Playing with polish: India + Ruby Pumps

I put Zoya India on in the middle of the night the other night, and I must've been half-asleep, because it was a mess. I cleaned it up and it ended up looking alright, but... this was the first time I'd worn India, and I have to say I didn't immediately fall in love. I don't really think the application issues had anything to do with it, either. It was okay, it just wasn't all that and a bag of chips, especially compared to the other two Ignite polishes I'd already tried (which was Teigen and Yuna, both of which I adored). So I wore that for a day or so - I didn't take a picture because the sun wasn't out - and then for some reason I decided to put a coat of Ruby Pumps on top of it. My exact reasons escape me now, but I think I just sort of randomly pulled it out as something that sorta-kinda matched India, And man, I love this combination:

I've been looking for a "blackened red" nail polish for a while now - or at least I've been in love with the idea of a blackened red polish, I can't really say I've done that much active looking - and this is kind of in that ballpark, really. The bright red of Ruby Pumps over the darker red of India seems to give that effect.

(If you blow that picture up you may notice that my cuticles look a bit dry - but for once I noticed this in real life before I noticed it on the picture, and pulled the tin of G&G cuticle balm out of my purse and used it. I usually forget I have that. I also notice that my cleanup was once again not exactly stellar - as usual, I was running out the door on the way to work, and this picture was actually taken in my parked car. But anyway, you can get the idea, which is the important part.)


I was talking a while back about what I was calling the "Lynnderella plan" in my head - basically it was a way of inducing myself to buy less - and I've been trying it out, and so far, so good. The original idea was, if I didn't buy anything else all month, I could buy one Lynnderella at the end of the month. But when I went and looked at Lynnderella's website I didn't really see anything that caught my fancy, especially, so I decided it could be any high-end polish, within reason - and then I decided that it would work better if I just called it a $5-a-week budget. However many weeks I can hold out without buying anything, it's that x5, right? It accumulates. If I want to buy a Louboutin (which I'm pretty sure I don't) I would have to not buy anything for 10 weeks, in theory. For a Chanel it would take about six weeks, because the budget has to cover shipping and tax, too. I started this several days into February, so almost three weeks have gone by - this is pretty amazing for me - and I saw a flakie from Painted Polish that did take my fancy - I think it's Flake Your Booty, it's navy, but their website is down right now so I can't check. And it was $12 plus $3 shipping, so three weeks' worth of budget, exactly, and I went ahead and ordered it. It hasn't quite been three weeks but I figure it will be by the time it gets here - as long as I don't start buying anything else in the meantime I decided that's within the rules.

We'll see if this keeps working in the long haul, but so far, it's been quite effective at cutting out the drug-store impulse purchases, at least. If this ends up being one indie polish every few weeks, that's fine, too. I was spending well over $5 a week before, on average, and I've got so many polishes now that it was just getting ridiculous.