Purple for World Lupus Awareness Day

May 10th is World Lupus Awareness Day. Lupus is a chronic, autoimmune disease that can damage any part of the body (skin, joints, and/or organs inside the body). It can range from mild to life-threatening and should always be treated by a doctor. Lupus strikes mostly women. But men, children, and teenagers can develop lupus too.

My friend Michelle has Lupus and recently suffered from it so much that she had to stay in the hospital for several days. In 4 days she suffered 27 seizure! Michelle says: "A common misconception is that most people with lupus aren't sick because they don't look sick. This misconception goes for all invisible illnesses but in my experience, I was close to death twice now with lupus and even my family couldn't believe it because "I didn't look sick enough" for them".  You can read more of Michelle's story here. And you can read more information about Lupus here.

And here's my purple mani for World Lupus Awareness.

I started with two coats of China Glaze That's Shore Bright, a bright purple creme from the new Sunsational collection. This is one of my two favorite in the collection and one of the only two with decent formula. The polishes from this collection has really lame formula. They are all striky and very hard to apply. Except this one and it's purple jelly friend ("Are You Jelly?"). Not that I didn't have issues with this one. As you can see I did not really manage to keep my cuticle line clear but at least it leveled up nicely and didn't leave brush strokes. It also dried pretty quick and had this really lovely rubber finish that I liked. 

Sadly I can not remember where I got the flower stickers from. But they are gorgeous! If you have any idea - please do let me know! I need some more of those! 

Because I used some stickers, I needed to top coat my nails to make sure the stickers don't fall or anything. And since the polish had such a nice rubber finish, I decided to try some matte top coat hoping I could keep this rubbery look. Alas, the top coat, as good as it is (Butter London Matte Finish) is a true matte and not a rubber. I was not crazy about how it looked.

So I had to try it with a glossy top too and see which I like best. I used Glisten and Glow HK Girl fast dry top coat, and I have to say I like it better then the matte this time.

But my most favorite of them all was the original top-less rubber finish. So here's it again ;-)

Make sure you check the other ladies purple nails too!