I didn’t forget my weekly mani, but when I got home from my mother’s last weekend, I had some pretty disappointing news waiting for me, and then I had a polish disaster that resulted in shattered bottles and stains all over my closet carpet, and then it got boiling hot out, so I haven’t been able to get myself together enough to post. I’m sorry!
I love floral nail art, so I found it pretty difficult to narrow down what I wanted to do, but I finally ended up with this simple, pretty manicure that’s perfect for spring.
Ah, yellow. I love yellow, but it very definitely does not love me back. My ancestry is first-generation Portuguese (which in a perfect world would give me lovely olive-toned skin), and I-don’t-know-when-they-came-here Russian Ashkenazi, so the combination leaves me with cool-toned light skin that burns easily but then tans well. Or it would, if the weather would cooperate, but it’s been raining for four days. But what it really means is that while I love buttery pastel yellows and covet them in nail polish, they look pretty terrible on me. Sadface forever.
The Great Gatsby-inspired boxes for May finally convinced me to sign up for Julep, a mail-order monthly subscription box of nail and skin care. If you’re interested after viewing the post — and hey, why wouldn’t you be? — I’d appreciate if you clicked the blue box here on my sidebar to sign up through my referral, as it grants me reward points.
Julep costs about $20 a box. You take a beauty quiz to get a profile, from which Julep recommends a curated box each month, but you can chose a box from any profile or opt out of a month. You pay when you choose your box, and if you do nothing, you get charged and sent the box according to your profile. Boxes are shipped at the end of each month. Becoming a member, or maven, gives you an automatic 20% discount on individual products in the shop and gift sets, but not curated boxes. Julep has more than nail polish and skin creams; with the Gatsby sets they’ve put out lipsticks and lip scrub, and they had members take a new beauty bio quiz that implies they’re broadening into other makeup and skin care products.
The May Julep box. The tissue is sparkly and has a pretty floral design.
“That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” -Daisy Buchanan
So I have to start by noting two things. First, I’m editing this post while sitting in the gorgeous spring sunshine on my patio, so I can’t properly see the colors; I hope I didn’t overcompensate for my camera’s tendency to redden my skin. Second, I suck at freehanding straight lines. I need to invest in some striping tape.
Click here to see more Cinco de Mayo nails (and overripe clementines)
Now that I’m into manicures, I polish my nails two or three times a week, mostly to avoid grading tests. Usually I just do a simple mani of a single color, but a couple of days ago I wanted to do something more exciting.
I intended to draw cherry blossoms again, but I’m really bad at them.
I used Zoya Angelina, a rich, cool-toned brown, China Glaze Keep Calm Paint On, a pistachio green with a subtle shimmer, and CG Pink-e Promise, a petal pink that looks much brighter in person than in the picture. I made the dots with a dotting tool.
I love this mani so much. The only reason I took it off was because all the Zoyas I purchased in the 50% off sale arrived and I couldn’t hold out. But I really love how this design came out; it reminds me of the oxford shoes I wore in grade school — not that I enjoyed grade school or those shoes, but I like the pattern on my nails!
I’m going to post this a day early, because I’m procrastinating my work. So, I didn’t exactly skip week 04: gradient. I took pictures before I went to visit my mother, but I failed to post on Sunday, and then, you know, I got distracted by events. And now that I’m back in MA, I realize I left my memory card at my mother’s. So. I’ll get back to that week another time; I did an ugly manicure anyway.
This took me all morning and I’m not happy. I don’t even know.
I originally decided to do cherry blossoms for Spring. I started with butter London’s Hen Party, a delicate sheer cherry blossom pink shimmer, but I hate having my nail tips visible because I get so much stuff under my nails and it drives me nuts to see it. So I tried again with a base of Essie’s Where’s My Chauffeur? – a bright-hued light blue. Too bright. Then China Glaze’s Keep Calm and Paint On, but then it looked like an Arizona iced tea can. So I finally went with OPI’s My Vampire is Buff, with branches in acrylic paint and petals in SquareHue’s Wartime Romance and High School Crush (from February’s Vintage Love collection).
Spring is in the air, except for here in the Northeast where it’s, like, 40 degrees and I’m wearing a winter sweater. But nail collections are in full bloom, including the April SquareHue: the Bloom Collection.
Recap: SquareHue is a subscription service. For a monthly fee, they send you three full-size polishes, formulated and chosen by SquareHue. You don’t get a choice in color and you don’t know the colors in advance, although each month they put a promo picture and the name of the collection on the website, so you can make an educated guess. You can’t buy the previous polishes after the month is over, although maybe that will change in the future. It costs about the same as a Julep box, and you get far more polish by volume (3 x 0.5mL versus 3 x 0.28mL), but there are no cute add-ons or extras. You can suspend or pause the account, if you can’t foot it that month or the promo pic doesn’t thrill you (I’m on the fence about doing that for May, because I don’t know with that promo pic), and part of the proceeds go to charities: the current focus is preventing human trafficking and both helping victims and prosecuting criminals of it. SquareHue formulas are 3-free, so you can feel good about that, too (although I use Seche Vite as a top coat, so I’ll be birthing three-headed babies, I suppose).
This month’s box contained, as expected, spring colors of yellow, green, and purple, but I was pleasantly surprised when I went through my collection and found no actual duplicates. Each month’s polish names are themed; this one seems to be flower child, which makes sense.
formul8edphrase 