Blue Nails for World Autism Awareness Day

Sunday I painted my nails with blue polish for World Autism Awareness Day the next day.  I used my new Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night that I mentioned in my earlier haul post here.  I hesitated wearing such a vivid blue to the office yesterday, but no one said anything.  My nail-loving coworker was not in yesterday, though.  We always admire each other's nails when we have a new polish on.

Application was very easy.  The polish was opaque at one coat, but because I'm not good at polishing my nails and am still learning, I had to use two coats to cover up some spots I missed.  You have to work fast, though, and confidently because the polish dries quickly, so you can't go over your prior strokes very much, but you can dip your brush in the polish and do a quick cover-up if some strokes dried quickly but they weren't good enough.

I used Seche Vite because I painted my nails Sunday night before going to bed.  No sheet marks.  No denting, and I was actually worried about that because the polish dries so shiny and squishy-looking that I worried it had not cured and dried properly.  I did, however, get shrinkage.  I got a little from the Seche Vite  I used on Sunday night, and I got a little from the Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat that I used on Monday morning.  I put on the Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat every morning while I drink my coffee or cafe con leche.  It keeps my polish looking nice and keeps it from chipping, and it's what lets my manicures last a week or longer.  I think the thicker the application of Seche Vite or Revlon Quick Dry, the more shrinkage I get.  I may also get more shrinkage if the underlying coat of color polish is heavy and thick. Maybe it's because the SV is forced to dry more paint that it shrinks more with heavier coats of polish underneath.

Clean-up was very easy, but I'm trying new methods of clean-up, and the orange-stick-soaked-in-acetone method did not work well for me this time.  It just dissolved the polish a little and left my edges looking sloppy.  So, today I added some Finger Paints Motley flakie coat to the manicure, and I'm going to try a prior method of cleanup to see if it looks better.  One of my prior methods of clean-up was to just paint my nails before bed, and then just scrub the polish smears from my skin the next morning after a shower.  It worked well, and it seemed to increase the circulation in my cuticle area and seemed to keep the cuticles neat.  But, that method doesn't work on polishes that have a kind of vinyl texture.  Then if you pull on some stray paint on your skin, you can tear the paint on your nail that is next to the stray paint.

There was no staining on my skin from the polish, and I was able to quickly clean up bigger spots of polish with a Q-tip and then I tried and failed with the orange stick and acetone clean-up method.

The color of the polish in the bottle was darker at home than what it looked like in the store.  Also, it dried darker on my nails than the color in the bottle.  The polish actually looks different in different lighting.  In some lights indoors that I didn't photograph, it looks like teal blue.  At work it looked like the blue in a pair of 4-inch imitation-patent-leather pumps that I wore in the 80s.  Can't believe I actually wore those with stirrup leggings made of sweater wool-looking material in the same color as the pumps, and with a matching sweater . . . in South Florida.

As far as the claims that the polish is like a gel manicure, it does actually look like one to me because it dries incredibly shiny and squishy-looking (not in a jelly semi-translucent type of way, in a gel opaque type of way).

Although I'm embarrassed to post them with the sloppy edges from my failed orange stick and acetone clean-up method, here are some pictures taken with my iPhone:

In my office.  You can see the shine.

With flash, in my office.  The polish can look like all those colors.

With flash, under my office desk.  You can see the shrinkage.

Blurry, but you can see the range of shades of this polish.  I have seen it look like all those shades in this picture depending on the light.  This picture was taken with flash, underneath my desk in my office.

In my car, in the afternoon sun.  You can see the shrinkage

In the car, but not in direct sunlight.  Very shiny.

In the car, but not in direct sunlight.  The polish looks like different shades depending on how much light is hitting it.

Thank you for reading!