Coupla things... blog birthday and a giveaway

1) So, I stand corrected! Those Jesse's Girl nail polishes I mentioned in my last post DO have names. The Charla/Halley's Comet/Catch Me In Your Net dupe is called Glee, and the Scrangie-esque one is called Confetti.

2) That Scrangie-esque polish looks nothing like Scrangie on the nails. It's super sheer -- took four coats -- but flashes between blue, purple, and pink. It's really lovely! Most of the time it looks like a metallic purple with blue shimmer. I apologize for the slew of indoor shots lately, but light sucks when I wake up and sucks when I get home. Maybe I'll get some decent swatching done this weekend.

Anywho, here is Jesse's Girl in Confetti:


3) Friday, January 7, my blog will be one year old! I'm still recovering from my Christmas spendstravaganzzzzza, so I don't have much to offer... but anyone who comments on this post by Sunday, January 9 at 9pm can win a bottle of Milani Gems. Yes, I have a spare bottle. And I figured that since it's dupISH to Lippmann Happy Birthday (which I do not even have ONE bottle of), it'd be appropriate to give it away for my blog birthday weekend. :) I may or may not add more stuff to the package. My last giveaway, with the flakies, ended up being quite large... :)

So anyway... comment with your email addy starting NOW! HAPPY BLOG BIRTHDAY TO ME!

We have a winnah!

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


Congrats!

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

Incoco Flirt and Miscellaneous

Thanks to everyone who has purchased stuff from my blog sale! I haven't deleted the original post yet (I probably will by the end of the week), but I created a stand-alone blogger page for it. You can find it here: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/p/blog-sale.html

I'm also going to add some bath and body type stuff to it... that's another thing I hoard, and I'm really just trying to get rid of things I don't USE. I have Bath and Body Works stuff that I bought last year that I've NEVER OPENED. Ridiculous.

Anywho, I picked up a pack of those Incoco dry nail polish appliques on clearance at Walgreen's... god, it had to have been around last Christmas. I finally got around to trying them. I liked them, but wish I hadn't picked up such a boring color. I had some wrinkling on my pinky, but I think that if I were to try this again, I'd have an easier time with the application and probably no wrinkling. Learning curve, you know. :) Overall, though, I didn't have a terribly hard time using these. They were fairly easy to apply -- easier than I'd thought they'd be actually. I'd buy them again, just in a different color. One day I'll test the wear time on these... but not today.

On to the photos!

Also! Don't forget to enter my giveaway! The post is here!

Giveaway!

Ok you guys... I've been talking about having a giveaway for a couple of months now. I'm finally doing it, and a day earlier than I said I would! Hooray!

Here's what I'm giving away:
8 Colorama Nail Polishes in French Tip White, Juiced Berry Tips, Lilac Freeze, Plum Lights, Burgundy Blaze, Turquoise Seas, Candy Apple, and Black Magic


5 Colorama Topcoats in Flames of Amber, Give Me The Chills, Pink Pinata, Ruby Rays, and Blazes of Crystal


2 Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Lavender Pearl and Pink Rose Diamond


AND... whatever other little goodies I pick up between now and the end of the contest. :)

By the way, that Blazes of Crystal topcoat is AWESOME. I think it's my favorite flakie ever. Check this out. Today I'm wearing it over Orly Liquid Vinyl:

And a (new, unused) bottle of that could be yours! Woo hoo!

To enter, you must be a follower of my blog. Please tell me in the comments how you follow me. Leave a comment on this post telling me how you follow and your email address and you'll be entered. That's all you have to do! I'll pick a winner on December 15th!

Good luck!

Sally Hansens, el cheapo nail polish, and a giveaway!

I only picked up two of the new Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears -- Purple Gala and Mystic Lilac. I LOVED Purple Gala and HATED Mystic Lilac. The latter one wasn't flattering on me at all and my mani bubbled like I've never seen one bubble before (although I'm pretty sure that was user error and not a problem with the formula). It also never dried, even with Out The Door on top. :/
I ended up giving the bottle to my sister-in-law.

Here are my pix of Mystic Lilac:






And here is Purple Gala:


Now... lately, there has been some really cool nail polish spotted in the Dollar Tree here and in Big Lots. I found a bunch of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Dollar Tree several weeks ago. Yesterday, I gave a friend at work a bottle of Hard Candy Beetle I'd picked up for her. Later in the day, she emailed me saying she had a surprise for me. It was Colorama flakies she picked up at Big Lots! FLAKIES! YAY! So I went to Big Lots myself after work and picked up the rest of the flakies I didn't already have. I also bought extras for my blog readers. I also have some Nail Prisms dupes. So.... I'll be having a giveaway. I'll make an official post about it probably Sunday, so don't enter yet. If I can find some other goodies to throw in, I will. :)

Giveaway ENDING and nail polish haul

Ok, so I'm supposed to pick a winner for my giveaway today. I just got my spreadsheet caught up with my blog comments, so let's say that I'll count anyone who enters until 5pm Eastern time today (about 3 hours from now). Then I'll pick someone. YAY!

Oh yeah, and I GOT MARRIED ON SATURDAY! YAY! I had a really good time, and hey! I got married! We aren't taking a honeymoon at this time, so no, I'm not posting this from my honeymoon. :)

I also hauled on some nail polish while we were down in Florida. I also finally found Hidden Treasure! YAY! We drove from Athens to down in Florida where we got married. I stopped at a random Walgreens in Montgomery, AL, and there it was! FINALLY!

I wanted to go to the Del Sol store in PCB to get some more of their color change polish, but I didn't have time. But on the way back home, we stopped in another random Walgreens in Florida and they were selling Del Sol! Yay!

And then I hauled in the clearance aisle at Ulta.. and I picked up some other stuff there too.

So, I have all of that plus all the Zoya I got last week. I have a LOT of stuff in my untried drawer right now. This is a picture of everything I picked up on my travels. I also don't really have time to swatch right now, so I guess I'll be doing a nail a day for a bit. :)



And, just because I know I'm going to get terribly backlogged with my nail pictures, let me just go ahead and show you what I've got unposted pictures of. Enjoy!

So, I tried Illusion D'Or over everything for a few days. Here it is over black:


And here it is again over L'Oreal's High Tide.


And here it is over Rimmel's Milk Chocolate!


This is La Playa from the new Orlys that are out now.


Sinful Colors "Rise and Shine," which JJ declared "hideous."


Minted, one of the new Revlons.


Orly Glam, which I found on clearance at Sally..


And the ONLY Zoya Sparkle I've photographed so far, Charla. I really loved this color!!

What a crazy week!!

I have been so busy this week, I haven't had time to do anything with this blog. And the thing is, looking back on the week, I have no idea what took up all my time. It just seems like I've been going, going, going!

First, I have mailed out five packages from my destashing post. It is now updated and current, as far as what I have left. Please go check it out here: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/04/destashing.html

Secondly, I am keeping an Excel spreadsheet of all the entries in my giveaway. I've discovered some new blogs this way -- it's pretty cool! If you haven't entered, go here:
http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/04/giveaway.html

THIRD, I ordered some stuff from Urban Decay's Friends-and-Family 30% off sale. If you haven't shopped it yet, it ends Monday. Use code 1SFNF. I ordered a couple of things that were on clearance. Clearance + 30% off = dirt cheap. I got the Apocalyptic nail kit (of course), which appears to be gone now. I also got the Hall of Fame set. I'm debating placing another order to get their new nail set, but I'm not sold on the colors in it. Maybe I'll just wait til it goes on clearance... :D

Anywho, now that all that's been said... I actually do have some pictures to post. Oh yeah, and I chopped my nails off. After trying to get them to be long and pointy, I decided that I actually hate the way that looks, and shorter and squarer is just easier to deal with. So now they're just barely past my fingertips -- you'll see in the following pictures. :)

First of all, remember how I said I got that black glitter set at Icing for $5? I actually hate these polishes. The first coat is super sheer. The second coat drags and leaves bald spots. The third coat has to be really thick in order to cover up the mayhem left by the first and second coats. Then you have to deal with glitter removal, which I'm starting to really hate. Like, it's not even worth it to me to wear glitters because I hate removing them so much. Even with the cotton balls+tin foil trick, it's just a pain.

So I only ever wore three of these. Maybe I'll wear the other two one day, but I'm going to go ahead and post what I've got because I have a feeling that'll be a long time from now, if ever.


First up is the purple glitter, which I immediately gouged the hell out of by removing a power supply from a computer at work. This one is really pretty.


Then I wore... yellow? I guess? Or is that gold? Or a very light lime-green? It's sort of an ambiguous color.


Then blue, which I actually really liked, too.


The two remaining ones are orange and green (teal?), and yeah. Maybe one day. But not today.

This is China Glaze Strawberry Fields. I saw this on someone (a blogger, not IRL) recently and realized I had to have this polish! I couldn't seem to get a decent picture of it, but it's really pretty. I approve. I really like the tiny gold glass-flecks in it -- it makes it a very unique pink, in my opinion.


This was another of the Butter London polishes I got. It's called Teddy Boy, and it's a brownish-pinkish-mauvish color. I really liked this. However, those bottles suck. I found the application to be really difficult because of the way the cap is shaped. Then I read somewhere that they've changed their bottles (and obviously, the ones I got so dirt cheap were the old bottles... dammit). Maybe one day when I feel like shelling out too much money for nail polish, I'll try some of the newer ones. I just don't really like the idea of paying more than $10 or so for a bottle of polish. I've done it, but it's very rare for me. I am lemming Chanel's Illusion D'Or right now, though, and that's WAY more than I care to spend on polish, ever.


This was a polish I picked up at Sally's. It's Finger Paints "Magenta Mood." It's a pretty, foil-y, glitter-y magenta. Actually, it seemed to go back and forth between bright red and magenta. In certain lights, it looked magenta. In others, red.


I decided to do some fauxnading last weekend, and did this using China Glaze Light as Air for the base, and China Glaze Grape Pop for the stamping. I used a fauxnad plate that doesn't have a plate number, but these were just flowery. This is the last manicure I did before I chopped my nails off.


This was the first mani I did after chopping my nails off. This is China Glaze Grape Pop with Colorama Sonic Sunset (holy crap, I am loving the Colorama flakies!) on top. Later this day, I got my Urban Decay order in the mail, so I have only been wearing those colors since then. :)

Giveaway!

So... now that I've figured out what to do with the used polishes in my house, here's what I'm going to do with the unused ones.... give them away!

Actually, I've been keeping an eye open at Sally and at the Dollar Tree and at Big Lots for the last month or so, picking up things here and there in order to give them away.

Here's what I have:
Four random LA Colors I picked up at the Dollar Tree. They HAD names, but I took them out of the packaging and there are no names on the bottles. Lame.


Orly in Star of Bombay (with ring!) and Monroe's Red.


Sally Hansen Salons in Can't Bare to Know, Wine Not?, and Moonstone:


China Glaze in Cherry Pie and For Audrey, with a mini bottle of Matte Magic Topcoat.


Two Revlon Glimmer Glosses in Cherry Fizz and Blueberry Burst, a random NYC Nail Glossies in a sheer pink, and one of the new Finger Paints in Artistic Azure.



I am going to close this giveaway for entries on May 10, at which time I will pick a winner at random. I was going to do it on April 30, but I'm getting married May 8 and don't want anyone to have to wait 10 days to get their package mailed. So May 10 it is!

Enter by leaving a comment here with your email address. :)
You can also have one additional entry by blogging about this giveaway. Include a link in your comment here.

Good luck!