Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Laced Up

Okay, so I'm HOPING this will be my New Years Eve mani. It perfectly matches a shirt I plan to wear. I just hope this will hold up for four or five days.

I have friends coming in to town to party, starting tomorrow, and tonight was the last night I have to do my nails for New Years!

I'd been wanting to try these out. They are dry nail polish strips, like Incoco. CVS apparently has them BOGO 50% this week, but none of the CVS's in my town have them. I found them at Target, though, and bought the pack that most appealed to me. They retail for $8.99 per pack at Target, which is a little steep. I really wish I'd been able to find them at a CVS because I would have bought a few packs then. SOON. (I hope.)

These aren't quite as easy to use as the Incoco strips. I had a hard time removing the strips from the backing, and I had a hard time getting the excess filed off of the free edge of my nails.

HOWEVER, I recently cut my nails way, way down due to some nasty peeling I had going on at the tips, and if your nails are short like mine, you can get two nails out of each strip. Providing they fit the curve of your cuticles anyway. :) In the package, you get two sealed packages of 8 strips, and I only had to open one of the packages to do this mani. So, score, I may have enough to do another mani in the future, providing my nails aren't super long.

Another plus is that these come in all sorts of neat patterns and in GLITTER. I know Incoco does this too, but I haven't been able to find any Incoco other than boring reds and pinks in stores.

In the dry nail polish game, Incoco wins for ease of application, but Sally Hansen wins for availability and, uh, interesting-ness.

Anyway, I took this photo with my Droid since I have zero charged batteries for my camera and I just couldn't WAIT to show off. ;)

At KarenD's request

Bottle pics of the retail Essie I picked up.

"Essie" is printed in white on one side of the bottle, with the opposite side being blank. The other two sides have the typical "Essie" embossed on them. There is also now a sticker on the cap with the polish name.

Observe:

Essie Dive Bar and some foreign polishes

So when I was in Smalltown, GA with my husband to do Christmas with his family, we went to Smalltown's Walmart, where I saw the Essie retail display for the first time ever. Let me tell you, the Walmart and the CVS in Smalltown KICK ASS. My theory is that it's because there isn't anywhere else to shop there.

I picked up "Dive Bar" from the Essie retail display. It was the only polish I got, and I bought it because it looked interesting. I am a sucker for these blackened teal/blue colors, because I have TWO other polishes that are similar. This color is a retail-only Essie, so it's new. Which would explain why I'd never seen it before. :)

The quality is just so-so. It wasn't worth the $7.75 I spent on it, but it wasn't BAD, either. The brush was too small and narrow, but I think all Essie brushes are too small and narrow. The formula was a bit runny. The first coat was very sheer, and I feared that this was going to end up being a four-coater. But it all evened out and became opaque on the second coat, so it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.

Anyway, here's Dive Bar:



And my awesome cousin in Houston mailed me several Arezia mini nail polishes that her mom picked up for me in Hong Kong upon hearing of my nail polish obsession. My family rocks. :)
I am going to swatch these just as soon as I have a spare minute. Which isn't now. So here's just a pic of the bottles for now! (And yes, that is the patron saint of bacon hanging out behind the bottles. Don't judge me!)

Get thee to Sally's!!!

I decided to drop in at Sally's today. Since Christmas is over, I knew they'd have clearance stuff back out. I also had a $5 coupon (for renewing my Sally card) and a 15% off coupon. They ALSO are running a 3-day special where all clearanced items are an extra 50% off.

I got...
Orly Cosmic FX in Rocket Science and Out of This World
Orly French Polynesian Island Spa Kit for Hands
China Glaze Peppermint Cuticle Oil
China Glaze Rejoice Gift Set with Mistletoe Kisses and Mrs. Claus polishes and a red candle


Guess what I paid for all that? $4.53! Merry Christmas TO ME!

Some OPIs

Here are some OPIs my sister-in-law gave me. She's fantastic!

I'm pretty sure all of these were two coats.

Soho Nice to Meet You:

Apple Of My Eye:

I Don't Do Dishes:

Nomad's Dream (which was much more opaque than I was expecting!):

And DS Vintage (!!!):

And here's a picture of my kitten, just for some extra "aww!" factor:

seen at walmart

Essie is already @ Walmart!

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We have a winnah!

The winner of my giveaway is #82 -- Piper!


Congrats!

(I knew I'd still be up at midnight)

GIVEAWAY ENDING!!!! (and Nina Ultra Pros)

Y'all, my giveaway ends at midnight! You have an hour and 45 minutes to enter! Go here if you haven't already! I'm going to work on my spreadsheet of entries and if I'm still up at midnight (I probably will be), I'll pick a winner and email them then. I added SEVERAL items to this giveaway. A couple of them I've mentioned here, but several will be surprises. Flakies and surprises! Merry Christmas! The package is all wrapped up and ready to go. :)

Now on to the polishes!


First up is Purple X-ing. Gah... I kept reading about this color on other blogs. I'm not sure why it took me so long to pick it up.

The texture wasn't so great. A little thick and lumpy. Grainy on the nails. But purple! With holo glitter in it! The color is fabulous!

I think this was two coats, but I probably should've used three.

Then I also got Mossy Britches. I'm sure I used two coats for this. This is another fabulous color!

And now for your standard ending...

i swear i'll post something of substance soon

Like, when I have time!!!

In other news, when I totaled up votes between commenters here, commenters on my FB, and my husband and I, here are the votes as to which polish I should use on my nails for tomorrow night (see: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/12/readers-i-need-your-help.html).

So far Whirlwind White is in first place with 9 votes.
Something Sweet is in second place with 8 votes.
Millennium is in third place with 7 votes.

Everything else lags far behind those three. I'm going to go bathe, shave my legs, and pluck some stray eyebrow hairs. If anyone wants to vote between now and when I get ready to paint my nails tonight, go do it now! The game could totally change! LOL.

OH yeah... and I originally said my giveaway would end December 15. No. I'm going to extend it through midnight next Saturday, the 18th. That gives me Sunday to get all the entries together, pick a winner, and get the package ready to ship on Monday! I also added one of the new Sally Hansen Insta Dri French Manicures in Night Flight/Silver Sweep and TWO of the Wet N Wild holiday eye palettes -- Night Elf and Snow Sprite! So if you haven't, go enter by commenting on THIS POST.

Re: My last post

Just to give you guys some idea of what outfit this combination needs to go with, here is a picture of me in most of my Santastic glory (yes, I am very goofy).



So now go vote!
http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/12/readers-i-need-your-help.html

Readers, I need your help!

Next weekend, I will be donning a Santa suit (actually a dress... a very *short* dress... with many accessories... my goal is to look like Christmas puked all over me), and going to my city's Santa pub crawl.

NATURALLY, I need to do my nails for the occasion.
NATURALLY, I want to use China Glaze's Party Hearty for this because, well, my occasions for using that particular polish are very limited.

So I found ten colors that I thought would be good base colors for layering with Party Hearty.
I know what MY favorite is.
My husband told me what HIS favorite is.
But I want to know which layering combination is YOUR favorite. Please excuse the messiness you may see in some pictures -- I did this really quickly. I assure you the actual mani won't be so messy. :)

Each of these shows three coats of Party Hearty over the base color.

Whichever one gets the most votes is the one I'll wear next weekend. :)

On my left hand, I used:
Sally Hansen Salon in Haute Chocolate (thumb)
Revlon Ruby Ribbon (pointer)
Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Whirlwind White (middle)
Orly Shine (ring)
Orly Liquid Vinyl (pinky)
Here is a full hand pic of my left hand:


And by finger:
Over Haute Chocolate


Over Ruby Ribbon


Over Whirlwind White


Over Shine


Over Liquid Vinyl


On my right hand, I used:
China Glaze Emerald Sparkle (thumb)
China Glaze Phat Santa (pointer)
China Glaze Something Sweet (middle, and my personal fave)
China Glaze Millennium (ring)
Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (pinky)
Full pic of right hand:


Over Emerald Sparkle


Over Phat Santa


Over Something Sweet


Over Millennium


Over Meet Me Under the Mistletoe




PLEASE VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE COMBINATION IN THE COMMENTS!
:)

Polish Weirdness from Ross

I grabbed this set of Color Club polishes at Ross a couple of weeks ago. It was $8. Supposedly, it is the "Every Shade of Indulgence" half of the Untamed Luxury Collection.

There are no polish names on the bottles, but that's ok because the names are on the back of the box, right?

Except... those aren't the right names. I was looking at this last night because I've started swatching them (I won't post 'em til I have 'em all swatched, though) and I realized... I don't think these names go with these polishes. So I consulted the all-knowing google and found Ms. Evil Angel's post herewhere she swatched these colors. Notice how the names she has don't match up at all with the names listed on my box? Now, she's not wrong because Scrangie swatched these colors here and has the same color names as Evil Angel.

So then I went straight to Color Club's website here. Scrangie and Evil Angel are right.

So what's up with my mislabeled box, Ross?!?! I guess I shouldn't complain since I got the whole set for $8, but I am bothered by this because, dammit, I want my polishes labeled correctly!

Too Faced loves Ulta Enchanted Nail Collection

So I saw this at Ulta for $10 and it looked intriguing...

So I got it!

Four sparkly/foily colors and a bottle of top coat.

I LOVED this set so much! The colors are (from left to right) Sugar Cookie, Spice Drop, Peppermint Bark, Sugar Plum, and topcoat.

Sugar Cookie is INSANE. I expected it to be sheer, and it was. My photos are all three coats, and there is still definitely VNL. This is a sheer white with gold shimmer. But the gold shimmer flashes from gold to yellow-green to yellow to silver. At times you can even see a little blue. Check out these photos:

And now for the rest of the collection...

Spice Drop, which reminds me of a pink version of Zoya Crystal. I guess you could describe this as a rosy metallic with gold sparkles.

Peppermint Bark. Slightly less pink than Spice Drop. More peachy. Same gold sparkles.

Sugar Plum. Same as the other two, but light purple. The sparkles in this one is a little more silver and less gold.

In all, I LOVED this collection! Bad ass for only $10!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

China Glaze Vintage Vixens

I found these super cheap on clearance at Sally's. Even though I'd already bought what I REALLY wanted from this collection, I decided that for super cheap, I'd go ahead and round it out. :)

This is Bogie. It's a nice purply-eggplant nearly metallic shade.

And this is Hey Doll, another nearly metallic shade, but this one is dusty pink.

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry French Manicure

I found this at Walgreen's the other day. There are two colors, two brushes, and two openings in this bottle. It isn't the usual Insta-Dri brush, either -- I checked. There were several different (6 or 7) colors in the display. I picked up Presto Pink/Night Flight.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know when I do.

Have any of you seen this? Googling shows no results.

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Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure

I managed to pick up four of the fall LE colors from this line. I reeeeally liked three of them and really didn't care for the fourth. I BELIEVE each of these were two coats.

Problem Child (loved it!):

Sequin Scandal (loved it!):

Golden Ticket (I actually really like this, and I don't usually go for gold):

Fedora (eh. Good formula, applied nicely, don't care for it on me.):

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

More nail painting fun

My sister-in-law came to visit and we painted our nails.

She used Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe over a coat of Orly La Playa.

I used Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure over Finger Paints Icy Iris.

Hers:

And all together now!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Kleancolors!

Another brand I love from the local independent beauty supply stores is Kleancolor. Seriously, I think these polishes are extremely high quality for the price. ESPECIALLY the cremes. Kleancolor does cremes extraordinarily well.

I'm so behind, I already sold most of these on my blog sale, but here are swatches anyway. :) I'm pretty sure all of these were two coats. I probably could've gotten away with one coat for the cremes, but did two just for continuity's sake... or something.

Charcoal:

Jewelry Red:

Plum:

Purple:

Mocha:

Jungle Green:

Melon Green:

Red Sparkle:

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!