Friday, April 20, 2012

Nail Stuff

Hi ho, Beauties!

Today I would like to talk about nail polish.  I really love nail polish for the same reason I love jewelry - it doesn't really matter how old, how not slim, or how under the weather you might be feeling - your nails will, under most circumstances, NEVER give you away! :)  Isn't that wonderful?  So nail polish should be your friend, and you should avail yourselves of the pretty colors out there on a regular basis - you can always look down and see that pretty color you chose - just ignore the age spots and crepey look and you'll be In Like Flynn.  (It's an OLD saying, girls.  If you were born after about 1962 you won't ever have heard it before.  But then again, if you're born after 1962 you probably won't be reading this, will you? )

So, on to the pretty stuff.  Most of us oldies have probably had the luxury of having had a professional manicure at least once, but if you haven't, no reason to despair.  I think that I can safely say that most of us can do a pretty decent job of making our nails look nice.  The toes, that's another story, but we're not going to go there today. :)  In any event, though, I think we all know the basics of a nice manicure:  remove old polish; soak in some sort of warm, soapy liquid for a while; push back the cuticles; trim and shape the nail; apply a base coat; apply two coats of color; apply top coat; let dry for a good, long time; enjoy the lovely effect for as long as it lasts, which may or may NOT be quite as long as you had hoped.

I've been sucked in by Butter London, same as many of you might have been.  I read about it, I saw it in the stores, and, sure enough, I bought a few bottles of it.  This stuff is a tad expensive.  At least, I, for one, consider fourteen dollars for ONE BOTTLE of nail polish to be a LOT of money!!!  It makes OPI's  eight or (for the 'designer series') nine dollars a bottle to seem pretty reasonable.  And, let's face it, even eight dollars for a bottle of nail polish might be pushing it, so I think it's fair to say that Butter London's fourteen dollars is truly over the top.  And it might even be worth it if it lasted, say, three days without chipping.  But, guess what, ladies?  IT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE IT 24 HOURS without chipping.  At least, it didn't last for me, and I'm not working as a cleaning lady these days......I'm kind of living a life of leisure now, what with having only one teen child left at home and the rest out on their own, cleaning their own houses, cooking their own meals, and washing their OWN dishes!  In theory, my nail polish should last quite some time and still look good.  In theory.  Real life always kinds of trumps theory, though, doesn't it?

Above you can see a selection of some colors I tried out recently:  from L to R, we have OPI's UhOh Roll Down theWindow (horrors!!!! my aged eyesight did not realize the name of this color until just now with my readers on!!!); Butter London's Wallis; Butter London's Fash Pack; and A Taupe the Space Needle from OPI.  Ladies, I really am not sure that we Older Beauties are meant to wear colors like these.....or, well, maybe we can WEAR them, but it might take us a while to get USED to seeing them on our hands.  I don't know about you, but having grown up in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies, I was kind of brainwashed into believing that our nails were meant to wear pinks, purples, mauves, and reds.  Greens, blues, blacks, and browns are kind of Goth, and most of us are at the age where Goth doesn't read very well...hell, it doesn't even read well on the young'uns, so how could it possibly fare well with US?  :)  I know that I've seen Joan Rivers on the Q wearing blue or green nail polish, and gawd knows, she's even older than most of us, but it is still kind of shocking to me to see anything other than the colors of my youth on nails.  Give me a Peach-A-Boo any day! 



No matter what color you choose to wear, though, please remember to add that all-important Top Coat!  I have been using Seche Vite, and like it very much - it seems to add an extra dollop of shine that really makes the color you are wearing look wonderful.  

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