Two ways to destroy an unsatisfying manicure

You know those days when you've picked out and done a manicure with a polish you just didn't like very much? Of course you do. Like all of us nail nerds, you're just as restless as I am, and you know it. What do we do about it? Layering. Preferably to the absurd.

Two nights ago I ventured into my bottle of Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ, the OPI often referred to as very close to the coveted Vampire State Building, or "blood-like". Since such descriptions appeal to me, I went ahead and got it, as I was looking for a bundle of blood red creme vampies to compare for Halloween purposes. Needless to say, it has thus far been in my untrieds drawer, to finally be opened up and tried in January.

Sure, a nice vampy. But... Yeah. It looks like blood. In a bad way. As I was staring at it while in class yesterday, I was much more reminded of liver, fresh, newly cut liver, than something cool and predator-ish. Nah, didn't care for it. No.

Luckily, as you already know, I got a bunch of Nfu Ohs in the mail yesterday. No better way to perk a manicure up than adding some opalescent flakes! Hence, Nfu Oh number 59 ended up on top of Mrs. O'Leary.

Nice. Pretty. But still... Livery. I had been hoping that the more purplish tone of the 59 would even out the liveriness (!), but it didn't. So I thought, what the heck! Let's do the coolest thing that can be done to opalescent flakies; let's add a matte topcoat! I chose ManGlaze Matte-Astrophe.

Here is where I gotta confess. I have diluted mine with an inexact amount of nail polish thinner. I got my bottle pretty early on, before I had read any reviews, so I didn't know what to expect. And when I tried it... I still didn't know. It was a weird experience. And I wanted to find out if it was me or the polish. Turns out it had to be me, 'cause when the reviews started coming, I did not recognize how it was described.

My first experience was anything but pleasurable. It made me doubt my painting skills, pretty bad. The always lovely and hilarious Marc, ManGlaze's main man in Chicago, had sent the first few customers an email describing some of the uses for the polish. Since I'm an experimentation ho', I immediately tried applying it to wet polish, as it was supposed to cause cool crackle effects. And it sure did! Which was cool. But what was not cool, was that when I applied it to an overnight dried manicure, it still caused crackle effects... And obscene cuticle pulling, and shrinking. At that point my self-confidence was weak. It had to be something wrong with me!

When I was reading all the raves, I could not believe I had the same product in my bottle. But I had decided to give it another chance, at some point. That point was today. But just to be precautious, I added about 5 to 10 drops of thinner to it before use. I had a very vivid memory of a gluey substance.

Turns out it did the trick. No crackles! No shrinking! No cuticle drag! Look:

Pretty, huh? I'm so glad I got mine to work just as well as it seems to do for everyone else! This means I can ditch my Essie, which I don't like as much, because it... ehm... Causes shrinking and chipping. Plus, I'm a big fan of the ManGlaze products, because I find them to have much higher quality when it comes to wear. Most matte polishes chip within hours on me, but the ManGlazes stay put. And for your information, they do stay put on the nails of male construction workers too.

Sadly, I'm still bored with the color. I'll tell you another reason why. This is what it looks like outside my bedroom window today:


Grey! Gloomy. No color! The only areas in which I can compensate for that lack of bright influences, is on my nails and eyelids. So that is just what I'll do. I'll be back. (It's a threat!)

Swedish word of the day:
moln -noun cloud
Because they're all over the place.