An April Wedding: What I Wore - Nails

My first wedding of the 2012 season got things off to a fantastic start! Both the ceremony and the reception were perfect and classic. The bridesmaids all looked amazing donned in full length ivory a-line gowns and carrying bouquets of red roses while the bride looked beautiful in a strapless, ruched, mermaid style dress with a unique scalloped neckline and long cathedral veil. The whole crew was gorgeous! The reception was at a local country club and the venue was perfect for the warm and sunny spring day. I think that everyone had a great time and that the event was truly a success! 

Now, after a wonderful evening of friends, dancing, photos, flowers and champagne, I am excited to share with you the details of what I wore on the joyous day! First up, the nails. I wanted something fun that would go with my outfit and live up to the excitement of the day so I went with a combination of glitter - gold, to go with my accessories - and a deep magenta that almost perfectly coordinated with my dress.

The glitter base is actually a polish of my own concoction. I have yet to find a "store-bought" gold glitter that I have fallen in love with. They always end up being too thin, or the gold is not bright enough, or the glitter doesn't sparkle enough. Whatever the reason, every gold glitter I have ever purchased has been benched, so I took a stab at making my own. I simply found a beautiful, small grain, gold craft glitter and added it to a clear polish - in this case, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Clearly Quick. You can add as much or as little glitter as you like, depending on how dense you want the glitter to be. The polish tends to separate, but with a quick shake before use it quickly recombines and becomes my perfect gold glitter polish!

The magenta polish I used on top is Sinful Colors - Dream On. The polish is a really gorgeous deep magenta, that looks much brighter in the sunshine and dries matte so make sure you have a top-coat on hand! I could not stop looking at my fingers when I was wearing this combination and they looked perfect wrapped around a tall glass of bubbly champagne. I also got a ton of compliments, my friends all seemed to love it!

To the blushing bride and handsome groom, thank you so much for sharing your celebration with us and I wish you a lifetime of love and happiness! As for the rest of you, stay tuned for more on what I wore to this April wedding!

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!