Nails

Summertime means being able to wear brighter nail colors like corals, hot pinks and even sparkly blues or purples without looking like crazy nail lady. Here are a few ideas to brighten up your fingers and toes.

• Essie Summer 2008 Nail Polish Collection: Help!
  “After washing off my neon-orange fingers and chewing three Tums (note to file: do not eat half a bag of cheese crunchies in one sitting), I pulled out my Essie Summer 2008 nail polish stash and painted each of the nails on my left hand (and the pointer finger on my right) different colors. This is what too many cheese crunchies can make a woman do.”
• China Glaze Text in Colour 2BHOT: Holographic Hotness
  “The 2BHOT colors are a bit flashier/more club kid than my usual pink, peach, and coral nail color choices, but I really like them. The funky way the colors seem to change in the light adds another dimension to these polishes that makes them a lot of fun.”
• Chanel Flamingo Nail Colour: My Sunday Morning Manicure
  “Part of Chanel’s summer 2008 collection, Flamingo is a soft, pale pink with flecks of shimmery silver. I swooned when I first saw it in the store a few weeks ago; I have a well-documented weakness for pink.”
• China Glaze Ink Nail Polish: Wow, That’s Bright
  “The set includes six bright and slightly obnoxious colors, a cute packet of nail decals, a wee bottle of black polish (great for drawing patterns on the other nail colors) and a bottle of orange-scented cuticle oil.”
• China Glaze OMG Text in Colour 2BKEWL Nail Polishes
  “I’m lucky enough to live close to my parents, so tomorrow I’m heading home to visit my mom for Mother’s Day. I thought it might be fun if she and I painted our nails a matching color. Here’s the twist: I would like it to be a slightly obnoxious color, so her yoga friends at the senior center can ask her about it (‘Girl, I saw those nails from across the room while I was mid-downward dog!’).”

Right now I’m wearing coral on my toes and sheer pink on my fingers. How about you? Do you have a current favorite nail color?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

According to a story in The New York Times, a new trend in nails has lazy women everywhere jumping for joy! Get this: chipped nail polish.

On the fingers of some fashion-forward women, streaked, chipped and basically tow-up nails are replacing well-manicured nails.

“Over the last few years — since the era of the skull print scarf, let’s say, or the (metaphorical) rise of the Olsen twins — having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness. Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it’s now part of a deliberate look.

And chipped polish is not sported solely by nail-biting school students and downtown punkers. It has been spotted uptown, in professional settings and gala parties, behind department store sales counters and even (gasp!) on beauty and fashion industry insiders.

Anyone can get caught between manicures. But now women no longer have to sit on their hands when they do.”

NYTimes.com (free registration required)

This works out great for me. Lazy women rejoice! Is it a sign of the times? Are we too busy to take care of our nails? Homemakers, businesswomen, fashionistas, students, beauty bloggers — we all lead busy lives. Where does painting your nails rank on your list of things to do?

I’m all for new trends and the evolution of style, but I think chipped nails look messy. Hell yeah, I’m certainly guilty of sporting chipped nails from time to time (BlackBerry/CrackBerry typing wreaks havoc on nail polish, girl!), but rarely on purpose.

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Have you seen China Glaze’s OMG Text in Colour nail polish collection yet? OMG, these colors are GR8, QT!

The full collection first landed back in February, and I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a while. China Glaze released the collection as two sets, 2BHOT and 2BKEWL, with six colors each. 2BHOT carried the warmer shades; 2BKEWL the cooler ones. To describe the colors, China Glaze used a term I hadn’t heard used to describe makeup before: holographic. And it’s not just marketing nonsense, either. The polishes contain the tiniest little flecks of multi-colored glitter, and they do seem to change color (silver to green to red, for example) depending on the angle you look at them from.

I finally got around to swatching and photographing the six 2BHOT colors yesterday. Unfortunately, since their release the colors have become pretty hard to find, but you can still purchase all of them individually from Amazon for $4.20 (shipping extra) each.
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When I got home from work this afternoon, my inner crazy possessed me to inhale half a bag of Trader Joe’s Reduced Fat Cheese Crunchies. After washing off my neon-orange fingers and chewing three Tums (note to file: do not eat half a bag of cheese crunchies in one sitting), I pulled out my Essie Summer 2008 nail polish stash and painted each of the nails on my left hand (and the pointer finger on my right) different colors. This is what too many cheese crunchies can make a woman do.

Essie Summer 2008 contains six shades ($8 each), and I lurve them all.

1. Guilty Pleasures — pink strawberry
2. My Place or Yours — pink rose
3. Escapades — shimmerless red coral
4. Risky Business — red with tangerine shimmer
5. Secret Stash — fuschia
6. Movers & Shakers — bold hot pink

Guilty Pleasures

My Place or Yours

Escapades

Risky Business

Secret Stash

Movers & Shakers

Which of these is your favorite? I can’t decide which one is mine. I need help!

The shade that gets the most votes will be the color I wear the rest of the week.

Aren’t you glad we’ve gotten Monday out of the way? I had a bad case of the Mondays this morning, but things started looking up in the afternoon.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

For more fun beauty bits, try your luck with my random post generator. Click for a totally random post.🙂