Massively Hugely Enormously Massive Haul Post

Okay, so this started out as just a post of what I've hauled this past week, but then I thought, what the hell - I'm going to do a post of every single thing I've bought this year so far.  Wanna stop reading?  I don't blame you :p

I don't know if I should do most recent to oldest, or....?  I guess I'll do it from oldest to most recent.  Keep in mind, those of you thinking I'm some spendaholic freak, that this is for this entire year so far.  Some of these are swaps, as well.  Oh, I'm just going to stop making excuses for myself - you know you're all just as bad as I am ;p

Ready?  Grab some chips and turn the TV to something boring :)

Sephora by OPI Read My Palm and Just A Little Dangerous.  Two I'd been lemming for a while - I only had a mini of RMP.

From Forever 21, Love & Beauty scented polishes in Peppermint and Kiwi, and a regular polish in Lime.  These do smell, although not very good - the scent reminds me of those scented fat felt pens we had when we were kids.

Boring stuff - Barielle Camo and Mani Extender, found at Winner's for $5 each.  After I bought these, I walked into Eterna Skin Care on Robson and saw Camo for $18!  D:

But oooh, this is exciting - the Dare To Wear Disco Tech collection!  Hee.  I like glitter.  I just noticed that my older polishes from this brand are spelled "Dare 2 Wear".  Huh.

See?  See?  I told you!  This is Hunter Green x2, Billie Purple Haze (awesome neon purple with subtle shimmer, and only a buck!) and some little butterfly decals I found - which are sitting on top of a Hello Kitty fauxnad plate :)

Aren't these adorable?  I got these so I could copy this mani that I saw on Chloe's Nails.  It's so simple, but so adorable - one of my favorite manis of all time :)

Anna Sui 101, 103 and 011.  011 has flakies!

Some old discontinued China Glazes.  L-R: Stone Age, Sunset Glow, Channelesque, FYI and Drama Queen.

More old discontinued China Glazes.  L-R: Subtle, Beatnik, another Channelesque ;p

Now, we move on to our OPI part of the presentation:

OPI Texas collection. L-R: Y'all Come Back Now Ya Hear?, Big Hair..Big Nails, Guy Meets Gal-veston, That's Hot! Pink, Do You Think I'm Tex-y?, Houston We Have A Purple, Austin-tacious Turquoise and You Don't Mess With OPI!  These names get worse with every collection :p

More (yes, more) random OPIs - Skinny Dip'N In Lake Michg'n, Tickle My France-y, Barefoot In Barcelona, Over the Taupe (I needed neutrals, lol), Just Groovy and Simply Smashing.

And dusty finds!  Awesome dusty finds!  L-R:  Mad As A Hatter, Sapphire In The Snow, Smitten With Mittens, Merry Midnight.  I already own all these, but backups, swaps, you know how it goes... :)

And that concludes our OPI portion of the evening, now how about some Daiso finds?

OMGHOLOsqueeeeeeeee!  <--- iz what I did when I found these in the store.  These are the "Rainbow" line of polishes, they are pretty holo, and they are fantastic!  The three in the middle look like they're the same, but they're actually three seperate colours.  But aren't these just the FUGliest bottles you've ever seen?  Daiso has some seriously ugly bottles, man.

Like check THIS out.  These are all very pretty - a chunky silver and holo hex glitter, iridescent hex glitter, a blue that looks really frosty and horrible here but it's actually very silvery and pretty, and the one on the end is called Aurora Lights and it's basically an exact dupe of CND Crimson Sparkle.  But those first two bottles are seriously some of the most ridiculous-looking things I've ever seen in my life...

SEE?!?  Like, seriously?  What the hell is that thing?  A nail polish bottle or the frickin Empire State Building?  I think the folks at the Winmax must've just done this for a laugh  :p

And look at this!

Aren't these cool?  Anyone know how to read Japanese?  :D  The pictures are SO awesome though.  I'm going to pick a couple of pages and try to scan them like Wan does with Nail Up! magazine over at I Love Nail Polish - a fellow Vancouver blogger, btw :)  And that concludes my Daiso finds!  Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

American Apparel polishes in (L-R): African Violet, Cameo Blue, Army Jacket and MacArthur Park.  Now I just need Passport Blue, Dynasty, Echo and a couple more  :p

Some randoms. L-R:  Nox Twilight Disco Darling and Citrus, unnamed LA Colors yellow gold, Claire's Poison Apple and Zoya Jade.

Wet N Wild Teal Of Fortune and Blue Wants To Be A Millionaire?  TOF looks like another Charla dupe, and BWTBAM looks similar to the Justin Beiber Nicole polish Me + Blue, although they're not dupes.

China Glaze mood polishes that - blast it all - have no labels!! :(  Anyone have any idea what these might be?  The one on the left is baby blue with a pinky-gold flash, and the one on the right is slightly darker with blue glitter.

CND Effects - all for a swap :)  Aren't they pretty?  I love these, they're so fun to play with.

And some Essies - Coat Azure, Beach Bum Blu (frosty and horrible - I dunno why I bought it :-/) and French Affair.

And last, I know no one cares, but some non-nail-polish stuff that I got for cheap:

I got my makeup done by a Smashbox artist at SDM, and since I had a gift card I bought two products - the Halo powder and Peony cream cheek colour duo, and the MU artist ended up throwing in all this stuff for free!  She threw in a full-size lipgloss, lip pencil and concealer for free, as well as a travel-size mascara and a billion other little samples.  I was blown away!  Usually they're just trying to get you to spend money and even when you do, make you feel like you're not spending enough, but she was extremely generous!  Thanks Smashbox!  Oh, and the In Bloom eyeshadow palette I bought at Sephora a few weeks back - happened to grab the last one :)

I started composing this post about a week and a half ago, so I've bought a couple of things since then.  I'll take some photos and get an updated haul post up as soon as I can :)  I've been working lots lately, which I really need.

Crappy Monday :)

I Can't Sleep.... Let's Look At Some Recent NOTD Pics!

 So I really suck at keeping promises.... yeah.... you're probably so sick of hearing me apologize too.  Whatever.  On with the blog.

First of all, let me tell you a story.... Lex isn't very good at staying awake lately.  Which is weird - I have had chronic insomnia since I was a little kid.  I'm used to staying awake whether I want to or not - usually way past the point that I want to.  But these days, I come home, blather on to my bf and dork about on the computer for awhile, make dinner, and then I can barely make it through a DVD episode of Lost before my eyes are starting to close on me....  It's really frustrating.  So tonight, Saturday night, I decided to chug a can of Red Bull in order to not fall asleep in front of my friends during the hockey game.  Hence, this post at 5 in the morning.  And this is after Falling Behind. It's actually 6 in the morning  :(  I love my Red Bull, and it's helped me through some tough times, but lately the stuff has such an adverse, hateful effect on me...  Anyway, the end....  Because of this, I can't sleep and you get this cracked-out-sounding post!  High fives!

In other news, I bought another Helmer, and am in the midst of reorganizing my stash.... trying to figure out what goes in what drawer and what deserves its own drawer and all that....  I thought it'd be more fun, and, I mean, it is kinda fun, but it is kinda just like cleaning.... I need to massively de-dupe, I'm realizing as well  :-/

In other other news, I found all the holiday China Glazes except for... well, like half of them.  My Sally's is ballz.  I still need Peace On Earth, Little Drummer Boy, Frosty, Mommy Kissing Santa and those two golds...  Problem is, no one place has all of them in stock  :(  At least I got my greedy mitts on Party Hearty.  We all know that's the important one :)

So anyway... who wants to look through some old NOTD pics?  yaaay!  Well, they're actually pretty recent...

My sloppy execution of the candy corn mani.  Did this sometime during the week of Halloween....  I used....

An old Sally Hansen Halloween exclusive from a few years back, Orange Pumpkin.  Yes, the point of me taking the pic like that was so I didn't have to type that, but let's move on....  Maybe it was just last year's release, I'm not really sure.  Anyway, I used the yellow and white SH Insta-Dris for the rest (Lightning, and... I don't remember...) Also, I freehanded the lines, because I couldn't find any tip guides.  Or tape.  Don't hate.

Another Halloween mani.  This is Sephora By OPI If You've Got It, Haunt It, with Color Club Tangerine Scream on the ring finger.  IYGIHI was one of the Halloween-exclusive $OPIs, along with Kitty Loves Black and that glow-in-the-dark white, and my fave of the three by far.  It's a black glitter in a base of grey microglitter, and there's some blue and pink in there too.  Gorgeous and unique in my stash.  I can't find Nicole Pitch-Black Glimmer anywhere, and this fulfilled that lemming nicely.

This is a Kiko Cosmetics #270 overtop of $OPI Kitty Loves Black, which was a black with pearly blue microshimmer.  Kiko 270 I've shown on top of $OPI Read My Palm before, but it shows up much better on top of a darker colour like this.  The paillette glitter reflects different colours at different angles - purple, blue, teal and green.  These photos are blurred but you can see some of the colours of the glitter...

It is really quite stunning IRL... very Across The Universe-ish.  I love this polish.  I got it in a swap from Italy - I wonder if there's anything similar on this side of the pond...

This was my anniversary mani, for my 3-year with the BF...

Cheesy, yes, but that's what I was going for :)

I used (what else) OPI Happy Anniversary! and layered various heart polishes overtop.  I actually kind of went crazy with the heart polishes.  I pulled out every one I own and started slopping them on, flinging hearts this way and that....  There's a couple of Nicole ones (Love Your Life, Have A Heart, Honey-dew You Love Me, Spring Romance) a Claire's one (Love Struck), some random no-name dollar store ones...  Yeah.  It doesn't look the greatest, I'm aware - the repeated application of the thick heart polishes turned the finish of Happy Anniversary all gungey and gross-looking.... but it served its purpose.  Boyfriend liked it :)

And last, but not least....  I have a random no-name dollar store polish for you!! (don't you hate those? :p)  I've been combing Asian dollar stores recently.  Being in Vancouver, I walk past a ton of them all the time, and decided to start exploring some.  Well, look how glad I am that I did!

I found this gorgeous grey holo polish in one such store.  It was $2, has no name and comes in a fugly-ass twisty bottle.  But look how prettyyyyyy! *_*

I love me some holo.  And this has got good holo :)  I also picked up kind of a rusty-reddish looking one that also looks kind of holo, so hopefully that one'll turn out to be as nice as this one!  I scored a bunch of stuff at that store and stores like this recently, and I'm going to have an upcoming post dedicated to my dollar store finds. Most of them are random Hong Kong and Korean brand polishes, they're cheap, and they're all kinds of awesome :)  I'll also include where I found them all, in case anyone's in Vancouver.  (And in case you're interested, I found this particular one at that Daiso-type dollar store in Tinseltown by Stadium Station  :)  Or what used to be Tinseltown.  I don't know if it's still called Tinseltown.  But you guys know where I mean, right?  I'm sure it'd probably be at Daiso, too, since this place seemed to have pretty much the same stock as them...)

Well, I have run out of pics for you right now.  But do not fret - I shall return with more stuff I promised I'd do.  Seriously.  I will.

(No, I'm still not tired yet.  FML  :p)

Some Spam While I Wait For The Evil, Sadistic UPS Truck.....

Okay, I have to put this up quickly because my TD order should be here any minute....  The UPS page says "Out For Delivery"  and I'm sitting here waiting and watching for the truck.... I know, I need a life.  Whatevs.  Come on, truck.....  I'm going insane.  They're doing this to me on purpose, I swear....

Anywho, here's some more spam while we're waiting.... yes, I said we... You're waiting with me  :p

Lippmann Razzle Dazzle.  Really quite pretty.  From the Lippmann All That Jazz set, came with Some Enchanted Evening and Lady Sings The Blues.

Obligatory Blogger-flipped photo  :(

I liked this a lot more than I expected to.  It was kind of what I wanted WnW Night Prowl to be....

This is Kiko Cosmetics 270 over Sephora by OPI Read My Palm.  I know it looks like crap here - I couldn't photograph it properly for the life of me.  But trust me when I say it's an awesome glitter topcoat - it's comprised of tons of multicoloured pailettes that shimmer and reflect tons of different colours depending on the light and base colour....  I know they look yellow here, but overtop of this colour they mainly reflected blue and green... It looked very mermaid-like...

Aaargh.  This photo is blurry and bad, but your can sort of see the blue it reflects IRL...  It looked gorgeous, anyway.  I received this in a swap, but you can order Kiko Cosmetics through their website, I believe.  It frustrates me that I can't show you this topcoat properly though, so.... moving on.....

This was a recent KOTD.  It's the Barielle Blackened Bleu from the other day stamped with China Glaze Sci-Fi, and a konad plate..... I can never remember the names of the plates.  I fail at life.  Sorry.  But I did like the way this looked.

And this is my current KOTD.... current up until about ten minutes ago, that is, when I took it off in anticipation of my TD order arriving.... which still hasn't shown up, btw..... I'm seriously starting to get cold sweats....

It's like a "Still-Trying-To-Squeeze-Some-Use-Out-Of-My-Summer-Polishes" mani.  I'm kind of in love with it.  The base is an awesome polish from Claire's....

And yeah, its definitely hot :)  It's like a neon orangey-pinkish red.... ish.  It shifts between these three colours, depending on the light.  But it's definitely neon.  So bright and unique.  I don't own another neon like it, and I own a lot of neons.  This is probably the closest thing to a neon red that I have.... much closer than, say, China Glaze Rose Among Thorns, or something.  But it's beautiful.  And the application was seriously awesome - pigmented and not thick or gooey at all.  I did three coats but two would have been fine.  Three was easy to apply though - this polish is pretty thin.

Oh yeah, and I stamped overtop with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Expres-so Yellow... my favorite polishes for konad :)  Other than the Chromes and Romatiques of course.  Seriously, though, I've picked up so many of these just for konading - I find they work better than the actual Konad polishes!  I tried doing this mani with the yellow Konad polish, but it just would NOT transfer to the nail at all, and the bit that did transfer barely showed up.  So I tried again with this and got much better results :)  If you're looking for some good colours to konad with, I highly recommend picking up a couple of these - especially the primary colours and the pastels.

Okay, the UPS guy still hasn't come by.... If he doesn't come today, I'll have to wait until Monday to get my order!  The page still says "In transit" though.....  I'm going to quietly have a meltdown in the corner.  Hopefully I'll be back later.

Five Billion Swatches of What I've Been Wearing All Month

Hello all! Wow, I haven't posted in a month! I'm so so sorry... this obviously has been a really busy and hectic month. I know no one wants to hear my lame excuses or stories about what's actually happening in my real life. We just come here because of our mutual love/admiration/constant cravings for the polish, amirite? :D And for some reason, you look at my writing on my silly little blog here, and maybe identify with me? Or just feel superior. Either way, I hope you want to see five billion swatches of what I've worn this whole month - cuz that's what I'm putting up :p  Or most of it anyway.  There were a couple of days I didn't take NOTD pics.

Also, really quickly - I've gotten two requests to see some stash/collection pics, because y'all are thinking "my stash must be huge" and you "wanna see it!" I've taken a couple of photos, which I'll put up later, but here's what I'm thinking... yes.  You're right.  I have a giant np collection. Like, ridiculously huge. I usually stay away from those "How many are you at??" poll posts on MUA, because I see the numbers people post and I'm like, "wow.... maybe times that by five" :s and I don't want to seem like I'm some spoiled brat/hoarder.  Or rich.  I've been collecting NP since I was in 7th grade, but over the past two years my obsession really came about full-circle.  And I have... quite a lot now :p That's why I haven't posted collection or stash or storage pics before. But if I'm getting requests to do so, I was thinking.... would you watch a video of my stash and storage? It would be so much easier to follow. And I'll stay out of sight - you'll be forced to listen to my stupid voice, but that's all! Whaddya think?

I'll still post the collection pics I already took later.... wait, I already said that, didn't I...
 
Okay, enough talk.  Here we go - NOTDs from August:
 

This is Sally Hansen Spectrum, overtop of China Glaze Grape Juice. GJ was untried and Spectrum was new at the time, so I thought them a natural combination. I wish I'd tried GJ by itself, though, and I wish those SH's were opaque enough on their own.
 

Icing Chartreusely Yours.  This is the only true chartreuse I own, I think! :)  It's a bright yellow-green creme.  I fauxnaded overtop.  You probably saw that for yourself :p
 

Zoya Gwin....

OKay, blogger just decided to prematurely publish my post before I was done, so I lost all the pics I uploaded! I'm having to upload them all over again :(((( I seriously feel like throwing my laptop at the wall. Does Blogger ever do this to anyone else?? Lose their photos, randomly flip them weird ways, screw up your alignment...? It does this to me almost every time I post! Is it IE? It makes me not even want to bother writing >:(

Anyway... I think I can move on...  

This is Zoya Gwin after I coated it with OPI Significant Other Color.

The subtle gold/green flash in Gwin just wasn't doing it for me - I needed moar!

SIC is really one of my favorite layering polishes... it gives such a strong green/gold flash.  I was tempted to try Sonic Bloom over it as well, but I thought the blue tint would make it too murky.

This is Sephora By OPI Midnight Mambo. This was an online exclusive - not sold in stores. Which I think is stupid, because what if you don't have a credit card? This is such a gorgeous polish, everyone should have access to it!  I got this and 212 at the same time, and while I haven't tried 212 yet, I'm pretty sure that MM is my new all-time fave $OPI polish!  So pretty... a bright jelly blue base with very dense mulitsize and hex holo glitter.  What could be more perfect?  Well, one thing, but I'll show you that in a sec....

This is Toma Island Girl.  I got this in a swap, and it's an iridescent pearl colour with very strong blue and green flashes. 

Inside, it just looks like this most of the time:

But at certain angles, and in the sun, it's very opalescent and pretty. 

I couldn't really get all the colours to show up on camera :( of course, but I could see blue, green, purple, pink.... this is very very pretty.  It did take four or five coats to be opaque, though.  This would be nice on tanned toes, with a white underneath to help the sheerness.  Hmm... maybe I should try....

This is OPI Color So Hot It Berns, from fall's Swiss collection.  Sorry 'bout the chips.  I thought this would be a hot red, so I grabbed it at the last second when I first found the collection.  It's okay, a standard cherry-red creme.  I'm so bad at telling if a red is right for my skintone or not though.  I think they all kinda look the same  *hides*

This is Color Club Puccilicious.  Ignore the yellowness in this pic - the polish colour is the closest to real life in this pic.  This is a very blue-based purple.  It's not a blurple, it's definitely still purple, but with a very, very blueish tone.  Which = impossible to photograph.  Here were my attempts:

See?  Here in the sun, it appears very very blue.

As well as here, in the shade.  Oh well.  It looks IRL most like the first pic, and it's a gorgeous creme.  If you like purples, I'd highly, highly reccommend this one.  This is one of my very fave purple cremes.  I even like it better than China Glaze Grape Pop/OPI Funky Dunkey/RBL Mismas!  I just love the blue tone.

Okay, remember how I just said it doesn't get any better for me than $OPI Midnight Mambo?  Ahem.  BEHOLD!!!!

Yeah, I know everyone's seen it by now, but I can't help it.  I.  ABSOLUTELY.  LOVE!!!!!!!!!!

It was like Deborah made this polish just for me.  Blue.  Glitter.  Green tinges.  Gaaaahhhhhhh......  Yes, the hex glitter (or "sequins", as DL calls them) are big and chunky like in Ruby Red Slippers, but this combined with the jellyness of the dark blue and the glitter give it a gorgeous depth that really does make me think of space and night skies.  Awesome.  Automatically in my top 20 of all time.  Probably even top ten.  Oh yes, in case you don't recognize this, this is Deborah Lippmann Across The Universe.  Came in a set with Bad Romance, which I haven't tried yet.  I also got the All That Jazz trio with Lady Sings The Blues, Razzle Dazzle and Some Enchanted Evening.  I might post all that later as well, along with my stash pics.  Anyway, this was sold exclusively at Nordstrom's stores, I think... or so I was informed.  Now, we don't have Nordie's in Canada of course, so I believe you could also order them online through the store's site, but if you want this polish, I suggest you hurry up and pony up the twenty-something bucks (yes, I know) and grab it, because I'm not sure how long these will last...  I'm loving these high-end glitters, though.  So fun!  Owning them, that is.  Not the paying for them part :(

Sorry for my dry cuticles here.  This is a polish from Ardene's, called Royal Blue. I topped it with Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure here. It's basically a dupe for SH Pacific Blue... which is, for some reason, kind of htf where I live. I did have it already when I bought this... but I wanted it for comp purposes. Besides, they often have 10 for $10 cosmetics sales at Ardene's. So Canadian gals, if you can stomach the obnoxious 12-yr-olds the store is usually filled with, it might be worth ducking into Ardene's to check out their polish, especially if you can't find SH PB. Other than this and a bright orange, though, a lot of their colours looked like dupes.

This is LA Girls Disco Brites Hustle.  Sorry for the crappy pic, but it was the only pic I could get the colour to show up purple, not blue!  This is another blue-based purple, but this one's a jelly.  So pretty.  Competing with Dance Studio to be my favorite from the Disco Brites line :)

See how outside here it looks way more blue?  It's not this blue.  It's a dark purple jelly.  Yeah, that was not very helpful, was it  :p

Here's one of my FAIL-of-the-days!  ChG Blue Fox topped with Revlon Galaxy. I should have put Galaxy over something else - I thought this just kinda looked like dirt on my nails. Blue Fox was brushstroke-y as fack, too :/  It's a very old, non-B3F polish though - the writing's all rubbed off the bottle completely - so I'll forgive it.  It's like seeing your Grandma with her lipstick applied outside her lip lines, or something.  You love her, and her little faux pas somehow make her more endearing :)  I'll give Blue Fox another chance, and try Galaxy over something else - something darker.

This is a Jolly Ranchers polish, from a set I got a Claire's.  This is the Watermelon one.  Ugh - my cuticles are really really bad here. Sorry. I had to wash my car and dog, and although I used Cuticle Eraser and Lemony Flutter, they're back to looking like this within a few hours. Bah.

Yay!  It woudn't be Blogger without a flipped photo!  (goddamned son of a... #$%^&!)  Anyway, this is a warm pinkish-red with very fine pink shimmer. Is it unique? No. Does it smell? Not really... it kinda does at first, but it doesn't really smell like Watermelon Jolly Ranchers. Which sucks, cuz that's one of my favorite scents in the whole world, and basically why I bought the set. Maybe the Blueberry or Sour Apple polishes will be better?

So since it didn't smell, I decided to layer over it!

I layered it with HT, which looked ok and I should have left it, but then, since we all know I never know when to stop, I decided to put a coat of Sinful Green Ocean (because I've wanted it forever and recently RIS as an extra from an awesome, awesome lady) overtop... which did not look ok. The polish looked orange after I topped it with HT, and green and orange? Ew. It looks better in this pic than it does on my nails.... but now it's 10000 layers thick and it's gonna take me forever to remove it :p I have a day off today - maybe I'll just not leave my house instead :p

So that's it for right now.... back later with a small haul post, and later than that with some collection pics!  And let me know what you think of me making a stash/collection video!

Sid and his thumbs bid you adieu.