3 Packages, 2 Stores, A Bunch of Polish

I have a few little hauls from the past two weeks or so, along with several polishes that I received through the mail, that I'm going to combine into one big haul post today.

I already posted about Nail-Venurous Floam several day ago, but when I bought it off of Ninja Polish, I also picked up two A-England polishes.  I was pretty much going to order Floam no matter what but I'd rather be able to get several polishes at once then have to pay shipping for just one bottle.  I've been hankering for several colors from A-England so when I saw that Lady of the Lake and Dragon were in stock, I ordered them as well.  I really, REALLY want St. George as well, but that one was out of stock so it'll have to sit on my wish list for a little bit longer.

A-England Lady of the Lake, Nail-Venturous Floam & A-England Dragon

A few days before placing the Ninja Polish order, I took advantage of Zoya's Spring Promotion, which was a buy 3, get 3 free offer.  I actually placed my order literally minutes before the offer was going to expire.  Even though Zoya has a ton of colors to choose from, I couldn't make up my mind!  But I finally settled on 4 colors from last year's Sunshine Collection: Kimmy, Apple, Tanzy and Rica, and 2 colors from the Feel Collection: Kristen (which I just used in my glitter sandwich) and Carey.

Zoya Kimmy, Apple, Tanzy, Rica, Kristen & Carey

Last Wednesday I was off from work and decided to do a little shopping in the afternoon, which of course resulted in some polish shopping as well.  After I picked up some necessities at Target, I ran next door to Sally Beauty and proceeded to buy the rest of the colors I didn't already have from Capitol Colours collection.  Sigh.  I know, I know, I said I wasn't planning to get them.  A week or so ago, I actually stopped in for something else and I picked up Dress Me Up and Foie Gras and I swore that was it!  Even though I kinda wanted Agro, I kept telling myself I had Peace On Earth and that was close enough.  But then there I was, not only buying Agro, but Fast Track, Hook and Line, and Mahogany Magic as well.  Double sigh.

China Glaze Dress Me Up & Foie Gras

China Glaze Fast Track, Hook and Line, Agro & Mahogany Magic

I also picked up a couple Orly's I've been wanting to get.  Nothing special, just a couple of basics that seem to come in handy for nail art: Luxe and Liquid Vinyl.

Orly Luxe & Liquid Vinyl

The OPI's I bought are all older polishes and I got them at CVS, of all places.  I know CVS is not supposed to carry OPI, but apparently some of them do.  I never realized it because my closest CVS does not.  But last Fall, I had gone to a CVS a little farther away from my house looking for some limited edition Wet n Wild polishes that had been released for Halloween, and that was when I discovered that this particular CVS had OPI polishes.  I've looked on some message boards and it seems there are other CVS locations that do this too. Unlike Target, which usually seems to have a set list of colors on hand at any time, this CVS is kind of hit or miss.  It's like shopping at Big Lots, one week they might have a bunch of colors from the Shrek Forever After Collection, then a couple weeks later you might find colors from the Burlesque Collection.  I had seen the Texas Collection there once, in fact it was the only time I saw CVS have an actual OPI cardboard display put out.  At the time I had bought a couple colors like Don't Mess With OPI and San Tan-tonio.  I did not, however, realize what the sorbet/jelly polishes were all about, so I didn't pick up any of those.  But that's also why, when I had considered doing a glitter sandwich for my b-day manicure only to realize I owned maybe 2 jelly polishes, that I decided to head to CVS and see if they still had any of those Texas colors available.  The first night I went, I picked up Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em, Guy Meets Gal-veston and Big Hair...Big Nails.  I ended up going back the next night and, after a bit of searching, found Do You Think I'm Tex-y and Houston We Have A Purple.  They did not have any Y'all Come Back, Ya Hear? though, which is disappointing because I really wanted that one most of all.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get it one day.

OPI Do You Think I'm Tex-y, Houston We Have A Purple,
Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em, Big Hair...Big Nails & Guy Meets Gal-veston

While at CVS, I also grabbed A Good Man-darin Is Hard to Find, from OPI's Hong Kong Collection, and DS Coronation.

OPI A Good Man-darin Is Hard to Find & DS Coronation

And then, just when I thought I had this post all ready to publish, I got a package in the mail today with 3 of the new China Glaze Prismatic polishes!  Kari from the MidAtlantic Nail Polish Enthusiasts Group on Facebook had offered to pick up some extra bottles and she was able to get me Prism, Full Spectrum and Ray-diant!  Yay, thanks Kari!  Now I just need to get to Sally Beauty to grab the other three.

China Glaze Prism, Full Spectrum & Ray-diant

Adding to the Stash

When I had gone to Ulta two weeks ago, my plan was to pick up the rest of the OPI Nicki Minaj collection.  A friend of mine had gone down to Philly a few weeks prior and was going to stop in a Philly Ulta on the way back, so I had asked her to pick up all 6 colors for me, if they had them, or get me basically whatever they did have.  They only had Super Bass Shatter, Did It On 'Em and Fly.  Ones that I wanted, yes, but not as much as I wanted Metallic 4 Life and Save Me.  When I finally got a chance to go to my sorta-local Ulta to pick up the other 3, all they had available from the Nicki Minaj Collection was one lonely bottle of Did It On 'Em, which I already had, thanks to my friend.

There was one website that I had stumbled across a couple months ago, mbeautylounge.com, that sells OPI polishes among other brands, but I had been hesitant to buy anything from them.  On the drive home from Ulta though, I decided to take a second look at it and by Sunday I had placed my order.  For some reason only after placing my order did I decide to do a search for reviews of the site and oh my God, all I found were bad reviews! At this point, I was more than a bit nervous about my order.  Luckily, by Wednesday, I received an email with a tracking number and by the following Monday my polishes had arrived safe and sound.

I had ordered the rest of the Nicki Minaj Collection: Metallic 4 Life, Pink Friday and Save Me, along with Glow Up Already! from OPI's 2010 Burlesque Collection.  Skimming over some of the bad reviews, it seemed like a lot of the problems dealt with really large orders and international shipments.  I only ordered 4 polishes and they only had to ship from Ohio to PA.  So maybe that factored into why I didn't have any issues with my order, but after reading all the bad reviews, I don't think I would order from them again.  It worked out for me this time, but I don't know if I'd want to take a chance on a second order.  A lot of people have had legit nightmare experiences, so I consider myself lucky on this one.  Even though I had no problems, I honestly would not recommend this site to anyone.

After that drama was out of the way, I got a chance to stop back in at Sally Beauty to see if they had Smoke and Ashes from the China Glaze Capitol Colours Collection.  I wasn't in a hurry like my last trip to Sally's, so if they didn't have it out I was going to ask for it this time.  When I got there, they did have a bottle of Smoke and Ashes out and I decided to get Harvest Moon as well.  So now altogether, I have half of the Capitol Colours Collection and I think that's probably all of the colors I'm interested in from this collection.  Besides the two China Glaze colors, I also grabbed Orly Prelude to a Kiss and Steel Your Heart, from the Cool Romance Collection.

I know I had said previously that I didn't want Steel Your Heart, but then standing there in the store, that neurotic part of my brain kicked in that says, "There's six colors in the collection and you're going to have five of them.  What's one more?  You might as well just get all six.  Just buy it!"  So I did.  ::Sigh::  That's the same "logic" that I lost to when I ended up buying all of the colors from the China Glaze Let It Snow Collection, even though I'm sure I didn't need half of them.  We'll see how it goes with the Capitol Colours Collection, so far I'm standing strong at six!

You can expect a few more posts from me this weekend.  On Friday, I received my first ever Lynnderella polishes in the mail and today my March Birchbox arrived and I'm really excited about both!  I never got around to posting about last month's box but I will be taking pics of this month's Birchbox tomorrow.

Mini Hauls, Part 2

After my Ulta trip last Saturday, I didn't do any polish shipping for several days.  But this past Monday morning, I woke up to find an email waiting for me from Kristina of My Lucid Bubble, letting me know that I won her China Glaze Magnetix Collection giveaway!  That was such a shock!  I'll be sure to post all about it shortly after I get them, which should actually be sometime today, according to the tracking number Kristina emailed me.

So then Thursday, I needed to run to Target after work to grab a few things.  Target is right next to Sally Beauty Supply.  And well, I decided that since I had just received my new 15% off coupon that same morning...gee, I might as well just pop in after Target to see if there was anything worthwhile.  While at Target though, I spotted the Salon Express.  If you haven't heard/seen of it yet, Colette has a blog post and video about it here.  I've still never actually seen the infomercial on TV, only on YouTube.  But for weeks, I had a bunch of ladies at work asking me if that was what I used, when in actuality I was using Konad and Bundle Monster plates.  I had no idea what they were talking about until Colette put up her post about the Salon Express.  I haven't opened mine yet to see if the scraper is as bad as everyone says but I don't actually care since the only reason I bought it really was for the double ended stamper.  I only have the regular single ended Konad stamper.  You can get the Konad double ended stamper for about $6.99 at most places online but Colette said she actually liked the Salon Express stamper a lot more than her double ended stamper from Konad.  So considering you also get 5 plates, I figured it was worth $9.99 to take a chance on it.

So after Target, I ran into Sally's and they finally had the China Glaze Capital Colours Collection out.  I don't know if it just seems this way to me, but I feel like my Sally's is slow to put out new things compared to what I read online from other bloggers.  Regardless, most of the colors were still on the display.  I immediately reached for Electrify.  Altogether, I bought Stone Cold, Riveting, Electrify and Luxe and Lush.

I believe the other colors they had left on the display were Dress Me Up, Foie Gras, Mahogany Magic and Harvest Moon.  I'm regretting a little bit not grabbing Harvest Moon.  But I know I'll be going back because I definitely want to get Smoke and Ashes, which they did not have out.  I was going to ask if they had more colors in the back but I was kind of in a hurry by this point so I didn't bother.  If I don't end up getting them at Sally's, I'll probably just put an order in online at Head2Toe, 8ty8 Beauty Supply or Victoria Nail Supply.  Besides the Hunger Games polishes, I also bought two more colors from the Orly Cool Romance Spring 2012 Collection, Jealous, Much? and Artificial Sweetener.

I think I'll have to go back for Prelude To A Kiss.  The only other color in the color is Steel Your Heart, but it's just not doing anything for me so I'll probably pass on that one.