After I remove polish I always do a scrub with olive oil and salt. The scrub seems to remove any extra staining left over from the previous polish and conditions my hands and nails. I usually push back my cuticles while I'm doing the scrub, just with my fingers. I rinse the scrub with hot water and get all the salt off. Then I shake my hands to remove the excess water and with my hands still fairly wet I add a dab of hand cream (right now I'm using Curél Hand & Cuticle Therapy) and massage the oil, cream and water mixture into my hands, fingers and nail beds until the water has evaporated.
At that point my hands are pretty gooey, which I hate but I'll let the goo soak in for as long as I can stand it -- usually no longer than five minutes. Then I take a cloth or a towel and wipe off the excess oil and cream. I use a Graham Hands Down Ultra Cosmetic & Nail pad (these are GREAT, they are round cotten pads with a plastic backing that has a flip up tab for gripping, no polish remover touches your fingertips or other nails when using these) with polish remover (I use Beauty Secrets from Sally's) and wipe down my nail surfaces.
Seche Rebuild is my current favorite nail treatment and I use it every time I paint my nails. It's made my nails much stronger, especially my weak and bendy ring and pinky nails. It's also cured the perpetual case of peelies on my right thumb nail that I've had ever since I shut my thumb in a car door in high school and broke the nail all the way through at the base. It was never normal after that, it grew back with an irregular half moon and the left side would split into layers. I had to continually buff the top layer on that side to smooth the surface and keep the peeling layer from catching on things. Ugh. But now, that nail has grown in solidly with no peeling. Miraculous.
Sech Rebuild is thin but not too runny. It's easy to use, quick to dry. It's milky and translucent in the bottle but dries clear with a satiny shine.
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| Seche Rebuild -- yes, that's a naked nail there |
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| Seche Rebuild... sorry about the dark photo |
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| Seche Rebuild... translucent but dries clear |
Next I apply basecoat. I'm currently using Butter London Nail Foundation and loving it. It comes in a larger bottle than their polishes, .6oz or 17.5ml of Nail Foundation as opposed to .4oz or 11ml for polishes. The wand is much much longer, but I find I don't have trouble using it. I rather like it, actually. Nail Foundation is a milky semi-translucent peachy tan color. It is thicker than the Seche Rebuild and takes longer to dry. I've added thinner to it a couple of times to keep it from getting to thick. It's a big bottle so I imagine I'll keep doing that periodically.
Nail Foundation is as good a ridge filler as any I've tried, and I've tried a few. As you know, I have intense well-defined ridges on my thumb, ring finger and pinky nails especially. Nail Foundation doesn't make my nail beds completely smooth but it definitely lessens the depth of my furrows. That alone would be enough for me to love this basecoat but it has another quality that I love even more. It lays down a beautiful track that polish will follow. When I'm careful with my Nail Foundation application, I find polish application to be much easier and much much tidier. It's really improved my polish application.
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| Butter London Nail Foundation, on the nail and in the bottle |
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| Butter London Nail Foundation, wet... goes on semi-translucent and stays that way, drying to a semi-matte finish... |
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| natural nails with a dry coat of Butter London Nail Foundation |
Now on to Orly Fowl Play. Fowl Play is a very deep vampy purple jelly with silver microglitters, bright blue small hex glitters and opalescent flakies that flash orange, red, yellow, blue and green depending on the angle of light. It was already famous almost before it was released two years ago because of the unusual combination of components. It is a fascinating polish but very dark for me, personally. The silver and blue glitters sparkle in the sun and the flakies will catch almost any light. It's one of those polishes where the more closely you examine it, the more you'll appreciate everything that's going on.
Application was ok. My technique, such as it is, with jellies is to apply a really thin first coat, get all scared because they're so sheer and apply a really thick second coat. This actually worked pretty well with Fowl Play but I guess I just wasn't feeling very secure because my hands were really shaky and Fowly Play was kind of thin and wanting to run where it shouldn't so I had some clean up to do after. Wouldn't you know that the very day I go on and on about Nail Foundation and how it lays down a track for your polish that I'd be doing a manicure with a polish that doesn't give a fig about that track and goes wherever poor technique and gravity will take it. Sheesh.
Photos show two coats of Fowl Play over my treatment/basecoat duo plus a topcoat of Seche Vite. Advance warning: I'm not very happy with these photos. In my opinion, they aren't accurate portrayals of what Fowl Play is like. I've seen much better photos of this polish than these. I guess I'm just not very good at capturing such a dark polish, even one as full of twinkly stuff as this one is.
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play, exciting macro shot in the bottle |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
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| Orly Fowl Play |
I can see why some folks really love Fowl Play but for me, it really doesn't work very well. The base is just too dark for me to enjoy everything that's going on in this polish. Perhaps I'm missing the special gene that allows one to appreciate the dark allure of vampiness. My loss!
At least now I know not to try to pull off any true gothic beauties myself, I'll just admire them from afar.
love,
Aunt Liz
Great post!
ReplyDeleteOh thank you, darling Schneet!
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