Couple O' Swatches

I have soooo many polishes I haven't worn.  My collection is well above 500 now and that's not including the SOG polishes.  So time to stop spending and start swatching.

So first up is Golden Rose Holographic 104.  I purchased a bunch of these a year ago and never got around to wearing them all.  This is 3 coats. Nice light green but the holo really only shows under fluorescent light.

It's a smaller bottle at 6ml but definitely on the cheap side for a holographic polish.  I think I paid less than $3 for it.

Next up is one I'm sure you've all seen but it's only recently been made available in Canada.  Essence Where Is The Party? 2 coats.  Massive disappointment for me really.  Why? Well most of the time it just looks purple.  It's really hard to notice the duochrome coming through.  Especially disappointing when the bottle looks like this:

Bummer.

Later
P

Golden Rose 108

This is 2 coats of Golden Rose Holographic 108 - Grey.  This was the darkest of the 4 silver holos that I ordered.  I have to say this didn't thrill me in the least.  The holo was barely there.

I stamped it with Kleancolor Metallic Navy and plate BM01.  I had a really rough time with this image as the stamp wasn't picking it all up.  I didn't even keep this mani on for very long either.

And here's a little haul I had at Walmart last week since they had all their Revlons on for $3:

From L-R: Pineapple Fizz, Plum Night, Grape, Punk and Princess.  Punk (light green) and Princess (light blue) were part of a new metallic collection which I plan on using for stamping.  The sale is still on but most of the Walmarts around are bare.  I'm going to check out one more before the sale is over :)

Later
P

What's not to love?

Black.  Holo.

This is 2 coats of Golden Rose Paris 118.  The Paris polishes are much larger than the regular Golden Rose Holographic polishes so I'm glad that the black one came in this size.  It was very hard to capture the holo in this one but it's definitely there.

Most times it looks like the above photo.  This polish was also very goopy.  I'm afraid to use thinner in a holo polish.  When I put this on I realized that this was exactly what I expected My Private Jet to look like instead of the brownish non-holo version I found.  I'd be curious to see how this compares to the original holo MPJ.

I finally had some time to stamp this time around.  It's Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes and BM08.  I almost added a gem to it but decided against it. 

Tomorrow is Wienerfest - basically a picnic for dachshund owners.  I've gone for the last 4 or 5 years with my Mom who has 2 dachshunds of her own.  They have a costume contest and wiener dog races.  It's always funny to see hundreds of doxies running around.  I may post a pic or two later on.  Have a great weekend!

Later
P

Another stamping fail

Yeah this a week of fails for me.  So yesterday I posted Golden Rose #107.  I decided to stamp it with one of my new bundle monster plates BM201.

Bad girl, messy cleanup...actually nah, I don't give a shit.  I make my own rules here!  This was the first time I used the black Konad polish.  After stamping, the design was still left on the stamper!  My left hand, which is what I usually photograph was totally smudged so I had to photograph my right one, which wasn't a whole lot better.  I don't know if it's just me or if the Konad polish was the problem.  Not too fussy on the design either.

To update on my Golden Rose post yesterday, they did respond just after 24 hours and refunded my money for the 'swamp jelly'.  They didn't acknowledge the remarks I made regarding the colour discrepancies though.  I did notice on their website however that they raised their prices...

Later
P

Golden Rose Holo Order

It's great having a sister who lives in the US so I can get my hands on some amazing polishes, but it also makes for a real pain in the ass sometimes when I have to deal with customer service. 

I placed an order through Golden Rose USA and had it sent to my sister in Delaware since they don't ship to Canada.  I only asked her to open up the package and count the polishes.  Typically in the past I've asked her to open each one (especially Zoyas) and I have no idea why I didn't ask her to open this package.  Regardless, 2 months later she came up to visit and brought my package and one of the bottles looked like this:

In real life it looks much more disgusting.  This is supposed to be a 'moss green' holo polish but it's a bottle of cloudy jelly.  I have no idea how that could even happen.  Anyways, I've emailed customer service so it remains to be seen the response I get but I will definitely post it.

This wasn't however, the only problem with my order.

Here we have 3 of the polishes I ordered.  #108 is described as grey on the website - ok good.  #103 is described as silver - check.  #107 is described as purple - uh what?  I already mentioned in a previous post that the burgundy color was not really a burgundy either, but at least it had a tint to it!  Out of 9 bottles ordered it ended up that 5 of them were varying shades of grey/silver!

So here is #107 in all it's glory:

Pretty polish but there is not a hint of purple to be seen here.  I'm really more concerned with my bottle of swamp water so I will wait patiently for a response from Golden Rose.

I did want to share an excellent response I had from Zoya with a problem order though.  If you visit Zoya's facebook page you'll see that occasionally orders arrive with broken bottles or missing brushes.  I always have my sister open the bottles to check for this when they arrive.  The last order I placed for 6 bottles in the bogo offer, she noticed the neck on one bottle had broken, and she sent me a photo of it.  I contacted Zoya through their live chat on their website and they were quick and helpful.  They sent out a new bottle immediately.  Great service.

I have seen people complaining that the Zoya CSR asks for a photo.  Seriously?  Would you walk into Walmart with a receipt for a broken dvd player that you left at home and expect them to refund your money?  Years ago I worked in customer service and I would get complaints non-stop from people asking for their money or their item replaced.  You would not believe how many of those people were scammers. 

I remember quite clearly one guy who complained that he and all his buddies got sick from our food and he said he wanted all his food replaced the next day.  Wait a sec, so you claim you just got sick from our food but you want to eat it again the following day?  Who does that?  So I asked him to bring his receipt in - he claimed he lost it.  I asked him to bring in the packaging - he claimed he threw it all away.  So I asked him what exactly he had ordered.  Then I went out back and pulled the cash register tapes from the previous night.  There was nothing on those tapes that was even remotely similar to what he claimed he ordered.  When I came back out and told him that he took right off.  Sadly, that guy and many others get away with that shit all the time.

Those are the people that drive up the prices on the products we love.  I have zero problem sending a photo to a company when I have an issue.  I'm amazed that people would even have a problem with that.

Later
P

Golden Rose 114 Holo

This is 2 coats of Golden Rose 114 which says 'burgundy' on the website.  Clearly it's not.  I would describe this as a dark dusty rose and I really liked it.  The holographic effect was much more noticeable in real life but very hard to capture in a photo.

My sister brought these for me from the US when she came to visit last weekend.  I think I ordered every holo polish except for the pink ones.  There are about 3 or 4 colours that look almost identical so that was a bit of a letdown.  They also stink and they are mini bottles.  Can't really complain much though when we have a limited selection of holo polishes to begin with.  From swatches I've seen online I imagine that these polishes are similar to the Kaleidoscopes. 

I also tried out my new Bundle Monster plates and used BM211 with Wet and Wild's Black Creme.  I enjoyed wearing this even though it's not my typical colour.  Too bad the bottles are so small I'll only get maybe 5 mani's out of it though.

Later
P