Are you there, blog? It's me, Ryan.

Hey, strangers.  How've you been?  Wish I could explain my absence by telling you that I've been off fighting evil villains and saving unicorns, but that would be a huge whopper of a fib and my daddy taught me better than that.  Nope, I've just been busy doing regular life.  Still super loving nail polish and buying way more than is prudent.  Still sharing it with the interwebs, just over on Instagram, where it takes much less effort to do so.  I've decided to come back, though, as I have a rather ambitious project in mind that wouldn't work too well on IG.  Are you ready for this?  Hell, am I ready for this?? 

Well, here it is: I'm going to swatch my entire 2 helmer collection.  By brand.  Oh, man, I'm sweating just thinking about doing this.  But I can do it; yes, I can do it.  I will do it, dammit!  I have entirely too many untried polishes in my stash and that needs to change.  How can I justify buying anything new when I don't even really know what I already have?  I did start a spreadsheet in an attempt to organize my pretties, and it does have them all listed, but I stopped adding color pretty quickly.  You'd think it'd be easy; pick up a bottle and it's blue!  But it's also green and purple and maybe it's a shimmer or a glass fleck or a foil or a duochrome (or is it multichrome?) and hey it's got glitter!  Made my head swim.  So I decided it would be better to just have pictures.  I thought about using pictures from my favorite bloggers, but I want to know and remember what the polishes look like on me and there's only one way to do that: slap a coat or 3 on and photograph that shit.  

So.  First drawer of helmer 1 contains my non-US indies.  I'll do one brand per post and I'll start with aEngland.  Look for that coming up soon.  

Later, dudes!

PS. Holy crap, WTF, Broncos?

Hellooooo!!

I'm supposed to be taking a break from blogging until I can lose 10 pounds.  Well, it's been about 5 months, and that 10 pounds hasn't gone anywhere.  If anything, it's somehow managed to procreate.  By "somehow", of course, I mean "aided by my good friends, Burrito and Pasta".  It would seem that going to the gym really doesn't make much of a difference if you continue to eat foods not found in nature.  Imagine that.

In the absence of blogging, I have been Instagramming my little head off.  I like the format of Instagram because you can share a quick picture or 2 without really having to come up with anything witty or interesting to say, and you don't have to worry about editing your photos.  You certainly can if you want to, but it's definitely okay if you don't.  This is perfect for lazy sonsabitches like meself.  Plus, I like making up fun hashtags.  I will continue to use Instagram, but I also want to start blogging again.  I'll still just be using my trusty iPhone for picture taking, so no improvements there, but I will try and cut down on the amount of pictures per post.  I went back through and read some of my older posts, and boy howdy are there a lot of unnecessary shots!  I'll get a handle on that for you.  You're welcome.  

Hope to see you soon!

MIA

Yo yo yo, polish-loving friends. I just wanted to pop in to tell you why I've been MIA for so long. A friend is trying to help me shed some pounds and one of the things she's having me do is give up something I enjoy until I lose a certain amount of weight.  I chose blogging-- both writing my own and reading others.  I'm not there yet, but I hope to be soon!

However, we didn't say anything about Instagram, so come find me! My username is FingerFlair.

Cheers!

Spammage

No rhyme or reason, just some swatches.

Sinful Colors Forget Now

With ridiculous pen

Dotticure or Eyeballicure?

Boo! Seche Vite is killing me lately.

Enchanted Polish Sour Patch Kid

L'Oreal Brit Invasion + Girly Bits Shift Happens

L'Oreal Brit Invasion

Banana

Max Factor Fantasy Fire layering

Through an instagram filter

Black + Sally Hansen Glass Slipper.  And a fried egg sammich.

Pretending to be a south paw

Sally Hansen Freeze.  Pretend I cropped this.

This looks like a spider

If you've made it this far, HI!  Today is my birthday.  I'm tres-dos (totally a real number) years old, if I can even believe it. Mentally, it's more like 15.  When I was a tot, I always thought adults were so together, and that they were in control of everything.  I don't know about you guys, but I have come to the realization that that couldn't be more FALSE.  Half the time I don't know which way is up, and the other half is spent scratching my head squinting at things.  And yes, I know those are basically the same things just worded differently.  I'm glad to be 32, though.  It's an improvement over 31, which is a total non-age.  All the 'one' ages are, with the exception of 21.  

My brother got me an original Lite Brite.  It's so cool. The sound and feel of the punch of those colored plastic pins through construction paper takes me back!  Nostalgia!

*Grumble Grumble*

I am in a real pisser of a mood right now.  Pretty sure it's on account of my rage.  Grrrrr, I say.  Grrrrrrr!!

a-England The Knight, 2 coats Enchanted Polish Cranberry Cosmos, 1 coat Cover Band Sticks 'n Stones, 1 coat a-England The Shield.  Direct sunlight, sitting in the Juke.

Same mani shit as above, except in my room at home.  Natural light.

Outside in the sun

These were my nails last weekend.  Fun, right?  Well, bah humbug!  Not cheering me up.  I've lost the funk.  Old Gregg keeps it in a box in his cave.  He probably takes it out and drinks Bailey's with it.

Enchanted Polish should be called Most-Pigmented-Best-Formula Polish, but I can see how that might be awkward on a label.  You can purchase Enchanted Polish at llarowe, but this shade is no longer available.  Might be released again in the future, though, so go like them on FB to keep updated on the Enchanted goings-on.  I'm writing this from work (naughty) where FB is blocked, so no link for you.

Cover Band Sticks 'n Stones is awesome.  I love it way more than I thought I would.  I want to put it over everything.  I'm currently wearing Annalicious and  Let Me Fly (Cult Nails) and I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking and stoning my digits when I get home.  You should buy this.  Now.  It's in stock  at Ninja Polish.


I'm still grumpy.

I won a frickin' giveaway!!

I am just about excited as all hell because I won a frickin' giveaway!!*  No, but really.  I totally did win.  This, after I was telling my friend just yesterday that I never win any of the giveaways I enter.  Free shit rocks, especially when it's cool free shit.  Those polishes in the new Ninja Polish Facets Collection look interesting and I can't wait to try them out.  Thanks so much, Rhonni!

*It's kinda like when the name of the movie is mentioned in the movie, huh?

Nail Pattern Boldness: Le Big Party

Well, hello there, le You!  It's le me!  Today I have for you a couple of swatches of le AWESOME Le Big Party from Nail Pattern Boldness.  First saw this fun mix of matte glitter on Lavish Layerings (NOT the only blog I follow, swear) and stalked NPB until she re-stocked.  As you know, I bought 6 glitters at that time, and this is the 3rd of those that I've tried.  It is by far my favorite, both in formula and in look.  The glitter in Le Big Party is densely packed, yet it somehow manages to escape the usual thick and goopy consistency of other glitter polishes.  You could easily get full opacity in 2 coats, maybe even 1 if you have bitty nails.  I prefer it layered, though, which is what I've done below!

                          

                                  Seche Vite shrinkage, you may go to hell.

Add caption

This is 1 coat of the Knight, 3 coats of Girly Bits Cu Blue, 1 coat of the Shield, 1 coat of Le Big Party, 1 coat of Seche Vite.  I wore Cu Blue on its own for a couple of days, but couldn't get it to photograph even close to how it looks in person. So I slapped some glitter on to show you instead.  Now, these are not the best swatches, even for me, but I wanted to show them anyway. The plan was to apply Gelous before posting to the blog, but I ended up picking the mani off during a Friday evening showing of "The Bourne Legacy".  <spoiler alert>Movie SUCKED.  Not at all worthy of the Bourne franchise.  There wasn't nearly enough ass kicking, and the story line was a bit redundant.  And really, what good is a Bourne movie without Jason Bourne?</spoiler alert> These photos are the only ones I have before picking off the polish.  Side note, don't ever pick off your polish.  It's murder on the nails.  Check out the Lavish Layerings link above for a better representation.  I plan on swatching this again at a later date and will use either Gelous or Glitter Food (which I haven't bought yet, but intend to) so it doesn't look so gritty.  Even gritty, it still rocked my socks.  

What the hell kind of nail polish blog refers you to another blog for better pictures of the polish its featuring?