day one hundred and sixty, creative nail design

alright. consider this a cautionary tale of 'don't try to polish your nails when your head hurts' because you end up doing a pretty nasty job!!! and for some reason my thumb looks only half polished but i promise it's just a weird light relfection thingy.

this is probably one of the few straight up purple cremes i own (i can only think of about 3 total off the top of my aching head!) and it's a really nice colour. i will say one of the great things about these old CND polishes is that they are absolutely fantastic for konad stamping because they're a bit on the thick side. but definitely not so thick that i had trouble manipulating the polish effectively (it didn't need thinning), it's got fantastic opacity (another reason it's so great for stamping). so i still haven't purchased any of the 'new' CND polishes...but i sure love their old ones!!

happy friday!

day one hundred and eighteen, creative nail design hyde in the dark

so i took advantage of the full 5 minutes of sunshine we had today. weather has been completely rubbish! this is an old (no longer produced) creative nail design polish (from before they rebranded) called hyde in the dark. it's an awesome dark gunmetal that definitely is more black than silver but i adore it. it can't quite pass for silver unless under really bright sunlight but it doesn't make it any less beautiful. it also makes a good base for konad...i got new plates in today so i will try them and obviously post the results when they are acceptable. the problem with this manicure was i put a topcoat on before the design was completely dry so it streaked.

if you have any of these old CND polishes they make for great konad stamping polishes, thick and opaque...exactly what you want in a stamping polish!

day fifty six, creative nail design cuppa joe

so before i begin today's post i'll answer something that was recently asked of me...which was how many bottles of nail polish i have...the real answer is i have no idea. i have at least 200 bottles and i've acquired way more since that was my last count. i tend to acquire polish in batches of 30-40 every few months instead of one or two at a time. these 56 have barely made a dent...especially since i just bought a whole batch in the early weeks of this month!

this is one of my new ones, creative nail design 'cuppa joe'. the old CND polishes are being phased out so they can be acquired pretty cheaply on the internet (i personally use transdesign.com). now this is a great polish and i totally messed up my manicure and these pictures don't do the colour justice. this is one of my first truly brown polishes. i admit the colour has never had any appeal...i could wrap my mind around almost every colour in the rainbow except brown. but colours like cuppa joe and the upcoming nubar chocolate truffle collection (6 brown polishes) that brown is finally growing on me.

cuppa joe is a lovely multi-tonal brown shimmer. i don't know that it really reminds me of coffee per se...but it's a beautiful colour. a nice warm brown that has a strong shimmer, mellow and inviting!

day seventeen, creative nail design (cnd) nfs

okay. today we are continuing with new brands and venturing into 'vamp(y)' territory! creative nail design is an interesting brand to talk about. they recently (in the last 12 months) discontinued all their old colours and started again. or totally redid their 'core' collection. it was weird and to be honest ('tbh') i don't really remember that much about it. i bought this colour 'nfs' from a UK beauty etailer (hqhair.com) and i thought it was going ot be a really cool navy/royal blue since that was what the colour swatch showed on the website. but when i got it i was disappointed because it was a seriously vampy colour. vamp means that a colour is very dark and almost black in most lighting. some people LOVE vampy colours. i try to like them but in the end i always get annoyed that the colour nail polish looks black 99% of the time when it actually isn't.

i took a lot of pictures with the flash so you could actually see the blue.