Winter manis

I don't have anything specific that I save to wear in January, but my January manis tend to fall into a couple of categories. If I'm feeling down I tend to wear glitters. (So far this year my mood has not taken a downturn, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed there.) I also tend to wear neutrals a lot. I'm not big on true nudes, so this tends to mean grays or grayed-out versions of other colors. Towards the end of the month I tend to shift towards a Valentine's Day theme - pinks and reds and the occasional purple. I've been pulling things to wear but I'm not quite ready for that yet. Soon, I think. (I was eyeing Purple Medallion, in particular, from yesterday's post. That might be the next thing I wear.)

However, today it's blue-gray. I was thinking about "throwback Thursday" and so I was digging around for something that was an old favorite, and I came up with Zoya Feifei - one of their glass-fleck-type polishes. This is three coats and it's not 100% opaque at that point, but close enough to suit me. (I just looked and Feifei is still available, which surprised me - I had some idea they had discontinued these.) (For the record: that's not an affiliate link.)

(This was taken in my car in the rain earlier - I was parked across the street from work and I was trying to decide whether to brave the rain or sit and wait for a few minutes. I finally told myself not to be a wimp, but meanwhile I got the picture! The lighting is surprisingly okay, considering the weather.)

Working backwards in time:
This is S-OPI I Only Shop Vintage, over a base of Rococo Stone Cold Karma, which is just a darkish nude. You can see the nude in this picture maybe more than in real life; I Only Shop Vintage is more like an "old gold" shimmer. I really like this, even though I don't feel like it should be especially flattering to my skin tone. Somehow it always seems to overcome this!

Before that I was wearing my recent L'Oreal purchase, The Reign of Studs, which is a texture... and also my brain really, really wants to read that name as a joke I'm not getting, because otherwise it's just very strange. But if I can get past the name issue, it's very pretty. I mattified the hell out of it, I must note - 3 coats of NYC Matte Topcoat, because I didn't feel like going as shiny as it would have been otherwise.

And that was over the previous manicure, which I also really liked but which I failed to get a decent picture of - that one was Square Hue First Flight, one of their new January releases. It's a pale gray that's sort of opalescent, very nice.

One more:

I was looking at my file of NotD pictures from 2014, and the last one I added, back in December was one I don't think ever made it over here. It's not anything special but just for completeness' sake: this is NYC Blue Majesty over Triple Shine Slick Black, in a sort of vague stab at a French mani effect. (I think I just wanted to try Blue Majesty out, was what that was about!)