Shipwrecked in the Bermuda Triangle with Smitten

Hey Everyone!! Today I am so super excited to bring to you one of the upcoming Smitten Polish Shipwrecked Collection polishes. These polishes were sent to me for review. I will have a preview of four of the seven Shipwrecked polishes for you this week. This collection is set to be released in June.  You can purchase Smitten polishes from etsy or Llarowe.

I had to add a cool picture to get us in the mood :)

First up is Bermuda Triangle.

Bermuda Triangle is a gorgeous, vibrant orange. This polish is a glass fleck and simply glows.

I took these pictures in late afternoon shade. It was sunny out but I didn't take them in direct sunlight. This one shows the glowy nature of Bermuda Triangle.

I know this picture is similar to the one above but it shows the difference when I shifted my nails slightly. This polish is gorgeous and I love the way it glows in this lighting.

I took a ton of pictures because I absolutely love this polish.

Noelie knocked it out of the park with this glass fleck.

I used three coats for this mani. The first coat was really thin and patchy but once that second coat was on it was almost perfect. You could probably get away with two coats if applied carefully but I used three to make sure the color was vibrant for the photos.

I like my polishes pretty thin so this was on the thicker side for me but nothing a little thinner doesn't fix up real quick. Considering the amazing glass fleck in this one the consistency is really good. I am just weird and like polishes really thin. I had no problems with application and didn't use any thinner in it with either of the two manis I used this polish for.

I took some pictures in the sunlight too so you can see how absolutely gorgeous it looks.

This is a great color for Summer too. I just realized I need this on my toes asap!

Stay tuned tomorrow for another polish from the Shipwrecked Collection.

That's all for now :)

LA Splash Be Mine

Hey Everyone!!! I am going to start my Smitten Shipwreck Polish posts tomorrow. I intended on doing it today but since today is going to be crazy hectic with the baseball game I figured tomorrow is better. I can't wait to show you! I also can't wait for the game tonight. I did a special mani that has baseball and music stuff on it that I will show you after the Smittens. It didn't come out exactly how I wanted but it is still fun.

Today I have a polish from LASplash. They used to be carried in Ulta but have since disappeared though they can still be found on CherryCulture. This is from the 2011 Love Notes collection.

LASplash Be Mine. It is an iridescent glitter polish with light pink hearts. Unfortunately I didn't realize that I had the cap on loose and when I was doing my organizing I found this bad boy all dried and gloopy. I worked on reviving it but it is still on the thick side. I figured a nice three coat mani might take enough polish out of it so I could add some more thinner and so this mani was born.

This is three coats. This would look nice over another color too. I put it over the polish I had on my toes too so I could use some extra and make more room for thinner.

The hearts came out pretty easily but there were some fingers that I had to fish out a heart so there would be one on that nail. My polish was also on the much thicker than I enjoy using side because I was still trying to revive it so the hearts may have been getting stuck in there.

The light pink hearts are a little hard to spot sometimes. I would think that putting this over another color might help make them pop out a little more but the one over my blue toe polish didn't stand out any more than these did.

The iridescent glitter is really very pretty though.

It is a shame they stopped carrying this brand at Ulta because they did have some great glitters.

I do love hearts.

The outside pictures show this polish a lot better.

It still isn't that easy to see some of the hearts though. That is kind of sad.

That's all for now :)

Project Organization

Hey Everyone!!! Happy Saturday!! I am killing time on the computer so I thought I would so a post today! Our tv is broken so I am pretty bored. I have some crocheting projects to finish up but I usually do those with the tv on as background noise. I should probably put some music on before the quiet drives me crazy.

So over the past few weeks I have undertaken PROJECT ORGANIZATION!!!! I say that in a loud boisterous announcer voice in my head lol I decided that while my swatch cards are awesome it is pretty impractical to carry to stores with me because it is bulky and heavy. This prompted me wanting a new swatch book which is fine BUT I would need to got through ALL my polishes because my spreadsheet and swatch cards were not completely 100% up to date. Um, yeah. This is a large undertaking. 

SO I started by going through my swatch cards and making sure everything was on both my cards and my spreadsheet. THEN I went through ALL my polishes and made sure they were all accounted for on my spreadsheet. THEN I cross referenced it with my swatch cards so that they were up to date. I also spent countless hours looking up polishes so I could determine what collection they came from and what year they were released for my spreadsheet. OMG. I am really bad at determining color and finish because I don't like having periwinkle, blurple, teal, turquoise, aqua etc etc as labels I would rather just have blue, green, red etc. I left a ton of color and finish blank on my spreadsheet because just thinking about determining what it is gave me a headache lol.  

I realized that all my color club sets weren't on my spreadsheet. I let them live in the boxes so they aren't IN my helmer drawers and I forgot to put them on the cards and sheet. 

I did them at work one day lol. I also made them little labels for the bottoms because Color Club likes to make you guess what polish is what when they put them in sets.

This is a bin of overflow polish that I took to work to go through. I just got my third helmer and needed to sort through my overflow bins so I could fill my helmer and get rid of the bins. 

I got all these polishes put on the spreadsheet. My co worker came in and said she had never seen so many polishes. I laughed because this is just a small portion of the collection lol. 

After getting them all on the spreadsheet I put them back in the bin nicely but accidentally knocked it over. Luckily no one was harmed in the accident. 

I filled my third helmer pretty darn quick which means I probably need to either purge or set up helmer #4. Seeing as purge isn't in my vocabulary I see a new helmer in my future. 

SO Project Organization has been taking a ton of time and attention. I haven't been able to comment on many blogs lately because though I am taking a minute to stop and check them out I am doing so from my phone, kindle or work and sometimes commenting isn't feasible. This project is taking a bunch of time but when it is done I am going to be so organized! I still have to take ALL the polishes out so I can sort them by brand and put them back in helmers because as you can see I just put them all in drawers any way I could. I am also in the process of listing all my polishes in the new portable swatch book so that when I have all the polishes sorted by brand I can swatch them in there. I have found out a bunch of interesting things while doing this project. 

I am overly organizational when it comes to this project however that is the ONLY area I am completely organized in. I am pretty much a mess in every other area of life lol

I hate my handwriting. A LOT! IF I could pay someone with nicer handwriting to write in my swatch book or figure out a non time consuming way to get it typed in there I would.

I know know how many polishes I have and OMG. 

About 10.44% of my stash are Indie polishes.

Between 7-10% are foreign brands that are very hard to locate in the US. 

The most popular brand in my stash is China Glaze. 

I have 163 different brands of polish in my stash.

I found 52 doubles because either I spaced and bought the same color twice, sometimes three times or someone gave me a color I already had.

I still think I need swatch sticks even though there is no way I want to go and swatch three helmers full on swatch sticks.

I know this post was long and didn't have too many pictures but thanks for reading it anyway :) lol

That's all for now :)

A Contest that I Won and a Small Haul

Hey Everyone!!! Oh what a month! I sort of forgot that school was wrapping up and that means tons of events and lots of money is needed for various things. I totally forgot that last night was my son's last concert of the year. What makes that even worse is I am an officer in the Band Parent Association. We scrambled around Wed night getting stuff for the concession stand and I spent all night at the school last night. I think the concert went well but I was holding down the fort at the concession stand most of the night so I didn't really get to check out the bands. Monday night they are going to play the National Anthem at the Miami Marlins Baseball game which is way cool and very exciting. I will definitely have pictures from that! 

Today I have to show you the awesome contest I won from Stephanie over at At Peace with Polish. She had a baby hunch contest before the birth of her son baby E and I actually won. I thought it was the most unique and fun contest and had such a blast entering. If you don't follow Stephanie's blog I highly suggest you do!! She is super cute and I love her blog. Go follow her here, I can't wait for you to get back :) 

THANK YOU STEPHANIE and BABY E!!!!! She sent me three awesome polishes that I can't wait to wear and blog about!

 

Revlon Hearts of Gold fx, Nail Sauce Abalone Shell and Layla Flash Black.

 

This picture was supposed to be a picture better showing the polishes but I don't think I quite captured that. Duh for me. I am super excited and trying to figure out if I could use all three together lol I love them!!! THANK YOU AGAIN STEPHANIE!!! 

Now the next three polishes I picked up when I was making my polish hunting rounds. I tend to frequent the stores in case they suddenly have something awesome appear. Most of the time I just look but on some occasions there is actually something interesting going on. I saw the new Sinful Colors line at Walgreens the other day and was super excited. The Sinful Shine with Gel Tech is supposed to be "5x more glossy than a patent leather shoe". Um, ok. I am not really sure where they came up with that or how they tested and came up with an exact 5x amount but hey whatever floats your marketing boat.

 

 

I picked up two colors. I made a quick decision because I really had to pee and my son was not being of any help in picking out colors. I picked Steel Reserve and Amazonian. They are more than regular Sinful Colors polishes at $2.99 each but when you are getting "5x more glossy than a patent leather shoe" you are going to have to pay a little extra! I tried Steel Reserve quickly on my toes one day when I was about to head out the door in flip flops. It was a rush job because I was literally heading out the door so I don't have much input on them yet. I can say they were pretty glossy but I will have to do a full mani before I come to any conclusion on them. 

I also happened to pop into Sally Beauty Supply and found one of the 2013 Wild About Spring colors on clearance. 

 

I passed on Fishin' for Fun when I saw the whole collection because I don't do pink very often. I must say though that this one and Are You Hoppy were on my radar when the collection was out but I resisted. When I found it on clearance and had a coupon I decided it could come home with me. Had Are You Hoppy been there it would have come home too lol.

 

Something about the colors of this one makes me happy. I will have to wear this one soon! 

That's all for now :)

P.S. ohhh next week I have an awesome preview of a few of the Shipwreck summer collection from Smitten Polish. I am super excited about them! I can't wait to show you all how awesome the collection is!

PUEEN 2013 24E Love Elements

Hey Everyone!! Today I have a bit of a different post for you all. While on break I got some awesome nail mail and one of my packages contained the 2013 Pueen 24E Love Elements nail plate set. You can follow Pueen on facebook or their website . I bought my nail set from Amazon

The Pueen set! I was so excited since I had been looking at their plate sets for a bit.

The set comes in this little binder thing that has a snap closure. It is white which is probably going to mean it gets dirty pretty fast but it is really cool that they include this with the set.

The little pages fold out like a fan. The pages are pretty thin but it does the job. I am not sure how well it is going to hold up but we will see with time. 

This is the Love Elements set so there are lots of hearts and lovey type designs. I am a sucker for hearts so I picked this set.

The set comes with 24 plates. 

I love all the hearts. 

I also love that owl and the larger sized paw print. 

I really liked the fact that the majority of designs were full nail designs. My nails are a little on the small side but I love full nail designs.

I LOVE plate 47 (top right) for both the cute birdie and the music design. 

I haven't used this set yet but I will have some manis using the plates for you soon. I know I always look for pictures of the plates when I am trying to decide which plates to buy so I was hoping you guys would enjoy this. 

That's all for now :)

Monster Madness

Hey Everyone!!! I AM BACK!! I was supposed to be back yesterday but I couldn't get on the computer so  as soon as I got home from work today I jumped on it and started getting pictures ready. I have been doing Project ORGANIZE over the past week+ and I have made some great progress. I will share more about that later. I also have some hauls and giveaways I won to show you. It is going to get busy with school winding down for my son so I am going to try and get my posts done during the day so I don't fall behind. 

Today's mani is actually from before the break (pun intended) so my nails are longer than they are now. I have pretty much been laying off polish and trying to oil and treat my nails while I was on break last week. My nails are still incredibly week and damaged but they are a little longer and a bit happier now. 

I started with a strange base for this mani. Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Starry Starry Flight and Loreal The Temptress Touch.

I started with Snow Me White which shows ALL the flaws on my bumpy nails. I had already had some breaks that I patched with my gel mani so my nails were not smooth and nice and boy did this polish show that loud and clear.

I then put Starry Starry Flight over top of Snow Me White. I would have left it there but I didn't like the way it looked so I went onward.

I added Loreal The Temptress Touch from the 2012 Project Runway Electric Fantaise Collection. This one didn't look as patchy in person but I also wanted it to look a little funky because it was the base for my monster nails.

I used Cheeky plate CH32 to stamp some monsters on my nails. I am not sure if they are supposed to be aliens or monsters but I called them monsters.

For the Monsters I used Essie Mojito Madness, China Glaze Hanging in the Balance, Spoiled Distant Memory and China Glaze Man Hunt.

I stamped a different monster on each finger in a different color. From pinky to index finger the colors are Man Hunt, Distant Memory, Hanging in the Balance and Mojito Madness. 

On my thumbs I used the full nail design and used all the colors. You can tell better in on the other thumb how the colors differ but I love multi colored stamping.

These guys were super cute and our waitress even liked them.

I love full nail patterns but I think my nails are on the small side for many of them.

Super cute little guys. 

That's all for now :)