Julep Sophie

Tonight have Julep Sophie for you, another polish from Julep's collaboration with Trina Turk for the September Maven boxes. Sophie is a "chic truffle mushroom creme" and is your standard griege or taupe color. It's another classic that you can't really go wrong with, for sure.

I think a year ago I probably would have turned up my nose at Sophie because it's so neutral, so I'm glad I've moved past that now. This is a great neutral! I intentionally wore this with a fall inspired outfit and I  loved how this polish pulled it all together-- I felt very chic and pulled together. It sounds silly, but I'm being serious! Sophie is another of Julep's wonderful cremes-- it is extremely well pigmented and has a great formula. Goes on smoothly, no application problems and it dries smoothly. For my pictures I used three coats (could probably have gotten away with two) and no top coat.

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I really like this color! Perfect for fall and applies flawlessly. I think this would be flattering on a wide range of skin tones and is a great staple for your polish wardrobe.

Anniversary nails: OPI German-icure by OPI

Originally I intended to post this last Friday (Sept 21st), but my family emergency meant that that didn't happen. Ah well! I decided to just leave my original text so please forgive the fact that I wrote this over a week ago.

So, instead of my regular Football Friday post, tonight is a special nail post! My five year anniversary is tomorrow, September 22 and we're celebrating by going out to dinner tonight at Canlis-- a very fancy and expensive restaurant in Seattle. Conveniently, this is also UW's bye week, meaning they don't play this week, so there's no football game to get ready for.

I wanted to go for a fall flavored manicure, given the time of year. So I got OPI German-icure by OPI, which is a gorgeous blacked red-brown shimmer from this fall's OPI German Collection. German-icure went on very smoothly but was a little sheer in the first coat. However, two coats was enough to get opaque coverage. This polish shifts a bit depending on the light-- sometimes it looks more brown and in others it definitely looks more red. The shimmer is magnificent. I have used two coats here and no top coat.

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Us in all of our anniversary finery!

And with my jewelry!

German-icure is such an awesome fall polish-- I love it! This is a stunning polish and looks amazing in person. Run out and grab it!

Julep Otte

Tonight I have another polish from the Julep + Trina Turk collaboration, Julep Otte. Otte is described as a "rich camel neutral creme" and camel is such a classic color for fall. This isn't an original color by any means-- camel hair coats are a staple of fall lines, but it's just that-- a classic staple that you can always wear from year to year. Hard to go wrong with that!

Otte was supremely easy to use. It applied like butter-- very well pigmented and has a formula that went on easily and smoothly with no issues at all. I feel like in the past I would have been very hesitant to wear a color like this because camel has strong yellow undertones, which I think can make the color look a little gross (at least on the nails). But Otte doesn't seem to pull too yellow at all, though I think it's slightly more yellow than it photographed here. I used two coats and no top coat in my photos below.

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Gorgeous color! I think the 'rich' descriptor is definitely apt-- I want to go out and buy a camel hair coat asap. I could definitely see this becoming a staple in my polish wardrobe.

Football Fri-, er, Wednesday: Stanford Black Out Edition

This week's game is on Thursday, which is always kind of weird-- but it means national exposure and an extended weekend for me, so there ya go! This week we take on Stanford, the Cardinal, currently #8 in the country. The theme of this weeks game is "Blackout of the Century". It's been the thing the last couple of years to add a black uniform (or some alternative color-- grey is big right now) into the rotation for a lot of schools and UW is no different in that regard. We first introduced the black uniforms back in 2010 for our first Thursday game. Since this is another Thursday game, UW is encouraging fans to wear black.

In keeping with the blackout theme, I decided to go for a slightly darker look on my nails. I got a great glitter from Nostalgic Lacquer's Saturday Detention Collection - The Criminal. It's a mix of purple, blue, white and black glitter and I thought it would be perfect for this game! But I also wanted to include some gold, because that is one of our school colors. So I grabbed my bottle of Julep Oscar.

First I put on one layer of American Apparel Imperial Purple, which is a extremely dark purple (it almost looks black in some lights). Then I dabbed on a coat of Julep Oscar to give myself some gold. Then I layered two coats of The Criminal on top of that.

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Ok, so this is kind of a mess. But I also kind of love it. I think it looks like galaxy nails. It sparkles like crazy under the lights, which is kind of what I'm going for. So I think it'll look awesome with my black jersey up in the stands while I cheer on the Huskies. On the other hand, it's going to be a real bitch to take off on Friday when I want to do some swatching!

Go Dawgs! Beat the Cardinal! 

Julep Eileen

Ok, I will freely admit that I spent the entire time that I wore this polish I went around singing 'Come On, Eileen'-- how could I not?!

Julep Eileen is one of the polishes from my September Julep Maven Box. Usually I get the American Beauty box (Eileen was one of the original polishes from that box) but Julep offered the entire September box for purchase, and because I'm a sucker for gorgeous cremes I decided to get the whole box. It's ten polishes and two mascaras, so I have a lot of reviews to write! I'm kind of doing it randomly and first up is Eileen, which Julep describes as an "antique bright white creme". I'm assuming the antique descriptor comes from the fact that while Eileen is indeed bright, it's not a stark white. There's just the tiniest hint of pink that keeps this from being straight up white.

The color of this polish is lovely, but I won't lie-- the formula is kind of a mess. Usually, I love Julep's creme polishes (and I do love this one too), but it leaves something to be desired in terms of application. Eileen was thick and slightly goopy-- and definitely streaky. I discovered that the best way I could apply this would be to apply a thick layer with as few brush strokes as possible and then wait for it to dry in between coats. I used three coats here, though you might have be able to get away with two if you are really careful.

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It's very pretty and I like that it's bright but not pure stark white. Kind of an interesting choice for a fall polish, but I like the twist on white after Labor Day.