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!

Very Nice Customer Service from Sally Beauty Supply Today

Hello!  We're getting close to the weekend, which is a good thing for most of you, but for me it will be the end of our vacation!

When I was going through my e-mails, I got yet another e-mail from Sally Beauty about their buy-two-get-one-free offer on ALL their polish.  I looked carefully, and there were no exceptions and no polishes to which the offer did not apply. It bothered me that at the first Sally store I'd gone to on vacation, they would not extend the offer to the Finger Paints Special Effects or to the clearance and sale items.  The second store I had gone to here in Savannah, Georgia had applied the offer to everything.  But, I bought much less at that store thinking that the offer did not extend to clearance merchandise, because that's what happened at the first store.

So, I called the main customer service number for Sally Beauty and explained what happened.  They assured me that the offer did include the Finger Paints Special Effects and also the clearance and sale merchandise.  The offer included everything except a line of gel polish.  So, they called the store and told them that I would be coming in and that they should give me a refund for the amount I had overpaid.

I went to the store, and the manager had left, but a very nice employee, Lisa, went to a great deal of trouble for me on very old-fashioned dial-up cash registers.  I will have to figure out if there's a way to bring her great customer service to corporate's attention.  She refunded all my purchases and ran the order again with the additional discounts, including applying my $5 off $25 coupon.  She refunded $36.63 and charged the lower $24.36 afterwards, including tax.  That was a $12 difference!  Yay!

My new, adjusted vacation haul tally is $25, and for that I have gotten 12 full size polish bottles (6 of the Finger Paints Special Effects flakie top coats, 5 China Glaze, 1 Color Club), 5 mini-bottles of Sally Girl, and a cleanup brush.  Yay!

Vacation Haul, Part Two

So, Lacey pointed out that I had some of the names mixed up on the Finger Paints flakie top coats I bought yesterday. I bought Flashy, Flecked, Asylum, and Motley yesterday. For a moment I thought I had the full collection, and that's what started my trouble with the names. There are five top coats. The one not in the store yesterday was Twisted, the flakie top coat with all the colors.

At home I have, love and use Twisted and Motley. Motley has blue and green flakies.

When I bought the four top coats yesterday, I thought that I might have a giveaway with what I thought for a moment was the full collection. Now it bugs me that it's not a full collection. Also, I don't own Flashy, Flecked and Asylum for myself, so I might keep Flecked and Asylum. That would only leave Motley and maybe Flashy for a giveaway.

So today I went back to that store to get every other bottle they had. I bought an extra bottle of Asylum and an extra of Motley, so now I have at least a bottle of Asylum and two bottles of Motley for a giveaway, and maybe the bottle of Flashy and the bottle of Flecked and another bottle of Asylum if I don't keep those three for myself. I paid $10.68 for the two bottles of Finger Paints today.

Then, at another Sally Beauty on Abercorn Street, I met two super nice ladies behind the front counter, and I bought two mini bottles of China Glaze Ruby Pumps to add as an extra to a giveaway ($.49 each on clearance) and a bottle of Color Club Gingerbread scented polish for $.99 on clearance that I may keep for myself or maybe give away. My total at that store was $1.58 because at that store ALL the polish, including clearance items, was buy two get one free.

I am happy to know that I now have at least three limited edition Finger Paints flakie top coats to give away, plus the two mini bottles of Ruby Pumps plus a couple of other things I have set aside at home. I'm thinking of having a giveaway when I reach 30, or maybe even 25 official followers. Also, as far as giveaways go, a lot of the blogs I follow are new, like mine, and with fewer followers I figure there is a better chance of winning giveaways, and the blogs are great, so you might enjoy discovering them. There is a list of 10 relatively new blogs in my Versatile Blogger Award post about a week ago.

Below are pictures of today's purchases.

Vacation Haul

We went to a Target store in Savannah to get a few essentials. I found the E.L.F. concealer brush that Lacey had mentioned to me when I asked about cleanup brushes for manicures. I thought I remembered her mentioning that particular brush as one she heard other people used, so I pulled out my iPhone and started frantically checking my e-mails to try to find the post on Lacey's blog. It took some time with the iPhone, but I eventually found the post, and yes, she had mentioned the E.L.F. concealer brush. It was only $1!

In the same strip mall, I saw a Sally Beauty Supply store, so I had to go inside, of course. I wanted to take advantage of the Buy Two Get One Free sale on "all" (not really all) their polishes. First I picked up some Sally Girl mini bottles that I thought would make a nice little "extra" when I have my first giveaway, maybe when I reach 30 followers. The bottles cost $1.92 for the three of them. They are Circus (very pretty pale purple with tiny holographic sparkles), Metallic Gray, and It's So Me (pretty light purple duochrome shimmer).

Then I saw the Finger Paints magnetic polishes. They are exactly the same as the Color Club magnetic polish you can get online or at Hot Topic. They are the same bottles, the same magnets, and the names of the four colors are the same.

Then I found the clearance racks. I found a Christmas set called Holiday Spirits with a wine bottle topper with a Cristmas tree on it and also with the polishes China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Dorothy Who?, and Frostbite, all for $2.99. I may have this be a giveaway prize or save it for swaps, or I might use it. I already have a Ruby Pumps mini bottle and a bottle of the Milani dupe for it, and I have my new bottle of Ring in the Red, so I don't *need* the full bottle of Ruby Pumps. I always look at Dorothy Who? at Sally Beauty, but I never buy it. But, I worry it might be too similar to other blue polishes that I own. The last one, Frostbite, I will have to look for swatches online to decide if I will wear it or if I should give it away.

In the clearance racks I also found a bottle of China Glaze Blonde Bombshell gold heavy-duty glitter polish. I would always pick up the bottle and put it back down whenever I saw it. It was on clearance for $1.99, so I bought it. Now that I have it with me, I feel such a strong desire to wear it RIGHT NOW, but I want to keep the Sally Hansen polish strips on a little longer. Maybe if I get tip wear I can do a funky French with Blonde Bombshell on the tips.

Also in the clearance racks was Finger Paints Sparkle Topcoat. It's very pretty. It looks like a cute somewhat translucent pink shimmer polish, but it also has duochrome shimmer that shifts from purple to green, especially when layered over darker polish (based on swatches I have seen). It was on clearance for $1.49. I was originally buying this polish for a giveaway, but I will have to think about whether to keep it. ;-)

When I got to the cash register, I saw the Finger Paints flakie top coats. They are limited edition, and they have run out of them at many stores. So, I picked up all four for $4.99 each. I already have Twisted and Motley, and I don't need Asylum because it's similar to Essie Shine of the Times that I already have, and I don't *need* Flecked. So, I bought these for either my first giveaway or for a swap if a fellow blogger is dying to have them and cannot find them online.

Nothing that I bought qualified for the Buy Two Get One Free promotion except the Sally Girl mini bottles. But, I had a $5 off $25 or more coupon.

The total I spent at Target and Sally, including tax, was $25.95. Not bad for 9 full size bottles of polish, three mini bottles, and a cleanup brush!

Here are a couple of pics I just took in my hotel room with horrible lighting at night because I didn't want to wait for tomorrow morning to put up this post:

New Finger Paints Magnetic Polish at Sally Beauty

I haven't read the blogs I follow yet today, but up until now I had not heard about Finger Paints magnetic polish. An e-mail from Sally Beauty Supply with what's new in April had this ad:




Has anyone tried these yet? The blue and pink and gray ones look similar to other brands' polishes. I don't know about the orange-looking polish, though. The magnet looks similar to Color Club's magnet.

UPDATE 4-13-12:  They are exactly the same as the Color Club magnetic polish available online or at Hot Topic.  They even have the same names.

Thank you for reading my blog!