About me

Before I get to posting swatches and whatnot, I thought I'd write a little introduction post about myself.



Who Am I?

My name is Becca, and I’m a 30 year old New Zealander. I teach university students science-y things for a living. When I’m not working or painting my nails, I can be found indulging in some arts & crafts, watching DVDs or hunched over my computer trying to write a novel.

Why blog about nail polish?

Because I love it, and I spend far too much time procrastinating from other things that need doing by reading dozens of other nail polish blogs. I get excited to know what polishes are going to be released shortly, and love hearing other peoples’ opinions and seeing their nail art talent.

Sure, it’s possible that the world doesn’t need yet another polish blog, but secretly, despite my love of polish, the part I love to read about in all those other blogs is the personal experience. And so here I am sharing mine. Plus I have two aims with this blog:

1. To post about polishes available to people like myself, at the bottom of the world, where polishes are a) much harder to get and b) much more expensive.

2. To focus on how well the polishes wear, as well as how they look. I love seeing swatches, but when I fall in love with a polish and decide to buy it I have no idea how well it’s going to wear on me. This is complicated by the fact that I am hard on my nails. Really hard on them. I spend half of my day in labs, using my hands for demonstrations or experiments, and frequently using latex gloves. The other half of my day is spent at a desk, typing. I’m a fast typer, but I use the tips of my fingers rather than the pads, and so there’s a lot of wear to my nail tips. And then of course there’s all of the day to day things that cause wear- laundry, doing the dishes (although I avoid that task as much as possible), cooking and feeding and cleaning up after our six budgies. Add to that the fact that I'm a generally clumsy person...well, if I last a day without chipping, I’m pleased. If I last several days, I want somewhere to rave over the polish because I'm over the moon! The other thing about my nails is that, for whatever reason, polish often pops off my nail beds. I don’t know if I have oily nail beds, or what the problem is, but even with bonding base coat, I’m still likely to lose a nail or two along the way if I get some small chips. This, of course, does not reflect the quality of the polish, but will likely be mentioned in my posts.

How did my love of nail polish get started?

It all happened very recently. I hated wearing nail polish growing up. I could never get it to look like the ads looked, and the clean up was always a pain. So, for the most part, I avoided painting my nails for years. I was (and still sometimes am) a nail biter.

Last year, I decided enough was enough- I was no longer going to bite my nails- at least not on a daily basis! And the best way I could think of to stop myself, was to paint my nails in a way that would make me think twice before ruining the manicure.

I saw a pack of OPI minis on sale- the Pirates of the Caribbean collection- online and bought it on a whim. I started with all my nails in one colour, then when that worked out okay I moved on to alternating nail colours and then tried out some stripes and dots. It was fun, and best of all, I didn’t want to ruin my nails by biting them.

Then about six months later, I discovered indie polishes and now my steadily growing collection contains equal amounts of OPI and indies from a variety of polish makers. I’m eager to try out new indie polishes, so I am open to recommendations!

I hope anyone reading this blog finds it useful, and I'd love to know what you think about the polishes and about the blog itself!