Glitter Gradient with Julep Sugar Plum Duo – Ruth and Padma

Hi everyone! I’m back with some nail art! But first I have a short announcement: I’m going on vacation! For the winter holidays, I’m going to be visiting my darling boyfriend’s family in “Sin City” and, since I will be busy during that time, I will not be doing any nail art for a few weeks. So as not to neglect all of you readers, I’m going to write some posts in advance and schedule them to be published during my vacation. Hopefully about three or so posts will come out during that time. Also, any holiday-/event-themed nail art will be done in advance of the actual dates to accommodate some circumstances that have come up. I just thought I’d inform you of the upcoming scheduled posts, for the sake of honesty.

Anyways, I finally received the Sugar Plum duo from Julep’s holiday collection in the mail, and I couldn’t wait to use it! One of the polishes inside – Ruth (the glittery one!) – sold me on the duo. It was too good to pass up! I mean, come on, purple flake glitter in a jelly base? Of course! As for nail art, I decided to showcase Ruth and its companion Padma in this glitter gradient manicure. While this manicure isn’t one of my best works, I still like it a lot because it’s very wearable and pretty. And the glitter is mesmerizing!

Swatch – Zoya Channing

Hi everyone! I have a quick swatch today of Zoya Channing, which is this astoundingly glowy red-orange shimmer polish. Let’s all admire it, shall we?

Disney Queen of Hearts French Manicure

Hi everyone! I have some more nail art today, and it’s back to Disney nails for me! My latest manicure is this cute French manicure inspired by the temperamental Queen of Hearts from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. This design was prompted by yesterday’s celebration of my friend Kimi’s birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIMI!!! <3), at which my friends and I dressed up in “Disney chic” villains attire! Dressing in “Disney chic” (or anything “chic”, really) means that you assemble a bunch of normal, non-costume clothes in a way that emulates the way a particular Disney character looks or dresses. Over a month ago, my friends and I found this awesome compilation of Disney chic outfits based off of Disney villains, and we were pretty wowed. Dressing in Disney chic ended up being a part of Kimi’s birthday party, so Disney chic dress up finally happened! I swear I’m an adult, haha 😉

Out of the ten villain outfits they had on the website, I chose the one for the Queen of Hearts. This was partly because hers was one of my favorite outfits in the compilation, and partly because I happened to already have clothing that would work for the look. Of course, I had to think of a nail design to go with my outfit! I decided that this was one of the few occasions in my life when I would like my outfit do the talking rather than my nails, so I wanted something that wasn’t too garish. Quite a change of pace for me! After thinking about it, I decided to do a simple, clean French manicure with subtle hints at the Queen of Hearts. My final design consists of colorful double French tips on all nails, plus little card suit accents and a little golden crown on my thumb. It’s so adorable! This made me super excited to do the full dress up once I got my nails done 🙂

Reflection Post: Julep Maven Meetup and December 2014 Sneak Peek

Hi everyone! Today I have a reflection/blog writing post about the Julep Maven Meetup event I went to on Tuesday night! Recently, Julep has been hosting “Maven Meetup” events in different cities where Jane Park (the CEO) and other employees of Julep come to show off upcoming products, get feedback, chat about life, and discuss products in the pipeline. If you haven’t noticed, my blog has a lot to do with Julep: I’ve used a lot of Julep polishes in my manicures, Julep has featured my work on their social media accounts (for which I am very honored! Big thanks to the social media team!), and I’ve made nail art in partnership with Julep for their InstaGrim contest. So when they announced that they were hosting a Maven Meetup in San Francisco, I had to go! I was looking forward to seeing the December collection, which they had out, and to chatting with the Julep people and other attendees. I didn’t take any photos of the event, so most of this post is going to be written. I do have sneak peeks of the December collection, though, so there are some photos in this post.

Overall, I really enjoyed attending the Maven Meetup – it was both enjoyable and enlightening. Beyond having fun playing with polishes, I liked meeting the people behind the company I buy so much nail polish from. It seemed like they really wanted to engage with us customers, and to get feedback about the company. Talking with them gave me some insight into Julep’s ethos, which I found fascinating. Chatting with the other Julep customers who came to the event was interesting as well, and I liked talking to everyone about their backgrounds and how they relate to Julep.

Julep November 2014 Maven Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! I’ve got my picks from the Julep November 2014 collection today (Friendsgiving)! While work has been quite busy for me (and will be until January), I really wanted to get this post going because I am quite excited about it. This month, Julep’s “Friendsgiving” collection had a nice fall-to-winter transitional look – some warmer, muted fall colors mixed with cooler and more saturated winter shades. And there were a variety of different finishes between all the polishes, so there was something for everyone. For me, that “something” was the It Girl box this month. While I liked the overall look of the collection, and a few of the polishes looked intriguing, I decided to go for just the It Girl box with no add-ons. Mascara was a no-go for me (I have never worn mascara, and never will), leaving my options as It Girl, Polish Lover’s, or nothing. Two of the colors in the It Girl box looked awesome, so I used some Jules (store credit) and went for it! I swatched all the polishes, did a few quick comparisons, and combined all three colors into a wintery nail art design. Read on to see everything!

SquareHue November 2014 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! Sorry for not posting for over a week – I’ve been really preoccupied with work, and will continue to be until mid-December. Consequently, I don’t have much time for nail art and may post infrequently until January. I do have some more posts in the works, though, so I’ll still have stuff going on, no worries!

Today I have the November 2014 collection from SquareHue to show off! SquareHue is a monthly nail polish subscription box service that I enrolled in to see if I would like it, since I’ve had a lot of luck with the Julep Maven program. While the service differs from Julep in several ways, what intrigued me the most about it – and led me to enroll – was that the stated intent of SquareHue is to guide you towards colors you may not pick yourself. They do this by not allowing you to choose the three colors in the monthly box, and you just have to hope that you’ll like what’s inside. Based on my assessment of the website, I assumed this would mean really unconventional, but tasteful, colors with a variety of finishes. Since I am not picky in terms of colors I like, I thought it might be worth a shot for at least one month. I was curious to see if the monthly box did indeed contain unconventional colors that I would not pick myself, and having no choice over the colors would mean a bunch of dupes for me.

I took the plunge, and just received my first box through SquareHue containing the November 2014 collection, inspired by Prague. They went with a very muted, medium-dark color palette that gives an overall “urban” look to me. The three colors are very fall- and winter-appropriate, and I’m sure that they’ll go great with a lot of the cold weather accessories that people are starting to pull out of their closets. Plus, each polish has a different finish to make things interesting. I’ve got swatches and nail art to show you all, so let’s go!