I'm back! Bottle pics of my haul for now!

Hey guys! I just got back last night from my Japan/Korea trip and have been sleeping irregular hours in between running errands today getting ready to go back to normal life. I unpacked my polish haul just now and took a few bottle shots to show you my bounty.

Some of these are gifts or CPs, so I may not get to swatch them, but I will definitely be swatching the ones for myself when I have time (hopefully by next week)!

I actually did not buy any polish in Japan (I did not see anything that really interested me or the price was too high... the USD was really weak against the yen just in time for my trip :P), so all the polish I got was from my 3 days in Seoul. I purchased some makeup and skin care that I'll probably post up here too later! I also bought a lot of stickers and stationary... because I cannot resist, and I may post a few of those too :)

Anyways, I am pooped right now and am really sad I have to go to work tomorrow :'( Why can't every day be a vacation??









p.s. I have to reply to a few pms on MUA still! Don't worry, I've read your messages, just haven't had time to respond yet!!

p.p.s. Thanks for sticking around while I was gone for two weeks ^_^

Essie Braziliant and Essie Vermillionaire

I had a terrific weekend. Incidentally, DBF was out of town for the weekend… is it bad that my weekend alone was so awesome? LOL. I met a NBer on Sunday and had a really great time.


Weekend haul / presents: OPI Glitzerland, Glacier Bay Blues (yahoo!), Essie Jazz, Essie In Stitches, Essie Mesmerize, Essie Absolutely Shore, Essie Sag Harbor, Essie Chinchilly

There's a hockey game on tonight, so I will be swatching these babies tonight!

I also got these super cute decals!!! Aren't they fabulous?!


So, last week, aveyou.com had a 2 hour flash sale in celebration of their Facebook page getting 400 followers/friends. The code was shared on NB and I broke my no-buy! I believed it was a sign that the sale was announced right after I had set up my blog sale (LOL, thank you everyone who purchased!! You made me feel less guilty XD).


Aveyou haul: OPI Koala Bear-y, OPI YDKJ Suede, OPI Have a Tempura Tan-trum, Essie Shelter Island, Essie Smooth Sailing, Essie Braziliant, Essie Vermillionaire

Today, I'm going to show you guys the two gorgeous orange shades I bought!

Essie Braziliant – From the recent Essie collection, this shimmery orange actually doesn't dry that shiny! I topcoated it for these pics. Very pretty! 2 coats.



Essie Vermillionaire – This is from last year's summer collection. I always thought it was gorgeous, but too bold for me. Luckily, after this wonderful year of nail polish appreciation, I feel confident enough to sport this on my tips! … on the weekend, at least :) Lovely formula, shown with 2 coats.


Piff mentioned recently that this polish was quite close to DL Lara's Theme. This nugget of info made Vermillionaire an easy buy for me, LOL! Thanks, Piff!

And a quickie comparison between Braziliant and Vermillionaire: They look more similar in the picture than they do in real life. I'm happy to have both shades.


I still have a lot of polish to go through and purge, but all these new pretties make me so happy! I'm so grateful that I am easily amused.

DBF is coming home tonight. My awesome weekend has come to an end (LOL). How was your weekend?!

p.s. I also ordered 2 more holos from fabuloustreet. BOOYAH.

Deborah Lippmann Glitter in the Air

Yay! My Beautybar.com haul came yesterday \o/ I used my $40 gc from Hautelook on DL GitA, Butter Seattle (err London) Lady Muck, and a Jack Black lip balm in Black Tea and Blackberry. For some reason, the lip balm came with a free gift... a 2oz tube of Jack Black sunscreen LOL


I was planning on getting BL Victoriana instead of the lipbalm, but it was OOS. Maybe it'll be back later and I can get DBF to add it to his order :)

So, I know you're probably all sick of GitA pics... but humour me here :p

Bottle Pics




What I like about GitA over the various frankens floating around is that there are only 2 main colours of glitter in it: pink and blue. There are large pink and blue hex glitters, smaller pink and silver hex glitters, and tiny round glitter that is blue/green at different angles.


So, if you remember my glitterless-GitA franken (named Glitter on the Ground), I layered 2 coats of GitA over it to get this:



Here's the franken by itself


And here's GitA next to my franken


It's so cute, I love it! I'm so glad that beautybar.com gc came around on Hautelook, because I was seriously torn between getting AtU and GitA with my ebay gc, so I'm super happy to have both now (especially at around $11 a bottle!) Woohoo!

Hope you guys have a great weekend! I'm going shopping!! :D

Busy swatching this weekend!

Thanks for all the good luck for my exam, I think it worked!! I won't find out results for 8 weeks, but I hope I make it onto the right side of the bell curve :)

I have lots of errands to run this weekend to catch up on "life" (Going to Michaels and Five Below, along with Marshalls, Target, Sephora, and COSTCO! I love Costco.

Anyway, here is my Zoya haul from the exchange. I'm half done swatching them, and I also have some other goodies to share :)



Hope you guys have a great weekend!

RBL Haul!

Yesterday was my big actuarial exam which I have been preparing for since June. The exam was two sessions of 3 hours 15 minutes each, so basically I left home at 7:30 am and got home at 5:30 pm, with tons of torture in between.

Luckily, when I got home, my RBL haul from Monday had arrived safely in my mail box :)

For myself, I ordered: 360, Diddy Mow, No More War, Chinoise, Cherry Love, and Plie. For my friend back in Canada, I got; Stormy, 360, and Dead Calm. After looking at Stormy and Dead Calm, I wish I had gotten them for myself as well! Oh well!

These are my first RBLs!


Here they are still boxed up.


And lined up :)


NMW, Diddy Mow, Stormy (flash)


360, Dead Calm (flash)


Comparison bottle shot: Nars ME, RBL Dead Calm, Orly Royal Navy (flash)


Cherry Love, Chinoise, Plie (flash)


Side view of mine :D


NMW - I'm wearing this right now as my NOTD and I'm not entirely sure if I love it on me or not. It reminds me of baby poop next to my skintone. What do you think?


360 - I do, however, adore this! Right up my alley and in my comfort zone!


360 macro - There is even super secret shimmer! Sorry about the bumpy bits there, I didn't use a base coat for these swatches and I must have had some curly bits coming off my nail.


Diddy Mow - I think the application of this was good, but not amazing compared to Sew Psyched. I think this may have been a touch sheerer than Sew Psyched, but I think I need to try them on side by side :)


Plie - 3 coats, not super impressed with this one, to be honest.


Chinoise - 2 coats, should have used 3. It looks a bit more orange leaning on my skin tone, so I'm glad I picked up the next one:


Cherry Love: LOVE this colour! The cap is different on Cherry Love and the brush is kind of poofy and hard to work with... anyone else have this same issue with these different (presumably older) caps? I figured I will wait a couple weeks until Ji is no longer packing orders 24/7 to ask about it.

Last week's haul and some NOTDs

I had some friends from back home come and stay with me for a week. This is what resulted from taking them around to various drugstores ^_^;



I cleaned out Marshalls of their Barielle stuff. Got some camo, HRF, mani extender, and hand creme.

Left to right along the top: SH Going Green, SH Blue It, SH LS Spark, WnW Night Prowl, NYC Chinatown, OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow, Milani Dressmaker (LOVE THIS!), Brucci Elizabeth's A Natural.


Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Going Green: I like this more than I thought I would! Not-complete-lemming for Essie Pretty Edge killed.


Close-up of SH Going Green: and this has shimmer!

The Milani is so lovely. Although it took 3 coats to be mostly opaque :( Still... secret shimmer is worth it!






Here's my awful mani of it. I did it in the living room (has terrible lighting) -_-


Also got these bad boys from a blog sale over at The Kitchen, the Closet and the Laboratory.... OPI Green-wich Village (a lemming! It has been fulfilled!), OPI Russian Navy Suede (my first suede, wow, it is amazing!), NARS Arabesque (as a freebie; not sure what to do with it!), Essie St Lucia Lilac (I should do a comparison vs OPI Rumple's Wiggin)

Last weekend I also stopped into CVS to pick up Confetti My Favorite Martian:


I kinda love it:



Finally, my first franken. The mess, first:


I got caught up in the frenzy about Paradoxal, which is bizarre because a) I'm not even that crazy about the colour, and b) I hope I never spend more than $10 on a bottle of nail polish (we'll see how long this lasts).

Anyway, somehow I ended up making this:



I actually like it!


Macro of the shimmer (wrong colour for Paradoxal, but hey, I used what I had)

I used some neglected eyeshadows (the dark shimmery brown from Maybelline Expert Wear quad in Natural Smokes - my first eyeshadow palette!, and a free pigment sample from Coastal Scents in Quartz Mauve), the light pink Barielle from the prior Marshalls haul (which was terribly streaky and blechy!!), some WnW Black Creme and the NYC Chinatown, all thrown together.

I picked up a few more drugstore polishes recently, but I'll save those for next time.

Haul time! :)

After all the dust settled from my move, DB indulged me in a little after-work hauling (using my leftover reward money from passing my last requirement for accreditation!)

We hadn't had much time to explore the area yet, so we took off to a nearby township (I think I'm just starting to get used to North Jersey and their overlapping towns) where I had identified a TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Harmon Discount.

Based on the NB over at MUA, I was crossing my fingers hoping to find some Barielle goodies at TJ Maxx and Marshalls.

TJ Maxx was a complete bust. The section for bath and beauty was tiny and cluttered. Nothing good here :(

Next, we drove over to another strip mall with the Marshalls in it. It also looked small, and I was starting to get a knot in my stomach that I'd have no luck all night. Then, I spotted down the strip mall a Sallys! Hooray! We (read: me) decided to go there after Marshalls.

The bath and beauty section at Marshalls was a bit larger, but there were very few things. DB spotted a 3 pack of Barielle polishes (for french manicures) for $6.


Barielle Shades in Enduring, Top Shield, and Cherish

I was not thrilled at these boring colours, but DB loves sheers and pinks, so I indulged him :p Plus, at $6 you can't really go wrong for 3 bottles, right? Also, I wanted to make sure I didn't come away that night empty-handed!

After digging around some more, DB found more Barielle products, since he knew what the packaging looked like now.


Barielle Manicure Extender and Camo Base Coat

He found the Manicure Extended and Camo Base Coat (both the last bottles there) hidden among some creams and lotions. I snatched these up at $4 each :D Hooray! I was hoping to find the Hydrating Ridge Filler, but no luck. I'll have to come back later and look again :)

Next, we hopped over to Sallys. It was an older store, but the good thing was none of the polishes had those annoying magnetic stickers on them to prevent theft. I suppose this was a low traffic area, since the other 2 Sallys I went to both had the obnoxious stickers over everything, and even the caps taped to the bottle to prevent people from opening them! Can you imagine all the residue on the bottle after you peeled everything off?? Ick!

I didn't see any new collections at Sallys, but spied a little rack of clearance items. At the very bottom, I spied a little box...


ORLY Enchanted Forest and Prisma Gloss Gold

Both for $1.99!!! I had Enchanted Forest on my wishlist, and was thrilled to pick it up for $2.


Close-up of Orly Prisma Gloss Gold

I was indifferent about the topcoat, since it seemed useless to me, but after using it, I quite like it over cremes! The glitter goes on sparsely, but looks a bit holographic. So, BONUS!

Since I didn't see anything else, I was about to check out and then DB, being a tall lanky boy that he is, spied an old China Glaze display at the very top shelf (which I could neither see nor reach) and we found these bad boys:


China Glaze Emerald Sparkle and Atlantis

For $1.99 and $3.99 respectively. SCORE! There were some other polishes on clearance for $2-4, but none of them appealed to me.


Close-up of China Glaze Atlantis

When I got home and looked closer at this bottle, there seemed to be quite a bit of polish missing. I wonder if this was a return? Or does all that glitter "absorb" the polish? Who knows!


China Glaze Atlantis over OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui

I'm not usually fond of glitters, but I threw it on for fun later that weekend.


China Glaze Atlantis close-up

I've been won over!! Look at that O_O!!!


Close-up of China Glaze Emerald Sparkle

Can't wait to wear this! I'm going to put it on my toes this weekend.

We left Sallys (me, reluctantly; DB, happily) and headed to the Final Destination: Harmon Discount Beauty Supply. I never heard of this store until I moved to NJ, and it seems to be owned by Bed, Bath & Beyond. I was glad to find there was one here, because the other one I had been seeing was on the highway (and on the "inconvenient" side) which I wasn't dying to go to.

I had a 20% off entire purchase coupon that came in my moving package of coupons from the postal office, after I changed addresses. I think usually you only get coupons at BBB for 20% off a single item, so I'm happy :)

I was fully prepared to make a big haul here, to maximize my savings, but I didn't think I'd get so many polishes...


Essie Van D'Go, Mink Muffs, Marabou

We looked at Essie polishes first. None of them made it into my basket, because DB was being difficult and only wanting sheers and pinks, etc.

Then, it turns out there was a larger display of Essie at the other end of the store. This is where their permanent line was showcased, and DB was in awe. He said, "I think I like this brand". I told him to pick out whatever boring pink he wanted, and I'd get it, and he picked up Mademoiselle. LOL. I told him I already bought it! Then I showed him how to identify sheers from opaques, and he proceeded to pick up every bottle. He had a hard time doing this, so I told him to discreetly open the polish and see how it dripped off the brush.

He picked out Marabou and Van D'Go and couldn't decide, so I took both :p

At this point, he was smitten with Essie and said all Essie's were "safe" and "cute". I ran back to the other Essie display and grabbed Mink Muffs. Woohoo! I got a "poopy" colour, according to him.

Part of the nail polish deal is that DB would get to choose my mani and pedi. He chose that awful sheer Barielle pink at first, but I protested (my nails are still stained from Charla), and he picked both Essie Marabou and Van D'Go.


Essie Van D'Go with Orly Prisma Gloss Gold

Van D'Go dried a lot more bright/orange on my nails than it looks in the bottle. I do like it, though. I still have Marabou on my toesies. It's so.. safe!

I layered the Orly Prisma Gold Gloss on top to see what it was like, and was pleasantly surprised!

Next up was Color Club! According to DB, I got all "ugly" colours.


Color Club Fashion Addict and Revvvolution

I was a little wary about getting holos, but I decided to trust in the widsom of the NB.


Color Club Fashion Addict

Guys, I love this!!!


Color Club Love 'Em Leave 'Em and Emerald Depths

Originally, Love 'Em Leave 'Em didn't make it into my basket, but at the cash register they had another display of CCs, and it "accidently" made its way into my obscenely large checkout pile.


Color Club Love 'em Leave 'em

I like how this is a blingy take on a "safe" colour.

Finally, they had some OPI for $7.50, so I decided to pick up a couple colours I had been thinking about.


OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui and Samoan Sand

Usually blue is too "ugly" for DB, but when I told him this was from the Hong Kong collection, he was all over it. Man, this boy does not make sense!!

Loving Samoan Sand! What a great neutral. I was a little worried about it on my skin tone, but I quite like it :)


OPI SSFS and Orly Prisma Gloss Gold

Here's SSFS with the Orly top coat on it :)

Anyways, all in, I managed to go $22 over my allocated "reward" money. Oh well. At least everything I got was on sale, right? :)

My next haul is contingent on catching up on a month's worth of studying. It'll be a 10 bottle minimum, plus I'm allowing myself a bonus 1 bottle for every time I get my lazy butt to the gym. I was going to go yesterday, but got home late from work, so I'll try again tonight!!!