Julep Kelly in the garden

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Hi again, lovelies. I had an interview on Monday, so I wanted a subtle, classy manicure. I wore Julep Kelly. It is a very pretty pale pink polish. Application was a bit difficult. It seemed to thicken up as I was applying, so one nail would turn out fine, but by the time I got to the next nail, the polish was a bit gloppy. I would close and gently mix the polish to fix the texture problem, but as you can see, I must not have mixed as gently as I thought because this resulted in a very bubbly manicure. The bubbling was not really noticeable until two days into the manicure when I did some work in the vegetable garden. Then the bubbling looked like brown dots, yuck. To get a fairly even finish, I had to paint three layers.

After four days, the manicure was really beat up. Planting and weeding take a toll on my manicures even when I wear gardening gloves. Even though it is hard on my nails, I love spending this time of year outside playing in the dirt.

My little girl and I had so much fun and she did a great job cleaning up the weeds from the walkway between my garden beds and getting rid of slugs. I was called in for a second interview on Thursday and my peonies are blooming too, so overall it was a beautiful week. Looking at this picture, I can almost smell the flowers! I'll go out and gather a small bouquet today.

Before I go, any followers other than GFC followers, if you are interested in a giveaway that I'll post about this weekend, let me know that you follow the blog and how you follow. This is your last chance to let me know.

Does anyone else have Julep Kelly? What do you think of it? Any tips for great polish application?

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!
~Alexis

Revlon Colorstay Buttercup, Fairies, and Vegetables

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Here is my first, very beat up manicure. On my nails, is Revlon Colorstay nail enamel in Buttercup. It is a lovely creamy yellow. It garnered quite a few compliments. As I mentioned in my previous post, the application was streaky, but smoothed nicely with a topcoat. I am not crazy about the brush either. It is very rounded and the bristles are somewhat uneven, making it difficult to get the color on my entire nail without straying onto the cuticles.

As far as living up to the name "Colorstay," I am a little disappointed. At the end of one day, I had a small chip on my right thumb and middle finger. By the second day, the right index finger had a tiny chip. On the positive side, the chips did not get much bigger until about four days into the manicure.

The photo above is a little blurry (sorry), but it shows some crazing of the polish near the top, left side of my thumb that appeared about three days into the manicure. On such a pale color, this cracking was pretty noticeable.

This was not the most long-lasting manicure, however I did put a lot of wear and tear on my hands this week. I had a very messy cooking day that required tons of hand washing. I also started about a quarter of the seeds for the vegetable garden and two terrarium plantings with my daughter. This will still be a go-to yellow polish for me, because when fresh, it is lovely and it did not stain my nails like other yellow polishes I used in the past.

This is one of the only seedlings that has sprouted so far. This cute little plant will become some delicious kale. We planted jalapeno peppers, orange bell peppers, stevia, cauliflower, swiss chard, and a couple of flowering plants like hollyhocks, lavender, and calendula. I am taking a risk with some of these plants; this will be my third year with a vegetable garden and the past two years my peppers, stevia, and cauliflower have failed to produce. If anyone has some tips for growing these, I welcome the help.

As an early Easter present, we gave our daughter a fairy terrarium. She is four years old, so plants under her care would not survive if they needed water on a regular basis. The terrarium seems perfect because it only needs water about once a month. I was also happy that the seeds germinated so quickly. Seeing such rapid growth really keeps her engaged in the process. She loves the rainbow path the little plastic fairy; I call it a fairy decoy, to attract more fairies to her little garden.

That is all for this week's manicure. Next week, I will be using the Glitter Gradient French Mani Tutorial from The Hungry Asian with festive green sparkles. I've never done a glitter gradient manicure and am really excited to see how it turns out.