polish purchases: march edition

i went a liiiittle over last month :S. but i got some stinkin' awesome polishes!

hard candy gummy green, hard candy peach pop, hard candy crush on raisin

china glaze hello, gorgeous, china glaze united, milani digital, milani cyberspace

hard candy gummy green ($4.00)- when the new hard candy polishes came out, i was most excited about this one. a pretty mint green that reminds me of ice cream? absolutely yes.

hard candy peach pop ($4.00)- orange isn't usually my thing, but this one spoke to me. it looked so much like velveeta and rotelle that i had to buy it. . . . lol.

hard candy crush on raisin ($4.00)- this is a really cool, complex color. sort of bronze-y, sort of pink, sort of pewter, but definitely glinty and sparkly. glad i picked this one up.

china glaze hello gorgeous! ($4.67)- cherry culture was running a 20% off sale not too long ago, and i jumped on the chance to snag a few polishes i'd been eyeing. this pink and holographic glitter was one of them. all china glazes were on sale for $3.99, plus 20% off, plus shipping. so each of my 4 polishes from cherry culture averaged about $4.67. not bad, not bad.

china glaze united ($4.67)- this is another pick from the same "united in purpose" collection for breast cancer. they look pretty similar in the bottle, but united is darker and more coppery. i couldn't decide which one i wanted more, so i just bought both!

milani digital ($4.67)- wow, this pink one looks a lot like my new china glazes. . . . and hard candy crush on raisin too. oops! i guess i have a mauve pink thing going right now.

milani cyberspace ($4.68)- as you probably know, you can't find the milani holos in cvs stores anymore :(. i'm very sad about this, because i love these holos. so the cherry culture sale seemed like a good time to get the remaining 2 from the collection that i didn't have yet. now i have all of the milani holos- silver, gold, purple, green, blue, and pink! i'm thinking i want to try a holo gradient mani sometime soon. . . . hmmmm.

GRAND TOTAL FOR MARCH: $30.71

yes, i went over my budget, but i really needed the new hard candy polishes lol. not really, but i like them a whole lot. there are a few more that look interesting, so i might pick up more this month!

31DC2012 DAY 22: inspired by a song

i'm a huge fan of oldies music, namely anything from the 70s. and the song that inspired today's manicure might be my favorite ever. every time i hear "dancing in the moonlight" on the radio, i suddenly feel perkier and hate my job less lol. the toy piano just makes me smile :).

instead of trying to depict someone actually dancing in the moonlight on my nails (which would've looked terrible, trust me), i picked polishes whose names correspond with the name of the song. i did a base color of moonlight, following by dots of dancing nails on top. so together we have "dancing" and "moonlight" :P.

 base color: 1 coat 10 moonlight

red dots: sinful dancing nails

white dots: sinful snow me white

i love how this turned out. i usually only dot with cremes, but the metallic red looks pretty sweet! very glinty and ornate (at least in person). i pretty much stole this design from the lovely raggio di luna, whose blog is incredible. but it's not stealing if you give credit where credit is due. . . . right??

whew, only 8 more manicures to go on this incredibly arduous challenge. . . .

31DC2012 DAY 12: stripes

went the lazy route again with this mani. i relied on a magnet to make stripes for me, instead of having to do any actual artwork/stamping.

1 coat unnamed nabi magentic

sunlight- most color-accurate

this magnetic polish gave me a little bit of trouble. the magnet (which is inside the cap of the polish) isn't very strong at all, so i had to get my nail super close to it for the diagonal lines to show up. which of course meant that i accidentally smudged a couple of my nails by getting too close to the magnet, and had to start over. i would've just painted over it with another coat and tried again, but i discovered that 2 coats made the color much darker and just generally ickier. i liked the effect of 1 coat, which is totally opaque anyway.

the other thing that bugged me was that in the bottle, this shade is a gorgeous warm rose gold with lots of gold/copper shimmer. but after using the magnet, all the copper gets pulled to the front, and you can't see the rose gold anymore. just a too warm copper that looks horrid with my skin tone.

very pretty in the bottle. . . .

overall, this wasn't my favorite look. but that's ok, because i only paid $3.99 for this polish at walgreens. so no biggie. maybe i can wear this on its own without the magnet? that way it would just be a lovely rose gold metallic. or i have a hunch that this would be great for stamping. all is not lost!

31DC2012 DAY 8: metallic nails

i can't think of anything creative to say about this manicure. . . . i've been home with a raging headache for 5 days now. . . . i feel miserable. i'm just ready for it to go away so i can go back to working and making money. money is good, i could use some. you know what else is good? glitter on my fingernails.

1 coat sally hansen diamond strength white veil over 2 coats spoiled i'm ba-roque

what do we think about this combo? it looks prettier and sparklier in real life. white veil is still one of my favorite layering polishes ever. too bad it was limited edition.

sorry to be such a downer today. . . . a nail polish blog should be a happy place where we only focus on pretty things, right? more pretty things coming soon!

if it ain't baroque. . . .

i'm dedicating this post to my little music students. well not really, because my students don't read this (i hope). but if they did, they would get a kick out of this polish's name- spoiled i'm ba-roque. we just studied baroque music, and hopefully they still remember what it is. . . .

2 coats spoiled i'm ba-roque

most color-accurate

not color-accurate, but see how shiny and sparkly it is?

i bought i'm ba-roque as a replacement for wet 'n wild craze shield, which is now discontinued. click here to see how similar they are. i did 2 coats, which made it mostly opaque. 3 probably would've been better, though.

not much else to say about this one. . . . except that this is another gorgeous polish for less than $2!

magnetique

hello new readers :). would you like to see my first magnetic polish encounter?

1 coat unnamed magnetique polish

i wasn't too sure about the whole magnetic trend when it first sprouted up, so i bought a cheap one to experiment with. i got this magnetique at rite aid for $4.99. i picked a color (bronze) that i would like even if i didn't have a magnet. however, i haven't quite mastered the star-patterned magnet that came with it, so i used the wave magnet from the new sally hansen magnetics:

so what do you think? i quite like it. you obviously can't capture this in a photo, but the silver magnetic part shifts when you move your hands. it looks like a cat's eye stone. a really weird but cool effect! i'm glad i tried this. even my brother (who mocks me mercilessly for always staring at my polished fingers) thought they were cool and kept grabbing my hands to look at them. ha!

metallic skittles

what's a girl to do when she can't decide which polish to wear? wear them all, of course!

pinky: wet 'n wild fastdry silvivor. not much to say about this one. just your average, sparkly silver foil. it's really bright and pretty, and will only cost you $2. why would anyone spend more on a silver foil?

ring finger: revlon gold coin. i bought this one for stamping, since it's a 1-coater, but i'm not really loving how it looks on me. for some reason, it pulls really green. bleh. i think a warmer or more champagne gold would look better with my (pale) skin tone. i'm thinking about purging this one.

middle finger: nicole by opi it starts with me. finally, a real swatch of this shade that i use under so many sheer polishes. it's a very pretty pink/rose gold foil that definitely needs 2 coats. 

index finger: revlon copper penny. this is probably my favorite of the metallic foils i own. i pretty much love anything copper, though, so no surprise. i did 2 coats of all of these polishes, but copper penny looked exactly the same with 2 as it did with 1. awesome.

thumb: wet 'n wild craze shield. now this an oldie. i've had this one for at least 3 years. the wet 'n wild craze line is now discontinued, but the spoiled line has a similar shade (i'm ba-roque). this one is sort of sheer too and definitely needed 2 coats. 3 might've been better. shield used to be one of my favorite polishes (several years ago), but now i'm like "meh." i've moved on to prettier and sparklier things (like holo!).

wet 'n wild fastdry silvivor, revlon gold coin, nicole by opi it starts with me, revlon copper penny, wet 'n wild craze shield

nail extravaganza (rite aid haul)

last month rite aid ran a nail polish promotion where if you spent $30 on any nail-related items, you got $10 to spend on anything at rite aid. at first i was like- how could i spend $30 on nail polish at one drugstore in one month?? but then ummmm. . . . i found a bunch of polishes i wanted. so yup.

here's what i bought for $30, in case you're into that sorta thing:

wet 'n wild color icon the crown is mine (limited edition!)
petites universe (which is kind of a strange name for a gold flaky. . . .)
revlon whimsical
petites epic! (another weird name. . . . what's with the exclamation mark?)
petites color fever banish

nyc water street blue

petites color fever peach blush (why is this cap different than the other petites color fever bottle above??)

sinful colors fig (one of my top 10!)

magnetique magnetic nail polish (unnamed)

nyc grand central station (i needed a few more cents to meet my $30 requirement, so i bought an extra of my favorite top coat!)

so 10 polishes for $30. . . . now i'm no mathmatician, but i figure that's $3 per polish. not bad, right? but really i got 3 more with my $10 back, so less than $3 per polish! part of me is pleased with my purchases, and part of me is ashamed of how many polishes i bought this month at just one store.

btway, rite aid is running the same promotion this month, if you want to be as lame as me. and no, you don't have to buy them all at one whack, your polish purchases accrue during the month!