First things first: don’t ask about the Alchemy of Souls ep 19-20 review. It makes me ragey and I’m still not ready to talk about it.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me tell you where I’ve been! We went to Seattle from 31 Aug – 5 Sept. Yes, I bought the new Holo Taco Dark Rainbow Collection while on vacation. I woke up early to join Cristine’s launch live stream to get a better idea of the colours before making a final decision to purchase. Now I’m waiting with bated breath for my new nail polish to arrive. I’ll probably write about it once it does.
I plan to go into greater detail about our lovely trip to Seattle but here are a few highlights:
Obviously I only ever post the most flattering photos of myself…
Remember in my previous post about Holo Taco I mentioned how I took Cristine’s advice on nail care with the nail oil and such? It actually made such a massive difference that I am now in love with the shape of my nails. Well, I mean, I like them a lot more than before. And my nails are actually able to grow out. For the first time ever, I have long nails and I like them.
I sent this before and after to my sister, and honestly I was shocked.
The ‘before’ image was cropped out of a photo where I’m cuddling my cat back in March. I literally don’t have many photos where my hands are really visible since I disliked the look of my nails. They were thin and grew out sideways or all sorts of weird directions. This was about as long as they could get before I had to cut them out of discomfort.
The ‘after’ photo was taken on 16th August, not too long after I received my first order of Holo Taco. Doesn’t it look… insanely different? My nail shape has changed, my cuticles are so much healthier and my nails are growing out in the right direction. Literally you wouldn’t believe it’s the same hand. I’m wearing a thin coat of Holo Taco’s Smoothing Base in that photo.
I’m not sure if using nail oil itself actually helped to change my entire nail shape – I first noticed it’d stopped growing sideways after I got my first ever gel manicure in early June. (That was a whole other story altogether – I have minor regrets about being upsold into it, but that’s beside the point.)
I wonder if sealing it with gel polish under the UV lights after the nail technician had aggressively filed them down was what caused it to remain in that shape? You can actually still see some of the remnants of the gel polish on my nails in the after pic.
Whatever it was, I know that using the nail oil plus changing to a glass nail file has helped a lot with my nail health after the gel started peeling off (ugh), and my nails have developed a stronger C-curve, which I feel is a highly desired outcome.
Anyways! All that is to say… I now adore my nails, and after using Holo Taco for a few weeks, I absolutely love it.
Towards the end of ep 18 was the first episode of this entire drama where I had to pause to take a breather because I was so frustrated with the events and didn’t want to watch what happened next. I went and sought out spoilers to see if I’d get angry at the plot, then came back and finished watching it later.
I explain in more detail below, I don’t want to be giving spoilers in this intro. But ultimately, after reading the spoilers and actually watching the next part, it turned out to not be bad at all, and in a way I’m a little disappointed with what I spoiled for myself because it was an excellent part of the story.
These couple of episodes felt a little slow but necessarily so. I loved the deeper exploration into Jin Bu-yeon, the character development of Nak-su and the surprise tying in of something that we saw in earlier episodes that I thought was a temporary plot device that I thought we were done with.
I also realised after I’d written my ep 15-16 review that the show was skipping a week to work on special effects. Waiting two full weeks was… hm. Actually, worth it. I can totally see why they needed the extra time and I think what they came up with was fantastic.
Jung So-min absolutely stole the show this week. I’d been disappointed in her performance before, but for these two episodes I was in awe. And I was actually, for once, finally sold on their romance. With only 2 episodes left, I’m not sure how they’re going to tie everything together neatly, and I can definitely see why they need a part 2.
I am a bit disappointed that when I finally get on board with JSM’s acting, she’s going to leave the show. Unless their previous confirmation that she won’t be in part 2 was a red herring/jk type of thing.
Click here to read my update for days 1-3 of this challenge. Click here to read my update for days 4-6 of this challenge. Click here to read my update for days 7-9 of this challenge. Click here to read my update for days 10-14 of this challenge.
Alrighty, this post comes later than expected, but better late than never. I ended up so busy and exhausted over the weekend I took a 3hr nap yesterday afternoon and was groggy more or less all day. It was overall a great weekend spent with church friends but my social quota going from 0 to 100 is taking a lot out of me.
This will be the final post for this challenge with my final thoughts at the end. This challenge has taken me far longer than 18 days, but that was to be expected since I was doing it on the days I wasn’t doing wushu. I needed more rest days than I thought I would, but sometimes wushu takes more out of me than expected, and sometimes the workout itself is more intense so I just needed more rest.
I’ve actually really enjoyed doing this challenge alongside my wushu classes. It ensures I get a workout in 4-5x/week, which is ideal for me, and it’s great for helping motivate me to actually do some wushu practice on the days I don’t have class. Since I’m already warmed up, may as well get some practice in, amiright?
I also very much credit my teammate for me getting this far with this challenge. She completed it according to schedule, and even though I’m disqualified from the team, I’m still encouraged to complete the challenge so that it’ll still be added to my profile as a completed team challenge.
I don’t want to quit or stop the challenge and have all that prior hard work go to waste! We’re ranked B because of my teammate, I can’t let her down like this! Here we go for the final 4 days~
Why holo everyone, it’s me, Crystina with no ‘h’ :p
You may have noticed in my Get Abs Challenge Day 12 photo that I had some nice fancy nails. The eagle-eyed among you may even have been able to identify that, yes, it is indeed Holo Taco nail polish. Allow me to tell you all about it!
Holo Taco is the brand created by YouTuber Cristine aka Simply Nailogical. I’m super late to the party, but I only found her videos in the past few weeks or so and only heard of her recently after Emily D. Baker mentioned her in a live stream at some point. In fact, I only found her channel after her most recent “I’m Not A YouTuber Anymore” video showed up on my recommended feed.
I was instantly taken with her professionalism and personality. A bunch of videos and nail oil later, I put in a Holo Taco order and waited in eager anticipation of the arrival of my new nail polishes. On Friday, they finally arrived.
I’m not the type to want holographic or bright coloured nail polishes. In fact, I barely get my nails done ever. I had a mani-pedi a few months ago but before that I don’t remember the last time I had one. I didn’t even get my nails done for my own wedding (I wore stick-ons) and, while there was a time where I went to a brilliant nail tech in LA, she retired so no more nice nails for me lol.
After purchasing some of the nail care products Cristine suggested and using nail oil, I could literally see a difference in the health of my nails. That was enough to convince me that Cristine was legit and knew what she was doing. Even if she only scored 60-something-% on the nail technician test ;)
Originally I was just going to buy her base coat and holo taco/matte taco top coats to wear as a nude polish, but out of a desire for free shipping, I took a look at the polishes available in the build-your-own bundle and fell in love with the One Coat Black with Gold Flakie Taco.
The OCB is pretty famous in its own right because Cristine wears it so much haha. But I was unfamiliar with everything else to be honest. It was a little overwhelming to browse the website as an absolute nail newbie and I hadn’t watched enough of her polish-intro videos to understand what all the cremes and toppers and holo and multichrome etc. were, but I think that was probably my error for not Simply Watching The Right Videos lol.
I’m still very happy with what I ended up with, and I’m already considering buying more! Full review below.
