Julep Margit

Hello! I just have a quick post for you tonight and it's a swatch!

 I am a Julep Maven and I probably skip about 90% of boxes because it's just not in my budget and/or the colors don't really catch my eye. Last month, it slipped my mind to skip and I ended up with December's It Girl box. It included three polishes-Janae, a charcoal gray, Shelly, a pale robin's egg blue, and tonight's feature-Margit, greyed out lavender with silvery-red shimmer running through.


Let's take a look.

Fluorescent lighting

Flash

Macro in full sun for all the red and silvery shimmery goodness.

This polish is really unique in my collection (of over 500). It's a great neutral and definitely office appropriate but the shimmer amps it up and makes it special.

Application was great. The Julep brush is really long because of the bottle shape and there is a definite learning curve when applying Julep polishes but Margit went on smooth. This is two coats.

If you're interested in becoming a Julep Maven, you can sign up here!

Talk to you soon!

xo, ali

the Never-Ending Pile Challenge: Textured

Hey! Happy Monday! I just have a quick post for y'all tonight. Of course, it's another installment to the Never-Ending Pile Challenge and today's theme is textured. I have quite a few textured polishes. I love how they look like the inside of geodes. I just never think to wear them! Tonight, I paired two of L'Oreal's textured polishes from their Gold Dust collection.

On my pointer and pinky fingers are three coats of Hidden Gems. For my double accent nail, I used three coats of Too Dimensional?

And some macro shots for good measure.

Overall, I really like these polishes but I favor Too Dimensional? over Hidden Gems, right now. While I love the darkened teal of Hidden Gems, I wish the purple flash you can see in the bottle shot would have translated better on the nail. I've seen Hidden Gems swatched on a few different blogs and that seems to be the general consensus.

Too Dimensional? is a beautiful dusty lavender and that gold shimmer makes it look so expensive. I'll definitely be wearing it as a full mani, soon!

What have been some of your favorite textured polishes since they've come out?

Be sure to check out the other sparkly ladies and their textured tips!

xo, ali

Steady on Stranger Tides

(or GOT: Chevron)

I'm late to Golden Oldie Thursday and posting it on a Friday night. I guess I'm really bad at time management. What had happened was...

I went to the gym and was murdered by a Nike Training Club work out and realized that the mani I did Wednesday night didn't qualify because I used two polishes I had picked out over the weekend.

So, I regrouped and redid and here we are! Let's look :)

I dug through my oldest OPIs and found Steady As She Rose (left) and On Stranger Tides (right). Both of these originated in the Pirates of the Carribbean: Stranger Tides movie tie-in collection that hit shelves in Spring 2011. That collection came out right as I was beginning to become the polish-aholic that I am now. I picked these up at Nordstrom Rack and Marshalls, respectively.

On all nails except for the ring finger on each hand, I did two coats of Stranger Tides On my ring fingers, I did two coats of Steady As She Rose. I topcoated with Color Club 0-60 and waited a few minutes.

Once everything was dry enough, I laid down four pieces of striping tape to make the criss-crossed chevrons you see here. I painted one coat of Stranger Tides over the tape, pulled the tape up and voila!

(this shot is not for color accuracy, but detail)

I really loved how soft and pretty this was. The gray tones in each polish really worked with each other and this was a feminine twist on army green.

What do you think?

And while you're at it, check out what the other ladies thought up and posted (on time)!

xo, ali

Baby, You're My Better Half

Well, hello! I know I've been a stranger but things have been NUTS over here at Casa de Phalanges. It feels like this weekend is the first chance I've had to breathe since the last time we got together.

Over the past two weeks, I've helped to put on a bridal shower for my older sister, celebrated Christmas, went to multiple family parties, and rang in the new year with my best friend. I'll share some quick snaps from all that at the end of the post.

Tonight, I'm going to share with you an Essie mini that I picked up just before Christmas. 

This is My Better Half from the Summer 2013 Bridal Collection that came out.

This is a sweet and simple pink-toned lavender that is shot through with a pearly purple shimmer. It applied really smoothly and I believe this is three coats with Orly Nail Armor base coat and Beauty Plus top coat. 

It was just a very simple, girly manicure and a great palate cleanser, as I wore this after the nail art I shared in my last post.

And before I go, I wanted to share a few peeks at the bridal shower I helped put on!

The shower theme was...

[source]

which is one of my all-time favorite movies.

So of course, I had to do my nails to match

What else could I use, other than China Glaze For Audrey? I did a Tiffany box as an accent nail using pearly white from my Migi Nail Art pen set.

(my phone case matched too..hee hee)

This is my younger sister, Ashley (upper left), myself, and our older sister, Aimee.

The bridal party girls!

It was such a fun shower and the food was delicious. It was great to honor my sister and spend time with family that I don't get to see that often!

What did you girls do to celebrate the holidays? Get any polish goodies for Christmas?

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and celebrated a happy New Year!!

xo, ali