Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is the first day of Chinese New Year, year of the Dragon! I wanted to make my nails special for today so I tried my hand at making a variation of a french manicure.

This is my first attempt at nail art so it's pretty basic. I did this free-hand and afterwards I realized I could have used tape to keep the lines straight. As it is though, I think I did a satisfactory job. I used Sinful Colors Gogo Girl for the red, which is just your basic, almost tomato based red. I was expecting to need more coats since Sinful Colors is notorious for being sheer, but I only needed two. 

sunlight

For the gold strip, I used CoverGirl Bronze Beauty. This is much more of an "old gold" shade, with tiny sprinkles of bronze micro-glitter. I don't own a true gold  so I made do with this. Formula-wise, this isn't fabulous. It's very runny and tends to pool along the top of the brush, so you need to pay attention or you may get some accidental drips. It also dries really quickly so you have to be careful to apply the right amount the first time. 

CoverGirl Bronze Beauty

For tonight's festivities I am making a big dinner for my roommates/friends which is going to include dumplings and rice, along with curry chicken. Yummy! Is anyone doing anything special to celebrate the New Year? Even though I'm not Chinese and didn't grow up with Chinese customs I still really enjoy keeping this holiday. I'm really bad at remembering to do special things for other holidays (like Christmas, Halloween, etc) so I feel a little weird putting emphasis on this one, but that doesn't lessen my excitement!

Check back later for other reviews, I have a Butter London polish to show you (which I am pretty excited about) and a mascara review coming up!

Sinful Colors San Francisco

I'm in a very foggy headspace today due to the all-nighter I pulled last night. I'm completely smothered under a pile of work and despite all the effort I put into getting things done, I still haven't made a significant dent on my to-do list, which mostly has to do with all the extra assignments that have been added at the last minute. Bah.

On a higher note, I found a few spare minutes to do my nails! Sinful Colors San Francisco. 

My camera has issues with bright colors like this. It makes the green look much more blue toned than it is, and it actually has more of a yellow base. It was extremely sheer and took about 3-4 coats. Super pretty in the sun, but in normal indoor light it fell flat.
I also had issues with shrinkage at the tips. You can see where the polish started pulling away at the edge of my nail, leaving a green stained tip in its wake. And it stained my nails horribly.  I did like this polish, but I just didn't find it super special. This will be a perfect polish to wear for St. Patrick's Day though!