Llarowe sale goodies, with a mystery polish

I ordered several things from Llarowe's sale that they were having right after the new year, including something a bit mysterious. I knew that it was called "City of Ashes" (and I love Cassie Clare's books, including one with that name) and I knew it was a gray glitter, but that was all I knew. But hey, it was on sale and how could you really go wrong with that? I think I happened to get the last bottle, because after I put it in my cart, it just kind of disappeared from the website. Which is a bit unusual. I didn't know what brand it was, but I didn't care much at the time, I figured I'd find out when I got the order. (And yeah, never mind that I seem to be collecting gray polishes at a slightly insane rate lately. That's just part of being a nail polish junkie, let's face it.)

If you search for "city of ashes nail polish" on Google you get this (along with some links to other polishes with slightly different names, and a bunch of Cassie-Clare-related links):

City of Ashes - Llarowe
www.llarowe.com/shop-all/esmaltes-da-kelly/ekacity-of-ashes.html


llarowe,llarowe.com,esmaltes da kelly,esmaltes da kelly nail polish, nail polish,nail polish online,nail polish retail,brazilian nail polish,indie nail polish ...

But if you try to follow that link, it's dead. It just gets you to a "bad link" page. (It looks like I put an ad in the middle of my post, doesn't it? Well, I don't do that kind of thing, normally, but today I just copied-and-pasted it in so you could see!)

So today my polishes arrived, and - can you see this coming? City of Ashes is very pretty - and it's marked with the name and nothing else. I couldn't stand not at least knowing what brand it was, so I had to poke around on Llarowe's website armed with the hint above, and the bottle style does match Esmaltes da Kelly, which is one of those brands I was aware of and had heard good things about but have never seen. I knew she (Kelly, that is) had a blog and I knew it wasn't in English - that's about the limit of my knowledge there. I think I had poked around on the blog looking at swatches of something or other, but I did know that she has a line of polish, too. I guess she must actually be Brazilian, looking at the website. I had it in my head that her blog was in Spanish, but it isn't, so I'm guessing it must be Portuguese. (I don't know about you but I feel terribly ignorant when confronted with non-English websites. It's a luxury we English-speakers have, I guess, not to have to deal with translating all the time!) Google Translate is only a little bit of help - and especially with something like a nail polish blog that is presumably utterly full of idioms that (presumably) don't translate well. I didn't find any mention on the website there about anything City of Ashes, either - unless Translate is mistranslating that name, which is entirely possible. So I still don't know much more than I did, but in any case, apparently I accidentally got my hands on something unusual, because I can't find any mention of this polish anywhere. So that's actually fairly cool, in itself!

Incidentally, Llarowe does have many other Esmaltes da Kelly polishes, and I also found them at Color4Nails. There is a Game of Thones line and a Disneyesque line but I don't see anything else that sounds like it would go with City of Ashes. So it remains a mystery - but I can live with that. Which is not to say I won't attempt to do some more research about it. (And if you have any input, let me know in comments, because I would definitely love to know where this came from!)

I also got a couple of Color Club polishes for $2 each, which I'll get to - but the most expensive item was a Glisten & Glow polish. Here is the description of that one:
"Gettin' Dirty with Disco Sally is mostly packed with bright pink microglitters in a clear base. Gold, red, pink, black and fuchsia microglitters are added to create the perfect sparkling super girly mix. Formula is textured with microglitters. not a chunky texture. 2 coats of Glisten & Glow HK Girl top coat will smooth it right out if you prefer!"
I have a bottle of HK Girl (I love it, I think of it as Seche Vite without the bad smell) and a tin of Glisten & Glow cuticle balm, but that's it - I've never tried their color polishes. I have to admit I partly just bought this one because I like the name, but hey, it's a perfect Valentine's Day polish. (It's from the Studio 54 collection and here are the same swatches that Llarowe was using - down at the bottom of that post. I may wish I'd picked up some more of that collection, actually.)

One of the Color Clubs is a flakie, which is why I bought it - Zoya discontinued my beloved Chloe, so I was in the market for something like that. That one is Snowflakes, and here's a comparison from Polish Insomniac. I'm guessing that Snowflakes is also now discontinued, since it's marked down so heavily. (But hmm, it's still available at Llarowe but it's no longer marked down, for what that's worth. For that matter it's marked "new" so I dunno, maybe they got a new shipment? It's another mystery.)

The other Color Club also looks like a top-coat sort of polish - it is Hot Couture. Looks like holo glitter in a pale-pink base. I think when I went to look it up before I found this mani which is what sold me. After all, I have about a zillion dark pinks similar to that OPI to put it over! Apparently the original collection this was in was A French Kiss - here's some swatches from Pailette. I will probably try this and say "It's too girly!" because that's what I've said about similar polishes in the past, but again, almost Valentine's so it's a good time of the year for girly.

(If the sun comes out tomorrow I'll take a picture. But I think I'll go ahead and post this now without one, what the heck.)