Quick and Easy Purple Spring Mani- 2 weeks of China Glaze

My nails are crap.  I'm so bad at nails.  I love nail polish, I love stamping, I love trying to freehand designs.  But I cannot break my nail biting habit.  I KNOW.  It's completely terrible.  Recently I was doing a great job.  They had grown to a very lovely length and I was happy with them!  Then I broke two of them on the toilet seat (of all things) and then another one when I was moving boxes (have I mentioned the part where we are moving/driving 3000+ miles across the country in a month?).  So I thought, what is the use of me trying to grow out my nails if every time I do, they are just so weak and fragile that they break?

Enter the idea of doing 2+ weeks of manicures using China Glaze.  I love CG, it's one of my top two favorite brands of nail polish.  A good friend heard my lament and said "don't you have China Glaze?  When I use that it makes my nails hard as rocks."  And a little lightbulb went off and I thought to myself, let's try this.

So here's the first!  A simple, quick paint job using what I had sitting on my desk (I'm lazy).

Products Used:

China Glaze Sweet Hook

Essie Pure Pearlfection

Also can I just say how fed up I am with Seche Vite?  Our love affair was pretty short lived.  I used it on a few really great manis last week that I was so excited to come home and photograph (I paint my nails at night, when I can't photo them, and then they have to last through my day at work until I get home) and by the time I got home from work, they had shrunk down and peeled or popped completely off.  Have you ever had one just pop off???  It has happened to me several times, I just look down and where the heck did my pointer finger go?  Then I look like I forgot to paint that finger.  Anybody have any solutions for that?  I've heard the Sally Hansen in the black bottle is a good replacement and doesn't do the crappy things that SV does.

I Have Been MIA... and Very Bad :(

I haven't posted in ages, and here's my excuse... I bit off ALL MY NAILS!  I am so ashamed.  I've still been painting them, but quickly and without much love, and I've been so stressed and busy that I haven't had time for photos.  But I'm back in the swing of things (my summer semester started up and it took me a few days to readjust) so hopefully I can get myself back on track and grow these babies out.

I have a mani on my nails right now that I want to show yall, but I haven't cleaned it up yet or put on a topcoat.  So I will do that and hopefully have some photos by tonight or tomorrow to get things going.  But until then, I have some non-nail-art related photos to tide you over.

My boyfriend and I went to Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm for their tulip festival a few weekends ago.  So here's some colorful, happy, springtimey flower photos!

And I leave you with a few questions/I'm asking for advice:

1. I once again attempted to use my Zoya matte polishes and, once again, they chipped off within the first day.  Then I tried again with Essie Matte About You topcoat and that STILL didn't help.  Does anyone else have these problems?  It's not with any of my other matte polishes, only Zoya.  Do you have any suggestions to make that work?

2. I am looking for a baby, baby, pale pastel blue.  Actually, any baby baby pastel color recommendations would be so awesome.  But particularly a blue, as I haven't been able to find one.  So: powder/pastel/baby blues that you've tried/heard are awesome.  

Thanks so much!  I'm trying desperately to catch up on everyone's blogs, so sorry if I spam you with comments all at once!