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.

Mini Hauls, Part 1

I was writing this post Thursday night and it started to take on a life of its own.  So I decided it would be better to split it up into two somewhat smaller posts, so as not to bore anyone to death!

I did a little bit of shopping this past week, starting with last Friday when I went to Wal-Mart to pick up Nicole by OPI's Fabulous Is My Middle Name.  I saw swatches of it on The PolishAholic's blog while at work.  So when I got out of work, I ran straight to Wal-Mart to pick up a bottle!  And I never go to Wal-Mart, so this is how I've come to realize that my little polish obsession had severely grown since last summer.  I used to like my local Wal-Mart but then they had to relocate the store and the second location...it's just a mess.  From bottle necks at the single entrance to the parking lot right to the harsh lighting and tiny aisles that are constantly a mess...I'm just much happier shopping at Target.  So when I saw Jen's swatches and realized it was a Wal-Mart exclusive color, I was a little bummed at first.  But I said screw it and drove over, got in, grabbed the polish, paid and got the hell out of there!  I also grabbed Have A Heart.  I already had Love Your Life, which is pink heart glitter, so I decided to grab Have A Heart to have some matching red hearts.

The next day, Saturday, I decided to trek to Ulta.  The closest Ulta to me is about a 30 to 40 minute drive down the highway.  I don't mind the drive actually, but fuel efficiency is not my friend when it comes to this trip!  And on this day, it really ended up being a waste of gas because they didn't have any of the OPI's I wanted to get in stock.  Everything I did get I could have just ordered online and used the free shipping code that was available.  But oh well, at least my Ulta is in a pretty decent sized shopping district, so there are tons of other stores around Ulta to hit while I'm there.  From Ulta I picked up two butter LONDON's from the Spring/Summer 2012 Collection, Slapper and Bossy Boots.  A friend had picked up Knackered for me a few weeks ago, so now I just want to get Trout Pout, which Ulta was out of when I was there.  I'm not sure yet if I want Disco Biscuit, which would be the only other color from the new collection I don't have.

I also got a few polishes from the Orly Cool Romance Spring 2012 Collection, Faint of Heart and You're Blushing.  And since I've been meaning to try both, I grabbed Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover and Orly Cutique cuticle and nail stain remover.

I plan on putting up part 2 sometime Saturday.  After last Saturday's trip to Ulta, I didn't do any shopping until Thursday, when I ran in to Sally Beauty Supply and finally was able to buy some of the China Glaze Capital Colours polishes.

Purple On Purple

Just a simple manicure this weekend using two OPI colors.  I originally had something completely different in mind when I started but it just wasn't working out the way I wanted.  I started with 3 coats of OPI Rumple's Wiggin', which is a soft lilac from the Shrek Forever After Collection.

Then I hit a wall.  I originally had a dotted design planned out with this color as the base, but I couldn't get dots as big as I needed them to be.  I'm not even sure if anyone actually makes dotting tools as large as I needed, but I've seen a bunch of do-it-yourself large dotting tools online using eyeliner caps and other common objects.  I just need to spend more time making and testing some to find one that actually works well for me.  I don't know if it was the curve of the items I tried or how high of an arch my nails have, but everything I tried kept resulting in extremely oval shaped dots, rather than circular dots.  So I decided to put that original design idea on the back burner until I can perfect a large dotting tool.

Since that idea was scrapped, I was stumped as to what to do next.  I already had 3 coats of Rumple's Wiggin' on so I decided to just keep it simple and I reached for my OPI Super Bass Shatter from the Nicki Minaj Collection, which I had yet to try.  And this was the first time I did a base color and a shatter/crackle color that were from the same color family, rather than going with bases and shatters/crackles that are completely opposite or that are complimentary but still different color families.

Really simple, but I do really like the way it came out.  I can't say that I'm sick of shatter/crackle polishes yet.  For as many as I have, I hardly ever use them so that is probably the only reason why I'm not sick of them yet.  I don't think I'll keep this on all week though.  I imagine that I'm going to get bored with it after another day or two.

Retro Skylar

Zoya recently ran a Valentine's Day promo where you could get a free red polish plus free shipping with any purchase.  I originally was going to pass on the promo but then on the 15th I found out that the promo was still running until midnight that night, not just on Valentine's Day.  So then I basically proceeded to talk myself into it!  I ordered Bevin and Skylar, both from the new True Collection.  I also picked up Lolly.  I already have Phoebe and Mitzi, so I wanted to get Lolly to complete the Mod Mattes Collection.  For the free red polish, I went with Kym from the Wicked Collection.

My order arrived this past Tuesday and I decided to try out Skylar first.

It wasn't exactly how I had imagined it would look.  I can't explain it.  I would look at the bottle and love it, but I kept looking at it on my nails and was feeling indifferent.  I wore it by itself all day Wednesday and it did definitely grow on me.  But by Wednesday night I wanted to switch it up and decided to try out another design from my Red Angel plates.  I picked a retro looking design from Red Angel plate RA-108.

I stamped it onto Skylar using Konad Special Polish in dark red.  Over Skylar, the dark red Konad polish came out looking more like purple but I really liked the way it looked paired with Skylar.  I had originally been trying to decide between the dark red and the dark purple Konad polishes, but I think the dark red was the better choice.  I think the dark purple would have been too dark and not have complimented Skylar as well as the dark red did.  

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my nails next.  There is a great stamping contest going on that Enamel Girl just announced this past Wednesday.  I definitely want to come up with something to submit, but the last day to enter the contest is not until March 21st, so I've still got some time to work on ideas for that.  I'll probably just end up doing what I usually do on the weekend...open a random drawer of polish, reach in and try to find a color I haven't worn yet and see what I can come up with!

Zoya Peter Som NYFW 2012 Fall/Winter Colors

Today, I have on Zoya Evvie.  Zoya describes it on their site as "a rich, decadent, smoky, eucalyptus cream."  I describe it simply as awesome.  I love all different shades of green and this is no exception.

Zoya Evvie is part of the limited edition Zoya - Peter Som Color Box from New York Fashion Week 2012.  Zoya, along with several other polish brands, is pretty active during fashion week, working with different designers to create nail looks to compliment their clothing collections.  Most designers utilizing Zoya picked existing colors from the Zoya line.  But two designers, Peter Som and Bibhu Mohapatra, actually worked with Zoya to create brand new colors to be used during their shows.  The Peter Som collection was announced for sale on February 10th and I jumped on it.  I usually don't buy polish without having either seen it in person first or having searched online for as many swatches as I can find.  But swatches of the colors didn't exist yet online, so I'm not sure if it was the whole "limited edition" part of it or that they were offering free shipping, but as soon as I saw the announcement on Zoya's Twitter feed and saw the bottle pictures on Zoya's site, I placed my order.  And having received the set yesterday, I'm so glad I did.

Besides Evvie, the Peter Som Color Box includes a pale pink cream called Audrey and a plum "nail gloss" called Katherine.  Katherine is a sheer gloss with "double the shine" that is meant to be worn either as a single coat or can be worn in multiple coats to build the intensity.  Adding a clear topcoat is supposed to create a gel like look.

In a video Zoya posted from the Peter Som show itself, their nail techs suggested that it can also be layered over other softer colors to give them an updated, fall look.  I decided to swatch the colors on a nail wheel and then experiment with layering Katherine over them.  Evvie is not exactly a "soft shade" like Zoya suggests to layer Katherine over, but since it's part of the set, I figured I'd try it and not just swatch Katherine over Audrey alone.

Overall, I'm very happy I decided to purchase this collection.  It sold out completely in about 3 days.  I did not purchase the other limited edition color box that followed, which was the Bibhu Mohapatra Color Box.  The colors in the Bibhu Mohapatra box just did not interest me much.  I'll be curious to see swatches of those colors though, once they start popping up online.  As of right now, both color boxes are listed on Zoya.com, but marked as Sold Out.  I could have sworn that I saw dates listed for restock when I checked the site Thursday, but as of Friday the dates were gone and replaced with the Sold Out message again.  So I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Zoya decides to make these available again or not.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Honestly, I really don't care much for Valentine's Day.  Aside from some decent candy sales, it's not really that big of a holiday for me.  But it's a great excuse for some heart-themed nail art.  I would have liked to have posted this sometime on Sunday or Monday, but I just didn't have the time to get it up before Valentine's Day.  Although, at this point, this is just my third post ever and no one is really reading this blog yet, so I guess my timing is not all that important right now, ha ha...

This is my main Valentine manicure for 2012.  I did this a few days ago, on the weekend, which is when I usually do most of my manicures.

And...drum roll please...I remembered to take pictures in between each step this time!  I started with 3 coats of Nubar Fire Sparkle.  Pardon the glitter around my cuticles...I had to do a little bit of clean up around the nails and it didn't seem like much glitter was left behind until I started to edit the pictures.  Fire Sparkle dries with a slightly rough finish, as you can tell from the picture.

After the last coat was dry, I stamped on a double heart pattern from Red Angel plate 110, using Konad Special Polish in black.  I didn't get them perfectly centered on each nail but in the final result, you really don't notice it at all.

Once I had the heart pattern stamped, I felt like there was something missing.  So I decided to put a few black dots around the hearts, just using Wet n Wild Black Creme and one of my dotting tools.  Then going back to Nubar Fire Sparkle and using a smaller dotting tool, I put smaller red dots within the black dots.

Then I applied Seche Vite top coat to finish.  I actually used two coats of Seche Vite on this.  As the first coat was starting to dry, I could see a bit of the roughness from the glitter starting to reappear.  But the second coat took care of that.

Hearts-A-Plenty

This past week, I've been wearing a pink manicure with red hearts as my first Valentine design of 2012.  It was more or less done on the fly.  I had a Valentine idea I wanted to do but I wanted to save it for Valentine's Day itself, which left me feeling unsure of what I should to do for the week before Valentine's Day.  So it kind of evolved as I was painting my nails, without a real clear picture in my mind of what I would end up with.

Since I planned to focus on red for the week of Valentine's Day, I decided to go with a bunch of pink shades for the week before.  I started with a few coats of OPI Mod About You.  Then I taped off part of my nails at an angle and used a coat of OPI Sparrow Me the Drama, taped them off again and made a third stripe with Milani Digital.  Even though I read a ton of blogs, I'm not used to doing my nails with the intent of posting it online, so I completely forgot to consider taking pictures of my striped nails prior to stamping.  I'll have to remember from now on to take pictures in between steps.

While everything was drying, I sifted through my stamping plates trying to decide what I was going to use on top.  I finally settled on a tiled hearts pattern from Red Angel plate 114 and used Konad Special Polish in red.  I just recently bought the Red Angel plates off of Amazon after seeing them on Enamel Girl's blog, so I was looking for a chance to use them again.  It wasn't my best attempt at stamping though.  I usually don't have issues with the full nail patterns but this time I think that I end up pushing too hard when I was rolling the stamper.  I didn't even realize there was a pretty badly blurred spot, right on the tip of my left hand middle finger, until I was browsing through my pictures.  I also think that this design ending up looking better from a distance rather than close up.

Overall though, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.  I'll be working my my next Valentine manicure this weekend, so I hope to have that up sometime during the week.  I also received my February Birchbox a few days ago, so I might take some pictures of what samples I received this month and do a post on that sometime this week as well.