star wars – Movies and Manicures

EPISODE I: SPEED OF LIGHT

Published on November 9, 2015November 12, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

So, if my calculations are correct, we are exactly six weeks out from the new Star Wars movie. Apparently there has been an awakening. I have felt it.

Seriously though, I’m more excited about this movie than I’ve been for just about any movie in the past few years. Avengers who, amirite? (Unless you’re the Marvel Studios executives, who I’m sure are reading my little blog, in which case oh my god I love you I love you can I have a cameo in Infinity War???)

Shameless plug in the hopes of getting into your good graces.

Anyway, because few things are as important to me as this movie, I obviously had no choice but to buy the entire Cover Girl line of Star Wars-inspired nail polish. It was a business expense, of course, and I’m sure I’ll file it that way on my tax returns (that was a lie). I’ll be posting a review of each of the six Star Wars shades every week until the week of December 18, a.k.a. the day we’ll be telling our grandchildren about when they watch Star Wars and we describe the hardships of having to actually, you know, drive all the way to the IMAX theater instead of having the movies beamed directly into our brains.

So, we begin, a long time ago (or last night) in a galaxy far far away (or at my kitchen table) with…

P.S. I found the coolest website in the world, the Star Wars Crawl Creator, which is how I made all of these kickass crawl pictures. Check it out sometime. Put it in your work presentations. Your bosses will thank you.

Let’s start by going over the Star Wars collection as a whole. It’s nice, I suppose. I mean, it’s fine. It’s CoverGirl nail polish, which typically isn’t my thing when I’d usually go for an OPI, Essie, Julep, or Indie of some sort.

But anyway, I had to get my hands on some of the collection, and that began with Speed of Light, a tan-ish, green-ish, grey-ish high gloss polish.

I only say green-ish because that’s how it looks in the pictures; it’s really more of the blandest grey you can imagine.

I can’t even think of good things to say about this color. I could definitely get away with wearing it to work, I guess? But really, my biggest problem is that the name is so misleading – absolutely nothing about this color reminds me of the speed of light. Even less about it reminds me of Star Wars, or does anything to increase my excitement for The Force Awakens.

Maybe it’s the color of the Millennium Falcon on a bad day, but even that’s pushing it.

There are also about 10,000,000 comments on the Cover Girl Website about how the bottles don’t have the Star Wars logo on them despite the website showing it in their pictures, but I would have forgiven that oversight if it were even a little bit more interesting of a color.

Verdict: Speed of Light might as well be bantha fodder.

Tune in next week for more reviews, and may the Force be with you.

Mary

Admiral Ackbar and Out the Door

Published on September 1, 2015August 31, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

I hate to brag, but this has been a ridiculously productive weekend. I did my grocery shopping for the week, I cleaned my room (with my mom’s help, which I add because she reads this blog and I’d definitely hear about it if I took all the credit myself), I did a few loads of laundry, I got some extra documentation written for my job, and I Skyped with one of my best friends for two and a half hours about her upcoming wedding. Lots of high-pitched screaming noises were involved, which could indicate that sometimes I’m capable of being a girl or that sometimes I’m capable of being a velociraptor.

So, in the end, I wound up doing a manicure that’s deceptively simple while looking quite fancy. A few months ago, while I was rebelling against all of the neutral nail polish that I had bought for work, I picked up a bottle of China Glaze’s It’s a Trap-eze! It seemed far more fun than the lavenders, pastel pinks, and nudes that were already in my Ulta shopping basket.

My first thought about the name of this polish is that Admiral Ackbar had something to do with it, and as such I wondered why such an esteemed citizen of Mon Calimari was related to something so glittery. Perhaps it had to do with the celebrations after the destruction of the Second Death Star.

admiral ackbar it's a trap — And yes, I use this line in everyday conversations.

Sure, I guess it could be circus-related, but come on. The name is weird. Even a trapping trapeze is weird to me.

It sure is glittery, though…

This is all one polish – no futzing around with multiple layers of a solid base and then multicolored glitter on top. This all mercifully came in the same bottle.

It was a little tricky to work with because it was pretty runny compared to a lot of my other polishes, and it tended to slide off my fingers and into my cuticles if I didn’t do it just right. What you see above is three coats of the polish because the white is so translucent around the glitter. However, I happen to love it, because a lot of the glitter got caught underneath the next coat of white as I put more on for a sort of layered effect and I JUST FIGURED OUT WHY THE POLISH IS CALLED IT’S A TRAP OH MY GOODNESS THE GLITTER IS TRAPPED BETWEEN LAYERS! THAT’S BRILLIANT!

Ahem. Sorry about that.

There’s one more component to this manicure, and it’s something new (to me) that I’ve been meaning to try for at least a year, if not more. I’ve been a Seche Vite fast-drying top coat devotee ever since I originally bought my first bottle of it a few years ago, but I’ve since heard about a similar product called Out the Door, which promised similar results without the gunkiness that usually happens when you get halfway through the Seche Vite bottle. I decided Out the Door was worth a shot, so I picked up a bottle on Amazon.

The results? I would definitely buy this again! It’s half the price of Seche Vite, does the top coat job admirably (I took the above pictures after taking my laundry out of the dryer and had no smudge problems!), and apparently won’t gum up. I’ll see about that last claim – for now it’s too soon to tell – but I’m happy to use as much of the bottle as I can for now.

Best wishes,

Mary

The only people who haven’t seen Star Wars…

Published on August 20, 2015August 19, 2015 by moviesandmanicuresLeave a comment

What can I even begin to say about Star Wars? These movies have been some of my favorites for as long as I can remember – some of my fondest childhood memories are watching the first halves of all three Original Trilogy movies before I fell asleep. Actually, I’m not entirely sure if I ever saw the end of a Star Wars movie until I was about six or seven and old enough to stay awake through the whole thing.

I remember having male friends in kindergarten, despite the fact that boys had cooties, simply because they needed a female to play Princess Leia on the playground and I was more than happy to step into that role. My first “boyfriend” played Han Solo as we chased each other over the jungle gym shooting imaginary blasters at our enemies. In the late 90s and early 2000s, I eagerly queued up in front of the movie theater with my dad in order to see and be disappointed by the Star Wars prequels. In fact, a discussion I had with a very terrifying 8th Grade English teacher about the pros and cons of Revenge of the Sith was the first time I realized that scary teachers didn’t have to be so scary.

This brings me to a few years later, and an episode of How I Met Your Mother:

Apparently my friend Helena (yep, she’s the one who writes the kickass newsletter that I wrote about before) lived them. She lived the Star Wars.

We’ve been having this conversation for about the last ten years we’ve known each other. We’ve known each other for eleven years. And I’ve always thought it woefully sad that my best friend, who I always consider so up to date on pop culture (again, read the newsletter), has never seen what I think is one of the most genre-defining epics in cinema.

There was only one way to fix this, and that involved Trilling It Up (a.k.a. watching the entire Original Trilogy in one sitting with plenty of snacks). I ordered the DVDs especially for the occasion, and also because there was no way I was going to live the rest of my life without owning these DVDs in case other such emergencies should arise.

helena with star wars — Here, Helena majestically poses with the DVDs in anticipation.

This also fit well into my 2015 Summer Challenge – I was required to spend an entire day watching old movies, and by “old” I count anything that was released in cinemas before I was born. I know, I know, I’m young. Or at least that’s what the people at work keep telling me.

The manicure I did for the occasion wasn’t particularly complex, and definitely didn’t involve trying to draw the symbol of the Rebel Alliance (I’m good, but I’m not that good). Instead, I went with some basic Space Nails (that’s Sinful Colors’ Black on Black with my China Glaze Fairy Dust and some Hard Candy Black Tie Optional on top to make the stars) on my index and little fingers…

And then a bright blue (Julep Alyssa) and a bright green (Julep Sam) on the ring and middle fingers for some Jedi lightsaber action. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think that, should my Force powers ever awaken (yes, that was a reference to the new movie that’s coming out in December OH MY GOD OH MY GOD – I’ll definitely do a different Star Wars manicure when the time comes!), I would almost definitely have to have a blue lightsaber. It’s not even a question.

My thumbs received a coat of red, Julep Ellen, because there are two sides to the Force, and the Sith had to be represented here somehow. I mean, they’re the main villains and all. And of course they had to be red; if you’ve read previous posts, you know how much I hate red nail polish and wish it didn’t stain my fingers every time. And it smudged too. That’s just typical for those pesky Sith Lords.

And now, a review from the great Helena about what she thought of her first foray into a Galaxy Far Far Away:

Luke Skywalker has the hots for his sister.

But on a more serious note, I really liked Star Wars and I’m glad that I no longer just have a vague understanding of it.

I can live with that.

May the Force be with you, always,

Mary