Super Bowl Sunday Mani!

Hey all! This weekend is the Super Bowl! Generally I am only mildly interested in the Super Bowl, as college football is my true love, but I do enjoy watching and rooting for my hometown team-- the Seattle Seahawks! And now they're headed to the Super Bowl for the second time in the franchise's history! Naturally, I had to have a manicure to celebrate. I've been planning this mani since before the NFC Championship Game! There's a ton of Seahawks spirit in the city right now and it's awesome to see so many people excited about supporting our team.

To put together my Seahawks mani I wanted to choose the right polishes. I found the perfect polish online-- from JENsations, a local Seattle polish maker. It's a glitter polish called Seattle Seahawks and inspired by the team's colors. It features blue and neon green hex glitter, in addition to white bar and diamond glitter. I love the way this looks in the bottle and think it perfectly captures the Seahawks. Given that the team often uses grey as an accent color, I decided to layer this glitter over the now defunct Lex Cosmetics Seattle Sunshine-- it seemed like it was meant to be. Then I added an accent nail of Julep (being a Seattle based company) Lola, a dark navy blue satin. I found some nail tattoos online and ordered those as well, so I put one of those on my accent nail. Initially I was hoping to leave the whole nail without top coat to emulate the helmets (matte blue with a shiny logo) but when applying the tattoo there was some residue that also transferred so I ended up putting a top coat on anyway. The tattoo is a little lost on the nail given the dark base color and the dark colors of the tattoo itself (it's recommended you put it over a white or light colored polish) but I still like the way it looks.

It's not the best manicure I've ever done, especially given my limited time, but I enjoy having spirited nails and was glad I could put together something for my team!

Go Seahawks!! 

Lex Cosmetics Seashell

The last Lex Cosmetics polish I have for you is Seashell. The color story for Seashell: "Created by Sarah, this color mimics the inside of a seashell, an iridescent/oil spill that not only captures the beauty of the seashell, but also the beauty of nature in general. It shows nature and it's beauty."

I just have to say, I don't see "seashell" in this color. Am I just confused? When I think of the inside of a seashell I think of pink. What this color does remind me of, though, is that black sand you sometimes find on the beach. In any case, while I may disagree with this particular descriptions, Seashell is an awesome polish. The color confuses me a little-- it sort of shifts between black, brown, and charcoal grey with scattered holographic particles.

Seashell was a little on the sheerer side, but three good coats made it opaque. I do love the 'oil slick' nature of this polish. It's a strange beast, (in terms of color), but really cool and unique.

Artificial light with flash:

Unfortunately, only my flash pictures really capture the scattered holo in this polish.

Artificial light:

Natural light - shade:

I wish the sun had been out so I could have gotten some sparkly pictures, but alas, no luck.

Lex Cosmetics Seattle Sunshine

Tonight I have another polish from Lex Cosmetics for you! Since I bought these with a Groupon I had, there was no way I could resist a polish named after my hometown, especially as one as on-the-nose as Seattle Sunshine.

The color story for Seattle Sunshine is this: "Seattle Sunshine was created by Seattle local Jamila. The light grey is a perfect match to the overcast sky for which the Emerald City is reknown." Seattle Sunshine is a nice medium grey with hints of blue-- a pretty accurate representation of most days in Seattle during the winter. This polish had great pigmentation, and was almost opaque in one coat (I used two coats in the pictures below). This isn't a groundbreaking color by any means, but it is a nice medium grey polish.


Artificial light with flash:

Artificial light:

Natural light - shade:

I would just like to point out that on the day that I swatched this, Seattle was having a nice day!  (Though not nice enough for me to get photos in the sun, unfortunately.) 

We're not clouds and grey and rain all the time!

Lex Cosmetics First Grade

I have a lot of polishes that have been swatched and photographed and just waiting to be posted. I decided to go with First Grade tonight because I had a difficult day at work and I kind of wish that I was back in first grade, when you didn't have any worries in the world.

First things first: Lex Cosmetics is a new brand to me, but is a company created by a woman named Lex (of course) who started it when she decided to create her own perfect seafoam green polish. Now people can submit color stories for polishes and these ideas are voted on and then the winning polishes are sold on the site. A portion of the price also donated to the creator's charity of choice, which is pretty awesome.

Is is possible love something while kind of hating it? You'll see what I mean in a minute. First Grade was created by Liz and she says this about her polish: "In the first grade, Liz from Boston's mom let her redecorate her room. She didn't want pink or purple because EVERY first grade girl had a pink or purple room, so she decided on Peach. This color represents the desire to be just a little bit different and to put your own twist on things any chance you get. First Grade is neutral enough for day to day, but just different enough from the pale pink that nine out of ten of your friends are wearing."

Here's the thing-- I love love love the color of First Grade but I LOATHE the finish. First Grade is lovely peach color that's not too pink with silver shimmer but it has a frosty finish. No no no! I want to love this color so much but the frost finish is killing me. In my pictures below I have used three coats of First Grade and no top coat. Thankfully, despite hating the finish, the polish applied really well and relatively streak free.

Artificial light with flash:

Artificial light:

Natural light - shade:

So despite hating the finish of First Grade, but I still find myself loving this polish. It's neutral and pretty and flattering and surprising, not as aging I anticipated.

Lex Cosmetics polishes retail for $10 at lexcosmetics.com.