Nail Mail and Beauty Mail!

I left work a little early today because I was feeling ill, probably from the lunch today in honor of our administrative assistants for Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day.  It was just the best day for me to find nail mail waiting for me at home!  And, I got beauty mail, too!

The nail mail is very special because it's from a fellow blogger here in Florida, Jody of SoFlaJo.com, who also has her own indie line of polish.  She sent me a mini bottle of Blue Martini from her newest Happy Hour Collection for me to try.  Blue Martini is a blue jelly filled with multiple sizes of diamond glitter, short tinsel, and round holo glitters.  All of Jody's polish is made from natural pigments and glitters with bases free of Toluene, Formaldehyde, and DiButyl Pthalate.  Mini bottles are $5 on her site, and full sized bottles are $10.  Her shipping charge is low, too, and she has promotions at times where shipping is free!

This nail mail just means so much to me in so many ways.  This is the first time I have received a sample of polish to review!  I can't believe she gave me a bottle to review when my blog is so new, and I don't have anywhere near as many followers as a lot of other blogs. And, I was waiting until the end of the month (pay day) to place an order for some SoFlaJo polishes, and Blue Martini was my #1 choice!  How does Jody know me so well???  You can see the Happy Hour Collection here.  She has done an amazing job with pictures of swatches on a nail wheel of the polishes by themselves and also layered over other polishes.  Go look!!!  Her macro shots of the polish colors are so sharp and amazing!  I wasn't able to take pictures even half as good as hers of the Blue Martini polish.

I'll be buying Pink Lady and Grasshopper (and maybe some more from this collection) after payday.  This week is a no-blue-or-glitter-manicure week for me because of an important hearing tomorrow morning and a conference/seminar on Friday, but as soon as this week is over, I am going to do a manicure with Blue Martini, maybe layered over black. I've never worn black polish before, layered or alone.  Double firsts this weekend!

Here are some pictures of the awesome nail mail from Jody of SoFlaJo.com:

The bottle was very secure in bubble wrap and was sealed with bright and beautiful , colorful tape!

It's like she delivered a mini-party to me!  The bottle has a very pretty label, and it has a very nice color-coordinated ribbon around the handle.  And, there was party confetti and a magic wand in my favorite blue color again!  The wand has a hibiscus on it, I believe.  That's a very pretty flower we see a lot here in South Florida.  And, the confetti is awesome!  I scrapbook, so I will be using the confetti in a layout, maybe a layout about receiving this first polish ever to review!

I tried to get some bottle shots of the polish, but Jody's pictures on her website are much better.  Here's the best I could do with my iPhone's camera:

DIAMOND GLITTER!    Oooooh!!!

And, although the swatches on a nail wheel are better on Jody's website, here are some pictures I took at home, because, of course, even feeling ill, I couldn't wait to swatch the GORGEOUS bottle of happiness that Jody sent to me!  On top is the polish by itself, two coats, and below is just one coat of the polish over one coat of black.  Can you believe how gorgeous it is over black and how much glitter is packed in one coat?

Application was super-easy.  You don't have to worry about not getting enough glitter or having to fish for any particular shape of glitter in the bottle!  And, there is no problem with placement of the glitter; it goes on evenly with the first brush stroke.

I compared the Blue Martini polish to a few other polishes I own.  There were no dupes, and nothing is as dazzlingly beautiful, not even close.

Top left is Blue Martini over Wet N Wild Black Creme.  Top right is Blue Martini by itself.  Below that is Sinful Colors Kissy on the left and Nail Junkie on the right.

On the left, top to bottom, is Essie School of Hard Rocks, Revlon Radiant, and OPI Austin-Tatious Turquoise.  On the right is Blue Martini over black and by itself.  The closest polish I own is Revlon Radiant, and it is nowhere near as beautiful as Blue Martini. Revlon Radiant doesn't have diamond glitter, either!

And now for the Beauty Mail!  I can't believe I got Nail Mail *and* Beauty Mail all on the same day!  The beauty mail was the free Beauty Bag from Target that I mentioned in this post on April 6th, the day I ordered the free Beauty Bag.  The samples I got were different from the samples in the picture of the offer from Target, but they are very nice samples.  Here are some pictures of the Beauty Bag and its contents:

The bag is pretty, and it's nicely padded, so I will probably use it to transport nail polish when I go on trips.

On the upper-right of the picture above, that's a coupon booklet with discounts for beauty products at Target.  I looked through it, and there are some nice $1 off and $2 off coupons for brands like Cover Girl and Maybelline.  But then I got to a coupon that made me stop and pull out my camera again:

Oh my!!!  I may be a lover of nail polish, but I'm a magnetic polish junkie!!!!  I have 15 bottles of different magnetic polish from different brands.  I cannot wait to see these Sally Hansen magnetic polishes at a local store!  Please, if any of you see these polishes in your local stores, let me know where you spotted them!  Wow, these will be the first magnetic polishes available at my local Target, Walgreens and CVS stores!  Up until now, when I've asked salespeople whether they will be carrying any magnetic polish, I have had to explain to them what magnetic polish is because they had never even heard of such a thing, let alone heard of them planning to offer it in the future at their stores!

Oh, thank you so much, Jody, for your incredibly thoughtful, sweet, and very special to me nail mail!  I am no longer feeling sick, so your nice surprise cured me!  :-)

Thank you for reading my blog!

China Glaze Magnetix Magnetic Polish in Pull Me Close

This polish has immediately made it into my top 10 favorite polishes.  It's a very pretty grayish light blue.  The application was very easy, the dry time was fast, the magnet worked well, and the brush--thin and long--was perfect for me.  The polish dried shiny and was crazy shiny with Seche Vite on top.  What I loved the most is that unlike a lot of my other polishes, this polish did not have any shrinkage from either the Seche Vite or my daily coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.  The cleanup was very easy and minimal, too.  This was the first time I used the E.L.F. Concealer Brush I bought on vacation to clean up the stray nail polish with acetone.

They sell the polish at Sally Beauty, but I bought mine online through a discount e-tailer for a very low price before my local Sally Beauty stores started to stock the magnetic polish.

It was difficult to capture the color in my photos, so I'm including lots of photos.  In the photos the polish looks a lot more blue, even in the bottle, and less gray than it is IRL.  In the pictures below, I'm originally wearing one coat of Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued), two or so coats of China Glaze Magnetix Pull Me Close, and a coat of Seche Vite.  Each day I added a coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.  I have pictures below with one to four days' wear.  Thanks to the lack of top coat shrinkage, I didn't have to do any patch jobs with the polish like I do with so many other of my manicures.  I've been typing a lot and cleaning, and the polish is wearing really well.

These first pictures are just one coat of the polish, no magnetic effect applied yet, no cleanup, and I wasn't able to capture how pretty the color is on its own, but I tried!

The next few pictures were taken in my office the next day.  The one with the dark background is under my desk using flash.  The blue is much bluer than IRL in these pictures.

These next few pictures were taken in my car after a day of wear:

I took the next few pictures in the car on Tuesday, after two days' worth of wear.  I did a little more cleanup practice with a brush and acetone that morning, too.

I took the next few pictures yesterday, after three days of wear.

These last pictures with the bottle I took a few minutes ago, so after four days of wear.  The color is actually lighter or more gray IRL.  I feel like the daily extra top coats may have blurred the magnetic effect a little, but I'm not sure.

UPDATE:  the picture below is after a week's worth of wear on the manicure, just before I was about to take it off and paint my nails a new color.  There is barely any tip wear, and it's still shiny and looks O.K.  Sorry about the bathroom lighting; it's not the best lighting, that's for sure, right?

To see more pictures and read another review of this polish, go here to a recent post on Elfleidy's blog.  She is another nail polish blogger here in Florida.  I read her review just a few days before I did my own manicure with the polish.  Her pictures are so nice!

On a different topic, I've gotten some awards from other bloggers and saw a very cool A-Z post that a lot of the bloggers I follow are doing, and I am working on my own post about the awards and with my A-Z information and will have that for you soon!  This first week back at work after coming back from vacation has gone by very quickly, and I've been busier, so I haven't had as much time to blog.

Thank you for reading my blog!

My First Rite Aid

Hello!

This morning I checked online to see if there were any Rite Aid stores in Georgia that I could visit while on vacation.  Why this didn't occur to me before my last day on vacation, I don't know!  But, at least I thought of it before I left.

Savannah does have Rite Aid stores, and I went to my first one.  I was totally unprepared, without coupons of any kind, because there are no Rite Aid stores in Florida, so I didn't pay attention to blog posts about deals at Rite Aid.

First I saw the Magnetix line of magnetic polish that you can only get at Rite Aid, as far as I know.  I had seen swatches of them online, but I didn't want to order them online without seeing them, and I have a lot of magnetic polish as it is, so again, I had put the Magnetix out of my mind.  Today I bought my first pink magnetic polish.  I don't see an actual name on these polishes.  The pink magnetic polish is FH7751.  It shimmers and glitters even without the magnet.  I like to see magnetic polishes because then I can test the magnet on the bottle and see the pattern on the side of the bottle.  I loved the pattern on the pink magnetic polish.  I also got a light brown magnetic polish.  I had my nail wheels with swatches of all my polishes with me, and I didn't have any other magnetic polishes in the same shades.  The light brown polish is FH7750.  They were $7.99 each including two magnets each (wavy & straight lines).

I also saw a regular bottle of Revlon polish called Sunshine Sparkle.  Actually, my husband noticed it and brought it to me.  It's a lovely pale yellow shade that made me think of Easter at first, but later on I realized the polish is the color of banana-flavored candy, like Now and Laters, although the polish also has irridescent shimmer, and the Now and Laters don't.  The polish cost $4.99.  Could probably have gotten it cheaper somehow somewhere, but it was not certain that I would be able to find it somewhere else, so I bought it today.

They had bottles of Revlon, like Whimsical, that they no longer sell at Walgreens in South Florida.  But, my husband didn't understand why I would want to buy a bottle when I already owned one.  Giveaways, swaps, I told him!  But, ultimately he convinced me not to take the bottle of Whimsical with me.

In a display of polishes from a brand I had never heard of, "petites COLOR FEVER," I picked up a wine-colored polish with lots of sparkle in it called galaxy.  The display listed the polishes at $2.99 each, but after I checked out, I got the welcome surprise that the polish had been on sale.  Guess how much it was?  No really, guess!  It was $.74!!!  Can you believe it!!!!

In the clearance bin I found a Sally Hansen 10 Day Nail Color for $1.17 (down from $4.69).  It's a beige color but has a pinkish flash/shimmer.  I don't have anything like that . . . except maybe a new Finger Paints polish I bought earlier this week.  We'll see when I get home and swatch the colors on my nail wheels.  The name of the polish is Persistent Peony.

The total for the five bottles was $22.88 before tax and $24.48 including tax.  I couldn't put out of my mind how earlier in the week I had bought 17 polishes and a cleanup brush for about the same cost.  Darn magnetic polish!  I cannot resist its magnetic pull on me!!!  And, the regular price Revlon polish shares some blame, too.

Sorry about the picture being sideways.  It was the only shot where I was able to capture a bit more of the sparkle from the pink polish.

Mmmmm!  Banana-flavored candy!

Sparkles!  They appear to be one color to me, though, while this picture makes it seem like there are more colors.

Picture taken with flash to try to capture the sparkle!

Thank you for reading my blog!

Nabi Dark Gold Magnetic Polish

I first got bitten by the magnetic polish bug after reading Jen's post on The PolishAholic on January 21, 2012 about Icing by Claire's Magnetix polish.  I had not even heard of that store before.  And, from reading The PolishAholic's post, I learned that you could not get Icing polishes online, just in the store.  So, after reading that post on a Saturday morning, I *had* to go to the mall to get those magnetic polishes.  I *never* go to the mall.  My husband was surprised that I was *asking* to go to the mall instead of him having to beg me to go.  Because  the post on The Polishaholic came up just as the polishes were starting to be sold, I had all four colors to choose from when I finally found the Icing by Claire's store in the mall.  There were two magnets, one with wavy lines and one with diagonal lines, so I got two polishes with different magnets so that I could have both types of magnets. They were also buy one get one half off, so they were something like $8 each (magnet included) after the BOGO 1/2 off deal. Those were my first magnetic polishes.

A few weeks later I saw a swatch of the Nabi polishes on Scrangie's blog on her March 5, 2012 post here, and I *had* to have them. They are low-cost magnetic polish. Scrangie paid $4.99 each, magnet included, at her local Walgreens.  Even more amazing than the low cost is that they come in a very large variety of colors including gorgeous dark reds and blues. Only some Walgreens have the Nabi magnetic polish, though, and it was not on the Walgreens website, at least not back then.  My local area Walgreens here in South Florida didn't even know what magnetic polish was.  So, I went online and paid an e-tailer $21.50 for 6 colors, with the 6 magnets and the shipping included in that $21.50.

In the manicure in the pictures below, I was wearing Nabi in Dark Gold, a color that Scrangie swatched here.  I wore this for a week, just barely. Magnetic polish doesn't last as long as other manicures. This was two to three coats of polish (depending on whether the design came out right on the first try). Magnetic polish reminds me of old Etch-A-Sketch games although instead of shaking to erase and start over, you just add another layer of magnetic polish and try again. But, with magnetic polish, fewer and thinner coats are best.  I used Seche Vite on top of the magnetic polish.

The magnet was not as strong as my Icing magnets, but the pattern had more and thinner stripes, and that looked nicer to me with this polish.  There are three different Nabi magnets (wavy, straight and diagonal lines), so with my 6 polishes, I made sure that my color selection would include at least one of each of the magnets.  I used the diagonal stripe magnet.  The magnet does not come off from the polish bottle's brush handle, but because I had duplicate magnets, I just used a magnet from another bottle that I kept closed.  The Nabi magnet was not as easy to use as the Icing magnet because it didn't have the little lip to rest your finger on.  I tried all kinds of different ways to use the magnet and settled on what is probably not comfortable for anyone else.  I kept the bottle upright with the magnet on the top, and I put my fingernail over the magnet with my finger upside down so that my nail was very close to the magnet, and I held my freshly painted finger steady by clasping it with two fingers from my other hand that were also making contact with the bottle and holding onto it, so everything was connected and held steady.

Scrangie had to remove the polish soon after swatching it because she couldn't stand the smell.  I wasn't bothered, though.  Heck, Seche Vite smells stronger and some other polishes and supplies do, too.  But, if you are sensitive to strong nail polish smells, you might have the same experience as Scrangie.

The polish was very easy to remove. It just took a minor amount of scrubbing like I have to do with micro-glitter polishes, but one mini cotton round per nail was all it took. You could see a bit more of a mustard-colored to greenish tint in the removed polish.

I wore this to court and got complimented on it by a MALE attorney who not only said it was cool, but that it matched my suit . . . which it did in a way. The head secretary at work also thought it was nice.

Here are some pictures taken in my car, some in direct sunlight, and some in indirect sunlight:

You can see some of the sparkly glitter that shows up when you use the magnet.

 

Here are some pictures taken in my office, the dark ones are underneath my desk, with flash.

Blurry it looks like old-fashioned butter rum-flavored candy sticks.

Thank you for reading my blog!