NOTD: Black Friday Is My Cardio

Polish 'M has had their Black Friday duo marked down, and Black Friday Is My Cardio is half of the duo. (The other is First In Line, which I'll show later on.) Honestly, Black Friday Is My Cardio is kind of an odd name for a blue glitter, but I love the polish and the name is funny, so I can't make myself care too much about that. This is a sort of a wintry blue with a lot going on - various complementary colors of glitter and shimmer (purple, aqua) and also some holo. It's lovely. I got not just compliments but exclamations (as in "Wow, that's gorgeous!") about this polish.

Olive Ave Flora collection

Right after New Year's, Walker (from Olive Ave Nails on YouTube) had a Kickstarter for her new polish brand, and you could pre-order either the entire first collection of 6 polishes, or 3 polishes of your choice. I'm never the completist so I did three, and the Kickstarter was funded in, like, 2 days, so there wasn't much suspense about that part - always a good sign.

I knew my polishes were supposed to be in the mail - considerably earlier than the date promised, I believe - and they came yesterday. The first collection was pastels, but I'm not quite as anti-pastel as I used to be, and they are lovely. (See the bottom of the entry for Walker's swatch video with all six colors.) When I was trying to decide what to get, I passed over the yellow and the coral (because I  usually think warm colors aren't flattering on me), and the blue (just because it was a cornflower-ish color that seemed similar to things I already had), and what I got was the purply-pink (Rhododendron), the minty green (Aster), and the pale-green shimmer (Calla Lily):

 

Added: I forgot to say that these polishes are now available online! here - Olive Ave Polish
 
My swatches are below, but first of all, it came in this nice (recycled and recyclable) envelope, with a hand-written note inside. (I believe if you ordered the full set of 6 you get a box.)

Here's Rhododendron:

These two cremes have really nice formulas. On both this and Aster, I did two coats. And I love this color. It's light enough to be spring-like but not super-pale - right up my alley.

Aster:

I was calling this a green, but really it's noticeably blue-green. And as I said, the formula seemed very similar to the one above. This is also two coats.

The third one, Calla Lily, is different, since it's a shimmer:

It's much more pale, but super-pretty. This is three coats. I haven't tried it on my nails yet, so I don't know yet whether I'll feel like that third coat is really necessary on the nail. But it has sort of a golden shimmer that's really unusual. (I should have swatched it over Aster, just to see what that looked like, but I didn't think about it last night when I was doing these!)


And here's Walker's swatch video:

Valentine's manis

Yeah, I know, I'm late with this, but oh well, pinks and fuchsias are always in fashion, right? I went into Valentines-Day mode on February 1st, more or less, so this is what I wore the first two weeks of February. First I wore Starry-Eyed For Dear Daniel, from the OPI Hello Kitty collection a couple of years ago (not the more recent one, from 2019):

 After that I wore Wind Beneath My Wings from Music City Beauty:

(This was one of the polishes from that Breast Cancer Awareness box last fall, so it's probably not available any more.)

More January manis

If you follow my Instagram you've seen these already - and sorry I'm so late, I know it's March, but I don't seem to be able to post consistently lately. (I started to put January and February in one post, but I felt like that got too long.)

I stumbled on this doorbuster at Cupcake Polish, and couldn't resist:

It's just called Blurple. I like. (It's my first Cupcake Polish, y'all.)

On Instagram, Jo of @polish_talk always does challenges, and one for 2020 is, pick a few polishes you want to use up. I picked a couple of Zoya cremes because I figured I could use them as bases since I never seem to wear cremes alone. So this is CG Where's The Party Canon At? (a My Little Pony polish) over Zoya Kieko.

This one was a KL Polish that I hadn't worn before, To The Stars:

And last, Zoya Dannii: