History

My friend Col asked me the other day why the sudden interest in nail polish, which made me laugh. The answer, of course, is that it's not sudden at all, it's just that he suddenly noticed - I'm guessing it's because I've been tweeting an awful lot of links to blog posts lately. Even though I persist in saying from time to time that this is "not a real nail blog" (mostly meaning that I don't swatch constantly and take well-lighted pictures of my swatching), I have gotten a bit more serious about posting semi-regularly and tweeting the links and such. I've had various blogs for 10 years or so now and I can say with fair confidence that I will never be super-regular about when I post. But I'm trying to get in something once a week or so, at least.

My husband has also noticed that my interest in nail polish has risen to the level of a hobby lately, but really it's been that way for a couple of years now. I guess maybe the blogging has made me more voluble about it. I've always painted my nails off and on since I was 12 or so - more or less since the time my mom decided I was old enough to wear makeup. Usually I'd go through periods of keeping them polished all the time, and then get bored with the maintenance and stop for a while, and then start again some time later. So it's always been sort of a cyclical interest of mine. But I've been keeping my nails polished more often than not for maybe the last decade, and the periods where I neglected them have mostly gotten shorter and shorter and have disappeared almost entirely for the last year or two. (I used to paint my toenails off and on, too, but never very regularly, and I've abandoned that entirely these days since I don't usually wear sandals or open-toed shoes and so nobody sees my toenails at all except family, when I kick my shoes off at home or at somebody's house where I'm comfortable enough to do that.)

I never had acrylic nails or have gotten a professional manicure at all, except for a couple of Christmases ago when my cousin (who's licensed as a cosmetologist, although she hasn't been in the business the last few years) gave me a gel manicure. That's partly because I didn't feel like I could afford regular manicures, and partly, I finally realized, because I don't actually like people messing with my nails very much. I've always had pretty healthy nails without much effort, and usually I think fooling around with them doesn't improve them, and often seems to actually do harm - for example, my cuticles are just fine, usually, when left alone. The more I mess with them, the more they seem to have problems. (I did like the gel manicure quite a lot, though. I might eventually buy a kit to do my own.)

Speaking of nail care, I watched Holly's video about her nail routine, which made me think a bit more than usual about mine. (For example, I think I might ought to try cuticle oil, at least.) As I said, I believe in letting well-enough alone, for the most part. If I wasn't just genetically lucky about my nails I would probably do more. I do use Nail Nutrition when I think of it or when they seem dry. I usually use another base coat on top of that - I always use some sort of base coat and almost always a top coat. I'm not consistent at all about brands, though; those vary according to what I have around. And I used Cutex or a similar store-brand polish remover until the last year or so, when I finally started using 100% acetone. And it doesn't seem to have caused my nails to dry out excessively, so I'm planning on sticking with that unless I start having problems.

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What I'm wearing now:

1. Nail Nutrition
2. Sinful Colors Base Coat
3. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Ivy League
4. Ivy League
5. Zoya Zuza
6. Revlon Colorstay Top Coat

As I've said before, Ivy League is too yellow to look good on me. So this is an attempt to get to some sort of spring-green that's more flattering on me. I think Ivy League and one coat of Zuza work pretty well together, really - some of the yellow-green peeks through, but the blue in Zuza tones it down. And Zuza on its own would have been more blue than I wanted.

I grabbed a sunlight picture in the car of my (currently very short) nails, so you can get an idea of the color:

 

I was being impatient and I messed the finish up on this a bit - you can see the bumps if you look close - so I don't know how long I'll stick with this. But I definitely like it. It's one to remember for future reference.