Happy New Year!

Hi everyone, sorry I haven't been around much.. as I mentioned in my last post, I woke up with my throat being completely swollen a couple of days ago and it just basically turned into a pretty nasty cold or UTI. So I haven't been feeling much like looking at a computer. As I mentioned on Facebook earlier today though, I spent my New Year's Eve swatching every single one of my polishes (minus the clears of course!). Roughly ten hours and 11 nail wheels later, all of them are swatched! It was so much fun. I could seriously see myself painting nails all day long after that experience. That also means I will have a bunch of nail wheels to show you all soon! First though, let me ring in the new year with my manicure.

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm not really a big fan of the whole New Year thing, and I've never been a fan of resolutions. Honestly, thinking about time depresses me. I would rather spend each day doing something to improve myself over all than to make resolutions to improve myself and never achieve them. My life long goal has just been to be healthier. Pretty simple, but 20 some years later I'm still working on it.  2013 means a couple of important things to me: my 15th high school reunion which I will not be attending is this year; Mike turns 40 next year which really scares me; it's now roughly 23 years of having a permanent headache, but the good news is my seizures have been under control for almost 13 years. A lot to think about and take in.

I think the thing that has me most depressed is this: time just seems to go by faster and faster as we age, and my grandma always said that it only gets worse. Thinking about my grandma, and realizing that this is my first year without her really makes me sad.

So! Sorry for all of the depressing thoughts. Blogging really helps me get these things out of my head and makes me feel better. On that note, here is my singular goal for the blog for 2013:

I've been pretty disappointed in how slowly I'm gaining new followers, so for 2013 I want to improve this! Any suggestions on how to do so? I'm seriously at a loss! I know a lot of people gain new followers through giveaways but with my lack of funds that's not much of an option, aside from the giveaways I can do from TRIB3. Also, I want to mention I am going to start using brand names as labels for the blog, hope that helps!

Moving on, I want to show you my manicure for this week. It's funny, because I've had this manicure planned out for about 2 weeks but as I was just finishing it up I went on Facebook and within just a few minutes I saw 2 similar manicures. I guess it wasn't exactly an original idea, but it is very pretty.

I started with 1 coat of China Glaze Blue Bells Ring. You seriously only need 1 coat! This is a gorgeous polish, but I do want to mention that a) it stains your fingers horribly if you do get it on you so watch out for being smurfed and b) the color is much different in real life from the pictures I've seen. Much more cobalt blue, less frosty. So while it's a gorgeous polish, I'm kind of disappointed that the color isn't quite what I expected. I do love the color, and it's the only polish I have of this color so I'm very happy with it. It just isn't quite what I expected.

After applying Blue Bells Ring, I applied 1 coat of Barielle's quick dry top coat, let it dry, then randomly applied some tape, applied one coat of China Glaze Marry a Millionaire, removed the tape, and then applied a ton more top coat. I did a second coat of Blue Bells Ring for the accent. If you're not familiar with Marry a Millionaire, it's a glitter polish made of silver, purple, green metallic and I want to say luminescent bar glitters. It's from their Eye Candy 3D collection from I want to say last year but haha - 2011. It dries pretty rough, so if you want a smooth manicure like I love, you'll need lots and lots of top coat.

I do have to mention the Barielle top coat because this is my first time using it. I got theNo Chip Speed Dry with Silk Protein Top Coat for free during their Black Friday special. So far it's holding up OK. It isn't as fast drying or as thick as Seche Vite, but I would say it's comparable to Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri top coat.  Finally, here's my pictures!  

 

Sorry this picture is so blurry. It's the only picture I have where it shows exactly how dark this polish looks in some light.

Suggestions, comments, questions? Let me know! Thanks for reading!