Last Weekend's Shopping

Last weekend I bought some of the new skull-bottle Wicked brand nail polish sold by Hot Topic.  They had a large part of the collection out on display on the store in my local mall, and the store clerk said that they were getting more selection in the future.  The entire collection is available online at Hot Topic's website.

I bought Deceit, a flakie polish similar to China Glaze's Luxe and Lush, except where Luxe and Lush has a clear base, Deceit has a very pretty light pink base with a little purple to the pink shade.  It's very dainty and girlie and delicate on its own; I don't know what it would look like layered over another polish.  The flakies are like shards of mylar, and the polish base is thick.  Sometimes a flakie will want to stick out, and you need to either push it flat or remove it or use cuticle nippers to nip off the part that is sticking out.

I also bought Royally Screwed which looks more dense and opaque in the bottle, but it's more of a top coat with royal blue small glitter and larger hex glitter.

Then I went to Claire's at the mall.  I bought Claire's Color Club Little Dipper, a beautiful orange shimmery polish with golden orange shimmer.  I also bought Claire's Candy Shop, a dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Candy Shop, a pink base with glitter in many sizes and colors.

And, you could get one Revlon polish of your choice for 99-cents at CVS last Saturday (after Extra Care Bucks and a $1 off manufacturer's coupon), so I got another bottle of quick dry top coat.

Most exciting of all, Sally Beauty Supply was having a large clearance sale, and I had a coupon for 15% off my entire purchase.  I didn't get any of the clearance polish, but I did find a bottle of Finger Paints Special Effects!  I found (and purchased, of course) Flecked!  I will offer this polish to my Finger Paints Special Effects giveaway winner if they don't already own it.  Then they can have 3 different ones of these hard to find flakie polishes.  Flecked has mostly green flakies and some blue flakies.  I also bought another set of nail wheels at Sally's.  It's what I intended to buy when I went there.  I can always use more nail wheels.

Here are some pictures of the bottles and some swatches of the polishes:

From left to right:
Finger Paints Special Effects Flecked, $4.24 + tax
Claire's Color Club Little Dipper, $5.09 + tax
Claire's Candy Shop, $3.91 + tax
Wicked Deceit, $5 + tax
Wicked Royally Screwed, $5 + tax
Revlon Quick-Dry Top Coat, $.99 + tax

Blurry picture of the package of nail wheels.  They're very inexpensive.  I paid  $4.58 + tax.

ONE COAT OF EACH:
#3 is Claire's Color Club Little Dipper
#4 is Claire's Candy Shop
#5 is Wicked Deceit
#6 is Wicked Royally Screwed

TWO COATS OF EACH, #3 through #6

THREE COATS OF EACH #3 through #5
TWO COATS OF #6

On the left #16 is Spoiled Vitamin C.
To the right is Claire's Color Club Little Dipper.
They are similar but I like the Color Club formula better, and it's more vibrant.

On the left, #3 is Revlon Orange Fizz.
To the right is Claire's Color Club Little Dipper.
They are slightly different shades with a very similar glass fleck or shimmer effect.
Also, the Revlon is more sheer and is scented.

On the top wheel, #17 is China Glaze Luxe and Lush which has the most similar flakies to Deceit on the bottom right.
On the bottom left at #18 is Luxe and Lush over black polish.
On the top wheel, #18 is Finger Paints Motley, and #16 is Finger Paints Twisted.
On the top wheel, #15 is Essie Shine of the Times.

Royally Screwed (#6 on the left) has similar sizes of glitter to Revlon Radiant (#10 on the right).

The glitter in Royally Screwed (#6 on the left) are most similar in color to  Sinful Colors Midnight Blue.

So hard to capture the sparkle in Deceit's flakies!

Thank you for reading my blog!

CVS Mini Haul: Spoiled Polishes

I have not loved the Spoiled polishes in the past because the only ones I saw had big untidy mops for brushes.  But, CVS was having a sale on Spoiled polishes that ended Saturday, buy two get one free, and their regular price is $1.99, so for $4 you could get 3 bottles!  I wasn't going to even look, what with my prior prejudice against Spoiled, but my husband pointed out the sale, and it was the last day of the sale.  I was surprised that the brushes on these bottles were actually O.K. and not awful like the ones I'd seen on Spoiled polishes before!  Yay!

They had some orange polishes, and I *love* orange polishes!  I picked out two orange polishes that were not dupes for anything I already owned.  I compared the bottles to the swatches on my nail wheels that I carry everywhere with me.  It's not a true comparison because what you see in the bottle is not what translates onto the nail . . . or the nail wheel.  But, I am buying fewer dupes this way.  The two orange polishes I picked were Jailbait and Vitamin C.

I had been wanting Vitamin C since I saw it on a blog post.  It's a very pretty orange with gold shimmer.  It's what I had wanted China Glaze Riveting to be.  I found Riveting to be too dark or something, just not entirely eye-pleasing to me, so when I wore Riveting, I had topped it with big and small gold flakies to make it more of a yellow-toned orange overall.

Jailbait is like a neon traffic cone dark reddish orange.  It dries matte.

After choosing the two orange polishes, I had to pick a third polish because I couldn't just walk away from a free polish.  After a good long time, I picked a pretty vampy shimmery shade called Bite Me.  I *loved* it, loved it, loved it, loved it.  It seemed similar to my swatch of Sephora By OPI I'm With Brad, but it wasn't identical.  When I got home I swatched Bite Me, and I loved it even more.  Opaque in one coat.  Truly opaque, no bald spots.  And, so gorgeous!  The formula was perfect and easy.  But, comparing the swatch to my swatch of SOPI IWB, it was clear that they were identical.  I compared the bottles.  Identical.  I tried and tried and tried to find some difference to justify my keeping them both, but they were truly indistinguishable, and although I think the formula for Bite Me was much, much better, I had bought IWB back in December 2011 and couldn't return it, but I could return Bite Me the next day at CVS and exchange it for a different color.

Here are some bottle shots and swatches on a nail wheel:

From left to right:  Jail Bait, Vitamin C, and Bite Me.

#16 is Vitamin C, #17 is Jail Bait, and #18 is Bite Me.

#3 on the top wheel is China Glaze Riveting, top half of it matted, left half of it topped with Luxe and Lush.  On the bottom wheel, #16 is Vitamin C, #17 is Jail Bait, and #18 is Bite Me.

On the top wheel, #1 is Wet N Wild Club Havana, and #2 is Essie Orange It's Obvious.

On the top wheel, #13 is L'Oreal L'Orange.

In the middle of the bottom wheel is Bite Me.  On the top wheel, #1 is SOPI I'm With Brad, and #2 is Sally Girl Gotta Have It 812 135.  Trust me that I'm With Brad and Bite Me were identical.  Gotta Have It is a little more brown-toned while the other two have more of a reddish undertone.

The pictures above are the last of the ones watermarked with the iPhone app that blurred my pictures by lowering the resolution and file size of my images.  The pictures below are all at original resolution, and from here on out, future posts should have images at original resolution unless I test out another program.

So, the next day, Sunday I went to a different CVS, hoping to find a larger selection of Spoiled polishes, and I exchanged Bite Me for yet another orange polish.  :-)   This CVS did have a much larger selection of Spoiled polishes, and I got to look at some shades that had caught my attention on blog posts.  The exchange was not a simple exchange because I had bought the polishes the day before with the buy-two-get-one-free offer, and now they were no longer on sale, but I wasn't going to pay even a few pennies for what should be an exchange.  With a manager's help, I finally completed the exchange.  

The polish I got was Orange You Glad, another shade of orange with gold shimmer.  I also like this one better than China Glaze Riveting.

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right,  #16 is Vitamin C, #17 is Jail Bait, and #18 is Bite Me. 

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right,  #2 is Revlon Tangerine, and #3 is Revlon Orange Fizz.

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right, #10 is HITS Speciallita Hula.

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right, #3 is China Glaze Riveting (the right half in this picture is matted, and the top half has China Glaze Luxe and Lush over Riveting).

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right, #9 is China Glaze Cross Iron, and #10 is Confetti Papa-Razzi

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right, #13 is L'Oreal L'Orange.

On the left is Orange You Glad.  On the right, #1 is Wet N Wild Club Havana, #2 is Essie Orange It's Obvious, and #3 is OPI Cajun Shrimp.

I really got as much if not more pleasure from these inexpensive drug store polishes than I have gotten from other more expensive polishes.  I just loved those orange shades, and they made me so happy to buy, look at, hold and swatch!  Even Bite Me made me happy, even if I did exchange it the next day.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Nail Mail

My first blog sale purchase! I love orange polishes and copper-colored ones, too. I had seen Sally Hansen's Pumpkin Spice on blogs, but it was not sold in stores anymore. I saw it on a blog sale late last week, and I got it on Wednesday this week!

Here are some photos of Pumpkin Spice:

Pumpkin Spice is not easy to photograph, but it's a copper glitter in a dark, smoky base.


Then today I received an order I had placed with llarowe.com.

Hits Speciallita Glitter Forte Punk Rock 614 (above) is a polish with bright orange glitters. I got it on sale for $3, but as of yesterday it was down to $2 on llarowe.com.

Hits Speciallita Hula (below) is a great flakie in very vivid red-orange shades. Anyone younger than 30 years old probably won't know what I'm talking about, but the color reminds me of the mercurochrome that was put on our boo-boos when we were kids.  I got Hits Hula on sale for $5, but as of yesterday the sale price went down even lower to $4.

Up Colors Lilas Holo (below) is a different shade from what I expected. I had thought it would be pale lavender or a bluish lilac color, but it's much more purple than I expected. I thought that I might give it away or swap it, but it's growing on me, especially when I noticed it's a complex color with some gold shimmer to it.  It looks very classy and pretty. It was $7 on sale on llarowe.com.

Shipping was very fast from llarowe, about three days from when I placed the order, and the shipping cost  was under $3 for all three bottles combined.

Below are pictures of the three polishes I received today swatched on a nail wheel, two coats each.  #9 on the nail wheel is Glitter Forte Punk Rock 614; #10 on the nail wheel is Hits Specialita Hula; and #11 on the nail wheel is Up Colors Lilas Holo.

Indoors, no flash.

Indoors, no flash.

Indoors with flash.

The glitter coverage was pretty thorough at two coats of Hits Speciallita Glitter Forte Punk Rock 614, but it doesn't feel very gritty on the nail wheel.  It's just slightly grittier than Sally Hansen Pumpkin Spice (#8 on the nail wheels above) which was hardly gritty at all.

Hits Speciallita Hula is such a juicy and shiny color!  The flakies have more of a glitter sandwich look rather than the more prominent look of flakies that I'm used to seeing.

And, the Up Colors Lilas Holo has a slight holo visible indoors and the holo effect is more visible using flash photography.  All my pictures above were taken indoors.  I haven't seen Lilas Holo outside in the sun, but I would guess the holo would look amazing in the sunlight.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Big Lots Nail Polish Purchases

Sorry that I've been absent for a few days.  I had a stomach bug this week, and I missed some time at work, and I wasn't up to blogging.  I'm even behind on reading blogs.  I need about two hours of solid reading to catch up with the over 200 blog posts waiting to be read on my blog reader.

But, back to nail polish.  I went to Big Lots last weekend because I learned they had two-packs of Revlon polish for $2, so $1 per bottle.  Also, the blog post I read where I learned about the Big Lots sale showed a polish, Orange Fizz, that I just *had* to get.  I love orange polish, and Orange Fizz is a dark orange polish filled with shimmer.  The shimmer actually does make it look a little like "fizzy pop" (what I call soda).

Here is a photo of the rainbow created by the four two-packs that I bought:

From top to bottom:  Electric Pink, Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit, and Coconut Crush.

From top to bottom:  Electric Pink, Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit, and Coconut Crush.

From top to bottom:  Electric Pink, Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit, and Coconut Crush.

You can see the pretty golden shimmer in Tangerine (second from the top) here.
From top to bottom:  Electric Pink, Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit, and Coconut Crush.

Here's a closer look at the first four polishes:

From left to right:  Electric Pink, Tangerine, Orange Fizz, and Pineapple Fizz.

And here's a closer look at the last four polishes:

From left to right:  Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit, and Coconut Crush.

I ended up with two bottles of Pineapple Fizz because I wanted the orange fizz, and it didn't come packaged with any other polish, and I wanted the blue polish, Colada Fizz, which also didn't come with any other polish.  I realized one of the benefits of my being a blogger now is that I don't have to feel bad about buying two of one polish.  I can add it to a giveaway or I can swap it!  My husband didn't agree with my reasoning, but at least he didn't stop me from buying the duplicate.  :-)

Once I saw Tangerine in the store, I had to have that one, too.  It has the prettiest golden shimmer in it.  My husband didn't understand why I "needed" another orange polish, especially as I was getting an orange already at the store, but he didn't stop me.  He did try to have me pull out my nail polish wheels to make sure I didn't already have these orange shades at home, but I was pretty sure I did not.  The Tangerine came with Electric Pink which is a dark pink shade.  I would have skipped it if it had been sold on its own.

I saw Colada Fizz at the store, and because my favorite polish colors are orange and blue, I had to have Colada Fizz, too.  Colada Fizz came with an extra bottle of Pineapple Fizz, which I mentioned above.

Finally, I saw Passion Fruit, a purple cream, and I had to have it.  That was the biggest surprise to me.  All this time I thought I didn't like purple polish, and it seems lately I am buying purple polish.  When I gave it some thought, I realized that one of my favorite colors for clothing is purple, especially a reddish purple or pinkish reddish purple.  Passion Fruit came bundled with a pearly white frost, Coconut Crush, and again, I would not have bought Coconut Crush had it been sold on its own, but now I own it, too.

Below are some pictures of the polishes swatched on my nail wheel with two coats of all the colors except the "fizz" colors which needed three coats except for Coconut Fizz that needed SIX (6) coats, and it was still very light and not yet at the bottle color . . . but I called it a day at that point.

From #1 on the Nail Wheel to #7 on the Nail Wheel:  Electric Pink (not color accurate), Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit (not color accurate here--see bottle shot above which is accurate as to color), and Coconut Crush.

From #1 on the Nail Wheel to #7 on the Nail Wheel:  Electric Pink (not color accurate), Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit (not color accurate here--see bottle shot above which is accurate as to color), and Coconut Crush.

From #1 on the Nail Wheel to #7 on the Nail Wheel:  Electric Pink (not color accurate), Tangerine, Orange Fizz, Pineapple Fizz, Colada Fizz, Passion Fruit (not color accurate here--see bottle shot above which is accurate as to color), and Coconut Crush.

Thank you for reading my blog!