My Favorite Things

I always wear a basecoat and a topcoat. My current favorite basecoats are Nutra Nail Strengthener with Green Tea, Wet n' Wild Wild Shine Protective Base Coat, ACI Bridge the Ridge Ridge Filling Basecoat, and Julep Oxygen Smoothing Base Coat. My go-to topcoat is Julep Freedom Polymer Topcoat, but sometimes I use Sally Hansen Mega Shine or Wet n' Wild Wild Shine Nail Protector, and lately I've been using and loving Julep Oxygen Performance Topcoat. If I use something new and different, I'll usually note that in the post. When I want matte, I use NYC Matte Me Crazy Mattefying Top Coat (I also use it between layers when I wear white polish). Unless otherwise noted, assume that I've used a base and topcoat with everything you see here.

My favorite non-polish products for my hands and nails are Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream, Avon Silicone Glove Hand Cream, Mary Kay Satin Hands Hand Cream, and Julep Luxe Repair Skin Serum. I use all of these regularly, at least one of them daily. When my cuticles are looking really rough or are cracking, I bring in the big guns and use an ordinary store brand triple antibiotic around my cuticles. My cuticles drink up anything petroleum jelly based, too, so expensive products are nice if you can get them, but are not necessary to have pretty hands.  I got every product listed above as a gift or at a deep discount. Luxe Repair Serum retails $28 (!!!), but I got it in my introductory Julep Maven box, so I got it and two polishes for the price of shipping, $3.99. I'm pretty much in love with the Maven program; the link here and the cute little "I'm Classic With a Twist" button to your right take you to my referral link. Send me a message on Facebook or Twitter if you want a detailed account of my experience. I'm happy to share, but I don't want to use too much blog space on Julep gushing.

My first post talks about some of these products and the miscellaneous junk I use. I'm a consummate DIYer, so some of my favorite tools are a Julep frankenbrush that I modified as a super thin striper and about a million toothpicks.