NOTD Retrospective

While I always take photos of my nails whenever I change my polish, I don't always get around to posting them. Sometimes it's because I've previously worn and shared the color/design, but usually it's because I've gotten distracted by newer polishes I've swatched (which is the same reason Nail Wheel Wednesday has been on hiatus again; I think I'll bring it back next week because there will always be swatches and my backlog of wheels needs to get smaller). Today I decided I'd clean out some of the folders on my computer and let these nails of days past get thier moment in the spotlight.

The earliest NOTD I still had hanging around in my files was a manicure I did in early March. I can see why I didn't post this look before, as the only photos I have are in normal room light, since I was out of town and didn't have my lightbox setup (nor did I paint these when the sun was out; the timestamp on the files says 11:26 PM). I can't find any record of this mani in my swatching notebook, but I did snap the lineup I used: Revlon Post Trauma Nail Treatment (winter is a trauma where my nails are concerned), Salon Sciences Instant Artificials, Wet 'n' Wild Megalast Candid Affair (from The Style Award Goes To display released earlier this year but which I just saw still around the day before yesterday at my Rite Aid—good thing, too, since that meant I could replace one of the smashed polishes from my stash accident the other week), and Diamond Dry topcoat.



Candid Affair is a pastel lilac shimmer, very soft and subtle. I don't know how many coats of color I used due to the aforementioned notebook problem, but here's what it looked like:



This was the mani which I covered with the purple Nicole by OPI Rougles. My nails were so short then, especially the index and middle. I shouldn't be surprised, since that's pretty typical for me at the tail end of winter, when my peelies generally kick it into high gear. Here's a bare nail shot I took around that same time, showing damage on three of four fingers. Yuck.



A couple months later, my nails were still recovering from the ravages of winter and I turned to the Sally Hansen Salon Insta Gel Strips in Shell We Dance, the same sheer pale pink color I used the very first time I tried the gel strips back in fall of 2012. I got just as great wear out of them this time around.



Near the end of last month, I put on a different set of Salon Insta Gel Strips, a light copper on pearl fishnet design I scored for $2 at Five Below.



After eight days of wear, they still looked great, with the minor exception of the corner of my index finger nail, which knowing me I probably used to scrape off a price tag or something similarly dumb.



I'm happy to say that my peelies are almost in remission right now, with just a few small problem areas remaining. I wish I could tell you what I've done to accomplish that, but I really think it's more do to with the weather/humidity/environment than any particular nailcare routine. Sure, I try to keep my hands and cuticles moisturized, and always wear a treatment basecoat, even under strips or fake nails, but I flit from product to product pretty regularly. I have used Salon Sciences Starting Over After Artificials quite a bit, but also Orly Nail Defense and Barielle Nail Rebuilding Protein and Barielle Fortifying Nail Builder have gotten into the game in recent months. Maybe that's the secret, rotating treatments. Plus summer weather.

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A Confession, Some Nudity, and a Break

The last time I posted an actual nails of the day entry was July 4th. There's nothing unusual about that; it typically takes me at least a few days to get photos out of my camera and into an entry. But you may have noticed that it's been a quite while since I posted even a recent nails of the day entry. Since late September, I've been working off my backlog of swatches, as I had to put my nails in rehab due to an unfortunate incident: my first ripped nail in I don't know how long. Peelies are pretty much a constant battle for me, but I'd been having really good luck with not getting rips and tears. Until a few weeks back, when I felt a nail catch on my clothes and instead of the hangnail I expected to find when I looked at the snaggy hand, I saw a rip in one of my nails. When I took off my polish (well, most of it), this is what I found on my left middle finger:



I was tempted to try and patch over the rip with a silk wrap or teabag, but as I recall that gets tedious to keep up, and besides earlier that week I'd been reaching for something without looking and jammed my right hand into a wooden railing, with this result on the middle finger on my right hand (this is after I filed back the part that was completely destroyed):



With two nails really struggling and a few others showing signs of Mr. Peelies, I decided it was best to just cut them all down to shorties and do a treatment week. Given how stained my nails were, I was somewhat chagrined to think of going out in public with nothing but clear coat between them and the world, but I reminded myself that I don't work at a beauty supply store, I work with computer geeks, most of whom pay absolutely no attention to my nails whatsoever. Here's my left hand, pre-rehab; it gets the worst of the staining because it's where I try out all the colors:



And here's that hand, freshly trimmed and treated with OPI Nail Envy Sensitive & Peeling, which I decided to try instead of my usual Orly Nailtrition or Nail Defense since those aren't completely making the peelies go away. My nails look so strange to me here, even though I used to keep them at this length or even shorter all the time.



I spent the next week applying another coat of Nail Envy every other day, per package directions. At the end of that week, here's how they'd progressed. My index finger was actually worse, but that damage was no doubt already done before I started rehab and just lurking, waiting to show itself.



I followed that with another week of Nail Envy, adding a new coat a couple of times during the week. After that week, here's what my nails looked like naked. Not at all pretty, I must say, though I guess the staining is better since I cut much of it off and some of the rest peeled away. I know it takes weeks for nails to grow out and the damage I'm seeing here is just going to take time to get past, but it's still discouraging.



At this point, I could not stand one more day of having nothing but treatment on my nails, but that's a story for another entry, which I will write after I get back from one of my periodic mini-breaks. I'll be spending next week mostly offline, getting reconnected with people who don't live in my computer or work in my office and refreshing my brain. I'll be back on the 24th or 25th, most likely. See you then!

Recent NOTD: IsaDora Subway Green plus Nakedness

Perhaps you recall the amazingly durable OPI Mad as a Hatter mani I wore for over a week with no touchups. Rather than take it off after vacation, I topped it with IsaDora Graffiti Nails crack polish in Subway Green, which I'd gotten in a swap with amused Polish. I'd call the results a semi-fail, as the very glittery base showed through not just the cracks between the top coat but through the green color of the top coat as well, so the crackle effect was rather lost. I'll have to try it over a less distracting base color next time. I'll be curious to see if I can get the teal that shows in the bottle to show on the nail, as this time I just got green.





On the plus side, it was a very festive look, perfect for the early Halloween celebration at the company I work for, where plastic spider rings were part of the goodie bags we got.



When I finally took all those layers of polish off, here's what I found. So sad to see the peelies on my index and middle finger (I've already picked at the index finger in this pic; bad, I know).



My right hand was in better shape with the exception of my pinky finger; I'd evidently managed to bang that into something hard enought to split the top layers of the nail yet did not notice any effect on the polish.



Just after I took the pictures of my naked nails, I took off some length and buffed the peelies that remained. I was going to take off some length anyway, as they were getting to the point where they bothered me when typing, especially on my laptop which has a shallower keyboard than my desktop, but I had to take off more than I wanted because of how far the peelies went. At least they weren't on every finger, so that's some progress for me.