Today’s Post Has Been Brought To You By The Letter Teal.

Some of you may be saying right now, “But Aren, teal’s not a letter!”, and to that, I say, “Well, neither is toast and jam. Let’s move on.”

Today I’ve got three manis for you. I can’t recall exactly how long it’s been since I did two of them, but I’m currently wearing one of them, and I like it. Anyway, I do know the order I wore them in, so I’ll post them in that order.

First up, we have Nicole By OPI My Lifesaver with three coats of Kleancolor Puppy Love and a layer of Essie Matte About You on the accent nail.

My Lifesaver is one of my favorite polishes. I think, overall, teal in general is probably my favorite color for nail polish, and while I have a bunch of similar darker teals, My Lifesaver is the only pastel teal I own. I bought it forever ago, after my boyfriend and I agreed that it was the best color in the Nicole by OPI display at our local Jewel-Osco. At first, I was a little disappointed, because it dries darker than it looks in the bottle. In the bottle, it looks like a kind of soft  50’s teal. Once it dries, it reminds me more of a mix-me-with-pink-plastic-flamingos-wearing-sunglasses teal. (I just realized that that description may only make sense to myself, but just go with it.) But then I realized that I love it even when it's dry, so who cares if it's a little darker than I thought it would be? It's bright and fun and the first time my dad's girlfriend saw me wearing it, she immediately said, "Oh, Aren. That is so you.".

Annnywho, I was kind of just looking for an excuse to give Puppy Love, which is turquoise glitter in a clear (maybe verrrry slightly turquoise-tinted) base, a try, so I did an accent nail. And the combination didn’t thrill me. So I thought that maybe adding a matte topcoat would help, since I usually like the way mattified glitter polishes look, but no. That actually may have made it worse.

Artificial light, no flash. The three nails with just My Lifesaver on them make me so happy. Then the accent nail kills it for me.

Artificial light, flash. I love my nails this length.

 On their own, I think both colors are great. This particular mani didn’t do it for me, though. I hate it when that happens...

Next up is two coats of Sinful Colors Nail Junkie over two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Mint Sprint.

Now, I almost never go to Walgreens. My pharmacy is at CVS and I do my grocery shopping at Jewel-Osco, and those are pretty much the two stores I buy my polishes from (or I just order them online—so much easier). And I don’t even remember what I’d gone to Walgreens for. Iodine, I think? Anyway, as I was walking to the back of the store, I decided to take a detour through the cosmetics section to see what kind of pretties they had. And lo and behold, they had a giant Sinful Colors display! I haven’t seen Sinful Colors in yeaaars (I have three or four of them that I bought about six years ago), and immediately one polish caught my eye.

Nail Junkie is a teal jelly with gold/teal duochrome microglitter and multicolored iridescent glitter. And it’s called Nail Junkie. I wanted it. Badly. (Junkie has a sister--Hottie-- that looked like it had a deep periwinkle jelly base, and I wanted that one too, but not as fiercly). Unfortunately, funds were a bit tight, so I had to put them back and ended up leaving empty handed, since Walgreens was charging an arm and a leg for a tiny bottle of iodine.

I’ve never been one for willpower, though, so a few days later, I scraped together a few spare dollars, and sent my boyfriend back to Walgreens to get me my Nail Junkie.

For the first two days I owned it, I didn’t use it. I just stared at it in the bottle. It’s seriously gorgeous. I hate seeing my nail lines, though, and I’d seen another reviewer say that she needed something like six coats to build it up to almost opaque. And while her nails looked absofuckinglutely beautiful, I didn’t really want to have to do a basecoat, then six coats of polish, then a topcoat. I mean, come on…

So instead, I decided to just layer it over one of my many teal polishes. I realize this takes all the depth out of jellies, and that’s sad, but it kind of had to be done.

Natural light, shade (indoors). I totally forgot to do a bottle shot. Lame.

A closer view of the glitters. Ohhh, my God, my cuticals were so ragged. I'd just pushed them back and, as usual, forgot to moisturize.

The combination of Mint Sprint and Nail Junkie was pretty alright. I think next time, I’ll probably go with a more blue-based teal as a base color. Mint Sprint leans toward green, and I just didn’t feel like it was the ideal combination. Still pretty as heck, though!

And lastly, we have another mani with Mint Sprint as a base. My New Year’s mani (which I'll post in my next entry) was chipping like crazy by Wednesday, and since I had to go out of town that day to see my sister, I didn’t have time to take it off and redo my nails. So instead, I texted her to meet me at the train station with nail polish remover and cotton balls, and I threw my bottle of Mint Sprint in my purse so I could to a quick mani on the fly.

Once we met up, I took off my chippy polish, and threw on a coat of Mint Sprint. No basecoat, no topcoat. Just something to keep my hands from feeling naked. Then my sister presented me with a belated Christmas/Yule gift from her boyfriend ex-boyfriend... it’s complicated. He’d picked out (with my sister’s help) a bottle of L.A. Colors nail polish for me. D'awwwww! I don’t see a name on the bottom of the bottle—it’s just marked BCC 556—but man, oh, man, did he pick a good one (thanks again, Alex!).

L.A. Colors 556 (I’ll just assume that’s its name, though if I could rename it, I’d call it Gaia) is grass green and turquoise microglitter in a clear base. I. Fucking. Love it. I don’t have any other glitter polishes with this combination of colors, and it just makes me ridiculously happy to look at. And, just my luck, the colors look pretty great over Mint Sprint! There I was, thinking I’d have to go around with some half-assed mani for the day, and I ended up with a really cool teal and glitter mani. Sweet!

Natural light, shade (indoors). Mmmmmmm glittery goodness.

Natural light. Why do I not take more pictures in full sun? Possibly because I'm usually nocturnal. But damn they come out nice.

Natural light, shade (indoors). A close up, so you can see my precccccious

I’ll probably wear this mani for a few more days, just because I love this glitter so much. In the meantime, I’ll try to motivate myself to edit the pictures I have waiting in queue to be posted (I think there’s only two mani’s worth of pictures in my To Edit folder right now—I better get crackin’ on wearing more of my untrieds. Maybe work a few oldies but goodies in there, too.)

So, which one of these is your favorite? Did you do anything fun for New Year’s?