One fateful day, my housemate and I decided we would paint our nails together. She wanted to borrow my Orly Luxe (which for some reason, out of all the colours in my stash, is her favourite), and I wanted to borrow her YSL and Anna Sui. It seemed like a good idea.
My mani was the most awesome combo ever - or at least, it sure did feel like it then. I used YSL Black Tulipe #34 as the base (or at least I THINK that was what I used - she didn't know what colour it was, and she didn't keep the box so unfortunately I had no way of verifying the colour name, since YSL puts the name of their polishes on the box, not the bottle. But it looks pretty identical to other swatches I've seen). I then layered Anna Sui Nail Color in 020. I have no idea what that is - it must be discontinued or Asia-only or something, since I can't seem to find any other swatches of it, and it isn't listed on the Anna Sui website. Lastly, I sealed in the glitter bits with two layers of topcoat, since they were rather large and I wanted a smooth finish.
Anyway, there I was, luxuriating in the sheer gorgeousness of my mani - hey it's purple, and blingy, and you know I love my purples, and I love them with a bit of bling! And because this mani was a whopping 6 coats (1 base coat, 2 YSL Black Tulipe, 1 Anna Sui 020, 2 top coats), I felt sure it would last forever, because I mean, 6 coats takes a longer while to wear down, right? So I would be able to be absolutely blingtastic for longer! Woohoo!
Sadly, it was ruined the very next day. I went to sleep, happy with my mani, and the next thing I knew, I was woken up at 8am by my housemates, and found that somehow, in the morning, our toilet bowl had overflowed and dirty water had soaked the entire lower floor of our apartment, which housed all our bedrooms and bathrooms. The floor was literally flooded with crapwater. We called the landlord, and he called the plumber, but in true British fashion, they said they would arrive anytime between 9am and 6pm. At that point I just wanted to scream. This is an emergency plumbing service, not Fedex package delivery!
So while my housemates and I waited for the plumbers (who arrived very punctually at 5pm), we spent our day vacuuming out the dirty water from our apartment, and hoping that the toilet bowl wouldn't flood anymore (hah! Murphy's law seems to love situations like this, doesn't it?). We were literally carrying pails of crapwater. It was that bad. It was beyond bad. It was gross, smelly, and just...UGH. If you were
following me on Twitter, you would have been subject to my updates on this - I think I must have complained a lot, because some user called "Carpet Cleaning Tips" started following me, LOL!
And after the plumbers had left, we spent the rest of the day cleaning up after the mess. I had to shampoo my darn carpet twice to get rid of the smell, and I think I used up a good third of a bottle of carpet cleaner. At some point I was so desperate I was just pouring carpet cleaning solution into the carpet. At that point, my carpet was clean, but it was still wet. As of now, my carpet is still slowly air-drying, so it's damp and squelchy, but at least it doesn't stink. Sigh.
So what did this really gross story have anything to do with YSL, Anna Sui, or my mani? Well, this is because the two days of maniacal cleaning, carrying, and generally getting my hands wet all the time took its very sad toll on my mani. By the end of it, there was immense tipwear, and there were chips, and my cuticles were dry and red.
And you can take a look for yourself at the damage all this manual labour did to my nails. This is the "better" nail that suffered less damage. To be fair, I think I was relatively fortunate - it could have been much worse:
Can you see the major tipwear? Yes, that's how much work my poor hands were subject to. I think my housemates must have thought I was crazy, because while everyone was complaining about the smell and the work, I was moaning, "This is so going to ruin my mani!" But you know how it is...it's always the manis you like best that get ruined in the most horrid fashion. I wouldn't have felt so bad about it if it was a crappy colour I didn't like.
Anyway, YSL Black Tulipe (hopefully my sleuthing was on the mark and I got the name right) is a decently pigmented 2-coater. The first coat was a little bit streaky, but it came out just fine with a second coat. I also love the colour - it's a gorgeous medium-dark purple plum creme that is deep in colour, but not deep enough to be classed as a vampy shade. It isn't that unique, however, and does remind me a lot of another colour I've worn before,
Nails Inc Dover Street Market, in this post.
Anna Sui 020 is absolutely gorgeous. Normally I'm not that much of a fan of glitter-in-clear-base variants, but I'm making an exception for this one because it just stands out with it's two types of glitter, making it a lot more interesting than most glitters. There is the more obvious glitter, composed of sparse round discs of silver glitter, and then there are also smaller glitter squares that are gold in colour. I actually really like the fact that they combined gold and silver in this polish, so it can be layered over virtually any colour without looking "off". Neat, huh? It applied pretty nicely, but as it usually happens with glitter polishes I had to work a little bit to get the glitter to spread out more evenly, otherwise it tends to clump together in one spot.
Here's a shot of my nails with the Anna Sui bottle, in case anyone here happens to be an expert and can help me track down exactly what range/series this came from. I'd really love more info on this colour - and need I say I'd love my own bottle too? :P I really love this combination of purple and glitter - it looks vaguely cosmic, like a purple alien sky filled with stars.
One of the things I noticed about the Anna Sui polish in particular is that it's scented with a fruity scent. It smells like lychee to me (and my housemate agrees). Even after applying 2 coats of topcoat on top of it, after the nail polish smell has worn off, I can still smell lychee on my fingertips. It kind of makes me want to sniff my fingers more. For people who are unfamiliar with lychee (since it's not really easily found in the West), I've come across the smell being described as a rose scent. I personally think lychee is a better description, but I can how it smells like rose if you've never eaten/smelled lychee before. In any case, it's a sweet fruity smell.
Rats, typing that just made me feel like eating lychee all of a sudden. Anyway, that was my NOTD of awesomeness that got ruined by the toilet. The toilet needs to DIE. But I'm glad that all it did to my NOTD was wear it down quickly. It really could have been worse - at least I didn't break a nail!
