Valentine's mani & gifts

We keep Valentine's gifts very small at our house, and I think this was a nice choice. (Not that I really need another red polish, as I've discussed recently. But at least it's a good red.)

The card almost made me cry.

The polish is Revlon Red, and the little heart is a mirror compact. Revlon Red is a nice middle-of-the-road red, maybe the slightest bit blue-leaning.

I don't have a picture of my actual Valentine's manicure, which went in a couple of stages, anyway. I wanted to try out Nails Inc Alexa Lace, and I wanted it over something neutral, so I tried out Square Hue Desert Storm, which was (naturally) in the 1990s collection. As you might also guess, it's sand-colored. And I actually liked it - I am not a neutrals person, generally. But it's a cool tan, which is kind of hard to find, sometimes, and it looked pretty good on me. It's not light enough to be called "mani hands" on me, but it's pretty close.

So I put Alexa Lace on top of that - and I dunno, I just haven't quite got the hang of applying this one yet, maybe. Two coats didn't seem like quite enough, and three coats was maybe too much. Maybe I just need to play with it some more. But it didn't look bad, so I wore that for a day or so, and then I went the red jelly route again, and put Jolly Lolly over it. And then later I put Revlon Red on top of that just because I wanted to try it out. Interestingly, the time I thought it really looked most like lace was when I tried to take it off:

Man, it was on there like glue - or more like concrete, maybe. The red started to come off, as you can see, and Desert Storm melted right away from underneath, but the glitter wasn't going anywhere. I kind of liked it this way, actually. Which is lucky, as it happens. I did eventually get it off with the Dip-It and some cautious scraping once it was loosened.