Hand & Nail Empties: July-December 2020

I haven’t done an empties post for a bit… since this time last year in fact! I did end up tossing all the stuff I saved during January-June of last year, but I still had all the stuff from July-December, so we’re going to just do one massive post! I want to get back to doing quarterly empties so I can do more in-depth reviews on the stuff I used up, but for now we’re going to try to breeze through these or else we will be here for a thousand years (the key word is “try” – you know I’m wordy)! For a lot of the things I have used before, like Bath & Body Works hand soaps or the Baroness X Acetone Antidotes, I’m just going to review the scent and not the formula; I’ve re-purchased these a lot and clearly like them!

MDJ Creations Smooth Finish Fast Dry Top Coat: reviewed previously

a-england The Ridgeway Ridge Filler: This is my favorite ridge-filling base coat hands down. First of all, it’s clear and not that weird nude opaque color that peeks out from the edges of your mani if you don’t cover your nail perfectly. The formula is awesome and stays awesome, I barely had to use any thinner. I already have repurchased it!

Holo Taco Glossy Taco: I really do not like this top coat. Yes, it does dry fast but it gets gloopy super quickly and it just applies weird. It does self-level, but it looks super uneven until that point. I had to use so much thinner to get through this, would never repurchase.

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Fall Favorites: OPI My Italian is a Little Rusty

OPI My Italian is a Little Rusty, 2 coats plus top coat

It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiiiiiime of the year…. no, it’s not Christmas yet, but it is FALL!!!!! Although 2020 has been a steaming pile of poo, one of the bright spots has been all the incredible fall and Halloween polishes that have been released this year. Well, not from my wallet’s perspective. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but nail polish and happiness are pretty much the same thing, sooooooo… all the fall polishes, please! I’m hoping to share a few of my favorites with y’all before the other holiday season starts, but with my current schedule of posting every two weeks, we may not fit as many in as in the past. But I would rather go for quality and we are starting off Fall 2020 with a banger! It’s from OPI’s Milan collection, which was pretty much made for me: I ended up getting 11 of the 12 polishes (thank you polishpick.com, no way could I have done that paying full price). This beautiful burnt orange rusty dirt color, My Italian is a Little Rusty, is the first of those 11 polishes I have worn. You guys KNOW I go insane for oranges and while this is definitely brown and not orange, it’s the orangey-ist brown out there and I adore it. The name is definitely a 5/5 too, maybe not specific to Milan but perfect for the hue!

OPI Mexico City VoxBox

*Influenster sent me all products pictured complimentary for review purposes. Writing a blog post was not a required part or any part of the campaign.*

Most people are putting out more content during these can’t leave your house times, but me? Nah bro, I ain’t about doing what everyone else is doing! Just kidding, the real reason I have not put up a blog post for weeks is that I had to rush to get the bare minimum stuff done for Influenster for this campaign because I got everything I needed only five days before it was all over, yikes. I also am still going to work and working full time (I work a local government job and we JUST got remote access on Thursday so we are still trying to figure out how that will work with us still having to serve the public) and when I get home in the evening after eating and doing whatever cleaning needs to be done, I spend way too much time watching commentary YouTube to distract myself (Kurtis Conner has been my main jam lately). Thankfully, I also have nail polish to distract me through all this craziness too. I do not have to do a blog post for the Influenster Mexico City box, but I thought I might as well because I tested everything they sent me. The box (actually it all came in two boxes) had pretty much everything I use for a full mani minus the cotton rounds and cuticle pusher! We will take a look at the two polishes first, Don’t Tell a Sol and Verde Nice to Meet You, then we’ll move on to the other goodness.

OPI Good Girls Gone Plaid: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Good Girls Gone Plaid, 2 coats plus top coat

You guys… it’s the last post in my series on OPI’s Scotland collection! We have made it through the eleven polishes I purchased and I’m proud of any of you who have stuck with me through the series. Although let’s be real, when you’re looking at colors this gorgeous you cannot exactly call it a chore. We finish it all off with a final purple, a purple so dark that your non-nail polish friends will be skeptical when you tell them it’s purple. OPI calls Good Girls Gone Plaid an “alluring amethyst” which prompted me to google “amethyst” and I suppose it is an okay description. Some amethysts can be dark and it certainly looks darker when the crystals are all layered up. Fine OPI, I’ll accept it.

OPI Red Heads Ahead: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Red Heads Ahead, 2 coats plus top coat

Happy Sunday, everyone! Have you been hitting those deals hard this weekend? I’ve picked up a few gifts, but the only nail/hand related sale I shopped for myself was at Unicorn Magic Skincare. I was planning on trying out their products in the spring, but decided to stock up during the sale. Why not? I really need to learn to restrain myself during the year with polish and candles until the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. Anyway, I’ve fallen behind on the  OPI Scotland collection, so today we are looking at Red Heads Ahead, which is probably the most vibrant polish in the collection. OPI says this color “shines like the auburn locks of a Scot.” Now, I will admit that I have not looked at every person in the world’s hair, but I have never seen a living human being with hair this naturally red. I would say this a classic, juicy red that leans on the darker side of medium-toned. I have some comparisons at the end that I think really show where this color falls in the red spectrum.

OPI Rub-a-Pub-Pub: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Rub-a-Pub-Pub, 2 coats plus top coat

Happy Wednesday, everyone! We are in the final stretch of polishes I have to share with you from the OPI Scotland collection. If all goes to plan, the last post will be going up a week from today! Wow! Thanks to all of you who have been following the series, I hope you have been enjoying the polishes as much as I have. Today I have another winner that I got to photograph in natural light – love painting my nails on the weekend! Rub-a-Pub-Pub is described by OPI as “a cool mix of coal and gray” which is spot-on! I call these shades “charcoal” – too dark to be obviously grey but too soft to be black. Grey polishes and almost black polishes are my faves, so when they combine in these charcoal-y shades I say yes, please, give me them all!

OPI Boys Be Thistle-ing at Me: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Boys Be Thistle-ing at Me, 2 coats plus top coat

I hope you all are having/have had a great weekend! Today we are going to talk about the third purple OPI decided to grace us with this fall. I think the name, “Boys Be Thistle-ing at Me,” is one of the better puns, but I don’t really care for it. I guess I loathe unsolicited male attention. On the contrary, I love this color and have pretty much nothing else like it! OPI says this shade “evokes the flora of Scotland all day long.” Of all their little descriptions, that was the closest thing I could find that actually sort of got close to the color. I would describe this shade as a raisin-y mauve metallic.

OPI Things I’ve Seen in Aber-green: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Things I’ve Seen in Aber-green, 2 coats plus top coat

Today is truly a glorious day! We get to look at the one single green in OPI’s Scotland collection as we march on with my series. I think it should be a legal requirement for OPI to have at least one green in all their fall/winter collections. The Washington DC Collection gave us two absolute bangers (yes, there were three, but I didn’t care too much for one of them), the Iceland Collection had an interesting one, last year’s Peru collection gave us the divine Ayahuasca Made Me Do It, and this year we get some murky dark forest green goodness with Things I’ve Seen in Aber-green. I always say that my favorite polish color is teal but everyone seems to associate me with green so I guess I’ll just embrace it. (I made that sound so begrudging, as if there are not about a million green polishes I’ve gushed about that have made y’all recognize me as a queen of green!)

OPI Nice Set of Pipes: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Nice Set of Pipes, 2 coats plus top coat

Strap in kids, the blogging is about to get serious! I would like to have all these posts up before December, so I am going to attempt two blog posts a week. Attempt being the key word there, y’all know my track record. We have another lovely purple to look at today; purple lovers, we really have gotten exactly what we deserve with this collection. So many darker purples and pretty darn good hue variety among them, too, if I do not say so myself. Nice Set of Pipes is described by OPI as a “gray purple” which is kind of true. I see it more as a darker blue-leaning purple. It is not particularly dusty, though it is a tad dustier in person than you’ll see in my photos.

OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k, 2 coats plus top coat

We are almost halfway through my series on my picks from OPI’s Scotland collection! I think I may need to ramp up my posting to twice a week next month if I want to finish it off before Christmas month, aka December. Today we are looking at Nessie Plays Hide & Sea-k. For the first time in this series and possibly on my blog ever, all swatch photos were taken in natural lighting! I didn’t realize that just by sitting on my couch I could take great nail photos until the weekend I wore this one. I will try to do that more with weekend swatches, light boxes just are not the same. Before we get into the polish, there is something that needs to be addressed: why did they use “sea” as a pun? Nessie is supposed to be in a lake. The name would have been totally cute and fine if they had just called it “Nessie Plays Hide & Seek” but then they had to get all inaccurate about a mythical being’s habitat. smh.