Today I have an extra-special polish to share!  This is a franken polish done by Glitrix on etsy!  I just looove etsy... and I especially love it right now because it helped me connect with the sweet girl in Singapore who is behind these polishes!  She sent me two colors from her shop, and I've already worn both and have been pleased.  First up let's take a look at Royal Chic!

   When the sunshine appeared briefly (literally just long enough to get these two shots) I hurried to get pictures.  This is two coats of the polish, which is a deep purple shimmer base with gold and pink glitter.  Sadly my only shot of nails-with-bottle is before clean-up:

   Your eyes aren't deceiving you - that is a star-shaped bottle!  Glitrix polishes come in adorable mini-sized star bottles that set them apart from the pack.  The brush head is surprisingly full (almost too much for my tiny nails), and the handle is easy to grasp.

   Here is a nail wheel swatch of one coat and then two coats.  You can see the shimmer here and it shows what a rich color Royal Chic has.

   My experience with this polish is as follows!  In the bottle the glitter in this polish settles quite a bit.  There is a metal BB in the bottle to help with shaking the polish up.  Rather than shaking it so much I found it was easiest to simply lay the bottle on it's side and flip it over every couple of minutes while I'm applying base coat.  Then set it right side up after giving it a quick shake, and ta-da, it's good to go.  As you can see there is a lot of glitter in this polish and I didn't have any trouble with coverage!

   In consistency it sort of reminded me of grape jelly - it's a bit thick from all the glitter, and isn't smooth when it dries.  Nothing terrible, though, and could be smoothed out with a thick top coat.  Because it wasn't gritty I didn't mind the texture at all.  This starts to dry very quickly, which is nice but made it next to impossible to wrap the tips of my manicure.  I'd suggest using a similar-colored polish for that step - glitters are generally not a good choice for wrapping the tips of a manicure!

   This isn't extremely glossy on it's own, but has a unique textured shine and the shimmer is very pretty.  Gold is generally not good on me but the glitter in this polish actually works for me!  I think the highly pigmented base helps tone down the color.  I really liked wearing this polish and the color definitely did feel royal!  This isn't a color I would reach for in a full-sized bottle, but getting a mini opened my nails up to new possibilities.

   Royal Chic was nice and durable, I didn't have issues with chipping, just a bit of tip wear because I work with my hands so much.  When it was finally time to take it off the glitters were a little stubborn, but finally let go when they realized I meant business.  =P  Another thing I really liked was how cleanly the deep purple came off.  Ever have a polish smear all over your fingers and stick to/stain your skin?  This one wiped off cleanly.


   In summary Royal Chic is a really neat polish that is worth the extra bit of effort to apply.  I was impressed with the pigmentation, the density of glitter, and how good it looked on me!  ;D  Because Glitrix polishes are mixed from other polishes they may or may not be entirely Big 3 Free, but they've played nicely with my other polishes, so I'm thinking they are.  The mini bottles are affordable and adorable.  I see these as being fun to collect, share... and wear!

   Alright, here is part two of the glitter set swatches!  This is LA Colors Mini Glitter set 126.  I have more pics and descriptions after the jump, along with the unlabeled polish dupes!

   I'm declaring this glitter week on my blog!  To kick things off I have swatches from a set of LA Colors minis.  These sets are only numbered and the polishes are not marked.  I did some searching to try to determine if they correspond to any of the brand's regular-sized bottle colors.  Find out more after the jump!

   I've seen several blog posts of people sharing coupon codes, sales, and %'s off over the last few days.  I'm going to echo my Cashback & Coupons page and remind you to check for the possibility of cashback through those Online retailers!

   Use ev'reward to find the best cash back rate, and then just click through your account on any of these sites:

   I'm sure I'm not the only person who likes to save money and get free money at the same time!  =P  Right now a lot of businesses have upped their cashback rate, so whether you're shopping for clothes, household items, beauty stuff... get rewarded!  And if you don't have an account at any of the above cashback sites, please click their banners above to create one.  I'm trying to earn a few more referrals.  Thanks!  =)

   Hi everyone, sorry I've been missing for the past few days.  I was sick over the weekend, and so I did not have the energy to touch my computer and write up my blog posts for the beginning of the week.  (I was so sick that I didn't even Tweet saying I was sick!)  The my Mom called me and asked if I'd be interested in an impromptu girls day out, so of course I said yes!  I generally don't get much when I go to a mall, and part of what I got I don't feel like sharing, but here is what I will show:

   Haha, yes, I'm only showing the bag from Victoria's Secret.  =P  And their neat little gift card promo that is running currently - purchases earn you a gift card that is worth $10 for sure, but might be worth $500!  How awesome is that?  I'd be happy with just $50 or $100, too!  =)

   Then I ran off to the DEB shop because I always love poking through their clearance racks.  Didn't find anything there that I had to have, but when I saw these lacy tights I snatched them up.  Wish they were a color other that just *black*, but of well.  Getting two accessories earned me a free one, so I picked out a feather hair clip.  It's nice and long and super soft.  I wasn't sure how I felt about the feathers-in-your-hair trend, but I've worn these once and I did enjoy them.  I was so afraid they'd tangle horribly but I had no such issues!  And my boyfriend said they were spiffy.  The only way they'd be better would be if they were pink.  ;P

   I hit a couple other stores but everything I wanted either was too big for me or it did fit but I didn't like the way it looked on me.   It figures!  By then we had overspent our time in the mall so we hurried home and since then life has been a never-ending stream of work for me.  I'm so glad I got to kick off the week with something refreshing, though.  It was more that I needed the time spent with my Mom than the shopping.

   So, I haven't been entirely delinquent about not posting on my blog - just a little delinquent!  Some action has been going on behind the scenes; I put up several more inventory pages.  This week and the next are going to be very busy for me so I may have to cut back on my 5 days per week posting.  Another sad thing is that I chipped a nail - rats!  My nails were getting to a nice length but now I'll have to shorten and reshape them.

   For those of you still reading this post: I'm pretty excited about my current batch of swatches and upcoming posts.  I'll just say it involves another giveaway~  Stay tuned!  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I picked up a couple more followers even with my absence.  Thank-you everyone.

   Not only that, but it's a video!   I made this one a while ago but was too busy with other things to post it up.  It's great to see an Nfu-Oh and Milani Holographic shifting rainbow colors right before your very eyes - check it out!

   I'm still testing out my ShopRunner membership and here are the last few small orders I placed with either Drugstore or Beauty.com (or both).  First I had to buy some more of my favorite dry shampoo:

   Then I snagged a couple of nail polishes:


   Once again nail polish is full of danger and peril and must be shipped ground, so only my freebie sample of gloss was eligible to be shipped in 2 days by ShopRunner.  (Uh, how is that going to work?)  Layla Magneffect Silver Galaxy has been swatched and blogged about and I highly suggest checking out the post if you haven't already.  Orly Space Cadet is my first Orly polish and wow, huge bottle!

   Then I treated myself during the 20% off Friends & Family-type sale, which made me happy that I skipped the one done by Urban Decay themselves:


   Finally, something that ShopRunner was willing to send to me!  I placed my order around 10-11am, and was surprised when my glosses came the very next day.  I suppose it's because I ordered in the morning but I really was expecting to see them in 2 days, not 1!  These are Urban Decay Lip Junkie Glosses in Red Light and Perversion.


   So in all I liked the fact that when ShopRunner can ship my items it works very quickly, but it's frustrating that so many of the products that I personally want to buy Online are no-goes with them.  Has anyone else signed up for or checked out ShopRunner?  What do you think of it?

   When I bought my new L.A. Girl Supernova nail polish I intended to wear it over black, but never had time to put it over my black weekend nails.  I swiped it over one nail later to see what kind of coverage it had.  Besides being a really pretty glitter, it reminded me of rain (probably because we just had a huge rainstorm..).  So I created this little mani instead!

   My base color was China Glaze Caribbean Blue, which is a lovely glass-fleck filled color.  Here it is alone, and before clean-up:


   Then I used L.A. Girl Supernova - one coat over all nails.  This is prismatic string/bar glitter floating in a grey base.  It worked to dull the Caribbean Blue, though it looked a little streaky in spots where I dabbed on extra glitter.  The sky gets a sort of mottled look during rain anyway, though, so it's all good.  I made my stormclouds using China Glaze Pelican Gray, the polish has a bit of shimmer too it and is the perfect color for rainclouds!  Here is my right hand, which had no faces:


   It was easiest to use the nail polish brush to create the clouds, and touch them up with a dotting tool where needed.  The faces were made by first dotting my Pure Ice Pink Ice polish to make blushing cheeks, and then I used a small dotting tool to add eyes, and then small mouths with Wet 'n Wild Ink Well.

   I thought I waited long enough to seal it with top coat but sadly the black polish was pulled and ran a little.  =(  And my pinky cloud looks more "hmph!" than happy, but oh well.  They are cute anyway.  So yes, this mani was easy to make and needed no fancy tools.  Who knew that bar glitter is like rain in a bottle?!  Supernova is super blingy and fun to wear, and removes easily.  Also, after a full day of wearing I have zero tip wear!

   Just got a forwarded E-mail in my Inbox.  Ironically it was from a male friend who probably doesn't even know how much I like nail polish, but hey!  I just have to share it:

   The artist is Laurel Roth, and yes, these beautiful birds are made entirely from "human mating plumage" (according to their description) - press-on nails, barrettes, jewelry and crystals.

   And we think our nail art is time-consuming!

   These are just two of many pictures from this series, and I snagged them from Laurel Roth's website here.  I highly recommend taking a moment to look through the rest of the collection.  It made me smile.  =)  Which bird is your favorite?

   I didn't plan anything special for today being all eleventy-one, but I did try out my new magnetic polish, so I guess that is what I will remember for the date 11-11-11.   I have Layla Magneffect polish in Silver Galaxy here, and I used both the magnet in the cap that it came with and the star magnet from my LCN polish set.

   This polish contains small square glitter, which sets it apart from all other magnetic colors so far.  The base is a sheer gray which is loaded with the magnetic particles and glitter.  I had to use two coats and even then it is slightly sheer.  Here are nail wheel swatches done in one coat:

   At the start of October I was pleasantly surprised - I won a giveaway for my choice of three piCture pOlishes!  I have to give a huge thank-you to both piCture pOlish and Johanna from Paillette.  The polishes just arrived Monday so I immediately painted my nails up with one of the colors, Twinkle.  Find out my other two colors at the end of this post!

   ...And that's just what I bought for myself.  Well, okay, maybe I'll do some sharing.  ;)  I have to start by saying that I absolutely looove CherryCulture.com and I'm always snagging pretty colors for myself and Mom through their store.  Generally my hauls are centered on pigments and glosses, maybe a few nail polishes.. but this time was different.  I was so impressed with the few Nyx Girls polishes that I picked up a few more, and the same story for L.A. Girl, too.  Well, enough of my gabbing, let me just show you!

   The L.A. Colors mini sets.  Top Row: Glitter 126 and Glitter 124.  Bottom Row: Bright 123 and Bright 125.  Yes, they really are that creative with their collection names.  These polishes are unnamed but I believe they are just smaller versions of polishes in their regular lines.  I was interested in this brand because of their 3-free formula and that they are very obviously animal-cruelty free - they have the little heart-ear buns right on the bottles!

   After my last Nail-of-the-Day post I dressed my fingers up a little more.  I was wearing NFu-Oh 63 - a pink holographic polish.  I added a coat of Milani 3D Holographic polish in Digital to each nail except my ring fingers, which got a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.  The result is lovely!

   The Milani line of Holos has a micro-flakie quality to the holo particles and a fairly weak linear effect.  They are sheer enough that one coat over another color looks nice but not overwhelming; I'm happy I decided to try it over another holo!  Digital made #63 look a little pinker.  Fairy Dust gave my polish a slightly more powdery appearance and most of the fine glitter was lost in the underlying holographic polish.  There is not top coat in any of these shots.  And yes, there are a lot of pictures.

  Hello everyone!  My first ever giveaway is OVER and I'd like to thank you all for participating!  I know you're wondering who won, and I'm pleased to announce that it is...

   I already contacted her this morning and got a response; I hope she enjoys her Nyx Girls polish in Gilded Glitter!  Check out her blog here: http://polishamor.blogspot.com/

   Everyone else, please stick around as I already have another giveaway in the works that you won't want to miss!  I had a lot of fun doing this little giveaway and I really appreciate those who went looking for a silver flakie just for me.  One entry suggested CND Sugar Sparkle and that was the best idea!  ...Sadly that polish is unattainable now, haha.  But don't you know when Polish Amor responded to me E-mail she said she might have found something like what I'm looking for in the newest Sally Hansen Diamond Strength line.  It includes what is basically a (cheaper, more available!) dupe for Sugar Sparkle.  I say awesome! and thank you so much, girls.  The hunt for a true silver flakie is not over, but I am content for now!  =)