One great thing about getting to review products is that there are times that I get to try out things that I never would have thought to try. In fact, there have been a few times that I've straight up fallen in love with something that I've walked by dozens of times in stores before. When I got the opportunity to try out ASP Long Wear Nail Polish*, I was crossing my fingers that this would be one of those situations. Though I've used and loved a few of the ASP Gel Polishes, I hadn't even pulled the trigger on picking up any of their lacquers from my local Sally, so I was eager to try them and optimistic about the formulas. 

Honestly, I feel like this mani has been basically years in the making. I've always, always, always wanted to create a mani using this leaves image from the WhatsUpNails B044r From Ground Comes Life stamping plate and I've been holding off hoping for a fall mani... and then I just couldn't figure out what shades I wanted to use to create it. In fact, I've tried a few times already and nothing I tried felt like it did justice to just how much I love this image. Ultimately, I paired it with one of my favorite indie polishes and some of my favorite colours and I love how it turned out.... but hoo boy, was it a process to get here. 

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The technique that I used for this mani is one that I've sort of fallen in love with this past year. I feel like there's definitely a push towards abstract nails at the moment, with a lot of different techniques employed to create them, but personally I'm a big fan of adding little swipes of dry brushing to the nails and then adding in some sort of graphic stamping image. I had the idea for this mani sort of peripherally in my mind, but I didn't really have a colour story planned until I picked up a couple of new polishes from Londontown that felt like they would work perfectly together and fall into our #CBBxManiMonday Fall Shades theme for September and a plan came together.

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I feel like the inclination for fall nails can be to go for those deep, vampy shades that we all know and love - just me? - but I feel like there's also room for soft, warm shades that evoke the feeling of falling leaves. For this mani, that's the vibe I wanted to go with so I paired a really soft base with some super warm toned golden shades for the stamping and I think it manages to very much feel like fall without any of that vampiness that we generally expect from fall mani's. 

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I have to admit, I don't actually remember the last time I bought a pressed powder that wasn't one of those really finely-milled, super lightweight, translucent powders to set my undereye concealer. Over this past summer, though, as I pretty much entirely stopped wearing foundation and instead just used a very lightly tinted sunscreen, I wanted to find a powder that would add a bare bit of coverage and give me a really smooth, slightly blurred look. I don't actually remember whose review I saw of the Covergirl Clean Fresh Healthy Look Pressed Powder on Youtube, but it inspired me to pick it up and give it a go. 

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I'm such a fiend for green nail polish - which I realize makes me a little bit weird since that doesn't tend to be a shade that a lot of people gravitate towards. For a long time, finding green polish at all was pretty tricky, but finding interesting and varied shades of green nail polish was almost impossible. Enter indie polish, and particularly Dimension Nails, who make my absolute favorite green nail polish of all time, Amazonian Manatee*, which you will have seen me use several times in the past year for nail art. Dimension Nails is seriously a brand I think every nail polish lover should take a look at. Their cream formulas are just... incredible. The pigmentation is insane and they apply really smooth and even and and and and. I can't say enough good things about these formulas, seriously. 

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One of my favorite things about fall - not just for my nails, but for my makeup and my wardrobe and really just everything - is that everything can get a little bit darker and more vampy after months of aggressive brightness. Honestly, after an almost oppressively hot and sunny summer this year, as soon as September hit, the skies got cloudy and it started to rain and I basically started basking in it like the rain loving fall fiend that I am. Anyway, being that this month's #CBBxManiMonday theme this month is all about Fall Shades, I like to go for the richer, smokier shades and I knew that I wanted to include a teal based look and I really, really wanted to finally do some nail art using 'Ard As Nails' Anita*, which I've had in my collection for quite a while now but was just waiting for some inspiration to reach for.

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As I continue to try out more of these gorgeous shimmer polishes from Starrily, I am seriously, seriously impressed with the formulas. Honestly, I'm not often drawn to shimmer shades, but these ones have no only really, really impressed me with formulas, but the choices when it comes to the actual shades. I have a pretty significant nail polish collection at this point and what has been drawing me to indie polish so much lately is the uniqueness of so many of the shades. Even a shade like Moon Glow*, which may look sort of basic in the bottle, has such a unique look to it that it really does stand out. 

Hey guys! I'm taking a little Staycation this week, tucking into the messy bun, no bra, cozy life for a few days and I'm loving it. It's also meant that I've been able to spend a little extra time at my nail desk putting together some upcoming mani's as I get ready for my favorite time of year - Halloween nails! Anyway, sometimes when I sit down to do my nails, I don't really have any idea what I'm doing and I just wait for inspiration to hit as I'm doing it, and that's definitely what happened with today's nail art. 

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