For my first nail of the day, I will show you the manicure I did in honor of the Milwaukee Brewers. I was privledged to attend last night's absolute TROUNCING of the Cardinals, and I did my nails the night before to match what I wore to the game. The only polish I bought for this manicure was the gold chrome. The other colors I already had.
As luck would have it, the Brewers team colors coincide perfectly with my absolute favorite nail polish of the moment: First Mate by China Glaze.
A side note about nail polish brands. I don't consider myself a nail polish snob, and by no means would I ever spend more than about $10 on a bottle of nail polish, but I do find myself gravitating to several specific brands, mostly due to price, color variety and availability in my area. My favorite brands are China Glaze, Sinful Colors, Sally Hansen, and Revlon. I'm a single woman, and I can't afford to buy the more expensive polishes so even though I may take inspiration from the more expensive brands (Mac, Illamasqua, etc.), I always use drugstore or beauty outlet brands. I like OPI polish, but I find it's usually a few dollars more expensive than other brands, and they have more shimmery colors, where I tend to gravitate to more creamy colors.
Back to the subject, First Mate is a very creamy, gorgeous navy blue. It's from China Glaze's Anchor's Away Collection. I do have a couple other colors from this collection, which I might do an entry on later, but First Mate is definitely my favorite. I got it at Ulta, but not until after I had been to 3 different Sally stores and almost bought it from eBay. I've found that the Sally closest to me doesn't often get the new collections very quickly, and mostly carries the stock China Glaze colors.
So the Brewers colors are navy blue, gold and white, so I decided to do those colors on my nails. First I used a clear base coat (which makes the polish come off easier and doesn't stain your nails as bad). Then I did two coats of First Mate.
At Shopko, I found a Sally Hansen Color Quick nail pen for $7.99. It goes on very easily, and it does dry super quick. The color is Gold Chrome so it is sort of metallic. Definitely need a good topcoat on this because the gold will flake off or chip very easily after it dries.
I added the Gold Chrome to the tips, followed by a white stripe, done with a So Easy Stripe Right in white. I got this at Sally for $1.99.
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The white stripe was really sloppy, and I tried cleaning up but it didn't look good. I'm so bad with small stripe brushes because they are so long. Even with my dominant hand, I still do a crappy job every time:
So, my OCD would not allow me to leave them looking so sloppy, so I took the tips off, then reapplied the blue and gold. By the time I did that, I was annoyed and didn't feel like attempting the white stripes again, so I just left it with the blue and gold. I was happy with it:
I also did gold eye shadow with navy blue on the outer corner and the crease. I don't know why I didn't smile in this picture!
So that was my look for the Brewers game last night. It was a fun time and I got a lot of compliments on my manicure. I'm not sure how long I will be able to keep my nails at this length, because it's becoming increasingly difficult to type and dial the phone, etc. But I'm going to let them go a bit longer and see if I can get away with it. It's so much more fun trying to be creative with my nails when they are longer.
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