Jamberry: Everything Nice

I've created enough wibbly nail art in my time to know that everything takes practice, and that nothing is ever as easy the first time you try it as the tutorial makes it look.  And that, I realized, also applies to applying nail wraps.

The first time I posted about Jamberry nail wraps was over the summer, and a string of recent online parties for Jamberry has re-ignited my interest in their products.  If you remember, the first time I applied Jams things were a bit wrinkly, and I ended up taking the wraps off within two days (the wraps are supposed to be able to last up to 14 days).  The second time I applied them was months later, and I didn't have much more success.  Another problem I had that time was that I used wraps that were too big on a few nails.  So lesson learned, Jams are the opposite of shoes: always size down rather than up!

Those wraps didn't stay on my nails very long either, and my application was so wrinkled and messy that I didn't even bother taking pictures.  But the good news is that each package of Jamberry comes with two wraps of each size, so I can still get a good long-lasting mani with that pattern!  (It was Crash Art, and it is awesome.)

Determined to get a long-lasting, pretty Jamberry mani, I watched a couple of videos with tips on how to apply them and tried again.  YouTube user BeautyandJams has lots of really great tutorial videos with some really neat tips and tricks for both applying and removing Jams.  So when I applied these wraps, called Everything Nice, I was very happy with my application results!  I still had a little bit of wrinkling, but this time it was only on my pointer fingers, rather than all of them.  I have long felt that my pointer finger nails bend kinda funny at the sides, and the fact that I only got wrinkles on those fingers solidifies that belief!

It's worth nothing, I think, that the patterns look far less pixelated in person than they do in the large photos.  Since they're printed from a computer, the designs are made up of pixels, and since you're seeing an image created by pixels, well, the pixels stand out a lot.  (Say "pixels" more, please.)  But in person, the designs look very smooth and pixel-free.

 

As great as these applied this time, I still took them off after just a few days.  It's hard to keep my nails the same for more than 4-5 days when I have a blog to run, after all!

Holding-the-product shots are super awkward when the product is a long, flat rectangle. :)

I'm currently hosting an online Jamberry party, so if you're interested in buying any wraps right now, please shop through this link and select my party - "Kate Jamz Into Spring" (or maybe it just has my name, Kate Wagner) - when you check out!  Jamberry has just released their new spring catalog and there are some great new wraps in there - and they have an amazing Mother's Day bundle available right now!

Have you ever tried Jamberry wraps, or any other kind of nail wrap?  How did you like them?  Let me know in the comments!

Pi Day 2015: The Date of the Century!

Starting in 2003, every year has had a cool consecutive date when written out numerically in the American fashion.  1/2/03, 3/4/05, all the way on up to 12/13/14 - which, sadly, is the last one that I'll see.

But this year?  This year holds the very best date that anyone alive will ever see.  Today is March 14, 2015: 3/14/15.  The best Pi Day ever.  Watch your clocks for 9:26:53 pm, for that shall be the best second you will ever see!

Yeah, in case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a little bit of a geek.  I like math and numbers and stuff. :)

Anyway, because this year's Pi Day is so epic, I painted my nails to celebrate!  They didn't turn out quite as epic as I'd hoped, but I like them all the same.

I used China Glaze Sunset Sail as the background color, which is the closest I have to pie-crust-tan, and the numbers were done with China Glaze I Brake For Colour.  The letter Pi on my right thumb was done with Sally Hansen Red My Lips and I'm super proud of how neatly it turned out (except for the top coat smears).

I don't even want to show you the rest of my right hand.  I tried some stamping, with a little pie and also some circles, but apparently stamping is really hard and everything turned out wibbly and piece-y and horrible.  I may have thrown a mini tantrum and sworn off stamping forever...

I'm going to be spending the afternoon making apple-cranberry pie, and for dinner I'm making Shepherd's Pie. :D

What are you doing to celebrate Pi Day today?  Do you think I'm a total dork for even caring? ;) Let me know in the comments!

Jior Couture: Part of the Merry Movie Collection (retiring soon!)

I'm super excited about this post, because for the first time since I started blogging, I received these polishes at a highly discounted price in exchange for swatches and a review!  So, to start off, let me promise you that I did not promise to say anything in particular; all of the words and opinions you'll read here are 100% my own and are influenced only by the polish itself, not the low price I paid for it.

These polishes are all from Jior Couture's Christmas 2014 collection, and each one is inspired by a different Christmas movie.  The colors are very versatile - they don't scream "Christmas on my nails" the way you might expect.  Which is awesome because, as much as I love a super-Christmasy polish, I like to feel like I can wear my polishes at any time of year and not feel out-of-season.

Believing Is Seeing

Believing Is Seeing is inspired by the movie "The Santa Clause," which I've actually never seen.  And even though this soft pink crelly is a Christmas polish, it really looks to me more like a spring polish!

A beautiful delicate pink crelly with several different colors and sizes of glitter, Believing Is Seeing really surprised me.  Pink is simply not my favorite polish color, and I've never seen a pink polish that made me go, "Ooh, I need that!" the way most blue polishes do.  So I wasn't really expecting to be terribly impressed by this polish, but wow, it is gorgeous!  I love the subtle, delicate shimmer in the base (which is much more visible in the flash photo).  And even though the glitters look pretty dense in the bottle, they come out pretty sparse onto the nail.  I suppose that could be a negative thing for some, but I liked the delicate effect of fewer glitters.  More "Oh, what a pretty polish, and look, it has some glitter in it!" and less "Ooh, what a dense glitterbomb!"

As far as application goes, Believing Is Seeing is really great.  It's very smooth, and the glitters don't cling to the brush or wipe off the nail.  It is very sheer, though, so if you don't want to see the line of the whites of your nail, I highly recommend using a base of white or a similar shade of pink.  Otherwise, you might need to build up to 4 or 5 coats; I stopped at 2 on my first two fingers, and went up to 3 coats on my ring and pinky fingers.  Three coats is opaque enough that from a distance you can't really see the whites of my nails, but up close and in the photos it's still sort of visible.

I recently got a macro lens for my phone's camera!  I haven't quite mastered the macro nail shot the way 

The Mercurial Magpie has, but in-the-bottle shots are pretty easy, so feast your eyes!

Son of a Nutcracker

Son of a Nutcracker is inspired by the movie Elf.  It's a really fun glitter polish in a pinkish-red jelly base.

 

I was actually really surprised at the opacity of this polish - two coats was pretty opaque!  I built up to three coats on my pointer and middle fingers, but left it at two on my ring and pinky fingers.

Application was pretty nice, but in order to get a nice distribution of glitter I did have to dab a little bit.  And I was slightly disappointed at how hard it was to grab those big white hex glitters - there are so many in the bottle, yet I could barely get them onto my nail.  But all the rest of the glitters went from the brush to my nails quite easily.

There's an incredibly subtle shimmer in the base of this polish - so subtle that it definitely doesn't show up in my camera even in macro mode, but if you look really closely in person, it's there!  I think subtle shimmers are one of my favorite features in nail polish.

Means A Little Bit More

Means A Little Bit More is inspired by the movie How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  (The cartoon or the live-action version?  I'm not sure, but either way this polish nails it!)  Of these three polishes, it's definitely the most Christmas-y, but I still think it would look nice in a mani any time of year!

Its green jelly base is very sheer.  If you want complete opacity, you'd probably need at least 5 coats of this one - or just use a base color.  I have three coats over naked nails here and, although my nails are tragically short after a ghastly break, you can still juuust make out a little bit of the whites of my nails at the tips.  The break that I suffered led me to cut my nails down so short that there's barely any whites left - and on my middle finger, one side broke so far down that I wasn't able to cut it into an even shape.  It was heartbreaking :(

Anyway, the polish!  I absolutely loved this one.  Application was super, super smooth - the glitters landed where I wanted them to and stayed in place, and it was nice and easy to get a good distribution of every size and color of glitter!  Pink, blue, red, silver, they're all there looking super festive and pretty.  I really like the sizes of these glitters - I think smaller glitters apply easier and look a bit better on my nails.  That's not to say that I completely dislike larger glitters - you all know that I love a good crazy glitterbomb! - but sometimes it's refreshing to use a, for lack of better word, simpler glitter polish.

 

So, that's it for this post.  These polishes are all available for purchase at jiorcouture.com, and they're on sale because they're going to be retiring this week!  If you're interested, hurry over to the shop!  There are three other great-looking polishes in this collection.

What are your favorite Christmas polishes?  Do you ever miss pairing traditional Christmas colors together throughout the spring and summer?  Let me know in the comments!