Almost Back!

Sadly, this is me last Thursday, after an exhausting day that included my (hopefully last?) IV injection. My nurse blew out not one but two veins before sticking my other hand (and that vein worked).  Yes, I was sitting at Bingo.  Yes it looks like I'm the hunchback of Notre Dame.  No real excuses - just bad posture and a very long torso that makes all tables too short for my body.


So I'm almost back - my poor hands look miserable.  I have rough, peeling cuticles, I still have paint on my knuckles and elbows (and in some of my nail beds), my nails are uneven and one was splitting this morning, and I think the arthritis is spreading to my hands or I'm just really working my hands (it's both).  I'm waiting until this house appraisal to be over with and then I'm going to be going wild with polish.  I got a phone call Saturday that my polish racks should be here this week, and I received a neat press sample from a new company and the TO DIE FOR China Glaze Halloween and Fight Like A Woman sets.  Plus I have Zoya Wicked/Wonderful that I've been dying to get to.  That, and a really Naughty company, as well as some drugstore buys.


I really do want to thank you for reading my blog.  I never thought I'd have so much online support as I do.  Last I looked, I'm just 45 readers away from 500, which I already have a special company sponsored giveaway planned - I'm excited about it at least!  Also coming up this week will be a link to the new beauty blog I now guest write for.  When the post comes out, I'll be linking everyone to it as well as explaining a little more about them.  I really do love makeup and beauty products, but my first love is still nail polish.  This way I get the best of both worlds!


Now I'm going to munch some frozen pizza... Okay, so seriously this is the BEST frozen pizza I've ever found in my life.  It's a brand called Freschetta and it was like $6 for a large pepperoni pizza.  I do add extra pepperoni on my own but the crust is SO amazingly soft and pillowly.  Oh geez.  I also love food.  Seriously.

Packing is not fun

Helmers, polish racks, clear storage boxes... we all have our way to organize our collection.  I love these spinning nail polish racks that I originally found on eBay, but turns out that the eBay user has her own website as well called Queen Nail & Beauty Supply, Inc. [official website]

This is quite an old picture of the rack, but you can see how many China Glaze polishes fit per side.

The wide sides hold 40 bottles and the narrow sides hold 30 bottles, so we're talking 140 bottles of China Glaze per spinning rack.  Considering I have ~218 bottles of China Glaze... well yeah.

So I originally had 2 of these, but I just recently ordered 3 more.  Sadly, they are on back order and I received a phone call the next morning from the company letting me know that it would be 2-4 weeks before they arrived.  I was already getting free UPS Ground shipping because of my total purchase price, so there really wasn't anything that I could do but say "okay" and wait.  I'm now on day 10 since I placed my order... it's going to be awhile.

However, some things can't wait, and currently my flimsy table that I was holding the racks on, isn't going to cut it.  Neither is keeping my nail polish in my entryway to my house (ask my friends, we all bumped into it).  So my spare bedroom which is currently occupied by boxes, will be cleaned out this weekend and a sturdy 8 foot table will be put up and I will be enjoying 5 total spinning racks before long!

I prefer the racks because you can easily see every bottle, every time.  Helmers only allow you to see the top of your bottles and you have to come up with some other kind of way to find THAT color that you wanted to wear.  Clear plastic boxes are kind of the same deal since you can only see the items on the outside of the box.

Yes, this is a very expensive route to go, considering the racks are $70/piece, but to me, it's been totally worth it. The quality of these racks are very heavy duty - and the acrylic has held up really well.  My son accidentally kicked it once and a piece broke off but I was able to super glue it back together and you can't even tell it's chipped.

My current polish count is at 556 bottles but that's not counting base coats/top coats/matte coats...  I figure with bottle size to take in account, I'll be using all 5 of those racks and be looking into a 6th before long.  Also I'm having issues on how to sort my polish.  I had them sorted by collection, then brand, but that got annoying.  Next I went for color then brand.  Now I'm thinking brand and then color.  Even though my spreadsheet is sorted by brand and then code or bar number, that would kill me if I had to move all my polishes every time I buy an "older" color.  Any thoughts?

So back to the title of this post.  I had to empty my racks today and stick all my polish in a box for moving.  I'm freaking out that they are going to break, leak, or both.  I currently also have a handbag full of 50+ polishes including my to be reviewed Zoya Wicked/Wonderful and all 3 of the Naughty Nails collections, as well as over 30 e.l.f. polishes I bought during their HUGE sale (I paid 40 cents a bottle!).

Here's the box of polishes that I had from the racks - you can see how deep the thing is

And a fun look off the top

Back in the day I learned how to fill type with an image but frankly, it didn't look so well with my preferred font or with the above picture... haha.  One day I'll show you my awesome photoshopping skills.

Well I have to get back to packing.  It's after 4 a.m. and I'm still not done...  I'm sneaking in polish swatching when I can - wish me luck!

OPI Catch Me In Your Net vs Zoya Charla

After hearing others say that OPI Catch Me In Your Net and Zoya Charla are very similar, I decided to do a swatch test for myself.  As you can see, the bottles look very similar with the blue base and the blue-green glitter.

Still looking very similar!


I used a base coat of Dermelect Launchpad, 2 coats of each color, and for OPI, I had a top coat of Seche Vite.  For Zoya, I used a top coat of Zoya Armor.


Up first is my sun picture.  I used OPI on my pointer and ring finger & Zoya on my middle and pinkie.

Well, you can see that Catch Me In Your Net is a little lighter than Charla - I don't know if another coat of CMIYN would make it look just like Charla?  I'm not sure.  ^_^

Same with the shade.  So are these exact dupes?  They are sure close!  Do you need both?  I will always say yes.  ^_^  But then again, I'm obsessed!


Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

OPI Catch Me In Your Net

When I originally saw the promo pictures for the OPI 2010 Summer Collection "Summer Flutter", I was the most excited about this color.  I had heard that it looked a lot alike Zoya's Charla, which I absolutely love (after wearing it), so I was excited to see how this matched up.  Catch Me In Your Net is a blue-green glitter in a blue base.


I used a base coat of Dermelect Launchpad, 2 coats of Catch Me In Your Net and a top coat of Seche Vite.  I haven't given up on RapiDry, but it dries slightly slower that Seche, and lately I've been having to take my blogging pictures around 6 or 7 p.m. when the sun is dying, so time is precious.

Beautiful.  I did a little color correction to get back to the true color, as my camera was freaking out on the color and on the focus.  All that glitter, all that loveliness... this sun picture really shows off the glitter in this polish.

In the shade, you still see so much of the true color - it's not like some of my polishes where it looks COMPLETELY different in the light versus the shade.  Removal was indicative of a glitter - takes a bit to remove so I just leave my Zoya Remove+ cotton pad a little longer on the nail that usual.


Very nice color!  I did go ahead and try it again Zoya's Charla, but that's another post.  ^_^


OPI is available at Professional Salons, including Beauty Brands, Beauty First, Chatters, Dillard’s, JCPenney, Pure Beauty, Regis, Trade Secret, and Ulta, for $8.50 ($10.95 CAN) suggested retail for each Nail Lacquer. Please visit their website for details [official website].  

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

OPI Wing It!

Do I even have to say it?  Look at this bottle!  See how the orange red is radiating on the sides of the bottle, and the pink red is in the center?  Love it.  OPI's Wing It! from the Summer Flutter collection is this amazing red with purple and pink microglitter.  The light shift is amazing.


I used a base coat of Dermelect Launchpad, 2 coats of Wing It! and topped it with Seche Vite.  The formula was very nice - not too thin, not thick.  I did have a slight glitter issue with removal - it's a glitter so I needed to wait a little longer with my remover on my cotton pad, because I had to scrub to get it off at first.  It's not like Mad As A Hatter scrub, but just a normal glitter scrubbing.  (I have yet to try the foil method where you wrap your finger in a remover soaked pad, then wrap the nail in aluminum foil... I'll probably write a small tutorial in the future).

Check it out!  The purple miccroglitter really pops against the red base.  It was so pretty to look at!

Check out that bottle - all that purple and pink... absolutely beautiful.  I think this is my favorite of this collection - I can see myself wearing it a lot.


OPI is available at Professional Salons, including Beauty Brands, Beauty First, Chatters, Dillard’s, JCPenney, Pure Beauty, Regis, Trade Secret, and Ulta, for $8.50 ($10.95 CAN) suggested retail for each Nail Lacquer. Please visit their website for details [official website].  

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.