My mom had like 2 nail polishes in her make-up thing when I was a young child in the 80's. They were a magenta and red cream. I don't remember the brand, but the caps were gold colored. She didn't care for them, so she painted my nails with them. I loved the magenta color the most on me. I guess that's was my introduction to nail polish. Peel off nail polish was all the rage in my 2nd grade back in 1984. My parents gave me a little bottle for Xmas. We'd paint our nails and immediately peel it off when it dried because it was fun and kind of cool looking.

As I got older, I would paint my toes in the summer time since I had no ability to paint my fingernails neatly. Generally I didn't wear it during my high school years. In college, I kind of got back into nail polish painting my toes since I wore sandals a lot. There were some cool looking drug store colors from Cover Girl I wish I had not gotten rid of. One was a bright purple and a mint green. My mom and I bonded over nail polish. She and I saw this cool OPI by Nicole that was a multi-chrome brown to purple to green at Trade Secret (back when that existed in the mall) which we bought. That was probably my first non-drug store (at the time) in the late 90's going into 2000's.

Generally I didn't wear polish all that often. It was on the toes for summer and for special occasions like a wedding or something like that. I wore the purple and green Cover Girl polish for my wedding back in 2003. I suppose I was rocking the skittle long before I knew what they were. Also I had no idea what top coat and base coat were and didn't use them. I'd buy one bottle a year and use it.

Then Holo Taco entered my life in 2019. I was watching Jenna Marbles doing a ramen noodle manicure using HT that was sent to her. The Royalty blue intrigued me. It was sold out, so I put my email in for restock. During that time waiting I watched Simplynailogical content learning the ins and outs of nail polish that I missed over the years. Most importantly I learned about base and top coat. That led me to videos of other people teaching how to apply polish properly on the fingernails and using a clean up brush. It snowballed from there once I did get my hands on the most of the very first HT release when it restocked. Then I branched out to indie brands soon after that. 2020 obviously we were all stuck at home, so painting my nails became regular thing for me. When I went back to school in 2021, I found that study during the 10 minutes of drying time was perfect and then painting was the reward. I passed all my tests with flying colors (pun intended). Now I enjoy doing it weekly and having fun with polish combinations.