Hauls: the good and the bad and the ugly

So I did a bit of hauling this week.  From L-R:
Maybelline Express Finish in Plum Intense, Snow Bunny and Demin Dash ($2 clearance at Zehrs)
Rimmel in Rags to Riches
I was so excited when I saw those Hard Candy polishes at Walmart for $1.  DO NOT BUY THEM!!!  They are Hard Candy polish bottles, but what's inside them is terrifying.  They smell like a Kleancolor polish that crawled up my dog's asshole and died, seriously.  The brushes are like straw and the polishes just plain suck.  These can't possibly be real Hard Candy polishes, they are nothing like my full size bottles!

And here's the good haul, from Winners of course.  From L-R:
Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe mini's
Cosmetic Arts All The Trimmings
Seche Vite for $3!

The Cosmetics Arts polish was $5 and I normally wouldn't buy an unknown polish for that much BUT....

Whoa.  How awesome is that?  It's slightly sheer so I decided to wear the Rimmel first.  Something seemed fishy about this polish brand so I went googling and found that it's made by the manufacturer of Color Club, which explains the Studio M bottle as well.  They are also only available at Fred Meyer which I gather is a 'western' version of Meijers (where Studio M is available).

So this is 2 coats of Rimmel's Rags to Riches.  This polish has a brush like the Sally Hansen Salon Manicures - love it!

I stamped it with Wet and Wild Black Creme and Konad plate M71, then freehanded the black tips and added a top coat.  Unfortunately I ended up picking at this...along with my holo glitter gel manicure underneath, wahhhh!

Later
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Friggen Sweet!

So Sally's sells some pretty awesome but expensive glitters in their acrylics section.  And someone on a nail board mentioned that there was a nice sparkly holographic one so of course I had to go check it out.

Doesn't look very holo at first glance and I think this ran me around $5.  Now something I may not have mentioned about soak off gels is that they have a sticky layer on them after curing which is fantastic for adding glitter.

So all I did here was Shellac Base Coat, 1 coat of a random colour ( I used Shellac Negligee) and then smooshed the glitter on with a dry brush, added Gelish Top It Off and cured.  I added a second top coat just to be safe.  I love when I finally do an awesome mani after so many fails :)  The sparkle is insane on this!

Later
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Hell has frozen over

I never thought I'd ever wear a crackle polish but then again I also said early on that I would never spend $10 on a nail polish either.  This blog is making a liar out of me lol.

This is a coat of Color Club The Great Divide over top of my holo gel mani (haha yeah you gotta wait til Monday for that awesomeness!)  Yeah I hate it, lesson learned.  Problem is that it looked so pretty in the bottle:

So Color Club, can I please have this shade in regular polish?

Anyways I was browsing the polish section at the grocery store yesterday and there was a display that caught my eye.  It was a new Revlon display and the bottles were shaped differently so I ran over to check it out but unfortunately didn't have my camera with me.  Here's the only pic I could find off the internet:

It's Revlon Colorstay nail polish - the display had at least 12 shades and a base and top coat, it also said 'lasts up to 11 days'.  The display seemed to insinuate that it was like a gel manicure without the uv light.  It also indicated that the base and top coat were necessary and sorry, but at $8 a pop I'm not willing to be a guinea pig on this one so we'll have to wait until the reviews start coming.  $24 might not be a big deal to someone who hasn't already invested in a Shellac system.  I'm totally dying to find out if this stuff is any good because the colours were pretty awesome so somebody hurry up and try it please!

Later
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Good idea, bad execution

This is 2 coats of Revlon Top Speed in Lily.  This is my 2nd Top Speed polish and I have to say I absolutely hate it.  There is nothing speedy about it and it's streaky as hell.  I could have used a third coat but I figured screw it.

I wanted to try another marbling idea I've had rolling around for awhile using clear polish again.  So I wanted to create a sort of interesting base by sponging on 2 colours.  I used 2 Studio M's: Magic Attraction and Sexy Siren.

And then I marbled it using clear and black polish.  I still can't get the marbling technique down and I ended up removing it right away...sigh.

Later
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In a slump

I'm taking another short break from the soak off gels and I'm feeling uninspired.  The awful Gelish glitter did a real number on my nails but mostly because I peeled it since I couldn't stand to look at it.  My nails are almost back to their natural white now and I'm taking it easy with some lighter colours for awhile.

This is 2 coats of OPI Designer...De Better.  The pink flecks aren't visible in my photo but it's a pretty nice colour.  I've purchased a lot of foils lately but they aren't really thrilling me.

I stamped it with Kleancolor Metallic Red and plate BM224.  It's kind of loud and odd and reminds me of old curtains but I like it.

Later
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