Football Friday: Husky Helmet Nail Art!

And... we've reached the first Football Friday of the year!! Action actually kicked off on Thursday, but my teams are playing tomorrow! UW meets the San Diego State Aztecs in our new home for the season, Century Link Field (home of our NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks). It's going to be a change, but we'll make it work! I'm definitely excited about football season, though I am sad that summer is ending.

To start the season off, I was actually inspired to try some nail art. While I was looking through all my purple and gold polishes, I was struck by the UW helmets, and decided to try to copy them on my nails!

It's hard to find a good picture, but the UW helmets are a sparkly yellow gold with a purple logo W on the sides, while a large white stripe with purple on either side runs down the center. It's not incredibly intricate, but still a challenge given my nascent nail art skills. Painting straight lines is hard!

Polishes I used: Ozotic 604 and Sally Hansen Purple Pulse, along with my Stripe Rite White and Gold striping polishes. I used three coats of 604, which is a sparkly holographic gold polish (though not quite as yellow as the actual gold of the helmets) and Purple Pulse is a metallic purple with red and blue shimmer.

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To switch things up a little, I decided to go with a slightly different design on my thumbs. I used three coats of Purple Pulse (which was slightly sheer and definitely three coats to become opaque) and used my gold striping polish to free hand W's. They... are not stellar:

That's actually my right thumb, because I kind of messed up the one on my left hand (usually the hand I photograph). It's not terrible, but it could be better.  I think it actually looks better in person than in the photograph, but I guess I just need to work on both!

And... inspired by Marta of ChitChat Nails, I decided to try using a prop! We have this little Husky Helmet that dangles from the rearview mirror of our car-- it's supposed to hold an air freshener, but we don't use it for that purpose-- I figured it would make the perfect prop for my pictures!

 
I hope you've enjoyed my foray into some football inspired nail art! I hope to be able to do some more as the season goes on, but still given there will be more time constraints. I'm definitely looking forward to trying a bunch of new polishes and hopefully getting more creative!

Go Dawgs!! Beat the Aztecs!

Julep Stefani

And here's my last polish from my August Maven box-- Julep Stefani. This was a polish that came with the box and not an add-on. Julep describes Stefani as a "gold-flecked grey metallic." This to me was probably the most interesting polish out of the five I got. It's a gunmetal grey with flecks of gold scattered throughout the polish. The gold flecks are pretty subtle, but that's the point. You can see them, but they do not dominant the polish. In some lights this seems to take on a slightly olive green hue, but is definitely grey.

Stefani was very nicely pigmented and almost covers in one coat, but there's definitely some sheerness there. In my pictures I used 2 coats and no top coat. You still have to careful about applying this-- I found it exceedingly easy to get too much polish on my brush and consequently end up with too much on my nails. But this did dry quickly and I found it probably the easiest to use of all these metallic polishes.

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Sorry for the flash of yellow in some of these pics-- that was my t-shirt! 

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I'm not thrilled with these pictures, but I hope they give you a good idea of what Stefani looks like! The artificial light pictures are best if you want to see the gold flecks. 

Apparently there was another Julep polish named Stefani, but it's more of an olive green color. In any case, it's not available on Julep's website anymore so I would assume it's been discontinued in favor of this new one.  Additionally, this looks like SpaRitual Sacred Ground, though I don't have the polish to compare.

Julep Melanie

And another add-on! Tonight I have Julep Melanie to show you-- this polish was one of the ones I was immediately interested in when Julep released the previews of this months boxes. Julep describes Melanie as a "pastel indigo metallic chrome." I want call this cornflower blue, though maybe it's too pale for that. This also sort of a demin feel to it, in spite of the shine.

Melanie is, of course, just like the others in terms of formula and you need to be careful when applying it. But I found Melanie to be pretty easy to work with, compared to some of the others. Here I used three thin coats and they went on nicely and dried quickly. It's well pigmented and I probably could have gotten away with two coats, but I like having three to really let the color shine.
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I love this color-- it's absolutely gorgeous and does not disappoint. This was one of my favorites!

Julep Piper

Tonight is another add-on to my August Maven box -- Julep Piper! Piper is described as a "mint-teal metallic chrome" and that's a decent description. I don't really get the mint part-- to me this is a light teal, but that what the 'mint' descriptor is for. My photos definitely bring out the more teal aspect of Piper. This color makes me think of a mermaid's tail-- it has a very aquatic feeling it, especially in direct light.

Piper is just like Dakota and Felicity in terms of formula and I used three thin coats here to build up the color. The first coat was pretty sheer, but actually two coats was almost good enough. Similarly to the other metallic polishes you need to be careful about how much polish you get on your brush and not to take too many strokes when applying it. Like the others, Piper dried quickly. As I look at my pictures I actually think my technique for applying these is improving! I didn't wear a top coat in these pictures and that might help reduce the appearance of brushstrokes. They still show some flaws (a few bumps here and there) but this is loads better than the first time I applied this polish.

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Personally, Piper was probably my least favorite of all the polishes I got last month. Though it looks pretty good in the photos, I was a little disappointed in the color payoff-- it seems more washed out in person compared to the bottle and I didn't love it on my nails when I wore it was a full manicure. To me, Piper is gorgeous in the bottle but just kind of ok when I actually wear it and I have the  feeling that this probably won't be a polish I return to frequently, though I'm not necessarily ready to give up on it yet.