NOTD Round Up

The last time I did a nails of the day post was back in April. Depsite all that time passing, catching up on my NOTD looks isn't going to be difficult, as I've worn something other than a treatment coat exactly three times since that last post. I've been swatching right along, yes, but when it comes to doing a full manicure, I've been slacking. I blame pandemic malaise. I'm not seeing any of my friends who expect me to have interesting nails so I haven't bothered. After a swatching session, I'll usually just slick on a treatment and call it good. Still, I did make at least a little effort a few times in the last several months.

I used a set of Incoco nail polish strips called Sweet Surprise from back when they sold seasonal designs at Walgreens. These have a pale pink base scattered with tiny silver glitter, square silver holo glitter, and multi-colored bar glitter. I added Sally Hansen Insta Gel UV topcoat to them and wore them for two weeks (they didn't look great at the end but like I said, not many people see me these days).







I mentioned back in April that I'd decided to lay off the fake nails for a while in light of all the handwashing. Well, I've now decided to go back to them. I feel like I can get my hands clean enough while wearing them, and since I so seldom go out of my safe zone, most days I don't have to wash my hands any more than I did pre-pandemic when I wore fakes quite a lot of the time. I kicked off this new regime with a set of Fing'rs Prints called Simply Chic. This artsy French design with silver tips adorned with swoops of black and white creme and silver glitter isn't my usual style but I figured there's no better time to experiment than during isolation. I did not take that experiment so far as to use the rhinestone charms in the set; maybe another time. After I got them all on, I noticed that the swoops on my index fingers were going in the opposite direction from my other nails ... I'd failed to notice that the sizes were in pairs, one in each orientation, and had switched the ones for my index fingers. Oh well. These lasted a week before the grow out at the base annoyed me. They stuck pretty darn well; I'd wear this brand more if they came in a longer length.





I followed that set of fakes with another, this time one from NailBliss MagicPress that I'd grabbed from the clearance section at Sally Beauty. Hot Stuff has medium pink plain nails with silver glitter accents (not my idea of "hot" but okay). I wore these for two weeks, sticking them back on with a thick treatment polish when they fell off. They looked pretty ratty by the end, with a wide gap at the base and worn edges on the tips, but that's pandemic times I guess.





The ski resort I call my home did open for summer season, with distancing and other precautions in place, so Mr. K and I have been riding the chairlift up and hiking the trails at the top a lot of days. That's helped my state of mind, for sure.



As I type this, I'm back to just clear treatment on my nails, though I have some sets of fakes nearby and am pondering which one to put on.

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.

So Many NOTD, So Little Polish

With all the travel I've been doing in recent months, once again I've turned to fake nails and nail polish strips to adorn my digits between swatching sessions. I certainly have and will travel with liquid polish, but sometimes it's nice to just toss a few boxes of nails and strips in my luggage and not worry about breakage or spills.

I've worn Sally Hansen Salon Effects in The Bold Rush before; the gold to plummy purple gradient is pretty, but not as pretty as the box, which has a strong scattered holo effect not evident on the strips themselves.





A set of NailBliss Magic Press fake nails in the Runaway Star design came next; I'd worn these before as well. The box has three finishes of nails: pale pink creme, white iridescent, and gold/iridescent glitter.



When I first put these on, I used only the pale pink and the glitter ones.



Four days later, I'd popped off and lost one of the pink nails and decided to go ahead and mix in the iridescent white.



I went super subtle with the next set of fakes, some Nailene So Natural ones I'd gotten ages ago when one of the drugstores had them on clearance.



By this point, my natural nails had grown out enough that I couldn't cover them with the fakes without leaving a bit more of a gap at the base than would be ideal. (Yes, I could have filed my nails but I hate to give up length if I don't have to, and these nails were so neutral I thought the gap wouldn't be too noticeable.) These had just a touch of shimmer to them that made them not entirely boring.



These lasted a long time, with only a couple needing re-attachment during the eight days I wore them. Here they are on that eighth day:



Lately instead of using nail glue or double-sided sticky tabs to replace fakes that I pop off (and I usually do pop one or two off within a couple days, as I have yet to break my habit of using my nails as tools, particularly the index and thumbs), I've been just putting on a thick coat of treatment polish and using that to put the fake nail back on. It's not as strong as nail glue, certainly, but it's kinder to my nails and easier to remove when it's time to change my manicure.

Recent NOTD: Fake Nails from Two Brands

I'm aiming to get a display post up on Thursday; I got distracted by huckleberry picking over the weekend and failed to spend enough time at my laptop to get all my display photos sorted out and cropped and described. But one has to pick while the picking is good, especially when one is going to miss another two weeks of the season due to a semi-unscheduled road trip (it's a long, not nail-related, story, so I'll spare you). Today, instead, I have the tale of some recent nails of the day, when I've once again turned to fake nails to protect my natural ones.

First in the order were some iridescent pre-glued nails from China Glaze; these were released with the Chic Physique collection. You may remember I was pleased with the silver chrome fakes from China Glaze that I shared back in January, so I was looking forward to wearing these. They're a different shape than the silver ones, with an oval tip, which is more my style.





Unlike the silver ones, which showed tipwear after about four days, these showed all over wear after only two days. That was disappointing. The glue also seemed less strong, though maybe it was just this tip shape is more prone to getting popped off.



Despite the coating wearing off so badly, I wore them one more day before removing them (which was easy, most just popped off easily, a couple I needed to drip remover along the side to loosen then) becase they coordinated so nicely with my shirt for the day.



After the China Glaze nails, I tried a new-to-me brand I'd picked up at a Sally Beauty store: Nailbliss Magic Press in the Runaway Star design. This pack had 30 nails in it; most were a pinky peach "creme", but some were accent nails, split evenly between white iridescent finish and gold/iridescent glitter. I used Essie TLC Gloss Fit (aka clear) as a base under the nails (not recommended on the Nailbliss box, but I don't like to put glue directly on my natural nails).



Like the China Glaze, these are pre-glued. Unlike the China Glaze, these have a plastic tab covering the glue, so it's easy to try them on for size. It's also easy to know which end is which, since the plastic extends at the base end of the nail.



These nails were on the short side, though long enough to cover my natural nails, except for my pinky; there wasn't a size that was narrow and long enough at the same time. They were thicker than the China Glaze, so I think they look a bit more "fake", but I'm past worrying about that sort of thing. (And hooray for that!) It was somewhat frustrating to have to put the accent nails where they fit rather than where I wanted them. I only used the glitter accents this time. The white iridescent are still in the box, waiting for I'm not sure what—maybe I'll collect all my unused fakes and do a franken-mani one day.



A couple days later, these nails were looking as good as when I put them on (I'd taken off my ring here because we'd gone hiking and my fingers were swelling). The ski resort runs one lift during the summer, and Mr. K and I got the summer add-on to our winter season passes so we can ride up and enjoy the view whenever we like—as long as that's between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.



Three days after that, they were still holding up quite nicely, with just a tiny bit of tipwear on the solid color nails, though that gap on my pinky was more gap-py due to nail growth. I did have a few of these pop off during the week, but it was simple to reattach with more Essie TLC ... that seemed to work almost as well as using nail glue and was way easier on my natural nails. The solid color nails here were more interesting than I'd expected ... depending on the lighting conditions, they looked peach or pink or even white at times.





My peelies seem to be doing better lately (they often do in summer since the air isn't quite so dry), and the fake nails protect against the other type of damage I get, namely inattentively whacking my fingers into things and smashing the nail tips (every room in our house has the light switch at a different height/distance from the door, and I still have learned to find them reliably in the dark). I know a lot of people are "yuck, fake nails, those look bad" but I ignore them. I like wearing fakes at times, and I'm gonna keep doing it until I don't like it anymore.