No, Christmas Tree (When Manis Get Ugly)

When I chose this lacquer, Polish Me Silly’s green glitter and everything else X-Mas Me Silly, as an un-favourite for week four’s theme of least favourite polish in the February N.A.I.L. Challenge, I had no idea it would lead me towards what is perhaps the ugliest manicure I’ve ever done. But not to worry – it was all on purpose!

The general theme here is my neighbour’s Christmas tree, which from my vantage point in my livingroom I can see plain as day in his. News to absolutely no one, but it is the end of February. That is some quality laziness right there (although my husband thinks he might be a snowbird, and took off for warmer climes immediately after the holidays.) The thing is undoubtedly artificial, which would partially explain its livingroom longevity, but can you imagine if it’s not? Dead/wood City, that’s what.

So with X-Mas Me Silly, a too-much-of-a-good-thing glitter from Polish Me Silly’s 2014 holiday collection, acting as my least favourite chosen one, I drew inspiration from my neighbour’s everlasting ode to the holidays and came up with this gradient mani that’s meant to look like a Christmas tree starting to brown around the edges.

Which would have been ugly enough all on its own had I not chosen to use two other polishes on my hit list of hate, Essence’s bile-hued L.O.L. and OPI’s brown A-Taupe the Space Needle. I colloquially refer to these two as “Neon Pee” and “Electric Baby Poo.” These are some of the ugliest colours in existence, although oddly enough, I use them both for nail art detail work all the time.

But I maybe should have left them out of this doomed-from-the-start mani, because the combination of lumpy X-Mas Me Silly over the sickeningly-coloured L.O.L. and under the greenish-tinged A-Taupe the Space Needle is a truly horrendous one. It reminds me of a Christmas tree all right – a Christmas tree in a basement that’s backed up with about two and a half feet of sewer water. This was a super fun challenge prompt, but I can’t wait to scrape this green gunge off my nails!

The offending parties’ mugshots:

Woah, Christmas Tree!

Holy smokes, this is one intense holiday nail polish! Meet Polish Me Silly’s grinchy green X-Mas Me Silly, a rainbow glitter bomb that really looks like the brutal aftermath of an ill-considered meet-up between a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and an immersion blender. Wretched “X-Mas” notwithstanding (is it better or worse with that hyphen in there?), X-Mas Me Silly is such a fun and festive holiday polish, I can almost overlook the fact that it is, as some of us may say in the nail biz, a somewhat advanced glitter. It’s quite thick and wants to lump up a bit, particularly in those places where the large star glitter is most plentiful (there are eight on my thumb alone; in the plus category, no fishing around for the good stuff!) You really have to have a strong handle on applying chunky glitter polishes, lest you wind up with an inch and a half of lumpy green gunge on your nails. Even then, the end result is sort of messy and simply TOO MUCH (you’d never know these nails are smooth to the touch – thank you, topcoat – because it looks as though there’s heaps of glitter sticking up all over the place.)

But all is not lost! As always, if you take your time and don’t load up your brush too much and allow each coat to dry thoroughly before going back for more, you’ll be aces. I also think this might be one of those polishes that would work better as a megawatt topper over a cheery green or even white to highlight all those fun rainbows and sparkling green micro glitter. There’s always a workaround to be had, particularly for a polish as seasonally-specific as X-Mas Me Silly – just enjoy it while you can!