Interview nails dethroned!

So Rimmel London is a drugstore makeup brand, one that I think is relatively newly spreading into the US?  So that's a thing.  Um sorry but I can't do much of an intro because I am too excited to show you Rimmel London Caramel Cupcake:

It's nail polish!  Promise!!  Dinged my index before it was dry.
jaundice = indoor lighting.  Matte top coat.

When it's shown all close-up like this, you can at least tell my nails are painted, but in most light you really cannot.  I topped it with a matte top coat to minimize shine, and y'all, this stuff is me-colored.  Normally one doesn't need a nail polish that looks exactly like one's self, but at the moment I do, and I found it!!  It is this.  It matches me less or more depending on lighting, but I will swear you would never notice it.  (I showed a friend, and she grabbed my hand and stared at it super up close before giving me an "if you say so" shrug.)

In nail-polish-junkie-landia, this look (perfectly matching nail polish) is referred to as "mannequin hands", for those following along at home.  I'm almost tempted to paint some half-moons (the white round bit at the base of your nail) just to see what it would look like.

I am really disproportionately happy about this!

PWI: OPI Nomad's Dream (interview nails selection!)

Since I made such a fuss, I'll cop that I wondered all along if this would happen: I ended up using one of my possibly 5 oldest polishes for interviewing. This is pretty close to perfectly balanced between pink and gold, making it a good match for my super-noncommittal skin tone.*

OPI Nomad's Dream:

I don't have a conversational aside for this picture, possibly
because I am in New Jersey, slowly being drained of life

A little shiny, but on my short nails, basically unnoticeable, as desired.  It's also pretty sheer; this is three coats.  Two is even more unnoticeable.

Nomad's Dream was a special edition MANY years ago, but has been re-released in the last few years.  Since OPIs have been reformulated in the last ten years or so, it may be quite different – it looks different in the bottle.  I don't care enough to pick up a new bottle and find out, and the internet's fascination with nail polish post-dates the original.  Humankind may never know.


* Most makeup babbling starts with: "determine whether your skin's undertones are pink (cool), or yellow (warm)". This does not work for me, independent of being arbitrary and a bit odd.  OTOH, I pin down one end of the fair—dark spectrum pretty thoroughly.

PWI: Wet n Wild Champagne Toast 2

Real quick, here's Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast:

Indirect actual sunlight [!]

Much more reasonable photo in daylight.

It's gold, but it really reads more nude on me. A little pale, a little shiny, but definitely very interview-able.

Okay! Work!

The Stash, plus, PWI: Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast 1

Polish All the Nails just posted these amazing shots of her entire collection lined up. O.O If my casual x × y count is even close, this is roughly a thousand bottles, which makes me question my handwavey "about a thousand" bottles in my collection, like, a lot. I doubt I could cover a 7-foot table... or could I? People are notoriously terrible at estimating volume, coverage, etc... but I still think I only have a fraction of these.

Well, PWI should make it a lot clearer. (Yay, "science"!)

I was going to do a PWI on Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast, as another possible interview polish, but I can't help feeling like we have to wait for daylight swatches. I think it's a product of my nighttime lighting and/or camera, but this very pretty polish makes me look like a boiled lobster.

Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast at night:

Left: more cooking, right: marginally less cooking. To my eye this looks like a
lovely, suitable pale gold, but to the camera... not so good. Daylight shots tomorrow!

I can say... this is a lovely, but streaky, pale gold. It's pretty sheer; this is 3-4 (fairly fast) coats. I don't mind streaks, to be honest. In my opinion, without a macro lens or a nail obsession, nobody notices or cares.

But I'm looking forward to a daylight post. Current feeling is that this is pretty, but subtle-verging-on-unnoticeable... which is to say, an excellent interview polish.

More tomorrow!

Interview polish, maybe?

Since my nails are currently 1/2 ugly yellow (ssiiiiggghh), my need for a nude (ish) polish has stepped up. Like, I have to make something work before the first job interview. I wasn't planning to wear nail polish to a job interview, but I wasn't planning on dying my nails nicotine-yellow, either. Oops...

It's not like this realization made me buy nail polish; it just made me buy comparatively boring nail polish. (Let's face it, I was gonna buy nail polish.) This isn't exactly a Project Wear-It, either, since I'm explicitly looking for something I plan to wear several times, soon...

So, the possibly-interview-ready OPI Dulce de Leche:

In indoor lighting it's basically perfect...

...but in sunlight it's pretty pink! You can see the slight gold shimmer.

It's certainly a very pretty color! I'm just not sure if I'm feeling it for interviews. I do think it's flattering, in an incredibly understated way. Not a bad thing to own, although I rarely want "understated" nails. I mean, if nobody is going to notice it, I would just go without nail polish. ...usually.

Amusingly, I had to find the color name by slowly navigating OPI's all-flash website, rather than walking eight feet and picking up the bottle.  Why?

you knew that was gonna be why

Project Wear-It: Sinful Colors Satin

Here's something I hadn't expected to come from Project Wear-It: definite fails!

I've been looking for The Perfect Nude for a while; I've also had Sinful Colors Satin for a while, but every time I've gone to use it for something, I've ended up aborting its involvement for some reason. Well, when it's the last time I'm going to wear something for a really long time, I'm going to try hard to make it work!  And so I learn: sometimes I can't.

It's very sheer. It's really, really not self-leveling. This is five coats. It's... look, better bloggers than I have had great success. In/on my inexpert hands, however, it was a lumpy, uncooperative catastrophe. I tried putting it over white; then it was a lumpy, uncooperative, white-ish catastrophe. Plus – insult to injury – it's too yellow for my skin.

So for the sake of completeness, here's the first Hall of Shame entry: Sinful Colors Satin.

I really tried, though?

The Hall of Shame here probably refers to me, rather than the polish, dunno. Nonetheless. I won't cry about not wearing this one for a while, because I'm never wearing it again. Want it? I'll mail it to you postage-paid, but it can't stay here.