NOTD: Butter London Royal Navy and Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat Fuzz-Sea

Lately, I've felt like I've gotten lazy with my nails. I've been painting them one color, then another color, then another. No accent nails. No glitter or sparkle. No patterns or complex designs. So to mix things up, I did a couple of accent nails this week.

I love both of these polishes. This was the first Butter London polish I used, and I fell in love with the application. It almost feels like it begins drying the second that you start painting a nail, and I feel like Butter London stays shinier for more days than a lot of other polishes do. This Sally Hansen polish is awesome: Nails Inc has a similar line, but it's like twice the price, and honestly, how often are you going to want to use a fuzzy top coat? Because it has texture to it, it's a bitch to remove, but I survived it.

I wish that Royal Navy had applied a little bit lighter. In the bottle it's a true navy, but it almost looked black on my nails. In fact, my boyfriend Ian asked me several times why I was wearing black nail polish. Silly Ian, it's navy.

NOTD: Julep's Florence

After I got my most recent Julep box in the mail, I wasn't entirely in love with the color Florence. Honestly, I got the box for the dark purple color, Padma, and to try the Bare Face Cleansing Oil.

But I decided that the next time I painted my nails I would use Florence, in an attempt to fall in love with it. It just seemed sort of bland, but now that I'm wearing it, I really like it. It's very much a great neutral.

It's a very light, tan, creamy color. It has a creme finish. It reminds me of coffee once you've added cream. I drink enough coffee that anything that reminds me of my beloved beverage is something that I really enjoy. It doesn't really look coffee colored in the bottle, but it's definitely the color of coffee on my nails.

See, that looks more like coffee.

I'm so glad that I forced myself to try this nail polish. At first, I didn't really see how it fit into a fall nail polish collection, but after wearing it, I totally understand now. Florence really is a great neutral, one that I will wear again and again.

NOTD: Julep's Claudette

It's finally September!!! I took the first day in September to be the appropriate time to start wearing fall nail colors. I've been waiting for this day for months. There's something about deep, rich, dark colors that I just can't get over. I'm unbelievably sick of pastels and even of bright nail colors.

So yesterday, I painted my first fall nail: Julep's Claudette.

Claudette is this beautiful deep red color, but it almost feels like it has a little bit of a burnt brown going on. Basically, ever since I received this color in like March in my first Julep Maven box, I've been waiting to try it. And I'm in love. I also love the consistency of Julep polishes: they always apply evenly, but the polish is also thick and opaque. And except for the occasional struggle: I'm looking at you, Julep Peyton, their polishes are consistently in my good graces. 

In the background, you can see a new base coat I'm trying out: Essie's Protein Base Coat. My nails have been looking a little raggedy lately when I take a polish off, so I'm trying to strengthen them up. I'll do a review of this base coat once I've been using it long enough that I should logically be able to see a difference.