Assorted new purchases

I am so bad with the purchases lately... I just bought some Nostalgic Nail Lacquer, mostly just because I like the names! (Well, I also like the polish but I love the names...) I got As If! (from the Clueless collection, of course), F*ck and Run, and Girls on Film. I did get mini size for two of them. (I know a lot of people have to have full-size, but actually I love minis. How often do you actually use up a full-size polish? I usually don't, anyway.)

And here is the last collection of stuff I bought lately, aside from the Sephora haul which I've already posted pictures of. This is stuff I got from Amazon, drugstore.com, Walmart and H-E-B. (Some of it I've had for a couple of weeks, some was backordered - that was the Seche - and some is newer.)

The first two came from Wal-Mart, the rest of that row from the grocery store (H-E-B, that is) except for the Seche Restore, which was Amazon. The Colorstay base coat on the bottom row was from a drugstore.com purchase in which I convinced myself that it was "needed" to get free shipping. (Only then I added some sinus medicine which put me wayyy over the free shipping limit, - and then didn't take the Colorstay out again, of course.)

The color polishes here are (L-R):

• Hard Candy Crush on Lava
• Diamond Strength Royal Invite
• Diamond Strength Private I
• CG Glosstini in Sangria
• Nicole by OPI Gumdrops in Cinna-man Of My Dreams

I've got a whole stash of untrieds now that I'm "saving" for fall - in this bunch, Cinna-man Of My Dreams, in particular, and maybe Crush on Lava too. I am going to try to make myself wear my summery colors for the next couple of weeks. Generally our weather doesn't really break until sometime well into October, so I try to wait until Oct. 1st, at least, to break out the serious fall colors.

So far no love for Ali - although I've had a couple of people say "I'd love to have it, but..." Go see if you do! It was probably a mistake to say, "I don't like this so I'm giving it away" rather than phrase it in more positive terms. It really is a pretty color, or I wouldn't've bought it in the first place! (Also, I just don't seem to be loving pink this year, or even fuchsia, which is a huge change for me. I'm not sure what's up with that.)

Not in love with Ali

I finally got around to trying Ali, which I bought in the Zoya BOGO sale back a couple of months ago, and well, you can see the answer in the title. I don't love it. There's nothing wrong with it, except that it's too coral for me. Here it is in the indirect sunlight of my bedroom: 4 coats, no top coat, not at all cleaned up, and still with a hint of visible nail line (and slightly lobstery fingers in spots, darnit).

*For those who are interested (because somebody inevitably will be!), I will address the question of what I was reading at the bottom.

It doesn't look bad on me. But just the same I decided to see what putting Chloe on top of it would do, and it did tone the orange tones down just a bit. But not enough to make me love it.

Hmm, if you go by those pictures, Chloe made it look more orange. I don't know if that's a difference in the sunlight outside between yesterday and today, or if that's really the case. All these pictures were taken with the same camera and the same settings in the same spot, though. And this is two coats of Chloe, btw.

Here's a rather blurry picture with the bottle.

...and you can see that it does look more orange than the bottle does. But as I said, that may be Chloe.


*About what's on my Kindle:
A couple of months ago I picked up a paperback in Sam's Club for about $5 that had two romance novels by an author called Mary Balogh. I used to be a habitual reader of romance novels (and particularly Regency romances, which is what these are) but that was a while ago and I eventually got bored with them and mostly stopped reading them. But it turned out that I liked these, and it also turns out that this woman has written a ton of them over the past 20+ years. The edition I picked up at Sam's is a reissue of two of her older novels and there are at least 10 or so of them available in pairs, like this. (They were originally issued as series romances, like this one, apparently.) So I have been working my way through them and I am not near finished. I bet I've read at least 15 or so, because I've read most of those duo editions and several more single ones, but there are still lots left. Obviously I think she is a good writer, or I wouldn't still be reading. They tend to be a bit more angsty than your average romance novels (in some cases quite a lot more angsty - but others are quite funny), and she can write a decent sex scene without being totally corny about it, and the characters are interesting, and well, I just like them. Anyway, the one above is First Comes Marriage, which is the first in a series of five. I actually have very few of these books on my Kindle - instead I have been buying the used paperbacks from Amazon, because they're cheaper than the Kindle editions.

Knees Up!

(Saturday)
I know I mentioned in the last post that I had put on Domestic Goddess (which is red-violet), but I don't think I got around to saying that I had put a coat of Daul over it, because that's what I do with cremes nowadays. (I put something on top of it, that is.) I thought it was going to look slightly odd, because they don't appear to be the same shade of purple at all, but it looks fine. It looks good, in fact. Although then I happened to look at Zoya's description of Daul and it says it has a red-violet base - which I wouldn't have guessed at ALL. Oh well, lesson learned anyway - Daul looks as good over red-violets as it does over more neutral purples.

So far that's holding up very well, so I may not change it for the party tonight. I guess I'll go wash my hair and see how it looks after that!

(Later)
Okay, the party manicure is Knees Up, three coats. It was opaque in two but, I don't know, I thought the third one added some depth. BL Nail Foundation and Hardwear, too, of course. It's all red and shiny and gorgeous! Just like somebody somewhere said about it, it's like red foil wrapping paper. I couldn't stop looking at it.

(I could've patched up Daul/Domestic Goddess, it had some wear that was pretty minor, but I decided I wanted to be more flashy. And I ended up wearing a black and white shirt so the red looked great with that.)

(Sunday)
Here's the shininess that is Knees Up:

It still looks pretty good wear-wise, but did I manage to mar the finish up a bit, so I'll probably do something new tonight or tomorrow since I have all these new polishes to try out!

Sephora haul

(very late Thursday night)
I have bare nails and I still don't know what I'm putting on next, but I remembered to put cuticle oil on, for once, after I took off the old polish. I actually have been remembering at least every couple of weeks, which is not as often as I'd like but is better than nothing!

Also, I don't think I remembered to say in the last entry that this was the first full-on Butter London mani I'd done; that is, it was the first time I'd used their base coat, polish and top coat all at once. And it did last very well, so the early returns there are encouraging. I am sort of thinking I am going to use one of my old S-OPI polishes today, so this will not be another one of those, I don't think - but I will probably still use the BL Nail Foundation and Hardwear.

I only had two Sephora by OPI polishes, before today's box came: Domestic Goddess (red-violet) and Shopping Frenzy (fuchsia shimmer). For a while, Sephora carried very little nail polish other than their own brands, and I think I bought these off of their website somewhere in that period - maybe five years ago or a little more. I think Domestic Goddess is going to get the nod tonight since I can then say I'm carrying on my ten-day-old purple streak for a while longer. (Also, for the record, I think both these polishes are still available - or they were a while back when last I looked, anyway. UPDATE: see below for more about availability, generally, and I don't see either of these on the website any more, so that's probably no longer true.)

S-OPI seems like good polish, but the fact is that I don't have much nail polish that cost over the $5 mark. I can talk myself into buying things that cost under that pretty easily, but I have to want something pretty badly to spend more than that, in general. Which is why most of my OPIs are from a few years back when they were cheaper, and also why I don't own many indie polishes. That number doesn't seem to increase much with inflation, either - maybe because I'm poorer than I was five years ago when I was still working full-time. Although you notice that I'm quick enough to make exceptions for things that were on sale. I had already put a number of S-OPIs into my cart when I thought they were half-price ($4.50 was what they went in the cart as), and once I realized that they were actually 3-for $10 I quickly went and added more, and added the Illamasquas  - which were still well over the $5 mark! - to get free shipping, too.

Also, perhaps I should say while I'm talking about price points and so forth: I bought a few more polishes at the grocery store today. (This kind of thing is why I'm mostly trying to stay away from any place that sells nail polish.) I'll do a picture later of these, but real quickly, it was: NOPI Cinna-man of my Dreams, a texture; SH Private I (Diamond Strength); and a Cover Girl Glosstini in Sangria, which I added at the last minute when I realized there was a coupon sale and it was only around $1.75 after the coupon. All of these were things I had seen swatched somewhere lately, and on the first two, I tried to talk myself into putting one of them back, but then I told myself that I might not be able to find them again later! I am not very good at talking myself out of things sometimes.

(Friday)
I was just looking at Sephora's website again and I'm wondering if they are just closing out these polishes, because they're still on sale and some of them are gone completely. I thought at first that this might just be a special sale or some seasonal closeout, but maybe not. Last night I looked at the order I placed online and for one color (Traffic Stopper Copper) it said something to the effect of Permanently Out of Stock. So that sounds like either they're changing out a lot of colors or they're doing away with this line completely. I'm just speculating, but certainly if you want Traffic Stopper Copper you'd better go see if your local store still has some while they last! (Oh look -  this isn't anything official, either, but here's somebody saying that the Sephora/OPI collaborative brand is indeed being discontinued. And a similar story from Refinery 29.)

Okay, so here we go with the pictures - I don't do reveal videos or anything but I did take some pictures as I opened it up, which tells you that I was a little excited about this box o'stuff:

Here's everything that was in the box, including the samples

 Kind of a lot of glitter-bombs in here!

Here's the Illamasqua duo (Viridian and Glitterati - I think this duo was released last Christmas):

(They looked to me like smallish bottles, but I looked, and they're 0.5 ounce. I guess it's just that they're compact! These are my first Illamasquas, if you haven't figured that out.)

I took pictures like this of all the S-OPI bottles, but some of them were really blurry so I'm not going to post them all. But this is the three "Jewelry Top Coat" colors (Traffic Stopper Copper, Sugar Plum Fairies Gone Wild, and G-listen To Your Heart):

Those are chunky glitters, all in clear bases, I believe.

This one is tolerably legible, too (Ruby Without a Cause, I Only Shop Vintage, and I Don't Bite):

I Don't Bite is a slightly grayed-out holo glitter. Ruby Without a Cause has some duochrome shift, but I'm not entirely clear on what it shifts to. (I think I knew when I bought it but I've forgotten, and I'm feeling too lazy right now to go look.)  And I Only Shop Vintage is a sort of vintage-looking metallic, a golden-bronze.

The other three, which were the ones in the really bad picture, were Leaf Me at the Altar (green, naturally), It's Bouquet With Me (purple glitter in a sheer violet base), and Just a Little Dangerous, which is described as a metallic amethyst.

I picked them by cruising around people's swatches, so I hope I picked well. Looking at the colors that are remaining, I can see some other things that look interesting, but I'm going to try to content myself with what I've already got and not go ordering any more. We'll see how that goes.

Monday mani (posted on Thursday!)

(Monday)

Today's mani: Lillibet's Jubilee. It's got a tendency to be brushstroke-y, which is not surprising given that it's a full-on foil, but other than that I didn't have any problems. It looks completely silver in some lights, but in others the lilac shows up more prominently. It's pretty, either way. (Note that this is technically continuing my purple streak, which goes back to the beginning of last week.)

Sigh. This picture is not flattering to my poor little stumpy fingers!

It occurs to me that I'm pretty sure I never tweeted the link to the last entry, so here is the link, just so you'll click over there. It's pretty short and sweet but it does have a picture!

(Wednesday night)
Well, it's very unusual for me to say, but there just isn't much news on the nail front. I'm still wearing Lillibet, but it's chipping now (although it still looks fine if you don't look too close!) and I'm going to have to put something else on by tomorrow. And I'm getting e-mails to inform me that the Sephora order is going to be here tomorrow, so rather than do an entry for an entry's sake and post now, I may as well wait until tomorrow when I actually have something definite to say. (I do want to give Sephora props before I forget again, though: I ordered on Saturday night and I got a notice on Sunday that my order had shipped. So that means they've got some poor soul, or more likely several of them, packing up orders on the weekend shift.) (Although I work weekends, myself, so I'm not sure why I act like that's the end of the world!)

Hmm, I may need to think ahead about what I put on next, because I have the day off Saturday in order to go to a party Saturday night. I guess if I do my nails tomorrow I can just plan on doing them again during the day on Saturday. (It's a family party so I asked ahead of time for the time off, if you're wondering! I'm not exactly going to a rave or anything...)

I kind of hate to take Lillibet's Jubilee off. It's one of those colors that's so interesting you can just sit and stare at it. Maybe I'll keep on with the purples and do No More Waity, Katie next.

(Later)
I did stumble across a bit of nail news: Zoya is having a back-to-school BOGO sale, good through (I think) Sunday. Here's the blog announcement. I'm going to try to sit this one out. If I can keep from browsing to look for colors I might want, I'll probably manage it.

(Thursday night)
I took the picture of Lillibet, above, on top of the Sephora box, which arrived mid-afternoon, and I took a bunch more pictures as I unpacked it all - but that's just going to have to wait until later, probably tomorrow. I'm too tired right now. (Sorry for keeping you in suspense!! But it all came, it's all beautiful, and there will be pictures later.)

Lillibet came off nice and cleanly, but I haven't put anything else on yet. I'll let you know tomorrow what that ended up being, as well.

No Bad Romance

Since I've been on the purple tear for the last week or so, I decided to keep going and wear another purple that I knew I had that was untried, and that was Revlon Scandalous, which I bought six weeks or so ago on a late-night trip to H-E-B. (Sometimes on Sundays after work I go shopping. The only things open at 9pm on Sundays are grocery stores and the like, so my choices other than grocery stores are pretty much limited to Target and Wal-Mart.) Anyway, so here is Scandalous (3 coats with BL base and topcoat):

(Lobster-fingers, ew. But at least the color on my nails is fairly true.) This is said to be a dupe for Bad Romance, which I don't really have any idea about. But here is a comparison between Bad Romance and Revlon Facets of Fuchsia, which apparently is the same thing as Scandalous. (I'm not sure which is the new name and which the old.)

Bargaining with myself (badly)

(Thursday)
It's not very clear from my previous post, but I think I put the Colorstay on late Monday night, and wore it all day Tuesday and then put Daul on top of it Tuesday night. And I haven't had to touch it since then - all day Wednesday and Thursday - and tipwear is still quite minimal, so that's very good by my standards. I'll evaluate tonight and decide whether to try to keep it another day.

I did buy a couple of nail polishes but I made it to the middle of the month so that's not too bad. I bought two polishes at Walmart - I had said I could buy one thing, but since the one thing could have been one expensive polish that would have cost much more than the two I got were together, I think that's okay. I just tweeted that perhaps my next deal with myself will be that if I don't buy anything (much) else for the rest of the month I can try to buy something from KBShimmer's fall line when they come out on September 1st. There's several things there that I'd love to have. (Added later: ...but see below for more on that.)

What I bought was Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Royal Invite, a purple shimmer, and Hard Candy Crush on Lava, which is sort of similar to Bad Fairy/SH Lava, although I don't think it's a true dupe for either. (At least, I read a review somewhere that said so, although I've lost the link to that. I'll look for that later and I might get a picture later, also.) But anyway, it's a cool glittery duochrome thing that looks really beautiful in the bottle. I'm excited to try it. It's also the first time I've tried new-formula Hard Candy - all the ones I have are several years old, from before they started being sold at Walmart. Actually I think they may have gone through a couple of rounds of changes since I last bought any, because I know I looked at them at Walmart a year or more ago and they looked completely different then from what they look like now. But anyway, that's all water under the bridge at this point!

The part where I buy a bunch of stuff is lurking under the jump.

Orchid displays and this week's manis

(Monday)
When last heard from, I was complaining about Essie magnetics that don't work properly. And even after I got all that settled, I kept thinking my nails still looked sort of boring - I pretty much do this whenever I wear a creme nowadays - so I went looking for my bottle of Lizard Belly, because it occurred to me that it might look good over Crocadilly. And I didn't find it. I don't really like it when I mislay expensive bottles of nail polish, but on the other hand, it's got to be around here somewhere, and during the search I found Chirality Kale, which is another green holo and is actually probably closer to the same base color as Crocadilly, so win. (Added later: and they did end up matching quite well. Lizard Belly is considerably darker, so I doubt that it would have matched near so well.)

Random linkage:
Somebody on Twitter linked to this makeup.com piece about what to do with broken makeup, including nail polish - and lipstick, which is probably my most-broken type of makeup. (I have also managed to break up many powder compacts over the years.)


(Tuesday)
Today's mani is Colorstay Amethyst, and then tonight I put Daul over it because it already had tipwear. I patched the Colorstay up before I added Daul and just did one thin-ish coat (plus Seche Vite), and it looks lovely. I haven't worn Daul in ages; I need to remember to wear it more! (I just tried taking a picture under that same light that I have been saying I thought blue-shifted everything, and sure enough, it came out way bluer than it actually looks - so I'm not even going to post it this time. It doesn't even look like Daul!)

However, I do have some display pictures to post, which I keep forgetting about. These first few were taken a month or so ago. This was an Orchid display which I found on an endcap (next to the card aisle, as you can see):

These displays do seem to have non-core colors - more on that below, but this one had some names like "Cobra Bite" and the like that I don't remember seeing before. (A typical Orchid name is more like "OK, 1 More Margarita" but some of them are shorter and less comical than that.)

And then the Nicka K brand which I had previously only seen at the largest H-E-B store in the area turned up at my store that same day. (I even took a picture of the non-nail display, something I hardly ever bother to do.)

 

Then last week a football-themed Orchid display turned up:



I turned some of the bottles around to see what they were named:

I'm not sure how well you can read this without clicking over to the larger picture, but they are Grass Stains, I Bleed Maroon, Orange You Glad You're From Texas? and Coin Toss. The maroon and the orange were the only ones tied to a particular school (A&M and Texas, respectively - this is a thing that most Texans know without thinking about it twice, but the rest of the world, probably not so much). The others were generic football-themed names similar to Grass Stains and Coin Toss, although I've forgotten now exactly what they were. But I'm pretty sure that most of those aren't core. (Orange You Glad You're From Texas? might be, though, and maybe the maroon, too.)

Assorted purchases, and more green polish

I should note first that I posted an entry on Thursday about a mani that included Jesse's Girl Glee, and never linked it on Twitter like I usually do, so some of you probably missed it. That's here, if you're interested.

(Saturday)
Last night I put on the Pretty Serious polish that I got at Llarowe, Party by the Pool. And it's gorgeous. Now it's a jelly, and it has the usual jelly problems - it's streaky, it's really hard to apply evenly, it takes forever to dry, etc. And it took 4 coats to get it the way I wanted it to look, but it's worth it. (I've already managed to mess it up, so there probably won't be a picture. Plus it's been cloudy all weekend so my usual natural-light pictures would be even worse than usual.)

The Lacquerologist (who is a professional nail tech) has a good piece about Vinylux, which is something I've been wondering a bit about. I might have to try out a color or two at some point. It seems like a good compromise between regular nail polish and gel.

I looked at Incoco's website the other day because somebody (Karen?) linked to it - that might've been on Twitter, actually, rather than on her blog - and now it's the ad on practically every website I look at. They do have some pretty designs, I gotta admit, but I just have not given in to the nail sticker thing yet. I can buy a whole bottle of nail polish for that price, and get far more than just one or two manicures out of it.

(new mani and some stash additions after the jump)

Zuza and Glee

Well, I am in between doctor's appointments - later I am getting new glasses, woo! - and I should be working but I can't seem to concentrate. So you're getting a nail entry instead. (Which is probably just as well, because I'm not working this weekend, and so I presumably won't get around to writing an entry then. Long dull weekend shifts tend to produce either a blog entry or a whole lot of pinning or, if it's slow enough, both.)

Today's mani has lots of layers already and might possibly have more. Or else I might take it off and start over, who knows. Anyway, this is what it is currently:

1. Orly Bonder
2. Tenacious Teal (Color Show)
3. Tenacious Teal - as discussed previously, it is streaky and isn't really completely opaque at two coats, but I was sure I was going to put something else over it by the time I got to this point so I didn't care. If you're going to wear it alone, you definitely need three unless you're putting on really thick coats!)
4. Zuza (Zoya - my, "Zoya Zuza" is a mouthful, isn't it? For some reason, I never thought about that before.)
5. Glee (Jesse's Girl)
6. Seche Vite

For some reason, Zuza over T-Teal didn't grab me. So I continued on with Glee, which I have posted a picture of over T-Teal before. But since that completely fails to capture the glorious glittery goodness of Glee, here is a picture I snapped in the coffee-shop window just now:

Still not a great picture, but better than that other one. It's already looking a tiny bit chipped, which is why I'm contemplating starting all over. Or I might throw Maisie or something on top of it and make it go another day or so. But Glee is really pretty - almost what I'd call a foil.

Fairy Dust II

I'm wearing sort of a jelly sandwich - or, well, a sandwich, anyway. The "bread" of the sandwich, so to speak, is Zoya Juicy*, which I was talking about in the last entry because it was one of the first Zoyas I ever bought. It's a sheer, but it's not technically a jelly or even a crelly, as far as I know. (I know a crelly is a cross between a creme and a jelly, but I'm not sure I'd know one if I saw one, quite frankly.) In any case, it's a dark pink, and it's quite sheer - I put on 4 coats and still had plenty of visible nail line. That doesn't particularly bother me, but I guess I was in experimentation mode again, and this morning I added a fairly light coat of Khroma Fairy Dust (not the e.l.f. Fairy Dust that I was wearing the other day) and then put another coat of Juicy on top of that. It came out quite nice. It really looks more red than pink by the time you get that many coats on.

Really terrible picture:

You can't really tell much here, I know. This was the picture with flash, which I don't usually use in my bedroom. But the one without flash was even worse. You can tell that it's reddish and sort of glittery. Really the glitter shows through quite well, though. (And in some lights it looks much pinker than I initially thought - sort of a strawberry color!)


*That link is Scrangie's review from 2008, in which she complains about it being sheer and streaky. I didn't have any problems with streakiness at all, though, for the record. The VBL was pretty much gone, too, by the time I got the glitter and the 5th coat on!

Finally a fuchsia (plus spoons)

Today's mani: Zoya Alegra. Nice dark metallic fuchsia. Actually I have had it on since Friday, and it's chipping a bit so I am likely to have something else on by tonight or at least tomorrow.

Karen told me that she had worn one of the Orchid colors that I sent her, and she has now posted an entry about it. (It's prettier on than I realized, and I had even seen it in person!) (For reference purposes, what I sent her is in this entry. And all the lovely stuff she sent me in return is the bottom picture in this entry.)

In other news, I happened to do the math on my spreadsheet and I have 38 Zoyas, which is certainly by far the most nail polish I've had of one brand at one time. If you could count up every Revlon I've ever owned in my life - since that goes back to oh, 1972 or so - it might exceed that, but probably not by a whole lot. I've been thinking that the next time I buy anything from Zoya, it ought to be their own top coat and base coat, which I have never bought, since I hear that it really does last better when you use their own system. It's an investment in all those polishes I already have. (But that still doesn't mean I'm going to go out and buy that now. Maybe at some point soon.)


I have probably actually bought 40 bottles of Zoya altogether (starting in late 2011, so in less than two years), because I'm on the second bottle of Chloe, and I threw my bottle of Tallulah away because the lip was broken and air had seeped in.  I know for sure about the late 2011 thing because I looked it up on my Zoya account to see, the other day. The first thing I ordered was a bunch of spoons, and after that I ordered Kierra, Karina and Juicy. (Juicy is a lovely sheer pink and I don't know why I haven't worn it more. Kierra and Karina are both wonderful fall colors, and I wore both of them a ton.)

So here is my entire spoon collection, which I found stuck in a box. Most - maybe all - of the loose ones are from that first order. Several of the collection ones came later.

(My bedspread is possibly not the best background in the world for this picture. From a distance, some of the spoons are almost indistinguishable from the brown background!)

Often if you order something, they automatically send you spoons for new collections - so above is Touch, which I think was new around the time I first ordered, and there are a bunch more of these collection sets below. (So some of you will have seen a lot of this stuff already, but some of you won't so I'm posting it anyway!)

These are ones I have purchased since (Delilah, Karina, Dita, Juicy, Lilith):

(and so are these: Kierra, Mira, Harmonie and Indigo)

These I have not gotten around to buying so far - the reds on the left are Caprice, Valentina, Carmen (which if you can read close enough, is ZP001, the first Zoya color), Garbo, Andi, and Kimmy. The blues are Tallulah (which as I said, I did buy but had to discard, and eventually might buy again) and Twila, and the greens are Ivanka, Midori, and Suvi.

Collections:

Except for Touch, I think I own at least one polish from all of these sets. (And Beach and Surf in particular - I'm fairly sure I have at least half of those, if not more.)

And, just for completeness' sake, here is a back view of one set:

(Note that nothing here is sponsored. I didn't even do affiliate links today!)

Warm pinks and cool reds

Note: Zoya links are affiliate links, but I'm not being reimbursed or rewarded in any way for the rest of these links. It's just my own little obsessions.

Nordstrom's Butter London deals of the moment (this is the part I'm oddly obsessed with):

• The Backstage Basics set is back (this is the one I ordered last week but haven't yet received), with Hardwear topcoat and Nail Foundation basecoat, Thames (a green), travel-size remover, and a nail file, for $24. This still seems to me to be the best deal, but compared to regular retail for these items, these are all good deals!
• A "starter set" with Hardwear, Horse Power Nail Fertilizer, and Pillar Box Red Nail Lacquer for $27
• "Coral Crush" and "Emerald Crush" trios - 3 polishes each, for $30 (and just about all of those are colors I've seen people rave about, although I'm not stopping to list them here)

(Today's mani after the jump)