Secret Valentine Surprises and Things of That Nature

Well a few interesting things have happened thus far and its only Hump Day.

I got my Secret Valentine package from a very awesome Andrea who sent me four wonderful polishes in all my favorite colors and included a Hello Kitty *gasp* treat as well:

I was so excited I swatched each polish on my right hand, swatching the scented polish on my index and middle fingers:

Thumb to pinkie: Piggy Polish - Around Sundown | Revlon - Pretty in Papaya (index/middle) | Orly - Fresh | OPI - Who the Shrek Are You?  (My pinkie got a little messed up when a cotton ball landed on it)

It's always nice to get nail mail.  :)   In case you're wondering, the Revlon scented polish does actually smell quite nice once it dries.  Each color is two coats over Essie - Lady Like (I told you I was excited.) 

I also realized that I need to consider investing in a better storage container for my growing polish pile:

Polish Organizational Fail.

What does the rest of the week hold for me after all this excitement?

A Candy That Won't Give You Cavities...

...except maybe in your pocketbook!

I went to one of the local beauty supply stores near my mom's house a few weeks ago and finally took serious notice of their Orly display.  It's not terribly unique; a lot of the colors are very Mom and Auntie colors -- light pink, nude/creams, bright reds, and pastels -- so I wasn't really that interested but I had been walking around aimlessly looking for China Glaze Trendsetter but they were sold out.  Not wanting to leave the store empty-handed, I searched around and found Rock Candy, an Orly color that was on my short list.  It was about $3 cheaper than the Orlys at Ulta so I snapped it up and took it home. 

It sort of reminds me of the reformulated Sally Hansen polish, Hidden Treasure.  You can see it on ThePolishAholic's website here.  I don't own it so I can't really make comparisons over whether or not they are dupes but considering the Orly polish was waaaayyy cheaper, I won't lose sleep at night not owning it since they seem to share some attributes. 

Originally I layered it over Orly Ancient Jade.  The pictures didn't come out that great so I'm not going to put them up. :P

Today, I put it over Orly Pure Porcelain (sense a pattern with the Orlys?  Yes, they are my new favorite polish in the whole wide world!) -- every single time I try to remember Pure Porcelain, I always think of a local "gentleman's club" called Pure Platinum -- and I think it turned out rather nice.

Here is Pure Porcelain (3 coats) in the buff:

I got this on "clearance" from Ulta for $5.49.  I guess I should count myself lucky for having options in terms of where I can buy Orly because Ulta would NOT be my first choice unless the price was right.  =/

Here is Pure Porcelain with 1 coat of Rock Candy on top:

Because the lighting is so crappy in the new apartment, it's hard to capture the iridescent quality of RC but it really helps lighter shades along, I think.

I haven't tried wearing Rock Candy on it's own because I hate sheer polish but it makes a great layering polish.  I'm still obsessed with creating a "mermaid"-inspired mani so maybe I can include RC in the mix.  In the meantime, this is definitely a polish I would buy a backup of and its definitely one I want to shout about on the mountain top.  The formula is wonderful to work with and using it just to layer means I'll be able to use it for quite a while.  :)

Pop A Cork In It

So I finally succumbed and picked up a bottle of Sally Hansen Glass Slipper for myself after picking up a bottle for a friend in Brazil I'm swapping polishes with.  Its a flakie, not very iridescent -- very much like glass.

Anyways, I was originally only going to repaint my nails Because You're Worth It, but after I was done I thought, "hey I wonder what this would look like with Rock Candy on it," and decided to paint Orly Rock Candy, a pretty, definitely iridescent polish that's fairly transparent and makes for great layering.  It looked nice.  It "silvered" it up a lot and cast a frost on it without making it look 80s (everybody who remembers frost nail polish from the 80s knows what I mean!)  Anyways, trying to get creative, I decided to try Glass Slipper.

Here's how it turned out:

It dented my polish a little and made it look like it had wet spots.  But it also did remind me a little of champagne and those little bubbles that form from carbonation.

But I'm still not really sure how I feel about Glass Slipper.  >_<

Orly Galaxy Girl or How I Learned to Love the Multichrome

As of late, I have not really had much love for nail polish that sparkles.  I should probably explain that when I was a child (an only one I should mention) the only shades of nail polish I was allowed to wear had to be in the very barest pinks, beiges, and any other color that qualifies as an "80s nude" shade.  This is why seeing my Aunt's best friend paint her nails in one of Chanel's deep chocolate brown nail polishes when I was around 12 or 13 played such an important role about how I viewed polish in my adulthood.  

Its very much like my obsession with shoes and handbags; keep the outfit simple and classic, go crazy with the accessories.  (And nail polish is definitely an accessory.  I should also note that I took piano lessons from my early childhood into my teens so my nails were always a stubby, not-so-attractive length so I didn't feel as compelled to paint them.)

Anyways, whenever my nails get to a point where I think they're "long enough" I decide it's time to get to painting.  I recently placed my first Zoya order and picked up a few beautiful shades -- Kristen, Codie, Kiki, Reece, Adina, Yasmeen, etc. -- a nice mix of "flat" colors and colors with glitter and duochromes.  Of the colors I bought Kristen and Codie were the ones I fell in love with.  They were perfect and neutral enough to wear in most situations and I was happy. The others just didn't feel right quite yet.

So they've been sitting in my polish box -- relegated to a fate unknown -- but hope for sparkle wasn't lost on me it seems.  Today, while perusing the Facebook nail polish group I belong to, I was inspired by a couple gals that had taken a trip to their local Ulta and discovered a cache of nail polish bottles.

I decided I would drag my husband to the one and only Ulta store in San Diego hoping to find some diamonds in the rough and I wandered in feeling like I wouldn't find anything.  The store is huge compared to the beauty stores I normally go to and it features a salon but the selection feels -- incomplete.  Despite serving a client base of young college aged women who attend UCSD nearby, and the generally upper middle class, I was disappointed with the selection as soon as I walked in.  I wandered aimlessly around the store searching for any sign of nail polishes besides the ones in the Sally Hansen aisle and finally, after the kids had gotten tired of being warned not to touch anything and consequently taken out by my husband, I found what I was looking for.  Tucked in the back near an alternate entrance and the "salon" was a oblong shaped island that featured the more popular OPI/Essie/Orly shades.  I must've circled it five times.  I decided to stop in front of the Orly polishes, searching for some life in the sea of common colors.  I picked up a bottle on the top shelf of the polish rack.  It was Galaxy Girl.  I was only really familiar with Space Cadet -- mostly as a cheaper alternative to the more elusive Clarins 230 -- but I thought, "why the hell not?" and picked it up along with Out of This World after some humming and hawing.  They were labeled with prices, but I thought as long as they didn't go over $8 I'd be happy.  

These were the (3) shades I decided on (L-R Out of This World, Yara, Galaxy Girl).  The Orlys ended up being a little more than I expected but I also signed up for the Ulta Perks Card and the girl took off an extra $3.50 from my purchase so it was like getting the Zoya polish for free!  (That's Kiki in the background in case you were wondering.)

After wandering around some more, I found a disheveled aisle of clearance items.  Sifting through separated bottles of OPI, Essie, Zoya and Orly was a little sad but I managed to score a bottle of Zoya's Yara for half price.  Not wanting to jinx my already good fortune of finding a Zoya color I was sort of wanting and two Orly colors that looked hard-to-find, I decided it was time to checkout.  In the Orly's were a little more than I expected but I figured they'd be worth it.  I'll let you be the judge.  

Here is Galaxy Girl paired over Wet N Wild's Morbid:

It was really difficult to capture the color shift fully...especially with a plain ole' point-and-shoot but you can kind of see the chameleon glitter shining here.

At certain angles, It just looked like a dark nail polish with a very fine green glitter.

In any case, it is an absolutely beautiful duo-chrome and I'm really excited about it.  I have yet to try Out of This World (mostly because I ran out of cotton balls and nail polish remover) but I'd imagine it won't disappoint me either.  

I think the thing I loved about Galaxy Girl the most was that I could do (1) layer of it over Morbid and it still looked amazing.  I think I'm definitely going to be experimenting with this one.