Mani Monday After An Accidental Vacay…

So I accidentally took a vacation from this blog. Whoops.

The past week my allergies have been truly horrendous… it’s been migraine city. Add that to some crazy work stuff this past week, and I have basically been avoiding screens and computers like the plague.  I never thought it’d last a whole week, and so never announced anything here. So that’s my bad.

But for my triumphant post migraine week return, I have the first Mani Monday in a while, and it marks a kind of special milestone for me. Not only are my nails long enough and healthy enough to paint again (finally! No more cello gigs for a while), but this mani has the distinction of being the very first manicure I’ve managed to wear chip-free for an ENTIRE week! I painted them last Sunday, and actually am still sporting them today – although I got my first chip this morning so they’ll be off by tonight.

I can honestly say I never thought I’d see the day.

But anyway, the polish: the base is Julep Evelyn (which I got in a maven box recently) and the glitter for the gradient is China Glaze Pizzazz (from the 2012 Holiday collection). I was going to use my OPI Rainbow Connection (Holiday 2011 Muppets Collection), but I decided the smaller glitter in Pizzazz would make for an easier job, and I think I was right. Evelyn is just a hair darker than in the picture, but without losing that very pinky-purple tint.

Both polishes applied beautifully, although Evelyn took an absurdly long time to dry, even though I used very very thin coats – but it was also very hot and humid that day, so it may be less a formula issue, and more a quirk of the weather conditions. Pizzazz was a very dense glitter, which made doing a gradient a little more difficult, but I figured out if I pushed it down the nail from the tip instead of painting thin coats like I normally would, it worked beautifully in terms of glitter distribution. It did leave some odd textures in the clear part of the polish, but a coat of my trusty Sally Hansen Insta-Dri topcoat evened that right out.

Overall, I love both polishes (both were untried for me), though the dry time was a bit irritating. I ended up with some thin patches (evident in the closeup) because I got frustrated and wasn’t willing to wait another hour for another coat to dry. But I love the color and the finish, so I’ll have to use Evelyn again on a less rainforesty weather day to see if that makes a difference.