My manicure, and into the trash we go!

So today I have a manicure to share with you - I was going to do more with it until our house decided to literally fall apart on us. Long story and I'm too worn out to go into the details. Last year was difficult for us, and this year isn't looking much better so far. Something has to give soon.. just waiting for things to improve while trying our best to get there is so exhausting.. and we've been working towards things being better for so long. It's incredibly difficult to keep going sometimes.

For this manicure I used Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Get Mod, which is just a fake gel polish in white. I found the polish to dry fairly fast so I'm really happy with how it worked. However, I did end up with some bubbles - and for some reason after a few days I noticed the polish was starting to crack on me. Kind of like an iceberg. I've never seen anything like it. Really weird. I used two coats of Get Mod, and topped with the Sally Hansen Miracle Gel top coat. I did use base coat with this just because I don't believe any of these companies when they say not to use base coat. My nails are not happy with me if I don't use it.

I used a zebra stripe mask to do stripes on every other nail. I had planned on adding stickers to the plain white nails, but then my house collapsing on itself happened, so that didn't happen.

I used one coat of Top Shelf Lacquer Arctic Kiss on each nail. Arctic Kiss is a white polish with iridescent glitter. Unfortunately it doesn't really show up much in the pictures but it did add a nice bit of sparkle to my nails.

I sponged on three LA Colors which are neon blue, neon yellow and neon pink. This combination worked really well and I was very happy with the results. The zebra stripes looked pretty awesome. I really loved it. I somehow got flecks of the pink mixed in with the blue on a few spots so that adds some interest to it.

I'm thinking it would be fun to do a candy cane manicure similar to this for Christmas some time. It sure would be easy enough. The Sally Hansen gel polish made it so much easier to paint my nails one day, then do the nail art another. I have a couple more of that polish line to try out so hopefully that means I'll have more nail art to show off this year. I certainly have enough supplies to use!

So moving on, here is my small pile of things to toss this month. Not much to toss for once.

First I have Insta Natural peppermint oil which is expiring this month. It's still very potent so I think I'm actually going to keep this on hand just to use in the kitchen to keep the mice away - which that does seem to be working now. I just won't be using it on my skin incase there is any bacteria growing in it.

My Tarteist mascara from tarte also expires. I wasn't crazy about this one, anyway - it seemed kind of clumpy like it was starting to expire, almost since I got it honestly. Maybe I just got a bad batch, I don't know.

I'm kind of surprised that's all I have which has expired this month - it seems I'm getting a better handle on my supply and of what I really need and don't. Lastly, the single item I used up this month was a sample of volumer from etude House. From an internet search, I found you were supposed to combine this with bb cream, so I guess it just helps stretch out the bb cream? I don't really know, honestly. I can't really say I noticed much of a difference.

I guess that's it for now. I have a few things which I will probably review before long, so I'll be back sometime. Thanks for reading :)