Oh no! Back to short nails again....

My nails did not survive last night's shift at my retail job very well. We had to move some shelving units around and I ended up accidentally tearing two of them off. When I got home I had no choice but to cut them all very short...I am not a fan! I think having short fingernails like this makes my hands look very strange.

So I'm going to have to take a break from most of my swatching, I just don't want to show awesome polishes on not awesome nails. Plus, is it just me, or is it harder to paint short nails? I feel like there's just not as much area to work with, so it's much harder not to accidentally flood a cuticle.

I'm trying to look on the bright side, though, and am telling myself that this is a good chance to wear dark polishes that don't always look good on longer nails. Am I right? I've always sort of thought that dark colors look strange on long nails. I feel like your nails don't have to be THIS short, however, because they're just ridiculously short right now. (Can you tell I'm really sad about this?)

Anyway, today I'm wearing one of those nameless Urban Outfitters polishes that I posted about here. The formula on this one was great. Perfectly opaque in two coats, the brush was perfect, and I really love the square bottles, because I don't feel like I'm about to knock them over all the time. This is two coats over Orly Bonder basecoat with one coat of China Glaze Fast Forward topcoat.

This one's a bit more olive green than it looks above, but it does sort of go back and forth between brown and green depending on the light. It's got a gorgeous gold shimmer running through it that really just makes the color happen for me. The only thing I could fault it on is that brushstrokes are visible even after two coats, but I think that's just the nature of some polishes.

Please excuse the oddness on my index finger, had a bit of a mishap with some topcoat. I'm not sure it's my favorite color on my nails, but I do love this one as a color. I'm also officially a fan of Urban Outfitters polishes!

OPI Nicki Minaj swatches (Part 1)

This week I'm going to be showing you two fun looks that are created from OPI's Nicki Minaj collection that came out in January. I know it's nothing new for most people, but I missed out on this one and just recently decided to pick up the mini collection when I saw it at my local Ulta. I wasn't too sure if it was worth the money, but as soon as I put these pretties on my fingernails I knew I'd made the right choice! In fact, now I'm wishing I would have grabbed the bigger bottles of a couple of them, because a couple of my coworkers have already asked to borrow them!

So first up is a pretty basic mani with the first two shades from the mini collection, OPI Did It on 'Em, and OPI Fly. Here's a bottle shot of the colors I used:

under indoor light

OPI Did It on 'Em is a bold, bright chartreuse (that means it's halfway between yellow and green!), that is very similar in the bottle to OPI Who the Shrek Are You, although since I don't own the Shrek polish, I can't compare them. However, according to swatches online, OPI Did It on 'Em looks to be a tad more yellow. It's definitely a funky, eye catching color. What you see below is three coats, with OPI Natural Nails basecoat and China Glaze Fast Forward topcoat. The formula was a little thin, it definitely needed all three coats.

in sunlight

OPI Fly is also bold and bright. I thought it would be a bit more pastel, but after swatching it, I discovered that it's a bright, not-quite-teal shade! It's now become one of my favorite blue polishes! For my accent nail on my ring fingers, I did two coats with the aforementioned base and top coats. The formula was a bit better than on OPI Did It on 'Em, it wasn't streaky at all, although if you look closely, you can see a bit of VNL in real life. Three coats probably would have solved that problem.

So...that's it for my first OPI Nicki Minaj manicure, what do you think? Did you buy this collection when it first came out, or did you wait like I did? Feel free to leave me comments below!