Mani of the Day and a Giraffe

As promised, here is the first manicure from the polishes I picked up at Peninsula Beauty the other day. This one is Orly Rage over Essie Flawless. My diagonals are not perfect here as I just free-handed my use of Rage. If you wanted a more perfect line, you could use tape, scotch or nail tape, but when you use tape you have to make sure your first color is completely dry (and I mean let-dry-overnight level dryness) and I wasn't feeling very patient at the time. I am not a huge fan of flawless, it is a pretty pink, but doesn't really differentiate itself from the dozens of other pinks in my collection... but I am loving Rage. It is a champagne foil with a bit of a pink tint that really compliments my skintone and as you can see, it is really very shiny!

I also wanted to share this little guy with you that I picked up at Forever 21 today. Isn't he cute?!  You can pick up in gold or silver here. I am also very excited about the bright purple jeans that he is resting on in this pic! I have been lusting after some great colored jeans and I snatched these, along with a pair of turquoise ones, at F21 as well! 

Now only to find the perfect pair of red jeans before football season....

Hunger Games Harvest Moon Mani

I have been a little MIA lately, it has been a very busy week which I will hash out for you in my next post. In the meantime, I just wanted to share this shiny copper-gold mani for the China Glaze Hunger Games collection. First, let me just say that I am a HUGE fan of the Hunger Games series. I am a really avid reader, and truthfully just a big book worm, so I tore through all three books in the series in less than a week. Suzanne Collins story is exciting, intriguing and colorful, as well as being a surprisingly deep commentary on societal standards and human behavior. I would recommend the books to anyone and was very excited to hear about the release of the movie. However, I was disappointed in the movie. From what I have heard from my friends, those who have not read the books, LOVED the movie, and those who had, thought that the movie was just ok. It is always hard to translate a novel into a movie and I personally believe that it is very rarely done in a way that truly does justice to the written story. I had such high expectations for how spectacular this film could be and was just.. underwhelmed.

This is pretty much how I felt about China Glaze's homage to the Hunger Games with the Capital Colours collection as well. I only ended up picking up a single bottle - Harvest Moon (District 9 - Grain) a gold, copper foil.

It is really a gorgeous color with tons of sparkle. It is highly pigmented and goes on super smooth, you can almost get away with a single coat, although I still had a little nail line show through so I went with two coats followed by a high-shine top coat.

I really wanted to like this polish and had really high expectations (seeing any parallels here?) however, for some reason, I just couldn't bring myself to wear this outside of the house. In fact, this manicure only lasted about 2 hours before I gave up and repainted. It just looks kind of odd against my skin tone. It doesn't give me lobster hands per se, but I think it would look much better on someone who doesn't have as much red in their skin.

So while I am sure that others will love this polish, it is just not for me, le sigh. Back on the shelf it goes.

Happy Friday!