NOTD: Nailkale & more

I've been distracted by other things and haven't posted here much for a couple of weeks. But I'd better catch up on recent manicures or I'll forget completely, and that's the whole reason for this blog's existence, really. I fill in with other stuff, but remembering what I've worn is really the main purpose here, to me.

So when last heard from on the manicure front, I was wearing the remnants of my Valentine's manicure, as detailed here. I did eventually get that off with Dip-It, but what I didn't say there was that it wasn't until several days later, because I put something else on top of it instead, first. I believe I was thinking about jellies - so that the lace stuff would show through, see - but what I ended up with was Excuse Me I Blurpled, several coats of it, which did not let the lace effect show at all. But it did look pretty, so hey. Then a couple of days later when that chipped, that was when I got out the Dip-It.

Here's the Blurpled:

I actually am wearing this again now, over OPI Give Me Space (because I should have known better than to buy a holo, because holos just are not really my thing), and it doesn't look as good over dark blue as it did alone. (It's kind of like when I kept buying pastels because, y'know, pastels are pretty - despite the fact that they just don't look good on me. I keep buying the occasional holo because they look pretty in the bottle, or in somebody's pictures, and then I am always disappointed when I get them. I'm hard-headed, I guess, and it just takes me several wasted purchases to get certain things to sink in.)

(Added: I said I didn't like Excuse Me I Blurpled as much over dark blue, but actually in some lights it looks really gorgeous. I should also know by now never to judge anything only from how it looks in my living room.)

I have been doing a bunch of swatching to nail wheels which I mostly haven't posted yet, and one thing I was looking at were the sort of transitional grayed-out purples.

So this is more or less in order from most-gray to most-purple. The OPI mini is Tickle My France-y, and then we have NailKale Windsor Mews and Zoya Odette. (Interestingly, these seem to be an exception to the pastel thing I mentioned above - they do look pretty good on me despite being pale.) I got the NailKale set for Christmas and hadn't worn it so I did a whole mani with Windsor Mews. Later I added SOPI It's Bouquet With Me, and mattified it. I really liked that. I am all into the matte lately.

It's Bouquet With Me was a "Jewelry Top Coat" - SOPI had a whole line of these - and it's a holo glitter. It's sort of purpleish-pink, which is why I thought of it, I guess. Without the matte top-coat it's too sparkly for me, usually, but matted down it's just fine. (I think I was using Matte Me Crazy this week.)

(On the strength of a couple of tries with NailKale, I like it. The base-coat, especially, does seem to do something beneficial for your nails, and it lasts well.)

After that, I also matted-down Dollish These Are Not The Droids You're Looking For:

(I enlarged this so you can see the gold in this a bit. It did show up more in real life.) I'm not sure if Wet Cement was really the right undercoat for this, but it's not terrible, at least. TANtDYLF is mixed glitters with silver, gold, and blue (C-3PO and R2-D2's colors together, I assume), so I didn't know what to pick. Anyway, I tried it before without the matte and I kind of hated it, so I did like it much better this way. I'll have another try with finding the right undies for it, though!