How did I get here?

Hang on, this gets long.

So you might be asking yourself, but most likely not, how did Betty end up on blogger with, of all things, a nail blog.  Well, I am here to tell you,

I was a nail biter all my life until one fateful day when I was 19 and pregnant with my son.  I was working at an international photocopying company that rhymes with blinkos, I was using a drill press to bore holes through stacks of business card sized pieces of cardstock.  This, destined to be misadventure, required removing some of the safety equipment (done by one of the managers because the customer is always right and gets what they want regardless of the risk of bodily injury to the peons) from the drill press, namely the guard that keeps you from getting your fingers too close to the metal plate that presses the stack of paper down while drilling.  Anyone care to guess what happened next?  I will spare you the nasty gory details but the tip of my left index finger now has a jagged little scar about half in inch long from the stitches.  It also broke the tip of my finger bone off, this required wearing a splint on that finger for the better part of a month and a half.  When I was finally able to take the splint off, lo! I had a nail that wasn't chewed down to a nubbin'.  I loved the way my little non-chewed nail looked (after some shaping with a nail file) and was determined to make the other ones conform to this new state of being.

I didn't really start polishing my nails on any sort of regular basis until after I met my current husband.  I started with the drugstore polishes, Maybelline, Revlon etc.  I was less than impressed with my manicures, they started chipping within hours of being completed.  I will admit, I never used base or topcoat at the time, didn't think they were necessary, didn't want to spend the money on them.  Back then I knew about brands like O.P.I. I just thought the only way you could get them was by paying to get a manicure at a salon that used them, and if I wasn't going to pay for base and topcoat, care to guess whether I was going to pay for a professional manicure?  At some point I discovered Sally's and their selection of Orly and Fingerpaints, which were much better wearing and when I ran into the problem of the polish peeling off my nail in an entire sheet they turned me onto the need for base coat at least and topcoat for "the shiny".  I spent a few years just buying colors I liked, and doing one color manicures.  I would go through periods of not wearing any nail polish, theses were generally the periods where I ended up with one or two long nails and the rest were in various stages of growing back from being broken.  I always knew that if I wanted my nails to all grow out, that keeping them polished was the best way to do that.  The problem was, I'm an impatient person when it comes to not being able to use my hands because my nails are drying.  At the time I was using Orly Gripper as a base, because that's what they recommended to keep the polish from peeling of in one sheet, my selected polish, and then Orly Glosser as a topcoat for the shiny.  I would find myself resisting the need to polish my nails because I literally had to set aside 4 hours where I didn't need to use my hands lest I mess up my polish.  It often got messed up anyway.  I just didn't want to invest the time, like I said, impatient.

OK, that was a little long, sorry.  Let me get to how I truly started my addiction to nail polish.

I had tried doing french manicures in the past, they never worked out for me, even using those ridiculous half moon guides they sell, it always looked like crap and I would end up removing it before I was even done.  I decided I was going to look up on YouTube how to do a french mani.  At that point it was all over, I kept clicking through to more and more nail art videos and realized that it really wasn't that hard and I could do it. 

Then I discovered swatching, oooh, now I can see what all the colors actually look like on a person (taking into account variances in cameras, lighting and computer screens etc.)  I was lost, there was no bringing me back, I needed to have the pretties, and the shiny's, and especially the squishy's, I would have them all.  I also discovered the striper's and the rhinestones and the striping tape and the glitter (still not a huge fan of the loose glitter) and and and, there's just so much!! and it's so much fun!! 

I have literally invested days of my life over the last couple of months watching nail art tutorial after nail art tutorial and oohing and ahhing over swatches.  This of course was in between running all over town to find my local beauty stores that I didn't even knew existed until after watching some of these videos (Ulta comes to mind).  While watching these videos the wonder that is Seche Vite was brought to my attention.  Seche Vite is now my very best friend in the whole wide world, it has taken my one color manicure time from 4 hours until the topcoat was dry enough that it wouldn't dent when looked at funny, to about 20 minutes.  This makes doing my nails fun again instead of a chore.  Of course doing nail art makes the manicure longer, but it's nail art, that's fun in and of itself.  Now I can put Seche Vite on the design I've worked hard on and know that it will be mostly dry within 5 minutes, dent-proof in no more than 30.  To me, that's miraculous.

My husband has been very patient with me and all my running and the scores of polish bottles and nail supplies that have now taken over our kitchen table, really need to order a Helmer one of these days.  He also likes seeing me doing my nails again, it let's him know that I'm not all tomboy, just 98% and the other 2% is all about the NAILS!!

As a reward for reading through my long ass rambly post, I have a swatch for you.  This is my first swatch, so please forgive any blurriness or other faux pas's (is that even a word "pas's"?).

I love the jelly polishes, they are just so...juicy.  I had seen a mani done with one of the new Revlon Just Tinted polishes and decided I must have them, especially since they were buy one get one 50% off, who doesn't love a sale right?  I bought all 4 because that's all they had, one of each and I didn't want to regret not having them all.  This is the first one I tried, it's Revlon Just Tinted in Victorian.

Revlon Just Tinted in Victorian

Need to turn my date stamp off dangit.  Can't even tell that finger was squished in a press can you?

This a bright pink that has a little coral to it, this is three coats with SV.  You definitely get a vnl with this, but that doesn't bother me.  I don't think you would be able to build this up enough to not have a vnl , it's not as noticeable in the picture as it is in real life. I could have gotten away with two coats, but I wanted to see if a third coat would have any impact on the vnl, it didn't really.  I didn't have any formula issues much to my surprise, I was expecting my old issues with "drugstore brands" like streakiness and gloppiness, I didn't run into that with this polish.  It went on smooth but sheer (par for the course with jellies) and dried matte, so a topcoat is a must if you want that shiny, squishy jelly look.

Please excuse my wonky pinky finger, it never wants to sit straight and always cants off to the side like that, if I attempt to squeeze it together with my other fingers the nail just goes behind my ring finger, so canted it will be.  This was taken in blazing sunlight, no seriously it's like 96 out right now, so I took the best picture I could with no shadows falling on it and ran back inside before I melted.  I don't have the best camera in the world, it's a Canon PowerShot A1000IS, pretty much a phd camera (push here dummy), I hope to be getting a dslr at some point, but that would seriously cut into my polish fund, so it might have to wait a bit.

I hope to make my next post and let you all (pff, who am I kidding, no one's reading this) know a little bit more about me personally, not just my obsession with nails.