Maybe I Need To Stop Buying Nail Polish- A Haul

So I may not be posting as much but that does not mean that my spending on nail polish has waned. In fact, it has probably increased. In the past year or two the amount of polishes available to consumers has exploded in conjunction with the popularity of nail polish itself. We now have available to us polishes from countries around the world along with the always innovative polishes from indie sellers. Big name brands have taken notice of this and stepped up their game offering a wide variety of creative colors and finishes. Now is definitely the time to be a nail addict. I'm definitely happy, but maybe my bank account isn't! These are all polishes I've bought in 2013. And there are probably more that I've stashed away in a Helmer that I've forgotten about (bad girl!).

Hard Candy polishes. From left- Crush On Pink, Crush On Tin, Fun 'N Festive, Pixie Pink, Cocoa Smore, and Gummy Green.

Sigh. I'm so, so impressed with Hard Candy and bringing out this completely revamped line of 45 polishes. I literally want every single one. I don't think that has ever happened to me before. There are maybe a few I could live without. It was almost torture limiting myself to these 6. The bottles are small at almost half the size of a standard polish, but the price is right at $4 a bottle. Just be prepared to go hunting at WalMart to find them. (Here is a list of all the polishes)

Hit Polish. From left- Tes-Stained Linen, Turq-ish Delight, On Angels Wings, and Lilacs in Bloom.

Unf. These are so pretty. I'm most excited about Tea-Stained Linen. It's so unique!

Cult Nails polishes. From left- Disciplined, Untamed, Scandalous, Flushed, Annalicious, I Got Distracted, and Spontaneous.

I finally picked up the Cult Nails polishes that had been on my wishlist when they had a sale recently. You can never go wrong with Cult Nails.

Etude House Sweet Recipe Ice Cream Nail Polishes (not sure if they have actually names but the colors are numbered 1-4).

I was REALLY excited for these. The whole Etude House Sweet Recipe collection looks amazing, but these called out to me the loudest. These polishes were shipped all the way from South Korea (Etude House is a Korean brand) and I couldn't be happier. Korean cosmetics and skincare are becoming a new obsession for me. (I bought these on eBay)

Hits Mari moon Modern set. From left- Cool, Dreamer, Trendy, and Cutie Pie.

More foreign polishes! These are from Brazil and I bought them from Ninja Polish. I have the Unique Set (and posted about it here) and need the Modern Set to round out my collection. These polishes are a must in any polish lover's collection. Especially Cutie Pie. I think I need a back up of it.

From left- Ninja Polish Divinity and Nebula, A England Dragon, Hits Salsa and CanCan.

The rest of the polishes from my Ninja Polish order. You can't tell from the picture but Divinity is a multichrome in the same vein as Clarins 230 and Max Factor Fantasy Fire. The bottle of Nebula is backward because it shows the color shift in the bottle better. The A England polish is a long time lemming that I'm super excited to finally have. And lastly the two Hits polishes are color changing flakies in a colored base. It's hard to tell with Salsa, but it has the same color flakies as Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure and Essie Shine of the Times.

From left- Orly Orange Crush, China Glaze Beach Cruise-r and Surreal Appeal, Essence Oh My Glitter!

Some random polishes. The first three I think I got on clearance at Ulta or Sally Beauty. Something like that. It was a busy polish buying day.

From left- Rainbow Honey Be Mine, Urban Outfitters Chilly, Ulta XOXO and Diva, and OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air

Last batch of random polishes. I needed Be Mine by Rainbow Honey to round out my Valentine's collection from them. The Urban Outfitters glitter polish I'm really excited about. I wish I had bought a few more polishes while I was there but I was trying to be restrained. And the last three were Ulta impulse purchases.


And theeeeeeeeeeeere we go. I really should stop buying polishes faster than I can wear them. Do you see anything that catches your eye?

Recent Nail Polish Acquisitions (AKA I Buy Way Too Much Polish)

So I drank a bottle of champagne last night- by myself, for no reason. Haha, how sad does that sound? I rarely drink and this bottle of champagne had been in my refrigerator since New Year's. I was just waiting for a special occasion. I got tired of waiting and decided Tuesday evening was special occasion enough. So I drank the bottle, got really happy, danced around to the Gangnam Style song, got sleepy, laid down and read a book, then got totally sober and awake and decided to write this post.

Since I decided to write this post at such an ungodly hour I'm just going to show bottle pics of some of my more recent nail polishes purchases. I'm sure there have been more than this... somewhere in the abyss that is my nail polish "storage" (aka random boxes stashed around my room) now that my Helmer is full.

Butter London- No More Waity Katie, Knackered, Wallis, All Hail the Queen

Icing- Lipstick & Lovers, Forget You, Eenie Greenie Miney Mo, Mr Right Now (not as neon as it looks)

Barielle Falling Star, OPI Just Spotted the Lizard, KleanColor Chunky Holo Black, Nicole by OPI For Gold Times Sake, OPI Fly, Barielle Buddha-ful

Hits Mari Moon- Artsy, Daring, Chameleon, Unconventional

Zoya- Fei Fei, Frida, Anastasia, Daul, Zara, Jules, Song, Bevin

This was my order from the recent buy one get one free Zoya sale. I got the sugar scrub and the polish remover free.

I'm a Frankening Fiend!

So what I did today, in between studying for two exams, was make more frankens. I bought some color morphing powders (probably the ones used to make Unicorn Pee itself- Clarins 230) from Cathy of More Nail Polish awhile ago and just got he chance to play with them. The polishes themselves turned out amazing but I'm disappointed that my pictures turned out so blah and one-dimensional. Hm, maybe I can convince my boyfriend to buy me a new camera!
Anyway, I made 5. Once I start it's hard to stop!

Ugh, crappy, crappy picture. The first one is holo. The second one morphs between gold to reddish bronze to green depending on the angle/light. The middle green is not that bright of a green; it's more murky. The last blah looking one photographed the worst of all. It's actually a top coat made with red to green color morphing pigment.

Here is a slightly better picture of the top coat franken showing its more greenish side.

I'm wearing the purple one third from the left in the picture above, but I need to wait until I can get some sun to take pictures. I've already made 15 frankens since I ordered my little bottles from TKB Trading. I ordered 30, which I figured would be more than enough, but I guess not! I'm obsessed!


Thank you for reading and have a great day/night/whatever!

Glitter and Holographic Franken Creations

Thanks to the bestest idea ever by the most badass redhead on the planet, Robyn, I've been creating frankens like a mad woman. Because I've spent a whole day playing The Sims instead of doing the things I planned to do, I don't have any swatches for you. But the bottle pictures are still pretty cool. Most of them are holos, after all.

The first one isn't a holo, but I still luff it. It's pretty much glitter puke in a black jelly base.

I used equal parts of all the polishes you see in the background and about 20 or 25 drops of a black creme.  This was before I mixed it (you can see my little container of BBs I used as mixing balls in the background) and I love the way the glitter layers look.

This was 6 glitter polishes and I already have plans for another using as many glitters as I can manage to squeeze in.

This is a baggie of the powder I use to make the holo frankens (here is my green one). It is what all the old really holo polishes were made with. I read somewhere, but can no longer find the post, that the FDA decided not to allow the use of the powder for cosmetic purposes any longer, which is why you no longer see those really pretty linear holo polishes. I read the Material Data Safety Sheet for this powder, and I'm fairly comfortable that this isn't going to harm me (unless I breathe it is, as it is tiny metal particles). Also this stuff is crazy expensive. 1 gram (this bag you see here) cost me $18. But you hardly need any at all to get the holo effect in your polishes.

And here are all the frankens I've created in the past few days. I'm currently wearing the silver middle one over a black base coat, which I'll show you pictures of soon. I think I'll either wear the black glitter puke or the blue holo next.  And I have more idea for new colors too!


Thank you for reading and have a great day/night/whatever!

Cult Nails Hypnotic Collection Bottle Pics

Yay, look what came in the mail on Tuesday!

No, they aren't extremely inedible-looking eggrolls, they're nail polishes! Cult Nails' Fall 2011 Hypnotic Collection, to be precise.

From left- Awakening, Enigmatic, In A Trance, Hypnotize Me

Sigh, aren't they beautiful? I can officially say that I own every single polish that Cult Nails has released. I think this has become an obsession within an obsession as I'm already obsessed with nail polish in general. I didn't have time to swatch these before I left to visit my parents, but I'll get on it first thing when I get back.

You can purchase Cult Nails' polishes from their website here- http://shop.cultnails.com/


Thank you for reading and have a great day/night/whatever!

My Cult Nails Order

Unfortunately I don't have swatches for you guys.  I think I mentioned before that I had a bad break on my swatching hand.  Not just an ugly break, but a bloody one.  I'm going to wait until my nails grow out a bit to do these gorgeous polishes justice, but I was just excited about my order and wanted to show you guys the bottle pics.

I was super impressed with the shipping time.  I order on a Tuesday and got my tracking number that same night.  So they were probably mailed the next day (Wednesday).  I recieved them on Saturday.  See? Quick!

The owner of Cult Nails, Maria, is a blogger and nail polish fanatic just like many of us.  On her blog, www.r3daily.com/, Maria often writes about the behind the scenes of starting her own company, creating new colors, and other interesting tidbits.  It's nice to a company be so forthcoming and it makes me want to support her.

Cult Nails polishes retail for $10, which may seem a bit high to those of us used to paying drugstore prices.  But really, I don't find the prices that bad for a small company just starting out.  It isn't like creating mineral eyeshadows where you can make them at home; Cult Nails actually works with a lab to formulate each of her polishes.  You can tell Maria puts a lot of thought and effort into working with the lab and picking the colors for the collections.  Most of the colors are extremely unique and the formulas of the ones I have tried so far has been amazing.  I feel like you know you are buying quality when you order from them because the owner really cares about her product.

Sorry if this seems overly gushing, but I just find it really inspiring that Maria went for her dream of starting her own company.  I think of how many times I have thought, "I should do this" and never followed through with it because I was afraid of the work it would take or was afraid of not being successful.

But anyway, on to the pictures!  I'll do swatches as soon as my nails stop being gross!

It came packaged in a Flat Rate Box.

The polishes look like little eggrolls wrapped in their packaging material.  Cotton balls are also used as packing material, which I thought was cute and clever.  Everything arrived packed well and nothing was damaged.

From left- My Kind of Cool Aid, Living Water, Iconic, Quench, Devious Nature, Cruisin' Nude, Captivated, Let Me Fly, and Always Winning

Inaugural Collection- My Kind of Cool Aid, Living Water, Iconic, Quench

A Day At The Races Collection- Devious Nature, Cruisin' Nude, Captivated, Let Me Fly, and Always Winning

You can buy Cult Nails' polishes from their website- http://shop.cultnails.com/  Polishes are $10 each or you can buy all 9 polishes for $75, which is what I did.


Thank you for reading and have a great day/night/whatever!

My Zoya Polishes

Zoya is an awesome company.  They have fabulous nail polish in a wide variety of  colors and finishes.While they aren't available in stores (online is the best place to buy them), it is really worth it to pick some up if you are a nail polish lover.  They also have great customer service and really care about their customers as they are always having promotions.  The bulk of my current collection came when they were having a BOGO free promotion.  The others came when they had a promotion for reaching 20,000 fans on Facebook.  You got 3 polishes free and just had to pay for shipping and handling.

So I went from having zero Zoya polishes to having 14 seemingly overnight. Being entrenched in the nail blogging community I forget that buying more than 1 or 2 polishes once a year or so is highly unusual for most people. Heck, P.P.O.D. (Pre-Polish-Obsession Days) 14 polishes used to be more than I owned total, not just of one brand.  Also, before I knew better I threw out all the colors I had that were not nudes or pinks in a fit of color hating rage.  I'm so mad I did this... old school Sinfuls, Streetwears, and Sally Hansen polishes all gone.  The only colors I have left from my childhood are some ugly frosty mauves my grandma gave me. Ugh!  Oh well, I guess eBay has to be good for something.

I really wish I could have swatched all of these, but I'm just starting out blogging and I'm TERRIBLE at swatching.  I was able to swatch two before I got frustrated and gave up.  I'll post those later.  for now, here ar some bottle pics.

First Row: Tiffany, Lola, Adina, Savita, Valerie, Casey

Back Row: Shawn, Ivanka, Edyta, Crystal, Kotori, Kelly, Ki, Loredana

Zoya Tiffany and Lola

• Tiffany is a peachy-pink metallic shimmer with gold flecks.  The gold flecks show up much more prominently in real life.
• Lola is a neon hot pink with a blue shimmer flash.  Unfortunately the blue flash isn't showing up in this picture, but it is very visible in real life.

Zoya Adina, Savita, Valerie, and Casey

• Adina is an almost frosty looking purple with a strong green duochrome.
• Savita is matte blue leaning purple with tons of pink shimmer.  This is gorgeous with a top coat.
• Valerie is a reddish purple metallic base with golden copper shimmer flecks.  Once again the gold flecks are not showing up in the picture.
• Casey is a vampy, blackened purpley red.

Zoya Ivanka, Shawn, and Edyta

• Ivanka is blueish emerald green base with grassy green shimmer flecks.
• Shawn is dirtied yellow green creme.
• Edyta is a dark forrest green base with lots of golden and green shimmer flecks.

Zoya Crystal and Kotori

• Crystal is a light blue shimmer with golden metallic flecks.
• Kotori is a sapphire blue in a blackened blue base.

Zoya Kelly, Ki, and Loredana

• Kelly is stormy, purple tinted gray creme.
• Ki looks like an oil slick in a bottle.  It is a dark base with a purple and green duochrome.
• Loredana is a matte charcoal with multicolored shimmer.  The colored shimmer is not very apparent without a topcoat.

Available:

• Zoya polishes retail for $8 on their website.  They offer free shipping on orders over $55.
• Zoya is also available as select salons.  Use their salon and spa finder tool to fine one near you.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day/night/whatever!