Something for the Patriotic

I was at a local Walmart not too long ago, and I saw a collection of Independence Day themed nail polish.  The Salon Perfect line, sold at Walmart, had released a limited edition set of nail polish colors and glitter topcoats all in shades of red, white, and blue!

 A press photo for the collection, called "Paint the Town Red White & Blue" (my main concern, naturally, being the glitter topcoats) are below:

 

At the store, it was the glitter topcoats I surreptitiously took a photo of:

 

I decided not to purchase them, although I'd been wanting another red, white, and blue topcoat for awhile now.  I'd been toying with the idea of buying the one from Sephora, but to tide me over I made my own last week--but more about that later.

Since I have a ton of glitter already, and of course hundreds of empty bottles, caps, brushes, and suspension base at my disposal, I decided to make my own set of red, white, and blue topcoats, inspired by both this one from Sephora called Liberty:

 

and the set of six red, white, and blue glitter topcoats from Salon Perfect.

Here they are, yet unnamed; I finished designing them two days ago:

 

The first one shown was made a week or so ago while I was still deciding whether or not to buy Liberty.  The other five I made over the space of a day.  Click on the photo to enlarge.

I need to come up with names for these, but so far, I'm very pleased with them!  

Going from l - r, the polishes contain:

1.   tiny matte red hex glitter, matte blue star-shaped glitter, tiny white matte square glitter, matte bar glitter, tiny matte white hex glitter, tiny matte blue hex and square glitter, and holographic shimmer glitter

2. a ton of equal-sized tiny matte white, matte blue, matte red, and holo red glitter

3.  tiny blue, periwinkle, red, and white stars and holographic shimmer

4.  metallic red, blue, and silver bar glitter

5. holographic red, silver, and blue moon and star glitter, and multi-colored, multi-sized holographic glitter (the only polish that contains colors other than red, white, blue, or silver)

6.  tiny matte red bar glitter, tiny matte white rectangle glitter, and tiny matte square bright blue glitter

I really LOVE these and I can't wait to wear them in flag-themed manicures!

Calling Myself Out!

I'd been keeping track of all the glitter I buy, but I'd slacked off on keeping an inventory.  So this weekend I sat down and, over a course of three different sittings, logged my last FOUR glitter hauls.

When I finished, I realized I have over 300 unique types of glitter.

At this point I need to slow down.  I had asked for a custom listing from an Etsy glitter seller last week, and as of yet, I haven't heard anything from this store owner, and I'm taking that as a sign that I don't need to buy anything else, since this seller usually follows up relatively quickly.

I'm at the point where I have way more glitter than I do bottles to put it in and base to mix it with.  Because I tend to buy in spurts--this month I might buy glitter, the next month I might buy bottles, and then I might not buy anything else again for MONTHS--I'll more than likely hold off on getting any more glitter for a few months.  What I want to do is try to at least use up all my inventory of bottles and base, but I have to be honest with myself: that will be a challenge.  I'm iffy about sitting down and forcing myself to blend, and then swatch, and then photograph, but I still like to do those things.  I just haven't been doing them as much lately.

I'm also iffy with manicures as of late.  Whole days will go by where I might not change my polish lately, and that used to almost NEVER happen.  Yet, I've got some ideas for manicures inspired by other fingertips I've seen around the Internet, so I've been making notes.  I did two mini polishes yesterday inspired my my ideas, and I plan to do a couple more to complete the "set."

Also, I've been getting interested in stamping again.  I was doing it pretty heavily about five or six years ago.  I had, over a period of years, bought a lot of Konad plates and polishes.  But I slowly lost interest.  I kept all the stuff, so that's good.  I'll have to play around with stamping more.  I recently ordered new plates and I can't wait to use them.

I've also found myself interested in decals.  But in typical "me" fashion, I don't want to buy decals that others are selling, so I decided to order some inkjet water slide decal paper and make my own decals.  That should arrive in the next week or so, along with my plates. 

I can't believe it's already March.  It doesn't seem like four months ago that I posted last, but I guess it has been.  Time really flies, but I do hope to update more frequently going forward.

My next step as far as all this nail-stuff is concerned is getting organized.  I'm to the point where I have way too much glitter to keep it in two cardboard boxes.  I need to devise some kind of system for them.

Zoya Gold Glitter

A lot of manufacturers are coming out with gold glitter topcoats.  Unlike typical gold glitter topcoats, the better ones these days contain actual gold.  When I saw these, I knew I wanted to own a few.

Pictured below is just a snap of my fingers wearing the Zoya gold topcoat.  I can't remember what color is under it, but the combination of bright gold flakes over the rich pink polish looks fantastic.

The polish, non-surprisingly, is quite thick, and the glitter is more sparse than it appears to be.  I used three layers of it to build it up to this density!

But I like the polish a lot.

Having gold-trimmed fingers isn't super inexpensive, though.  It costs around $35 per bottle.