More Pic Spam from the last couple months!

I really have no excuse for being MIA this time, except that I think I sort of have the winter blues. I also think that, upon going through my stash and updating my spreadsheet, that I feel that I'm reaching my nail polish saturation point. Creeping closer to being in the 4-digits--scary!! But fun. I know it's a harmless hobby, but yeah. Somehow when I realized how much I had acquired made me a bit crazy!

Plus, I have to decide what I'm going to do about it. I'm moving to Winnipeg in May, around 1700 miles away. I'm having my stuff shipped in a pod, but there's *no way* I'm packing that many polishes, and I won't have room for my polish in my car. My solution, so far, has been to decide on a core number to bring with me, pack them securely in one of my Helmers, and ship that, and store the rest of my collection at my mom's house in NY. Our move to Winnipeg is supposed to be somewhat-temporary (a few years, until I'm a dual citizen), and then we intend to return to the States. What would you do? Could you live without part of your stash? I'm certain I could, plus I could always grab stuff when I visit home, or have my mom mail it. Any suggestions from you other nail mavens?

Anyway, enough babble and on to some NOTD's from December to present, in some sort of general chronological order, with running commentary, as usual:

Milani Purple Gleam. Umm stunner! So awesome it needed two pictures. I bought all of these new glitters the released. When I'm in Canada, I will seriously, seriously miss these LE Milanis (do ya'll get these? I feel like I read you don't). I bought all the colors and the Jewel FX's, even the Silver one that I ordered especially from Cherry Culture. I have glitter sickness!

OPI My Private Jet. I won't lie, I own two bottles of this beauty. I only break it out for special occasions. In this case, I wore it to my graduation for my Master's Degree.

China Glaze Peace on Earth. I like this polish a lot but it was a bit hard to control the brushstrokes, as you can see. It was pretty much a one-coater, though.

China Glaze Sexy in the City. Liked this one more in the bottle than in practice here. This is also a terrible shot of it. It's just not as blue as I wanted. In the bottle, it sort of reminds me of the Cerulean Crayola Crayon. In reality, not so much :-(

Milani Silver Dazzle. LOVE.

China Glaze Little Drummer Boy with China Glaze Fairy Dust on top, Konad Plate M59. Got a lot of compliments on this one, I wore it for a while.

China Glaze Frosty with China Glaze Party Hearty. Love both of these polishes. Frosty is like snow, so gorgeous.

OPI Teenage Dream. This is awesome. I bought all 4 Katy Perry polishes, even though I have zero opinion of her one way or the other (I'm a rock'n'roll kinda gal, I have zero knowledge of pop music), but this is a lot of fun, and very pretty.

This is a hot mess of a picture but here's OPI Black Shatter (no topcoat). Just playing around, and here my camera starts to do an annoying streaky glare thing that it will continue to do for a few more shots to come. Once I get my hands on the black China Glaze Crackle, I'd like to do a comparison, as I also have the Cover Girl and the Isa Dora black crackles.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Cut It Out. This was amazing. Any "wear" you see in this shot was actually user-error, I broke a few off wrong and had what looked like chips, but they weren't. Anyway, these wore crazy well for me, no tipwear, chipping, lifting, anything. I didn't want to take 'em off. I got a few more packs to try too, but I think I'm saving them for when I know I won't have much time to change my polish, as they're a bit pricey.

RBL Coral with OPI Dress to Empress on top. I felt like I needed RBL Coral in the last sale and I'm not sure why. It is pretty, but I don't really do coral. I got Dress to Empress at a salon on clearance, I hadn't heard of it before. It looked kinda sheer, so I layered it here. In real life, this sort of resembled OPI Wing It, and even though it was 2 coats of the RBL and two coats of the OPI, it was still kinda-not-totally-opaque. Lame!

Zoya Edyta. OK so sue me here. This picture sucks, and I have to say that I recognize and respect that this polish is gorgeous but I hated it on me? It was so boring and one dimensional on the nail. Yuck. Oh well... it wore great. I got this with my sale order, I also got Crystal (love), Cheryl (love), Valerie (untried), Tiffany (untried), and SARAH!! (my name!!!), which is serious, serious, serious love. It's wicked gorgeous, thank you Zoya! I didn't take pics though, sorry :-/

Essie Dive Bar with China Glaze Millenium & Konad M61. I'm trying to use my Konad more lately, it's kinda gone by the way-side. I'm bummed that the gorgeous purple duo in this polish doesn't show really on the nail except at some very random, incapturable moments. This is part of the new Essie retail line. Also grabbed Mochachino, and I reallllly want Coat Azure from the new spring line. *saves CVS coupons*

Milani HD. I can't tell you how many times I've passed this in the store. In CVS lighting, it looks dreary and un-holo. Actually, all the gorgeous Milani holos look dreadful in this light. I heard they're dc-ing these, so I wanted to grab the few I still didn't have. I still want the blue and pink ones. Anyway, this is WAY more holo than this picture shows, it's so pretty, I'm in love. This is tonight's manicure and it looks like it'll be my Valentine's Day one, too. Maybe I'll add a Konad heart, even though I don't celebrate (husband is far away, so boo).

I've gotta stop doing this in giant chunks and blog a little more regularly. I have fun ideas for posts, but then I get lazy! Ugh! Winter! All I do is read and work and try to stay warm and watch movies! I'm just itching for spring.

One last question to my lovely readers: Anything from China Glaze Anchor's Away that I need? I can't decide. Ugh. I've gotta go get a better look at 'em.

Milani Dot Com

Oh, what a gorgeous color. This appears to be from a new collection called Liquid Metal, which I mentioned the other day. I immediately zeroed in on this one as the star of the collection, and indeed, it was the only one I bought. It's a crazy shimmery polish--not frosty but with an almost foil-like finish. It's finish kind of reminds me of Hard Candy Mr. Wrong. But deeper and more complex shimmer-wise. So it's not a full-on foil. Very shimmery and metallic. It sort of defies description in that area. Also in the area of color: it's plum, bronze and flashes a bit of gold and pink here and there. Very fall looking. But fall be damned, it's Spring and I will rock it because it is gorgeous!

2 coats, excellent formula, dried fast and shiny with Seche Vite, I present to you Dot Com:

I'm not sure if these pictures really capture its gorgeousness. But it rocks! I highly recommend seeking it out if you can. Also, due to its intense shimmer, I may go back for one of the others, because this was seriously stellar.

Thanks for looking!

New Stuff: Borghese Tutti Gelati & Milani Liquid Metal Collection & A Gadget!

OK so while I'm stocking up a few nail looks to post, I thought I'd show a few things I picked up at the drugstore tonight, one of which I think is pretty gosh-darn nifty. I'll warn you ahead of time this post is wordy!

The first things I picked up are these two new Borgheses from the Tutti Gelati collection. Menta and Pistacchio (is this spelled wrong on purpose? Italian spelling? Not sure...). These look a bit on the sheer side (especially Menta), but they're super cool looking... Borghese is really amping it up. These were $8 but I had a $3 coupon I earned watching some videos on Rite Aid's website. You can sign up and print the coupon once you've watched the video (which is like, 2 minutes). Also, if you watch 20 credits worth of videos (they all have a varying point value) you get $5 off $20 coupon. Anyway, here's Menta and Pistacchio.

Menta, Pistacchio.

Menta.

Pistacchio.

Second, I went to CVS and saw this new Milani display/collection, Liquid Metal. Excuse the picture, I took it with my iPhone and the lighting was CRAP. But these looked so cool, and I haven't heard anything about them anywhere yet, so I took a picture:

These are the new Milanis, clockwise from top left: My Network, Just Browsing, PC Girl, I'm Online, 2.0, and Dot Com. (The one Dot Com missing is the one I took!). Not sure why there's three each of My Network, Just Browsing & PC Girl and two each of I'm Online, 2.0 & Dot Com.

I didn't have time to take detailed pictures of all of them, because I only bought one. So, here is my written description of the collection: Three of these, My Network (gold), PC Girl (silver) and I'm Online (bronze-ish) are basically dupes of the Orly Foil FX collection---or, rather, I immediately thought that there was a dupe (or close dupe) of each color. Even the finish looks very similar. I didn't buy these for comparison, but if you missed the Orlys, these look like they might be a good bet. There was also a sheer looking white gold shimmer, Just Browsing, as well as Dot Com--a shimmery purpley bronzey pinky awesomeness, and 2.0, a crazy shimmery silvery black. I only bought Dot Com because it looks fabulously, seriously, unique. I almost bought 2.0 but it looked a little too close to BB Couture's Dark Knight for me to need both. We'll see. I may break down and go get it.

Here's Dot Com:

I can't WAIT to wear this! I'm sure it'll be featured again very soon. These pictures just do not capture the awesome, irregular shimmer and the duochorome-yness of the whole thing. Gorgeous.

And lastly, but certainly not leastly, I found this weird little contraption in a huge clearance bin at the Rite Aid I went to. It was origially $9.99, marked down to $2.49, and I figured I'd pick it up because it piqued my interest.

It's called Calieo Soak-Off Antibacterial Artificial Nail Remover System, and it's for removing artificial nails.

It's supposed to come with five little orbs that look sort of like those plastic balls you get in quarter machines that have toys in them. One end is rubber though, and you stick your finger into it after you fill it went acetone (or the enclosed remover, which was way evaporated, as you can see).

This is how you put your finger in, and apparently there's some sort of scrubber mechanism on the inside.

A shot of all my fingers in it. Not sure if it's water-tight, so I'll have to experiment and find out if you should hold your hands like this.

Here are the directions:

My first thought was that this reminded me of the "foil method" that people talk about for glitter removal on the MUA nail board. Also, I thought, it'd be great for removing Orly Nail Rescue, because I use that frequently and remove and reapply it every other week or so (I have one really damaged nail on my left hand that I'm trying to grow out).

For some reason, my box came with 6 little orbs, not five as it states on the box. Haha. I'm gonna experiment with this really soon because if it works, I actually think it's kind of ingenious and will really be helpful to me for glitter/nail glue removal. So, if this piques your interest too, head to your Rite Aid ASAP! I've never seen or heard of this before, so I'm not even sure where else you might get them. Like I said, they originally retailed for $9.99, and I'm not sure I would've paid that much for it, but at $2.49, it went in my basket very quickly.

I was a super bargain shopper at Rite Aid tonight too--I had so many coupons (from the Video Values thing and others that I'd saved) that I got over $40 worth of stuff for $18! Not too shabby. I'm only 24 and I am living at home again during grad school (fiance and I are long distance still), so I haven't really gotten the finesse of coupons. But I've recently gotten into blogs like Noveau Cheap and the like that are inspiring me to get good deals on stuff that I'd buy anyway. I like to think I'll be very awesomely thrifty when I'm on my own again. I think That's all the babble I've got for tonight! Thanks for reading :-)

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PS: Not pictured above, because I don't have it yet, my fiance also picked me up American Apparel's Passport Blue today, which I passed on while I was there and regretted it. So I now have 14/18 of the American Apparel polishes. They're awesome!! Kudos to AA for good leggings, awesome deep V-neck t's, and wicked polish!