My First Giveaway!

I've been blogging for over a month now, and I have over 25 followers and over 1,000 page views, and to celebrate, I'm having my first giveaway!  I am not publicizing this giveaway much because I want my first few followers to have a better chance of winning.  You don't need to be a follower to enter my giveaway, although I would love to have more followers, so hopefully you will like my blog enough to follow it.  I also have a Facebook page here, but you don't have to like it in order to enter this giveaway, although I would appreciate a few more likes.  All you need to do to enter the giveaway is to follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below and add a comment to this blog post letting me know what your favorite polish color and favorite polish finish are.

The giveaway prize is two bottles of Finger Paints Special Effects flakie top coats (Asylum and Motley) and one bottle of Essie's Shine of the Times flakie top coat.  These bottles are brand new and have never been used or swatched. I bought them myself, and I bought them specifically for this giveaway.  I have no association with Finger Paints, Sally Beauty Supply Stores, or Essie.

The Finger Paints Special Effects polishes were only sold at Sally Beauty Supply Stores and not online, and they sold out quickly.  You can no longer find them in stores.  Asylum has red and blue flakies.  Motley, a favorite flakie of mine, has green and blue flakies and looks amazing over dark green polishes like China Glaze Glittering Garland.

Essie Shine of the Times is a multi-colored flakie that over a dark polish flashes some beautiful gold and green colors.  I especially like it over Essie Little Brown Dress.  It looks like fall in a manicure that way.

From left to right:  Finger Paints Asylum, Essie Shine of the Times, and Finger Paints Motley.

At number 14 on the nail wheel is Finger Paints Asylum over Wet N Wild Black Creme.   At number 15 on the nail wheel is Finger Paints Motley over Wet N Wild Black Creme.  At number 17 on the nail wheel is Essie Shine of the Times over Wet N Wild Black Creme.

The giveaway is open to those people in the continental United States only.  I had to educate myself on the post office's laws with regard to nail polish.  In summary, I can ship the nail polish by ground transportation only, not by air, so I'm keeping things simple by limiting the giveaway to the continental United States.  In the future, I will try to figure out international shipping rules, but right now, for my very first little giveaway, I don't want to have to worry about customs forms and customs taxes for internationally shipped products.  If you are outside the continental United States but can provide an address in the continental United States, for example if you can use a friend's or a relative's address, then by all means enter my giveaway!

I will do my best to package the polish securely, and I will get a tracking number.  However, I cannot replace the polish if it gets lost or stolen or breaks in transit because I don't have more bottles of these hard-to-find Finger Paints Special Effects polishes to give away.

This giveaway ends on May 31, 2012.  I will notify the winner by posting the winner's name (the name that shows up with their blog comment below) here on this page and also on a separate post once the giveaway is over, and I will post the winner's name on my Facebook page.  If I don't receive an e-mail from the winner (with their mailing address where I can ship their prize) within 72 hours, I will have to pick another winner.

You can enter my giveaway by following the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below.  Please give Rafflecopter a few seconds to fully load before you start your entry.  Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Free Essie Nail Polish

Cosmopolitan magazine is giving away a free Essie Nail Polish, Cosmo's PSS Shimmer, to the first 1,500 people who enter the sweepstakes here.



Thank you for reading my blog!

Hunger Games Nails

This is the manicure I wore when I saw The Hunger Games on the opening weekend. I wore it to court, too. And, the nice drive-thru employee at McDonald's told me, on two different days, that the manicure was very pretty.

I love orange nail polish. But, I was not prepared for how vivid the orange of China Glaze Riveting was. I wanted to make the overall color more golden, so I added China Glaze Luxe and Lush and then a tiny bit of Essie As Gold As It Gets. This was Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued) as a base coat, three coats of Riveting, one coat of Luxe and Lush, a little AGAIG, and a coat of Seche Vite. I must have done something wrong because the polish wouldn't cure and stayed dentable, so I broke out my Qtica Half Time Polish Drying Accelerator (quick dry drops). That seemed to have worked.

The manicure lasted over a week. A day into it, though, I added a coat of Gelous and another coat of SV. My manicures generally last a week to 11 days, but that's with me adding a coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat every morning. I did get significant shrinkage from so many layers of fast-drying top coats.

I bought these polishes online at a discount e-tailer because I got tired of waiting for the polishes to be sold by my local Sally's or online on their website. So, I bought them without seeing them, and I was very happy that I loved the colors when I actually got to see them.

I had never even heard about The Hunger Games until I started reading nail polish blogs. The CG collection posts got me interested in reading the books. I read each of the three books in 2 days, so all three in under a week. I loved them! And, I really liked the movie. Reading the books got me back into reading fiction books. I had not done that in over a decade. I hoped pouring my time and energy into reading would help me hold back from spending more time and money on my nails. I did manage to stop buying for over a week, which was quite an achievement. Anyway, after The Hunger Games, I read a five-book children's book series by the same author. Now I am reading The Maze Runner, another book I learned about on a nail polish blog.

Here are some pictures taken in my car, the day after I polished my nails, I think.  They are in both direct and indirect sunlight.

Here are some pictures taken in my office:

With flash, taken under my desk.

With flash, taken under my desk.

Thank you for reading!

Nail Mail and Nail Haul

So, I had not been buying nail polish for over a week.  It doesn't seem like a long time, but my buying polish whenever I wanted was leading to larger online orders and more purchases at my local stores.  I didn't want to have to buy more storage. . . yet.  And, I told myself that I couldn't keep spending lots of money on nail polish and instead should be buying work clothes.  I have not bought work clothes since July 2011, and I need some.  But, I also told myself that I don't go and get mani/pedis at a salon, so I'm saving lots of money there, and why not just buy polish bottles instead of getting mani/pedis at a salon, right?  As long as I didn't spend more than $95 per month, I figured it was O.K.

After not buying polish for at least 10 days or so, and planning to continue on my no-buy path, I got surprise nail mail on Thursday.  Essie and Tom's footwear got together on Facebook a few weeks ago to give away 15,000 bottles of a limited edition Essie polish:  Barefoot in Blue.  It's a perfectly smooth cream in the most dreamy periwinkle color.  And, oh, how I had been wanting a periwinkle blue!  I swatched it on a nail wheel right away!

Then on Friday, I had *more* surprise nail mail!  My aunt-in-law sent me three new amazing L'Oreal polishes with a very sweet note.  She sent me Now You Sea Me (an aqua polish), Greyt Expectations (a greige polish), and L'Orange (an orange polish).  I was ecstatic!!!  I didn't even wait to take off all my work clothes before swatching all three colors on a nail wheel.

Here are pictures of my nail mail from Thursday and Friday:

 

 

The colors IRL were in between the colors in the two photos above.

#13 is L'Oreal L'Orange.  #16 is L'Oreal Now You Sea Me.  #17 is Essie Barefoot in Blue.  #18 is Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night.

I *love* orange, and I was afraid I might have a dupe of L'Oreal L'Orange in my Essie Orange It's Obvious, but L'Orange is lighter and brighter than the untried Essie, and it's darker than my untried Wet n Wild Megalast Club Havana.  Yay, no dupes!  

Some of my orange polishes.  No dupes for L'Orange!

#1 is WnW Megalast Club Havana.  #2 is Essie Orange It's Obvious (NOT A DUPE!  YAY!).  #3 is OPI Cajun Shrimp.

Then I was worried the NYSM polish would be a dupe of one of my blues, but it wasn't.  It was much darker than a very pale and sheer no-name blue shimmer polish from Icing (untried), and it was darker than my untried Wet n Wild Megalast I Need a Refresh-Mint.  

#18 Warpaint Galaxy.  #1 Icing no-name light blue shimmer.  #2 WnW Megalast I Need A Refresh-Mint.  #3 Icing no-name blue shimmer.  #4 Icing no-name darker blue shimmer.

#18 Warpaint Galaxy.  #1 Icing no-name light blue shimmer.  #2 WnW Megalast I Need A Refresh-Mint.  #3 Icing no-name blue shimmer.  #4 Icing no-name darker blue shimmer

I only have one other greige, the Wet n Wild Megalast Wet Cement (that my husband *hates,* so this polish has gone untried, too), and the L'Oreal is different from the WnW.  The L'Oreal leans a little to the dusty pink side and is lighter than Wet Cement.  I didn't get good pictures of my WnW Wet Cement and my L'Oreal Greyt Expectations swatches yet.

Today I bought three Revlon Colorstay nail polishes at CVS and a Revlon Top Speed nail polish.  For buying $15 of Revlon, I got $7 in Extra Care bucks.  I also bought a Spoiled brand nail polish at CVS for which I had a $.50 off CVS coupon. They were running a buy two get one free sale on Spoiled, but I didn't see two other Spoiled polishes I wanted. The Revlon Colorstays were $7.99 each, the Revlon Top Speed was $5.99, and the Spoiled was $1.99 = $29 before tax.  I had $1 off coupons for all three of the Revlon polishes and the $.50 coupon for the Spoiled, which brought it down to $25.50.  I bought $15 worth of the Revlons first (two Colorstays and a Top Speed), got the $7 Extra Care bucks, and used those to buy the fourth Revlon (a Colorstay).  In total I used $16 of Extra Care bucks, which brought down the nail polish cost to $9.50 cash out of my pocket.  That's not too bad!  Four beautiful polishes for $9.50 (before tax)!  Yay!!!

The first two colors I bought were Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night (I'm going to call it a dark periwinkle, but I am not good with color descriptions) and Coastal Surf (a sky blue).  I had wanted both colors since seeing them at another store a few weeks ago (when I made my last nail polish purchase before briefly going into no-buy status--what I bought then was a Revlon Colorstay polish at CVS that with coupons and discounts and Extra Care Buck rewards was actually a money-maker, so that was a no-brainer to "buy").  

My husband picked out Revlon Colorstay Bonsai (green with gold shimmer) for me.  The most beautiful polishes I own were picked out by my husband.  He's come a long way.  After years of only thinking in terms of pink and red and orange polish, in December he went out by himself and came back with the Sally Hansen nail strips in Teal with It, a bright, "electric" aqua blue.  I had mentioned once, in passing, how I was thinking of buying the strips.  And, that's how he is.  He surprised me with them the same day.  I wore them that night to the firm holiday party.  They matched my blue dress.  I got tons of compliments on that manicure, and it lasted about 11 days.  Since then my husband has picked out some gorgeous blue polishes and green polishes for me.  

The Revlon Top Speed I bought was Royal; I had been wanting it more and more each time I saw it on a new blog post. It's, as can be expected from the name, a royal blue.  The swatch on my nail wheel dried matte, but it doesn't seem particularly neon-like.

The last polish I bought today was Spoiled's Ants In My Pants, that I had wanted for a while, but I would do the old pick-it-up-and-put-it-back thing on every trip to CVS.  My husband picked Ants In My Pants today from the Spoiled display, and I took it as a sign from the nail polish gods and added it to my collection.  Yay!  Ants In My Pants is a re-release of the limited edition Wet n Wild release Behind Closed Doors, which is believed to be a dupe of the very expensive Deborah Lippmann Ruby Red Slippers.  AIMP has a black jelly base with red glitter in two different sizes.

Here are pictures of today's nail polish purchases:

Left to right:  Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night, Bonsai, and Coastal Surf.  Revlon Top Speed Royal.  Spoiled Ants In My Pants.

Not a great picture, but these are four of today's purchases swatched on a color wheel.  Left to right:  Revlon Colorstay Bonsai, Revlon Colorstay Coastal Surf,  Revlon Top Speed Royal, and Spoiled Ants In My Pants.

Another photo of four of today's purchases swatched on a color wheel.  You can't see Ants in My Pants too well on the right, but you get a different view of the Revlon polishes.

#18 is Revlon Colorstay in Indigo Night (not very color-accurate).  #13 is L'Oreal L'Orange.  #16 is L'Oreal Now You Sea Me.  #17 is Essie Barefoot in Blue.

I am going to paint my fingernails this afternoon.  I want to use a blue polish because a lot of the nail bloggers are wearing blue polish tomorrow for World Autism Awareness Day.  My husband said my new Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night was his favorite of all my new blue polishes, so that's what I will be wearing tomorrow.  I would have gone with a more wimpy choice of a lighter blue because I will be in the office tomorrow, but at least I don't have to go to court.  Usually I wear my blue polishes on my toes. I hope Indigo Night doesn't stain too badly!

My pictures aren't the best.  You can Google all of these colors and see AMAZING swatches by the more experienced and very talented nail polish bloggers.

Thank you for reading!