My Monday Manicure – Birthday Edition!

OK, it’s Tuesday night. Don’t judge me! Yesterday was one of those why-is-today-so-ridiculously-unproductive days. And today was more of the same.

But last weekend was truly awesome. Last Monday was my birthday weekend. And my friends at Dove Visibly Smooth helped me celebrate! To help promote their amazing hair-growth-reducing deodorant, some of your favorite beauty bloggers have been invited to host Dove Visibly Smooth Girls’ Night Out events — click here to read about The Beauty Bunny, Clumps of Mascara, and This That Beauty’s Girls’ Night Out events in their cities.

I wanted to do something a bit different, since it was my birthday weekend. So instead of doing dinner or a lounge, I decided to invite some of my best blogger friends for a Girls’ Afternoon Out instead – at Allyu Spa, one of my aforementioned favorite spas in Chicago!

And here we are! From left to right:

Nikia of ChiTown Fashionista.
Aramide of The Sassy Peach.
Rae Lewis Thornton of RaeLewisThornton.com, a Diva Living with AIDS.
Brittany of Black is Breezie.
Karyn of The Fab Giver and The Red Pump Project.
Luvvie of Awesomely Luvvie, Luvv Divine, The Red Pump Project and prolly like 6 other random blogs LOL
me!
Jessica of Beauty Woo Me
and Courtney of Coco Cooks.

Allyu Spa arranged a beautiful room for us to hang out in, and we went in groups of three to get our manicures done.

Courtney is a food blogger extraordinare, and she advised me on what kind of spread to get with the ladies — fresh, delicious red grapes, strawberries, quince jam, pita chips to go with baba ganoush, and two different kinds of hummus. And to wash it all down, some large bottles of sparkling wine were in order!

So, the manicures. Many of us went with the “Blackberry bling” trend and had an accent nail on the fourth finger and thumb. I decided to go with two similar colors, but I really thought there’d be more of a contrast.

I used MAC’s latest matte – Studded – on my thumb and fourth finger. Click here to check out Karlasugar’s detailed post. It’s a matte pearl, very finely flecked gunmetal silver. I am gonna have to try this polish again on its own. My manicurist and I didn’t quite get that this was meant to be merely matte, and the addition of top coat made Studded shiny silver, but also brought out the black flecks in the polish.

On my other nails I used Orly’s latest Foil FX polish in Shine. These polishes are high shine foil finishes, and I have gotten SO many compliments on my nails since I got this mani! “Is that Minx?” someone asked me. No, it’s Orly FX, $7.50 a bottle! Haaaaayyyyy! Here’s an awful cellphone pic of the nails side by side for comparison.

Sorry about the awful photo – my camera’s been having battery issues!

Although I kept within the metallic family, I kept a close eye on the polishes my homegirls were getting! Allyu Spa uses Zoya polishes, and most everyone wound up using a purple polish! (Zoya has some GORGEOUS ones!)

Much love to Allyu Spa, my Chicago blogger friends, and Dove Visibly Smooth for the most fabulous pre-birthday manicure party ever!

Tags: allyu spa, Blog Sister Love, Dove Visibly Smooth, DoveGNO, mac matte nail polish, mac nailpolish, mac studded, manicure monday, my manicure monday, my monday manicure, orly foil fx, zoya nail polish

Category: Product Reviews