so that helped with the tips. I think in some cases I picked a size too large for the best fit, but the finish was so shiny and distracting it wasn't that obvious if I wasn't looked specifically for that. Inside they glowed mostly golden and pink.







Outside they sometimes looked blue; maybe they were reflecting the sky.



Still looking good in my bathroom after three days wear:



As with the other Ultra-Reflect nails, these white ones got a lot of attention and compliments. I'm sorry to say the whole display has disappeared from Meijer; seems like they didn't really give people much of a chance to try them before they marked them down and move to the clearance shelves.

Recent NOTD: Ministry of Beauty Ultra-Reflect Artificial Nails

I know it's Wednesday, which should mean a nail wheel, but since we in the U.S. had a holiday on Monday, it's effectively Tuesday, so there is no wheel this week but instead the post I planned to do yesterday but didn't because I had a lunch meeting and left earlier than usual to try and beat a big rainstorm (which I didn't quite manage, but at least I only had to deal with sheets of rain for the last third of my commute instead of the whole thing).

I included Ministry of Beauty (MOB) artificial nails I saw at Meijer in a display post back in April. I didn't buy anything from that display at the time I spotted it, thinking about all the Maybelline Nail Falsies I snapped up when they went on clearance which have been sitting in my stash untouched. My resolve lasted until I stopped at Meijer near the end of April on my way to visit my mom in Illinois (I figure I might as well combine a restroom stop with nail polish display hunting, since not all Meijer stores have the same stuff at the same time, and most Meijers also have gas so it's like three birds with one stone if I'm due for a fill up as well). I'd been too busy to do my nails before I left, so was extra susceptible to the lure of the fakes when I saw the MOB display again at this store—I could go from plain to fancy nails in almost no time by just sticking these on. Thus I found myself back out in my car with a box of the Ultra-Reflect nails in the purple/olive/gold multichrome colorway (I didn't see any names on the boxes for any of the designs, though it's possible I missed them).



I went ahead and put them on right there in the car. Like the Maybelline ones, the nails are numbered on the underside so it's easy to keep the sizes straight and make sure that the nails on one hand are the same sizes as on the other hand. Unlike some of the Maybelline ones, I didn't notice any burrs on the edges of any of the nails that I needed to file off.



I think I could have chosen better sizes in some cases, but that's not the nails' fault. In most cases, I was able to get a good fit, though the base curve of the fake nails was more square than my own base curve, which left a bigger gap than I liked (the sides of the nail touched before the center when I was snugging them up to the base of my nails). Still, they were so shiny and distracting, I don't think the gap was especially noticeable in anything but macro photos.







The adhesive tabs that came with these were quite low-profile; combined with how thin (but not too bendy) the nails themselves were, this meant they were quite flat against my nail. (Also, look at this color shift below—these are the same nails, in the same light, just at an angle that makes them mostly blue.)



These very nearly were the shortest-lived NOTD ever when at my next stop, I broke a bottle of nail polish at at Sally Beauty and got bright pink all over my fingers and nails (it was the OPI anniversary creme, for the record).



Since I happened to be traveling with a full complement of removers and tools, I was able to clean up with minimal damage to the nails, though I did end up removing bits of the shiny finish in some spots along the tips. No matter, they were still pretty, and pretty distracting what with the shifting colors.







I'd intended to just wear these for the weekend but liked them so much I kept them on for most of the workweek, too. The adhesive on these tabs was different than other nails I've used before; when it failed, it didn't let go all at once leading to nails popping off, but rather let go gradually, so I'd have a loose nail, like a loose tooth. That was good, since it let me remove and replace the sticky bit before I actually lost the nail. (The pack came with three full sets of adhesive tabs, so there were plenty of extras.) In the five days I wore these, I had to re-attach three or four nails. The shiny surface of the nails held up pretty well; by day five I noticed some very thin scratches and some spots at the tips where the caoting seemed to be peeling away, but some of that could be due to exposure to the remover when I was cleaning up the polish spill days before.







I got a lot of comments and compliments while wearing these; they are quite eye catching. I loved the adhesive tabs that came with these. Even though I feel like I had to re-stick more nails than with other brands, I thought it was worth it for the lower profile look and the gradual way they came off. When it was time to remove them, they came off easily with no damage to my nails. Depending on how well the glue was holding, I either tugged the nail off by sliding it down toward the tip of my finger or used a metal cuticle pusher tool to loosen and remove the nail. Any adhesive left after the fake nail was gone just rolled off my natural nail like rubber cement. Based on how well I liked these, I wore a different design shortly after I took these off, but I'll save those for another post. Apparently not everyone liked these as much as I did, as when I went back to Meijer to get more, they were already on clearance.