Purple Nubbins!

As I mentioned in my last post, Marisa and I decided to do a polish swap, and I now have a ton of new polish to try out! Some of them I'm trying to wait to show you until I have some free edge, since my nubbins don't do any polish justice, but I guarantee I'll wear them within the next 2 weeks and then re-swatch them when my nails grow out.  Last night I was in a purple mood, and I have had this Savvy polish sitting in my untrieds for months and months, and finally was inspired to try it out. I paired it with this awesome purple glitter from Love and Beauty that Marisa sent me, and the result is pretty cool! You can't tell in pics, but in person it looks almost like my nails have droplets of water on them! Very cool!

Anyway, I used Savvy Nail Lacquer in Gotcha Grape. This little beauty is a lovely medium purple with flashes of blue and some lovely subtle pink shimmer. This is the first time I have used a Savvy polish, and I really dig it. Application was perfection, very smooth with zero thickening, bubbling, or streaking. Here I used 2 thin coats for opacity, but one coat was actually very cool looking! Reminiscent of Sally Hansen's Virtual Violet. Dry time was also impressive; by the time I had finished my second coat, my left hand was almost completely dry. I'm definitely going to pick up some more Savvy colors next time I am at Sally's. Their selection is a bit limited, but there are some gems hidden among the usual colors. But enough babble! Pictures!

Here is Gotcha Grape all by herself in my battered light box:

NOTE: I apologize PROFUSELY for my insanely dry, angry cuticles and fingers. That's what happens when you realize that you didn't get all the damned nail glue off previously and spend a good hour soaking in acetone and scrubbing like a mad fiend to get that sh*t off! Yet another reason to NEVER WEAR FAKES AGAIN!! Thankfully my skin and cuticles is much happier after some intensive overnight moisturizing.

So let's pretend my skin isn't uber dry and angry about being scrubbed like mad and just look at the polish, isn't this a beautiful color? My camera actually managed to capture this color beautifully (although I have no idea wth is up with my pinky in that last pic....it isn't smudged...I think maybe I managed to get something on my lense..), which is a very rare occurence with purples.  I love, love, love the pink shimmer in this girl - I don't have any purples with this kind of pink shimmer, and since I love pink and purple together this is kind of a no brainer for me. 

I love this color all on her own, but I was dying to try out the Love and Beauty Dark Purple glitter polish that Marisa sent, so I layered that over Gotcha Grape. In person, it really does look like I have little water droplets on my nails! So neat! However, I think that Gotcha Grape is really too dark to show off how gorgeous L&B's Dark Purple is, so I'll be wearing it again with a much lighter base soon.

Dark Purple is my first Love and Beauty polish, and combines 2 of my favorite things: Purple, and Glitter! It's a very sexy deep purple glitter with larger hex glitter in a clear base. It applied like a dream, I had no problems getting the hex glitter to stay where I put it and there's enough of the hex glitter that I didn't have to keep dipping and digging around the bottle to pick some up. Top coat is an absolute must though, since for some reason this dries rather dull. I never go without top coat unless I'm using a matte (and even then I sandwich), so that isn't a big issue for me.  Again, please forgive my horrible dry skin and angry fingertips and cuticles.

Love and Beauty Dark Purple Glitter over Savvy Gotcha Grape, Lightbox:

This combination really doesn't show just how beautiful this glitter is. I think I may pair it with SH Virtual Violet later this week and hope for some good sunlight for pics. Also, a huge thanks to everyone that has been supportive of my poor little nubbins! It makes me feel much better about continuing to blog while I grow my nails out to their former glory. I really hope none of you ever have to suffer this strange ordeal!

In case you guys missed it, I kept breaking nails due to some overzealous buffing (at least that's what I think happened. I can't think of any other cause for how paper thin my nails became, and now that I have cut them back they're already looking much thicker.), and I finally had to just give up and cut them all back. I was also having some issues with my free edge curling toward each other at the corners, which was aggravating, confusing, and concerning. Nothing is wrong with me healthwise, but my doc did remind me that since I have lost a lot of weight (When my son was born in My of 2010, I weighed 168 lbs,  I was 143 when he was conceived and a size 8 or so, for a total of 25 lbs gained during pregnancy. Since his birth, I have dropped down to 124lbs and a size 3/4), and my hands have obviously changed since I've lost all the weight, a fact that hadn't crossed my mind for some reason! Still, that didn't really explain the strange curling free edge. Combine both those issues and you have an OCD nail blogger's nightmare. I told myself that since they will grow back, it's not a big deal, but whenever I see pics from even a couple months ago, I want to cry. I miss my nails! My hubs and a few friends have told me that they think my nubbins are cute, and that means a ton to me. And like I always say, it's about the polish, not the length/shape of my nails, right? Plus my MASH plates are very small, and with the nubbins I can actually use the full nail images without having to try and double stamp.

Ok, enough out of me! It's time to go and change my mani. I have this strange need to wear a creme polish tonight, so I pulled out one of my untried Essies and am going to rock that baby! I'm debating stamping them as well. Let's see if I can't make these little nubbins shine! ;)

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber