Cleaning out my stash

I am a hoarder. I freely admit it. I love nail polish, and tend to keep bottles for years...even if I never wear them more than the one quick swatch the day I buy them. It's kind-of a sickness...but I have a hard time passing something shiny in a store.

A few weekends ago, I decided my current polish storage just wasn't working for me anymore. I had all my bottles in a hanging jewelry organizer, which kinda worked. (If you have the space to hang it where you can get to it, then it rocks. It'd be great on the back of a bathroom or bedroom door.) But I had to keep mine in a closet that was messy and overcrowded. Not at all ideal. So I dragged it out and dumped everything into a  vintage train case that I have also been hoarding keeping in my closet, just waiting for a purpose. (There will be closet pics sometime soon.)

That is when I found my stash of Urban Decay mini polishes! They were pretty badly separated, though not as bad as you'd expect from a polish that had been sitting for a few years. A good shake was all it took to get them into usable shape. I chose a shade called "Gunmetal". It's a nice, shimmery shade of espresso. I don't know if I'd equate it with gunmetal, but it does have that oily/glossy/shimmery quality that gunmetal has.

Three coats of Gunmetal by Urban Decay in direct sunlight.

And then, in my own version of "the evolving nail" I mattified it. Taking away the gloss took all of the metal out of it. It looked like a coffee bean. Not that I don't like it...but it's not what I was hoping for.

Gunmetal with Sephora by OPI matte top coat.

It's not bad...it's just meh.

I lived with this for a good two days. I like the way this stuff wears. I'm hard on my nails, and I made it nearly a full week before it started to chip. But the matte was boring. I am not good with solid color nails. So I grabbed my favorite (and probably only) duochrome: Just Spotted the Lizard by OPI. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, so on my right hand I taped off diagonal stripes.

and I only took a picture of one nail done. Which sucks because the stripes looked really cool on all the nails.

 And on my left (since I'm a righty) I did clear gloss and lizard spots. There is some debate on which hand looked better, but like my children, I love them both equally. The stripes really allowed the shiftyness of JStL to shine through. But the dots looked like different colors all together. I dunno, I'm torn. If I were to do it all again, I think I'd do the stripes on both hands. It looked like a ribbon laying against my nails. 

hooray for dotting tools!