Happy Christmas!

Or is that "Merry"?

At any rate, I hope that all reading this had a safe and pleasant Christmas Day, whether you went all out and celebrated, or just chilled.

Myself--I "celebrated" by making new polishes!  I hadn't designed any Christmas polishes since 2012 (and photos of them are around...somewhere) so I decided to help myself get into the Christmas spirit after a challenging fall, which consisted of relocating.

I knew I wanted to do a colorful, color-filled set, something bright and bold.  So in the end, I decided to go with yellow, green, blue, and red! Each polish consists of a mixture of at least six types of glitter, each.  One has a tinted base; the others have clear bases.  Three feature holo glitter; all but one feature round glitter of some type.

When I decided to name these, I thought, "Why not name them after some of the Christmas songs that pop into my head around this time of year?"

 

So, I called it the "Christmas Music" collection!

Left to right: Five Golden Rings, Ageless & Evergreen, Pretty Ribbons, Give Love on Christmas

Five Golden Rings is named after the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas."  It consists of lots of holo gold and silver glitter in a variety of sizes and shapes, tiny yellow stars, little gold stars, and lots of yellow--"golden"--rings.

Ageless & Evergreen isn't named after a Christmas song, but the song it WAS named after has always reminded me of Christmas, maybe because the word "evergreen" reminds me of Christmas.  It's made up of about five different sizes and finishes of round dot glitter, smaller hexes, metallic glitter, and a handful of large pastel and neon hexes thrown into the mix.

Pretty Ribbons is named after a song I heard a lot growing up.  I'm not a fan of country music, but I can tolerate the song this time of year.  Why not use it for this polish, which consists of a shimmery blue-tinted base, with an assortment of blue glitters in different sizes and shapes, including light blue bows, and iridescent glitter?

Give Love on Christmas is named after a holiday song that I DO like a lot and play all the time.  It consists of crushed candy cane-esque red and white glitter, multicolored holographic glitter, and a few neon pink and red satin hearts.  I think this one might be my favorite of the four, and I can't WAIT to wear it!

I've swatched them all on a color ring, and I plan to swatch them for day-to-day testing on my actual fingertips soon.  Unfortunately, I couldn't label them, as I haven't yet located the power cord for my printer--it could be in one of the dozens of boxes I have remaining to unpack.  But the virtual labels are just as cute as real ones, I think!

Another USPS Failure

For the LIFE of me, I don't understand how the USPS is still in business.  All package carriers have proven untrustworthy and reliable several times over with me, but I honestly believe that out of all the major ones I can recall right off hand, the United States Postal Service is the ABSOLUTE WORST.

One of my packages is still God only knows where (the where being Atlanta) after it was supposed to be delivered by the USPS carrier three days ago.  And one of the packages that DID arrive today came damaged.  I know full well the merchant did NOT send this box to me this way; this item was damaged in transit.  Someone at one of the post offices definitely kicked it, because the cardboard is pretty sturdy, and some true FORCE had to be behind this.

At this point I don't know if I should open the box and see if the contents are undamaged, or just take it back to the post office and file a claim.  I understand that this time of year things can get hectic for them, but honestly, the way our economy is right now, they ought to be glad they even HAVE a job.  If they don't like the work they're doing then they owe it to themselves to leave and find something better, but they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT take it out on people's parcels!

It arrived at my doorstep this way:

THIS is just disrespectful!  Priority mail?  Priority mail???  Looks like the only priority the postal folks had was to make sure they inflict as much damage to my box as possible. 

The treatment that packages get by services is a LARGE part of the reason why I don't like selling--anything--online.  Between late and lost packages, damaged packages, packages that look as if they've been opened before they arrive (I've gotten plenty of those as well, not only boxes but regular paper mail, too), these shipping services are SO untrustworthy and unreliable.  The thought of someone buying something from me online and then me having to entrust it to DHL or FedEx or UPS or, god forbid, USPS makes me very uneasy because I know how ridiculous they are.  ALL OF THESE PLACES need to do something about the poor level of customer service they provide.

There are things the seller can do (among them avoiding FedEx Smart Post and UPS Sure Post like the plague), but once the package leaves the seller's hands, there's really not much that can be done, and that's when the trouble starts.

USPS: do better!

Caught Up!

I'm almost always behind on logging my polish supply purchases, and I only log the glitter/pigments that I buy.  I need to inventory the bottles, caps, beads, and brushes as well, but I will start on that after, and only after, I get completely caught up with the glitter.  As the title states I'm caught up, but only almost.  I'm expecting one more shipment of glitter before the end of the year, and once it arrives and gets logged, I'll start on getting the rest of my supplies and products in order.

My most recent glitter purchase was supposed to arrive Saturday, and of course it didn't.  It didn't come in today's mail, either, which is a complete letdown, but if the USPS is unreliable on regular days, around the holidays you can count on it to be about seven times MORE unreliable, so it's a disappointment but in no way a surprise.  I was supposed to get at least another package in the mail today, as well, and it's not here either.  Rounding out the rest of the orders I have coming in for 2014 is three four shipments of nail polish from assorted vendors, and then I honestly think that's it, for polish, for me, for a VERY long time.

It doesn't help that I'm still getting settled into the house (I've unpacked/unboxed about 1/3 of what I need to unpack), but I can't expect to be all situated overnight.  Even the moving company gives us sixty days to file a claim because they know how long unpacking takes.  But I digress.  I no longer have the HUGE loft I was working with at my last house, and this time, I only have a small spare bedroom to serve as my studio and office, so getting it into order will be a challenge, but I'm up for it.  Once I can get my workspace figured out (which I plan to do before the year is out) then things will start to fall into place on their own.

I meant what I said about not buying as much nail polish anymore.  I have SO many--I mean, SO many untried polishes and I need to wear them, as many of them as possible, before investing in more.

Some nail polish bloggers log all of their nail polish.  I haven't done this and don't plan to do it for several reasons, the main one of which is because I honestly believe it would take forever.  I have so. Much. Polish.  But I'm going to slow down.  This time next year I plan to have the same amount!


A ban?  Maybe.  Probably.  More like a moratorium, I guess.  We'll see.

Ouch! Broken Glass!

While there was joy in getting all my nail polish and supplies back, there was NO joy whatsoever in seeing that so many of my empty polish bottles had suffered during the move.  A cursory glance when I opened up one of the boxes housing empty bottles told me that AT LEAST 1/4 of the bottles in that box had been broken.  When I brought this matter to the attention of the guy in charge of the movers, he assured me that not much could be done, since the bottles were moved in the container they were originally shipped to me in.

So much broken glass!  This is a problem I've never really encountered before, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle this.  I'm planning to just throw them all away.  I don't want to "play" with broken glass, whether it's trying to fish out the whole bottles from the wreckage of broken ones, or whether it's trying to clean glass shards and pieces out of the whole bottles.

So while I do have dozens of other bottles that didn't break, I'm going to need to replace the dozens that did break.  I really liked the bottles I'm going to have to discard, but I ordered them from another country (Canada, I believe) and of all the suppliers I've used for bottles, that company was one of the more difficult to work with, as far as shipping was concerned.  So, I've been looking around at other suppliers and in the past few days I've ordered "samples" of empty nail polish bottles from about three different sources I haven't used before.  Once the new ones come in and I test them out, I'll decide to either order more of them in bulk, or order more bottles in bulk from one of the suppliers I'd used in the past.

Red and Sparkly

One of my favorite types of glitter topcoats to make is holo glitter, especially if it's multi-colored.  In my opinion, it looks good with ANY color underneath.

This is my go-to red, Revlon Red.  The glitter mixture is assorted sizes of tiny hex glitter in metallic and holo colors!

I also had Revlon Red and this multi-holo glitter applied to my toes yesterday during my pedicure.  The technician said it looks just like Christmas!

 

Speaking of which, the next time I post, I hope to have some true Christmas creations to show!

Reunited...and it Feels So Good!

The movers are here right now--they're delivering our possessions to our new home.

This means that I get to have, look at, and play with all of my nail polish again!

Of course, everything is still boxed away as I type, and some of the boxes I can't even get to, there are so many of them, but I'll be spending the next few days unpacking polish (as I locate the boxes, we had over 16,000 lbs of household goods and I'm sure my polish alone weighed HUNDREDS of pounds, so you can imagine how many boxes that is) and deciding which ones to wear next.

I've bought polish over the past few weeks--probably more bottles than I needed to.  But I take that back--you can never have too much polish!

I also have two shipments of glitter coming in from two different sellers, as well as more suspension base (which I also ordered during a Black Friday sale on Etsy)!

I think I'm good on bottles, for now, but pretty soon I'll need to order more empties, as I will have over a gallon of suspension base which will call for way more bottles than I have now.

Something New(er)

Will be getting back on track with the updates.  So much has been going on (a relocation) and I've been sort of...discombobulated.  Due to the move, almost ALL of my polish is in storage, as well as my polish-creating supplies, so I've been limited as to what I can do.  Since I knew I'd be removed from my personal belongings for WEEKS (four weeks and counting as of now, and I might not see my stuff again for at least two MORE weeks), I pre-filled eight bottles with suspension base and mixing beads, and I kept all my glitter with me so that I could play.

This is something I whipped up in the meantime.  I like it.  It went on a little...thick and sticky/goopy, but a nice topcoat of Seche Vite fixed any issues and it hardened up quite nicely!

This is my latest:

 

Suspension base, orange, white, and green glitter, and green shimmer powder.  I think the shimmer powder made it a bit thicker than I wanted it to be.  Next time I'll have to use less.  The white glitter consists mainly of tiny diamond shapes.  

I like it! 

It's two coats, on top of two coats of Orly's Highlight, which is a putty type of taupe color, an opaque creme.

Happy Halloween by way of The Haunted Mansion

The bad news: I just left my home of the past three years for the unknown!  I don't know where I'm going next or when I'm getting there.

The good news: I found some nail polish I really like...

Spent the previous week in Orlando, having a little Halloween-themed fun.  I decided to go for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, which coincided with another favorite Disney event of mine: the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. 

I was able to sample tasty food, beer that REALLY hit the spot on a hot fall day, and lots of sweets and treats, a must for Halloween.  I also found nail polish that I didn't even know existed, the Haunted Mansion nail polish collection!  When I saw these in the gift store near the Mansion I had to buy not one, but two!

  

I don't have many colors like these in my nail lacquer collection, if memory serves me correctly.  They're dark, but shimmery colors, and I know they'll look interesting worn.

As an aside, I was ALSO able to FINALLY get my hands on a set of mini Pop of Minnie nail polishes, and a couple of other Beautifully Disney mini sets!

Faved!

Not much in this post, but I just thought I'd share with you some of my favorite creations from the past few months!  I never got around to naming or labeling these, but I did wear each of them a couple of times, and I must say, I liked them a lot!

Here they are below, as they appeared on my Instagram.

The first is based on a deck of cards.  Red, black, and white are common colors found in a standard deck of cards, and so are the suits--diamonds, spades, hearts, and clubs!  You can see all these shapes in the polish, along with tiny square and small hex shaped glitter, but the fun thing about them is the colors of the suits are untraditional!  There are white clubs, black diamonds, red spades...

I didn't name this one either.  It's pink and black and red and white--the pink glitter is in varying shades, and it's an homage to Minnie Mouse.  I added pink, black, and red "Mickey Mouse head" glitter shapes, and there are bar glitters in black and hot pink, as well as an assortment of circle, star, and hex glitters in shades of pink, white, black, and red! 

Below is one that consists solely of larger glitter shapes in all colors--stars, clubs, hearts, diamonds, skulls, flowers, etc.  I didn't give it a name, but I still love to wear it!  I basically call this nail art in a bottle.

 This one I will did a post about.  Large hex glitters in various bold, bright, summery colors--just right for spring and the coming summer!

Neutral + Sparkle!

Sometimes I like to wear a very understated color on my nails, but I still want them to sparkle.  This is where neutrals come in!  I don't wear neutrals often, but when I do I find they make an excellent background color for many glitters.  In this case, it's a holographic metallic chunky glitter topcoat I made several months ago.

The neutral--which is, of course, too light for my skin tone to be a true nude--is Brain Power by Formula X for Sephora.  I really like this color, and the Formula X line is a new and increasing favorite of mine as well.  I've mentioned that glitter typically peels off my nails in whole pieces, but this never happens when I use "The Formula."  Sephora has developed a set that works with their Formula X polishes, and the set consists of a nail prep/cleaner, a base coat, a color of your choice (complimentary), and a top coat.  I use my glitter topcoat after the nail color and before the Formula X topcoat, and it wears...and wears...and wears.  I don't have to worry about chipping or the polish peeling off!  I usually have one set in use and a backup; this is the backup (less the bonus polish, in this set it was a color called Extreme)

This is certainly one solution if you find that glitter manicures peel from your nails all too easily!