Show Me Your Nails 2.0

[Tamara76]

Due to some technical glitches with the original Show Me Your Nails Thread, I am starting a new thread with @vegchililover78's blessing (She says "hello," by the way!).

Please share your nail looks, nail art and manicures!

...And don't forget to check out @Beadshopgirl's Nail Stamping Thread for stamping inspiration! ❤️  

https://community.sephora.com/t5/Nailed-It/The-Nail-Stamping-Thread/m-p/3328865

[Titian06]

Thanks for sharing, @RGbrown ! 💖💖💖

[Saradestin]

I love both options equally @RGbrown! Simple but gorgeous anyways! ❤️❤️❤️

[RGbrown]

@Saradestin 

Thanks so much! Easy doesn't have to be boring, that's for sure! 😅✨

[WinglessOne]

Testing 5 very new-to-me polishes. My hunt for the perfect fiery red orange might finally be over! 

What, no one else likes an olive garnish with their tequila sunrise? 😄Top left: New Blood's green flake shift. All other: a mere few of the thermal Tequila Sunrise color shifts. Flash used in bottom left to try catching some holo and other glitter.

Details: 

Spoiler

Thumb: Lilypad Lacquer Guilty Pleasures (3 coats). An olive/khaki with a copper shimmer shift, plus iridescent salmon, gold, green, and blue glitter, and some green and blue flakes. This shade’s much sparklier than I expected! A hidden gem at just $4 USD. I wish I could’ve taken some direct sunlight photos to let Guilty Pleasures show off all its shimmer. 

Index: 

• Left - Cirque Colors Citron Jelly (2 coats). Lemon curd on my nail. This sheer yellow’s much better behaved than expected, though 3 coats would’ve evened out the mild streaking. 
• Right - Cirque Colors Olive Jelly (3 coats). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plain olive jelly polish before, so of course I had to buy this one. It was surprisingly fussier than Citron, requiring a 3rd coat to cover lots of bare streaks and wound up with bubbles. I still love this color though. 

Middle: Cirque Colors Tequila Sunrise (3 coats). A thermal that’s cheesy yellow when warm, red orange when cold, and shades of orange in-between. Cirque says their thermals dry matte, but this one looked semi-matte before I added glossy top coat. On my right hand, I had trouble getting an even second coat: the polish wouldn't self-level and/or I had issues using the obnoxious round brush left-handed. A third coat didn't smooth things out, and I’m annoyed enough to maybe strip that nail and reapply. Looks much better on my left hand—and thank goodness, because I love the between-temps ombre of this shade. 

Ring: Phoenix New Blood (2-3 coats). A red jelly base loaded with various sizes of flakes that shift red > orange > slightly green, plus a good amount of scattered holo glitter. This polish is ridiculously pretty in person. The 3rd partial coat was just a bit of extra flake placement to cover a couple bald spots. The finish is pretty smooth, considering how big some of the flakes are: one coat of Glisten & Glow was enough (no Glitter Grabber needed), though I had to lightly file/buff down a flake barely poking over the tip of my left ring nail. 

Pinky: 3 coats of Lilypad Guilty Pleasures, topped with 1 coat of either Cirque Citron Jelly (left hand) or Cirque Olive Jelly (right hand). Citron pushes Guilty Pleasures a bit into yellow green territory and mutes some of the shimmer. Olive enhances the shimmer. 

I gotta mention Cirque’s brush(es). Cirque uses either the typical narrow squared-off brush or the stupid obnoxious thick & round (not flat paddled) brush. I ran into both during this mani. As much as I hate Essie’s old long & super skinny brush, I hate round brushes even more. Why the heck does a $16.50 USD polish have such a crappy brush?! 🤬 Dealing with Cirque’s brushes has convinced me to go ahead and order all those KBShimmer replacement brushes in my on-hold KBS cart, and to add a few more (+caps) to cover my new Cirque polishes. 

[CookieGirl1]

That's the PERFECT Fall nail combo, @WinglessOne!  

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @CookieGirl1 ! 

[ather]

@WinglessOne  These are so pretty!!! Tequila sunrise is gorgeous!

[WinglessOne]

Thank you @ather @Saradestin @Titian06 @Mellmars1185 ! 🙂 

[Saradestin]

This is such a beautiful mani @WinglessOne ! You have a fall forest in your nails 🍁🍂🍁🍂 I love the color story! And yes, that fiery red orange polish is spectacular! 😍😍😍 I love them all! 

[Titian06]

Love this mani, @WinglessOne ! 💚💛🧡❤  The colors are outstanding and your experiment turned out lovely.  I particularly like Lilypad Guilty Pleasures and Cirque Olive and both colors combined and Phoenix New Blood is stunning! 🤩

[Mellmars1185]

@WinglessOne Great shades. The thermal polish on your middle finger is so neat!

[RGbrown]

@WinglessOne 

Fantastic 🔥 New Blood is stunning 😍 

I've seen tons of folks over on Reddit using the pink and purple and blue jellies from Cirque, and a couple of folks using the olive, but I don't think I've seen a single person use the yellow one. It's nice to see a swatch of it! It's creamier looking than I expected, which is a good thing...I had "yellow jelly sounds like a terrible idea" running through my head because sheer yellow sounds a lot like "my stained nails but worse", but this is really pretty! 

I had halfway considered Tequila Sunrise at one point, and then I saw a comment that it mostly just resembled ketchup & mustard nails, and I couldn't get that image out of my head so I dropped it off my want list 🤣

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @RGbrown ! Citron Jelly is as bright lemon yellow as I'd hoped for, and thankfully not sheer enough to look like a nail stain. It'll be fun to play with, but also to wear on its own. 

Haha, Tequila Sunrise does have its ketchup & mustard moments, kinda like what happened in my flash photo. But even then, there's an orange ombre in person that pushes it away from condiments and more into grenadine & orange juice territory. Ombre action varies from person to person and climate to climate, of course. 

[itsfi]

Loving the fabulous fall vibes from this mani @WinglessOne. I placed an order for Cirque Olive Jelly late last week for the same exact reason - hadn’t seen an olive green jelly before either. 

Phoenix New Blood looks marvelous on you! The flakes and glitters in that one really pop! ♥️🧡

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @itsfi ! It'll be fun to see what you think of Olive Jelly. It and Citron Jelly were glossy without top coat; I topped 'em just for protection's sake. Olive would be a fun backdrop for some "double double toil and trouble" Halloween nail art... I might have to explore that. 

[RGbrown]

I just realized that I haven't yet posted my other hand what with all that experimentation on the right, so I should probably do that now before I forget for good! 

I recently got to talking with @CookieGirl1 about cuticle oil and how much longer and healthier my nails have been since starting it three-ish years ago, and then looked at my very first post in this thread five-ish years ago to see the difference. 

October 2017. This was about as long as I could ever get my nails. I still break some, sure, but my average length is sooooo much longer these days and I 100% credit cuticle oil (jojoba specifically) for that! My cuticle care and polish cleanup skills have also drastically improved over the last five years.

Then I decided recreating this mani was in order 💜 This was one of the very few I've done where I didn't note which polishes I used, but since my goal is to use new polishes almost exclusively, I wasn't really worried about that anyways, so I pulled similar shades from my unused boxes and got to work!

A spot of sun filtered through the shade of a tree shows it best. It's subtle for sure, but the vagueness of light vs dark came out well IMHO.

Morgan Taylor Truth Or Dare: dark purple, almost black, loaded with deep purple shimmer. Base on my thumb, index and pinky. Easy two coater.

Zoya Hope: bright purple shimmer on my middle and ring. Another two coater, though this one felt a little thin and I went thick with that second coat...might be a three coater most of the time (but I was in the midst of frustration and annoyance with my other hand, and three coats simply wasn't an option I was willing to entertain at the time 😅).

Stamping was done with the same two polishes. They're both a bit sheer for stamping if you want bold contrast, but I like how this turned out!

[ather]

@RGbrown  Wow! Crazy that cuticle oil made that big of a difference. Reminds me to start being better at applying mine!

[RGbrown]

@ather 

I'm always amazed how much better my nails look since I've started using it regularly. It certainly wasn't an overnight miracle worker, but over time, my nails have done so well with it. Well worth the time and investment! 

[itsfi]

omg, I went to look back at some of my previous mani’s this weekend too. Thank you for sharing about your nail growth and nail care improvements over the years @RGbrown; it’s encouraging. 

I love the effect of the sheer stamping; it looks cool against the darker polish, especially when the light catches it.😍 And it goes without saying, loving the purple polishes. They’re gorgeous! 💜

[RGbrown]

@itsfi 

Thanks so much! It's always fun to look back through my older manis; I like to check them out from time to time, whether looking up swatches or just to see how my taste or skill may have changed. 

Purple is always an excellent choice, and I really like the subtle light vs dark that came out with this set 💜

[CookieGirl1]

Love the throwback, @RGbrown!

BTW, my cuticle oil is supposed to be delivered tomorrow.  Yay!