nails & whales

Finally back in California after a bit of vacationing in Hong Kong! Did the usual as you'd expect on a summer Asia trip – ate copious amounts of heavy food and shiny desserts, walked a bunch (seven to ten miles a day!), visited various relatives, shopped entirely too much. Although it technically is warmer in California, humidity is low here, and that's all that really matters. In the first half of our trip, HK reached the highest temperature ever recorded since the meteorological service there was established – just our luck. 36.3ºC where we were... which really doesn't sound too bad, until you take into consideration the 90%+ humidity due to a nearby typhoon. Absolutely, absolutely awful.

Shocker: I only bought one nail polish while there, and it was on the penultimate day. Alright, so maybe the only thing holding me back was knowledge that I'd soon visit a nail supply store once returning to the U.S. ($3 China Glazes? yes), but I think I still deserve some credit. ;) That polish, which will remain unnamed for now, will be featured soon.

In short, I am still exhausted and do miss HK a bit, but am very glad to be back!

The feature of today's post is from another Asian brand: Korea-based Skin Food. It's an incredibly luminous gold glitter-foil from their Pedicure Sparkle line, and although I don't have the specific name of it, I believe it's Sparkle Sun Yellow. It lives up to the name. Judge for yourself.



Alright, so I've skipped ahead to the nail art. But this photo had to be the post cover photo! The coloring is greatly preferable on this one, though I unfortunately couldn't achieve the same tinting on the actual swatch photo. When I first showed this photo to a friend, she remarked that it reminded her of Shakespeare's Macbeth – of blood spilled over golden ducats. A good save for an originally aimless design, one that I didn't even particularly like until that reference. Thank you Kitty!

The red is Blood by Kleancolor, applied with a small art brush. There you have it! Anyways...

The eternal question: how to avoid lobster hands with Photoshop?

Wish I could have two post cover photos.

Sparkle Sun Yellow