I Still Blame Blogger. (Also Known As: I Love Italics.)

You guys have no idea how stoked I am whenever you comment. I get ridiculously excited and feel like I'm the champion of the internet, because there are people out there that like my posts enough to take the time to drop me a line.

So, when I somehow accidentally deleted a comment from one of my favorite nail bloggers, Fingers from Fingers Polish Mania, on my last post, I legit felt super awful.

Soooo, to make it up to her, I decided to do a Fingers-inspired mani for today. No glitter, with stamping, and, because I know it's her favorite: BROWN.

For today's manicure, I used Kleancolor Dark Brown--a, well, dark brown--and Kleancolor Cappuccino--a medium brown. I also picked up a new bottle of topcoat, but Jewel was all out of my usual Sally Hansen Dries Instantly Top Coat, so I grabbed a bottle of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, to go with the Revlon Quick Dry Base Coat I've had to use as of late.

I don't usually wear brown polish. I've owned a few over the years, but much like my dislike of yellow polish because it reminds me of nail fungus and pee (real mature, I know), brown polishes have always kinda reminded me of, well, poop.

And Kleancolor Dark Brown and Kleancolor Cappuccino are both cremes, so I was sitting there, contemplating this manicure, thinking, "Great. There's not even any shimmer or anything to make it look like PRETTY poop.", but the idea for the manicure was already stuck in my brain, so I went for it.

The first coat of Dark Brown went on looking like a thin coat of chocolate syrup. Cappuccino went on looking like... Frappuccino (I don't drink cappuccino, so I don't know what it looks like, but I have been known to splurge on a Frappuccino every once in a great while, so...).

"Okay," I thought, "Chocolate and Frappuccino. I can work with chocolate and Frappuccino", and that made me feel a little less poo-y.

The second coat of Dark Brown darkened the color quite a bit, much closer to how it looks in the bottle. I still had a few thinnish spots, but I snapped a few pictures anyway.

Mmm, brown-y!
Artificial light, no flash.

With the flash on, the Dark Brown looks much closer to the color it looked at one coat. Just FYI.
Artificial light, flash.

I know how long Kleancolors take to dry, so I stopped at two coats at 10pm, because I knew I'd have to stay up for a few more hours just to let my nails dry enough that they wouldn't be destroyed when I went to bed. I ended up staying up until five o'clock in the morning, and they were still dentable, so I kind of dozed while trying to lay very still for two hours until I had to get up for work at seven.

Luckily (?), I was able to keep myself from falling into a deep enough sleep that I might accidentally move and ruin everything, so my nails were still in good shape when I got up. I was pretty tired after my morning emails, though, so I laid back down around ten. When I got back up at two, there were sheet marks mashed into my right pinky nail.

Twelve full hours after I'd applied just two coats (well, plus a layer of quick-dry base coat), and my nails had STILL dented. WTF, Kleancolor? I love your colors and glitters, but damn. Do something about your drying time. And your smell. Thanks.

I'd been planning on adding a third coat to cover those thin spots I mentioned earlier anyway, though, so I wasn't too concerned about the sheet marks.

After a third coat on each nail, I stamped my accent nail using Dark Brown and Bundle Monster plate BM21.

The stamp is a wee bit crooked, which tells me I'm out of practice and need to do more stamping! ; )
Natural light.

Artificial light, flash.

Artificial light, no flash.

Even though I'd never used this stamp before, I cleaned it with nail polish remover before stamping. I guess I must've still missed some silver polish that had gotten smeared on it from when I used one of the other stamps on the plate, though, so I ended up with a bit of silver in the circles near the tip of my nail. : P
 
Initially, I was super frustrated with my crooked stamping and the bit of silver that my stamper picked up. I wanted this manicure to be perfect, and it's just not. But the longer I wear it, the more I don't care. Because it turns out, I like brown polish. And it's not poopy at all. It actually looks really nice!

So, Fingers, I hope you like this manicure, imperfect as it is. Alllll part of my charm. ; )