Happy New Year everyone!!

I hope we all have a wonderful new year and that 2012 brings us all happiness, health and all our wishes come true.

Christmas Haul polish part 3: The end....?

OK and we are almost done with the polish posts!

First off we have the China Glaze polishes. Sally Beauty had a beautiful holiday collection out but I only got a few of them, but the ones I got I absolutely adore!!

China Glaze L-R Love Marilyn, Crackle Glaze in Haute Metal, Laurlei's Tiara and Some Like it Haute

This is my first crackle purchase (actually my 2nd, but I returned the 2012 stuff that was total crap). I'm just not that into the crackle look. I'll keep it around if I'm ever in the mood for it, but I don't think I'll be reaching for it that often.

Sally Hansen's Gem Crush line has duplicates for many of these colors. The red one is almost exactly the same jut the red is a little brighter, however the glitter in it is spot on. Gel Crush also has a straight on dupe of both Lorelei's Tiara and Some Like it Haute.

Up next are just some random glitters I got:

These polishes are (L-R):
Spoiled - Shuffle the Deck, Nicole - Love Your Life, Nicole - Rainbow in the S-Kylie, Nicole - Snow-Man of my Dreams, Sinful Colors Nail Art - Fashionista and Spoiled - Trust Fund Baby.

These next ones are some new ones I got from the Spoiled by WnW line at CVS. These retail for $1.99.

Colors L to R are: Shaken Snow Globe, Magic Carpet Ride, Black Mamba and Plenty of Fish in the Sea.
I normally don't care for black polish but I love Black Mamba, it's got enough shimmer in it to lighten it up into something very wearable for me. All the colors I have tried so far have very easy application and wear well (though I usually change my polish too often to really test that factor). Here's a swatch of 2 coats of Black Mamba.

Next is just some random polish I had either left over or got (I had some major extra bucks to spend) o were given to me after I took the other pictures:

 
The first polish is Essie luxeffects in Pure Pearlfication, essence @holographics.com in Gagalectric, SH complete salon manicure in Purple Pulse, Wet n wild megalast in Caught Red Handed, and Revlon in Radiant

I have one more picture to take of a few things i got since my last shopping trip. I swear I have go on a no-buy for a while after I get just a couple more thing i have been looking at.

Here we go (L to R):
Revlon Temptress (75% off at CVS)
Sinful Colors Nail Art in Bad Chick
Sally Hansen (75% off at CVS)
L'Oreal nail color in Eiffel For You
Revlon Top Speed in Pink Lingerie (75% off CVS)
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Wine Not
Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in Sturdy Sapphire
Salon Perfect Steel Rose
Salon Perfect in Silver Mint
and
Revlon in Dreamer

So that's it for the holiday nail polish haul. Between Clearance, gift certificates and CVS Extra Bucks I actually didn't spend too much! Now it looks like I've got some manis/swatches to do.

I hope you all had a lovely holiday and have a wonderful New Year!!

Christmas Shopping Haul, polish part 2: The sets

The first set I got was this Sally Hansen Insta-Dri minis set. I got this on after Christmas clearance for $3. By the way you can click on all images to enlarge.

I had to try all the colors to see how they came out and whatnot. I have to say I was pretty impressed. I even like all the colors, before trying them I was a little leary about the orange and green/yellow (I can't quite tell) colors.

But I think they all look pretty good.

Next up Wet n Wild coloricon glitter polishes. Granted I'm missing a couple from the full set, but they were colors I would not wear (gold) or an exact dupe of something I already own, so I didn't bother. What I did like about these is that most of them have interesting glitter in them, it's not always matchy matchy.

My cat Trixie likes these too! They are nice for glitters, the glitter is pretty dense, and doesn't take too many coats to make a full glitter nail. I got these at Walgreens, $3 a piece.
Colors are, L to R: Rockin' Rubies, Cost Is No Issue, Believe Me, It's Real (i love that the larger glitters in this are purple, goes nicely with the blue), It's All In The Cut, Back Alley Deals, and Diamond in the Rough.

Next up is the Shades of the Season tube they had for sale at CVS. I got this for half price so I paid $5. And I had a $5 extra bucks coupon so really I got this for free!!

This one is called the Glitter Collection. There are no color names on these polishes, but I put them back in the tube in order to talk about them. They are all glitters, but the bottom 4 are very sparse glitter. I will use these as a top coat over other colors. The other colors are awesome. I love them all, they go on like a dream, have light glitter, good pigmentation and only needed 2 coats.

After I went to the store for something a few minutes ago and decided I'd get the other set of Shades of the Season, the "Classics".

I haven't tried any yet, but if I even like half of them as much a I like those in the glitter collection it will be well worth it.

OK, we are almost done (with part 2 at least), with one last collection. This is from Color Club, it is their glittery Vixen collection. I found this at Walgreens and it was $7. There were 2 other collections there as well but the colors in them were all similar to stuff I already have.

The colors in this set are Sex Symbol, Magic Attraction, Sultry Diva, Art of Seduction, Sexy Siren, Object of Passion and Tru Passion. I did already have Tru Passion but it's a nice color so I don't mind having an extra.

Well, that's it for part 2, stay tuned for part three, coming soon!!!

Christmas Haul, part 1

Well, in these last few weeks I have managed to do more shopping for myself than for anyone else, haha. But I did finally get my shopping done on Christmas Eve after a marathon 9 hour day of shopping. So for part one, I will show you some of nail polishes I got for myself and for Christmas. It's actually a little embarrassing. I did have some store credits and gift cards from last Christmas that I decided I'd finally use. Money has been tight and if I get them when I have money I don't spend them so I will be able to make myself feel better when I don't have money. It's burned me a couple of times because I've waited too long to use them and they have expired. I actually had a gift certificate to Urban Outfitters for like 8 years and by the time I needed to use it they had moved on to gift cards and couldn't even process the old school paper certificates. Oh boy. Anyway, here's the start of the nail polish end of things:

I had to break these down into several pictures, there were too many :-O First off, the minis:

 I did label them on the picture but if I make it big enough to read it throws everything out of whack so I'll just post the names here:
(L-R) Orly mini Oh Cabana Boy, Essence Colour & Go You Belong to Me, Hard Candy blue glitter, HC matte purple glitter, HC lime glitter (these were Christmas special minis that did not have names listed), and Orly mini Blue Belle.

 Next up are the Revlon polishes. You can see a lot of them are marked 75% off. These were from CVS and made them roughly $1.37 a bottle.

Click to enlarge photo

Colors from left to right (including those slightly behind the others):
Blue Lagoon, Whimsical (glitter), Princess, Starry Pink (glitter), Powder Puff (matte suede), Sublime Strawberry (scented), Ruby Ribbon (matte suede), Orchid and Fire Fox (matte suede)

Next up we have the Sally Hansen Complete Manicure:

Click to enlarge photo

Colors left to right are: Fairy Teal, Hidden Treasure, Himalayan Blue (<3) and Thinking of Blue.

Here are the rest of the Sally Hansen polishes I got:

Click to enlarge photo

Colors: Xtreme Wear in Purple Potion, Xtreme Wear in Rockstar Pink, Gem Crush in Bling-tastic, Diamond Strength in Lilac Chantilly, Gem Crush in Lady Luck and Hard as Nails Frozen Solid.

OK That's enough for now. This post is long enough and I still have lots more to show you. I want to head out and hit the after Christmas sales for a bit, so I will post more polish porn in a bit. Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Two Less Lonely (Purple) Glitters

As I was working my way through my purple collection tonight I realized that I have 3 colors that are virtually identical. Nicole's One Less Lonely Glitter (Justin Bieber collection, oy) has 2 nearly dead on matches in L.A. Splash Sparkling Lavender and Color Club Tru Passion. The Color Club definitely comes out the best after 3 coats. In person, you can barely tell the apart. Now none of them will be too lonely.

Impromptu Orange polka dot mani

I was bored and playing around with my orange polishes, also pulled out my dot tool for a trial run, and this is what I came up with.

I used Zoya Tiffany on the middle and pinkie fingers, and N.Y.C. Classic Coral Creme on the pointer and ring finger. Dots were made with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White.

Spoiled by Wet N Wild - Trust Fund Baby

While out at CVS today checking out the nail polish clearance items, I found a display with this new, exclusive to CVS line from Wet N Wild called Spoiled. I really liked a lot of the colors, and they had some really nice glitters. They were only $1.99 but I didn't bring a ton of cash with me so I only got this color for the time being. It's called Trust Fund Baby. Multi Colored glitter in a clear base. I do like this polish. I love glitters, but I usually like the finer glitter because sometimes the big chunky stuff is hard to apply evenly. This stuff did pretty well. Another thing I liked about it is that it actually feels really smooth without a top coat. I am wearing one of the new China Glaze holiday glitters (post about those to come) and even though it's fine glitter, it's way more rough without a top coat.


So I did a hasty (ie messy, what's new) application to throw these pictures up and show you this lovely glitter. I put it over 4 different base colors.

First, here it is as it comes:

Then, over Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White:

Over Sally Girl 812046 (sorry these don't have names, it's a light robin's egg blue polish):

Over China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara:

and over Color Club's MODern Pink.

The pink is definitely my least favorite, but I do really like it over the white and the light blue. It actually works really well over the China Glaze as well but it was really hard to capture that in the photograph.

I will definitely be buying more of the Spoiled by Wet N Wild line!

Ulta Nail Prints

I had never tried any of the polish strips by Sally Hansen or various other companies so I bought some Ulta Nail Prints on a whim while on a recent shopping trip. I wasn't sure how these would work but thought I'd give them a go.

Overall, I liked how they looked They were easy to apply after a bit of a learning curve. They didn't really last any longer than a regular manicure, I had tip wear after a couple days and chips after 3. They were easy to remove with regular polish remover, but I will say for the price I will probably not buy them again.

Nail Polish Clearance Alert!!

I was in CVS today and there were quite a few nail polishes on clearance.

10 polish was all 75% off. I understand they are discontinuing this line as well as their Confetti polish.
A few shades of Confetti (mainly the very dark ones) were 75% off. Since they are discontinuing the line I assume the rest will be going on clearance as time goes on.
Several shades of Revlon, both the regular polish and the scented ones were 75% off.
Some shades of Wet N Wild were 75% off.
The majority of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear were 75% off (so they were $.75 each!)
Some shades of Sally Hansen Diamond Wear were 75% off. Looks like they are changing the bottle so they are getting rid of the old ones. They had some nice colors left when I was there.

They also have a new brand called Spoiled by WnW that had some really nice colors and glitters. They are exclusive to CVS and retail for $1.99. I only got one today but I will post pictures later.

One more thing, not a clearance, but Walgreen's has 3 different AWESOME sets of Color Club polishes for the holidays. It's a pack of 7 or 8 for $6.99. One was all glitters (and I love my glitter). I didn't get a chance to pick them up but I will soon and will post some pictures.