Nail Polish for Ants

I've never been consistently into nail polish. Sure, I had phases where I wanted to decorate my nails in cute prints and rhinestones, even had pretty long fake acrylic nails (at-home kit) that I did myself. But it always happens for a short moment, and then I start losing the interest to paint my nails and keep them looking prim and professional. But I had wanted the NYC Ballet mini collection by OPI for so dang long and I only recently gave in and acquired it.

My Pointe Exactly
A sheer grey with a tad bit of purple/blue tone to it. While I do love this shade, and have many a time painted a similar hue on my nails, it's a tad too deep to suit with my skintone. An in-between colour, not quite white enough and not quite earl grey enough either, but a single coat would be nice.

Care to Danse?
A pale, lilac pink. Again, it is sheer. Love this shade, it just brightens your nails a bit and adds that "healthy pink" to it too.

Don't Touch My Tutu
A sheer, clean white with maybe a hint of beige. My favourite shade of the lot, I've tried many a time to pull off white nail polish, why didn't I ever try going sheer? Possibly the hardest to apply, along with Care to Danse?, just because it's hard to get it even for someone that is not so super great at painting their nails.

Pirouette My Whistle
Fine silver glitter pieces in a clear base, with larger silver glitter pieces. Adds a really nice sparkle to your nails, I enjoy putting this on top of Don't Touch My Tutu, for that cute looking manicure, but I can imagine this being nice with My Pointe Exactly too.

Two Coats

Three Coats

Well, I think I may have found my everyday nail polishes to reach for. I love that they're all sheer, they add a tiniest bit of gloss to your nails and just look nice and well-made-up.These polishes are really easy to apply too, and I just love the size of the bottles - good for when you're travelling; and, because they are sheer, I think that's what helps them to apply so easily and dry relatively quick too. I know that the pictures look a bit splotchy, but somehow once it dries fully, it evens out a bit and settles, so that makes it great for amateurs like me too. 

I don't own a whole heap of OPI nail polishes, so I'm not sure if this is true for their entire range, but these dried on the nails pretty quickly, and lasted for at least two days without chipping, which is like a record for me! And, god, if I didn't love the ballet inspired names too, being a dancer myself and all. These shades all seem to be performance appropriate to (maybe not quite so much the grey), but really, it just really suits my style perfectly. Very much a professional, simple look.

Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat: Wool Lite

I stopped into my local Priceline recently just to have a bit of a browse and see if there were any nice deals I could take advantage of, and this nail polish just happened to catch my eye. I'm usually a sucker for polishes what with all the lovely colours, but I never really get into consistently painting my nails so I usually force myself to resist adding another polish that might get a couple uses out of it before being rested to the collection. But this Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat nail polish was just too adorable to resist.

I have a tendency, when I do paint my nails, to generally have them some sort of blue shade, but when considering the blue polish in this textured nail polish, I thought it would look better (and safer) to try out the light pink in Wool Lite. But I really should have gone with my gut feeling and resisted this nail polish. I only have a few Sally Hansen nail polishes, and, admittedly, I love their Diamond Strength line. But this polish was so very disappointing. Firstly, and probably unrealistically, I was expecting cute, fluffy looking nails. Almost like the velvet nails by Ciate, but not quite. More sheen and a bit rougher, and obviously not quite as much texture to the eye and to the touch. But despite realising that I wasn't going to get that effect out of just a polish (rather than a polish and texture added on top), I still hoped that it would give at least the look of fuzzy nails, as the name of the product implies. However, I got another let down instead. I'm not sure whether it was just the shade I chose or what, but this took a ridiculous amount of coats to even get my nails half covered in the tiny, confetti-like pieces.

In the pictures above, my thumbnail has (I kid you not) about 7 coats on it, and the rest of my nails have about 4-5 coats. Very disappointing to say the least. But I looked up what other people thought of this polish and swatches of different shades, and while, those that had the same shade as I fared much better, I noticed that the light blue shade (Wool Knot) looked pretty damn good. It seemed to be far more opaque than the other shades too, so perhaps, if I'm really determined, I would give that shade a try. Maybe if I tried a coloured base coat too, that would help bring this polish to life rather than it looking like I painted my nails then went crazy scratching at them. 

Overall, I do absolutely love the trend and the look of textured nails, but this polish simply did not cut it. I have tried caviar nails before (though it was a pretty cheap brand and did not last AT ALL) and loved that effect. So we'll see if next up will be the velvet nails I'm sorta maybe kinda coveting.