NailsInc returns?

So I've been talking about the NailsInc polishes I got lately from Sephora - some of them were from the VIB sale but not all. Some of them I'm intending to return. I was trying to think of nail polishes I've returned, and there aren't many of them. Back in the day (and I mean way back), many/most stores wouldn't accept returns for anything that could have been opened. Walgreen's took some unopened polish still in the package, a couple of years ago. Nowadays I know that Sephora will take "gently used" returns (I know that's the way they phrase it because I looked at the official policy) and actually my understanding is that they interpret that very generously. But I really haven't ever returned much of anything to Sephora either. I think in this case I'm going to, though. I ordered way too many polishes in a short time and I told myself (when I came down from the shopping high) that if I didn't love all of them I was going to return some, and well, I didn't love all of them.

So here's one set that I am intending to return. Obviously I did swatch these on the wheel, but I didn't put them on my nails at all so I'm assuming that should definitely qualify as gently-used!

This is the Champagne Shine duo, which looked interesting when I looked at the pictures, but I wasn't crazy about in person. It's way too nude for my taste. It's kind of pretty but it's the kind of thing I just won't wear, in practice, and so it's a waste of money to keep it. I have several of these duos, and they always seem like a good deal because they are $15, which is the regular price of most NailsInc polishes, but instead you get two full-size polishes. But that's only a good deal if you'll actually use them! (Added: Rank & Style has this as #3 on their best nail sets list. The Ciate set that I did keep is #1.)

I swatched both of these separately (see below) and then both of them together - that would be the nail that says "both". The polish on the left - which I cropped to minimize the glare - is Straight To My Head (I keep getting that name wrong: Straight To My Heart, for one) and the other one is Fizz-ical.* Straight To My Head seems to me to go with the Holler-graphic polishes. It may not be exactly the same as those but it seems quite similar, at least. It's definitely got holo stuff and something like Spectraflair in it. And then Fizz-ical looks like it's got a similarly beige sort of base but it's also got a load of gold/green (?) shimmer in there. It's awfully sheer, though. I was hoping that both of them together might do something that would make me want to keep it, but meh. I actually like Straight To The Head by itself the best of the permutations I tried - although Fizz-ical over black looks green, which was kind of a surprise. It's got a green flip to it that I hadn't really noticed, although now that I'm looking it's pretty clearly there.

*I don't know if they intended this or not, but "Fizz-ical" totally sets off Olivia Newton-John earworms in my head. "Let me hear your body talk..."

And then the other one is something that I frankly bought for the name, and that's one of the Dirty Unicorns polishes, The Mane Attraction:

I cropped the silver cap out of this picture because I didn't have any pictures without terrible glare. The glare's not completely gone but that at least got the worst of it. Anyway, what I mean about buying it for the name, I mean "Dirty Unicorns" - the name of the line of polishes, not the name of this specific polish. I am pretty underwhelmed by this polish, though, so it's going back. (I've also been toying with returning one of the two below that, the Holler-graphic polishes - I don't really feel like I need both of them. But so far I can't make up my mind which one of them I would want to get rid of!)

(The outer cap on the newer NailsInc polishes is white, which after all the fighting with glare here is a relief. I don't know if that's only for these certain polishes or if they're going all in with white caps.)

Here's the Champagne Shine polishes a little closer-up - Straight To My Head:

This is the one that feels like it has the same formula as the Holler-graphics, (linear holo, other holo glitter) except that it's so pale it's hard to be sure. But as far as I can tell the formula looks really exactly the same.

And then Fizz-ical:

(I think you can see the green "flip" a little bit in the reflections on the nail tips here!)

NailsInc Holler-graphics

Nails Inc has a new Holler-graphic line, and I got my hands on a couple of them. This is Molten My Day:

I feel like all these have near identical formulas. This is the - what would you call this, somewhere between bubblegum and fuchsia? - version.

and this is Get Out Of My Space:

This is the violet version, let's say. (Added: the entry after this one has to do with returns, but in addition to the polishes I talk about there, I started thinking I just didn't need both of these polishes, especially since I also have the ones below. So I eventually returned the pink one and kept the purple one.)

I already had the polish duo called Holler-graphic, and I'll put pictures of that below. These do seem to all have a common formula - bits of holo sparkle, but also linear holographic. I'm sure this isn't the first polish to mix those things, but I can't say I recall seeing it before. And one of the polishes in the other duo I got seems to also have this same formula but it isn't specifically identified as part of this line. But we'll talk about that tomorrow!)

So if these are the same formula as above, then this is the silvery-pink version and the silver version, I guess.

The swatches of these two are here.

Less Bitter, More Glitter!!

This is another Nails Inc Duo, Less Bitter More Glitter:

This picture is kind of dark but I like that you can see the holo stuff on the box.

The swatch that's pointing at the polishes here is both of these polishes layered, which I like, but I have pictures of them separately as well.

 This one is Shake Your Baubles:

I like both these polishes, but this one is the standout. It is packed with pearlescent stuff, and it's really gorgeous.

The glitter is Get The Party Started:

It got pretty opaque on its own in three coats, and on its own the glitter shades slightly pink. Layered over Shake Your Baubles, it - unsurprisingly - goes back to being red.

I honestly wasn't sure I would want to keep this, but I do. (More on the returns issue later.) I have a lot of reds and I don't wear them a lot, but I still want this one, mostly because I'm in love with that pearlescent one.

(I was originally intending to do all the NailsIncs in one big post but I seem to be developing an aversion to long posts. I'm getting where if I have a bunch of pictures I want to post I generally break them up and do them in several pieces. I think it's a lot more readable that way. If you have any input about whether you agree about that feel free to speak up! )

Thanksgiving/Cyber weekend

So here's what I bought in the Thanksgiving weekend sales, in general - I won't go into too much detail since I usually do that as stuff arrives, anyway. I bought a good bit of polish and other things too, but I don't think I went completely nuts. I didn't really buy much if anything on Black Friday proper - I did the Ulta order early on Thursday night and most of the rest in trickles over the weekend.

• Ulta had Not Your Mother's haircare on BOGO so I bought four things there. One thing I wanted (the scalp scrub) was out of stock by Thursday afternoon already. And I got two OPIs for $5 each. They didn't have a huge selection on the website (and when I looked again on Friday almost all of what they did have was gone). The only other thing I bought was some tins of Body Shop body butter - it was a set of three and I'll probably keep one and give the others away.
• KL Polish - several polishes at 40% off
• Zoya had everything 50% off and free shipping at $30 (that was the Sunday-Monday sale) - I put five polishes in my cart, decided two of them looked too much alike and deleted one - and then made up the last $10 I needed to get to the free shipping limit with those new wide brushes. I know I like wide brushes, generally, and I can just switch them out as I use different Zoya polishes.* (Most of the polishes I bought were from the holiday collection, I think - two of the new Pixie Dusts, for one thing.)
• other stuff: JCPenney - a leather jacket for my husband, 60% off. And tonight I looked at Erin Condren's website and that 30% off sale and ordered a few more things from that.

* Zoya had a note up that said they did a survey of customer preferences about brushes and it came in split 50/50 between regular and wide, which was why they just made the wide brush an add-on item. I think $2 is a lot to pay for a brush but at 50% off that seems much more reasonable.

You know, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (along with Small Business Saturday!) seem to have merged into one long weekend of sales - heck, mostly the whole month of November is sale-o-rama now. At least the offline frenzy seems to be dying down a bit lately, probably because more people are shopping online. I didn't hear anything about anybody getting trampled this year, anyway.

I still haven't done that NailsInc post I said I was going to do, but here's a preview:

Hopefully that will be up tomorrow!

Band Geek (NOTD + swatch)

Here is KBShimmer Band Geek:

This is messy because I put it on really late at night, but you can get the idea, at least. This picture is rather dark, anyway - the picture at the link above is better. (Or google and you'll get a lot of examples.)

I feel compelled to mention that while I am notably a geek, one thing I was not was a band geek. I was in the choir, instead. (I have called myself a choir geek for years, when the subject comes up, but actually at my school choir and band were not necessarily considered particularly geeky as I remember it, mostly because there were enough popular kids in choir and I think in band too that it gave the rest of us some cover.)

Here's the bottle and the swatch:

It's basically a black jelly with a lot of mixed glitters in various metallics (like the instruments in the band). It's very pretty. I wore the mani above for quite a few days, and over the Thanksgiving break I got sme new stuff in the mail that I slapped on top of Band Geek and they both coordinated quite well - that was Cigars On Ice, which was a Polish Pickup polish, and then Rustling Leaves from Night Owl's fall collection. I don't have pictures of those yet but I like both of them and they both looked good on top of this.

sale! sale! sale!

I have one e-mail account that the bulk of my mailing-list sort of mail comes to, and when I looked at that account Friday I had 200 e-mails. I had already done what Black Friday shopping I intended to do by the time I looked, so I decided to put some of those e-mails to use by making a list of sales that continued after Friday.

These are all good through Monday (11/26) unless otherwise specified. I'm guessing the ones that end Sunday will have a different set of sales for Monday! (KL Polish definitely does, I've already gotten an e-mail about that one. But I don't think it was anything better than 40% off.)

• Zoya - starting tomorrow, 50% off sitewide + free shipping over $30, code YAY (Nov. 25-26); today it's 70% off holiday sets with code GIFT
• KL Polish - 40% off through Sunday, code BLACKFRIDAY (Zodiac Collection excluded)
• Starrily - 30% off through Sunday, code BF18
• NeVerMind Polish - 30% off regularly priced polish & more, no code required
• Lucky 13 - 30% off "almost" everything with code TOFURKEY, free US shipping
• Jin Soon - 25% off through Sunday, code BLFRIDAY25
• ILNP - 25% off sitewide, code BLACK25
• Enchanted Polish - launching "Unicornicopia" a Limited Edition Mystery Polish + 25% off everything EXCEPT Unicornicopia with code THANKYOU 
• Cirque - 20% off with code CIRQUE20, through the 28th
• KBShimmer - holo drawstring backpack with $50 purchase

and here's some non-nailpolish ones:

• See here for a big beauty-sale roundup (yeah, I know it's Cosmo, hush)
• Nourish Organic - 50% off site wide, code ORGANIC50 
• Indie Lee - 25% off $50+ purchase, code ILHOLIDAY 
• Colourpop has sales changing daily, so check their website if you're interested in that
• Erin Condren - 30% off everything, no code

bonus! a couple of things that aren't sales:

• new! Marc Jacobs Leopard Frost Collection
• Essie fall nail art

Empties: cleanser & concealer

I mentioned in the last post that I had bought Skin Laundry cleanser, and here is what I was using before that:

I love this stuff, but it's really expensive, much more than the Skin Laundry is. This is a little over 5 ounces, and it's $36. I just checked and the Skin Laundry is $20 and it's 6-1/2 ounces or so. That's a pretty big difference - plus I bought the Skin Laundry during the VIB sale so it was actually, what, $16. I do like this Blue Lotus cleanser a lot and I would buy it again if it was a little cheaper. I did math and that comes out to about $7 an ounce for the cleanser above as opposed to a little under $3 for the other one even without the 20% knocked off.

I've talked about this product - L.A.Girl PRO.conceal - a good bit but I still like it so I will talk about it some more. This is one of those color-correcting shades - I think it's Apricot - but this concealer also comes in just the normal colors as well. What I've actually been doing a lot of the time is mixing this and my Shape Tape concealer - I just dot them both onto the brush and then they mix up as I apply them. That seems to work pretty well, because while the apricot color is good at covering up dark circles, it's actually considerably darker than my skin tone so it can look weird on me. (I deliberately bought the Shape Tape a shade darker than I thought my skin-tone was, but it's still quite light.)

Sephora VIB goodies

This is the first installment of what I bought from the Sephora VIB sale. Here I was trying to buy things I actually need. (Later on I kind of went nuts in the NailsInc section but we'll discuss that another day.)

I had had a sample of the Skin Laundry face wash that came in a Sephora Play box - which makes it six months ago or longer, because I cancelled that a while ago - and I really liked it so I decided to spring for the large bottle while the sale was on. Hopefully it will last quite a while.

And then I had decided to try out this Cinema secrets brush cleaner a while back - I had seen somebody recommend it highly. (It's said to be what makeup artists use.) I bought two different travel size bottles (one a spray bottle and another that came with a small tin) and I have been using this stuff like crazy. I'm still not really near to having used all of the two small bottles up, but I have made a significant dent in them and I decided it was time I bought the refill bottle.

I really do love this stuff. It's pretty much effortless to use. Spray it on your brush and just wipe it off, or if you have a brush that's really crusty, pour some into the tin and just dip it in and take it out immediately. The beauty of it is that it really works and it dries practically instantly. Even with a big brush it's dry very quickly. The small tin works fine for smaller brushes, but anything bigger than my mini-multitasker won't fit, so that's why I ordered the larger tin as well.

(I'm going to try to restrain myself on the Black Friday sales. We'll see how that goes.)

NOTD: Finley

This is Zoya Finley, which is an Aurora/Storm-style scattered holo, but in a dark purple:

Note that these are taken in the same light, although maybe not at quite the same angle - I just thought it was interesting that (on my monitor, anyway) they don't appear to be quite the same color. I know that happens all the time in pictures, but I don't often notice that with pictures taken at the same time in the same light!

Chocolate November

This isn't a Topic Tuesday but it's an externally-suggested theme, and I feel like that's the kind of thing I do on Tuesdays these days, whether it's Topic Tuesday proper or something else. (I didn't look to see what the actual Topic Tuesday topic is, but if it's anything that interests me I'll get around to it later!)

#chocolatenovember is apparently a thing that's going around - I think maybe it came from Instagram. Obviously it's a little late for me to decide I'm going to wear nothing but browns in November. (It's past mid-November and I'm wearing Grinchworthy - bright green - at the moment.) But I can find some pictures of browns to show you, at least. I love a good brown. I was already intending to get a brown manicure or two in soon, but you'll see those when the time comes - I'm not sure which ones it will be, anyway! - For that matter, I may go into December & keep doing browns if I'm still feeling it.

This one isn't exactly brown, but it's in the ballpark:

This is RBL Scrangie 2.0, and it's sort of a shifty thing but one of the places it shifts is toward brown, at least.

Here's what's probably my very favorite one, Zoya Cinnamon:

I've showed this a number of times before, and I always have trouble putting my finger on what's so great about it, and I don't think the pictures really show it either. So I can only say: it's sort of bronze-brown, and it's gorgeous. (Incidentally, this and Cassiopeia below may well be the only ones here that are current, although I didn't check.)

I don't know that I have a picture of my least-favorite brown, which is OPI Decades of Shades. I usually end up using the word "poop" when I try to describe it - but some people love it, so they're obviously seeing something I'm not. I guess it's no coincidence that I don't have a picture of it on my nails. I'm sure I have a bottle picture somewhere. (Here. I have a least-favorite polishes tag, I remembered eventually. I wasn't really prepared to go through the whole of my OPI pictures to find it.)

This seems to be Pumpkin Spice (the Xtreme Wear one) over Misa When U Say My Name:

(When U Say My Name is also very pretty on its own - it's a shimmery brown - but I don't see a picture of it on my nails offhand.)

Oh, one more, KL Polish Cassiopeia:

It's a dark brown with very fine holo bits.

NOTD: Grinchworthy, matte

Here is China Glaze Grinchworthy, with matte top-coat:

I really like this a lot. It's brighter than it appears here, really. I said when I swatched it that it had a colored base, but I think I was wrong about that, and it's actually just tiny glitter in various shades of green, in a clear base. It's super-sparkly, which is why I put the matte top-coat on it. Even with the matte top-coat it's really not what I would think of as matte - it's just less glittery.

Added: I forgot to point out that I'd already had this on for several days when I took this picture. It has a tiny bit of tip-wear but mostly it hasn't budged at all. Considering that I'm generally very hard on my nails, I think that's pretty outstanding wear.

R.I.P. Pretty Serious??

So I guess Pretty Serious is dead. Have y'all heard about this? They have been taken over by a liquidator for a debt that they say they didn't owe, but who knows about that. I adored Pretty Serious and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but man, what a mess. Anyway, I have been waiting more or less patiently for my clearance sale polishes (since July!), but I ordered using Paypal so they will presumably cover it. If you ordered with a credit card it's been over 3 months so I think those people are probably screwed. So sad. I think it's fair to say at least that PS over-reached with the clearance sale - they backordered all those polishes and that's why it's taken so long. Otherwise this all would have been done with already.

(There apparently was a huge kerfluffle on PS's Facebook page - which has now been taken down - and there was another kerfluffle on Acetone Alley where there were accusations of doxxing, I don't know if that just means they posted PS's address or something else. They say you can still talk about it there, just be careful what you say, which you can't blame them for. I came in late so I just saw the remnants of the AA fight and missed whatever went on at Pretty Serious Party People completely. I don't think I'm very sorry to have missed it, really.)

If you had clearance sale stuff and haven't gotten it, you probably got an e-mail from them and know about this already. My order was fairly huge and so it may have been one of the later ones because of that. Apparently there is some chance Americans could still get stuff if it was already sent off to the US but I'm not holding my breath, I went ahead & reported it to PP and if I happen to get some of it later, great!

I'm sad just because I loved Pretty Serious so much. It sounded like Kaz was wanting to go into cosmetics anyway and so the nail polish part of it certainly was never going to be back in its old form, anyway. I thought I'd show some Pretty Serious greatest hits, today. I've still got stuff I haven't worn - Throwing Copper, for one - and I imagine there will be one or two PS things in my yearly favorites as well.

Let's see, what do I love that I haven't talked about in a while? (Here's the PS tag, if you want to browse.) Obviously everything should be considered discontinued and probably more or less HTF at this point. If it shows up in a discount store or something that would probably be in Australia!

Here is Ichi Hanami (very messy, but you can get the idea anyway):

This is Poltergeist Puddle:

I've probably posted this one pretty recently, but I don't care, it's my favorite.

VT-100, a favorite and one of the original Pretty Serious polishes, too:

(That looks like it's mattified, incidentally.)

And this is BSOD, which is also from that same collection:

Holiday candles

KathleenLights did a candle video a couple of weeks ago with candles from Bath & Body Works (I'll link the video below) and I thought - inevitably - oh, I wouldn't mind having some of those, because I love candles. So I looked to see what the price was on the 3-wick candles and they were on sale for $12.95. (I just looked and they're $14-something now, but I also looked on one of those Black Friday sites and it's possible that they will be $12.25 or so then - and that's only a week away, after all.) Anyway, I went ahead and bought two, at $12.95. I've been in BBW a couple of times in recent years and sniffed at the candles, and I knew they had things I would be happy with even if I didn't quite know the proper names for the ones I like. Kathleen went through a bunch of scents in her video, and from that I figured out what I wanted to order. I just got two, and they're two that Kathleen says are among her favorites - Tis the Season (apple, cinnamon, cedar) and Fresh Balsam (which is balsam, eucalyptus, cedar, & fir). Those are pretty much the kind of thing I was thinking of in the first place.

I hear stories periodically about people getting broken candles in the mail, but these seemed well-packed in their little cradles.

(They seemed to have several versions of the packaging for the really popular ones. But I went with the holiday theme.)

They both smell fabulous. I'm tempted to go get some more but I think I'll make myself burn a good portion of these before I buy any more.

Love Potion 99.9

This is Lynnderella Love Potion No. 99.9:

I don't pull out my Lynnderellas much, but this one is one of my favorites - a blend of various medium-to-dark purples.

I'm pulling out some darker purples because I feel like they're good things to wear in the fall. Note that the two below may look the same in the bottle but only one of them falls into this (fall-colors) category:

Orchid Of The Year appears similar in the bottle, here, but is actually much lighter. To put it in seasonal terms, I'd probably wear this one sometime in the Christmas-to-spring time period. It would work for either of those. (I also tend to wear glitters a lot in the winter because they're cheery, which is what causes me to think of Christmas-to-spring as one continuous thing.)

Neeka

This is Zoya Neeka:

Zoya's description: "Neeka by Zoya can be best described as a greyed amethyst with subtle red duochrome shimmer and bright gold glitter accents. A fascinating, unique shade that manages to be glittery but not too flashy."

This is one of those polishes that I like but I rarely remember to wear. I have just put on Zoya Finley, which is kind of a similar color but in a scattered holo. (I'll have pictures of that later on.) Certainly I never thought of wearing Neeka instead - really it's that I forget it exists until something reminds me. It's a nice fall color, though!

You're A Mean One (NOTD + swatch)

This is the third China Glaze Grinch polish I bought, You're A Mean One:

This reminds me to a surprising extent of OPI Feel The Chemis-tree from last year's holiday collection, which I really liked. I thought at the time that Chemis-tree had a sort of unicorn-pee-type pigment in it, and I don't think this is quite as obviously shifty as that, but there's still something like that going on. It's hard to tell exactly, but I think it's a purple base with redder shimmer, and then the shift. I haven't been able to pin it down more than that, though!

I had Miracle Gel Buffalo Nickel on before this, which is pewtery, so I just slapped a coat of this on top. (The new brushes are awesome.) It covered up Buffalo Nickel completely with one coat, but I don't really think it would be a one-coater without that something underneath. The swatch was two coats for all three of these, I remember that even though I didn't actually put tick-marks on it.

(I have a picture of Buffalo Nickel on my nails somewhere, I'm pretty sure. I'll post it when I figure out where it went! It was actually super-pretty.)

Grinch Collection (LE)

I talked yesterday about my Ulta order which included foundation and an Ecotools brush. The rest of the order was nail polish, all from the new Grinch collection from China Glaze. Ulta had a buy 1 get one 50% off sale going, and I was going to buy two and added a third one at the last minute. Now I'm sort of wishing I had gotten one more, since it would presumably also have been 50% off. But it's too late now.

As you can see, the bottles have various Grinch silhouettes. (There was also a Grinch-face one, but I didn't end up with any of those.) The cap selection seems to be random - that is, it's not that you get a certain cap with a certain polish, if that matters to you.

The green polish is Grinchworthy.

Remember when I was messing with the Halloween skittles and complaining about not being able to find a green that was the color I wanted? I finally used OCC Chimera, which was OK, but this one would have been perfect. I guess I'll have to bear that in mind for next year! Anyway, this is a slightly yellowish green glitter - I think the base is probably sort of lime-colored and then there's a variety of colors of small glitter in various greens and maybe some gold. It's beautiful.

The pink polish is Who Wonder:

It's just a really pretty shimmery fuchsia. (The worst problem I have with doing my bottle-and-wheel swatches the way I do is that round bottles just do not want to stay where you put them. Usually, as here, I just use some other bottle to prop them against to keep them from rolling away, but it's annoying. I'm sure there's some more sophisticated way to keep them where I want them but I haven't ever bothered to look into that. Square foundation bottle = perfectly good thing to prop a bottle of nail polish against!)

(I decided to wait and talk about the third polish tomorrow, since I'm wearing it now.)

Meanwhile, here's some reviews of the Grinch collection on YouTube:

Foundation and a brush

I started an Ulta order because I kept hearing people talk about Physicians Formula The Healthy Foundation and I decided I wanted to try it.

This is the lightest color (LC1, for light cool) but it's really not all that light. They don't have a huge range of shades like so many brands do now - they need to catch up on that. (Actually I wonder if they have much choice - in most drugstores they seem to be allotted a pretty limited amount of space!) Anyway, I've tried it and the color seems fine for me. And then I decided to buy a brush, because the one I've been using is shedding bristles. I didn't want to pay a fortune for it, so after looking at several things I ended up at Ecotools:

It had good reviews - and I do really like it. It's not round:

so it's maneuverable. It's got a ton of bristles - they're really packed in there! Also the handle's a bit unusually-shaped and isn't all that long, which works well for me because I have small hands, anyway. It's apparently just over 6" long:

(The rest of the Ulta order is nail polish, so I'll do that tomorrow.)

Autumn over black

I don't really have anything ready to post today, but I pulled this out of my folder of swatches and it's an excellent fall polish so here you go:

The swatch here is Zoya Autumn over Black Creme. I actually maybe like it better this way. I do like this polish but I haven't worn it often, partly because (I think) Zoya Cinnamon came out at the same time and I like Cinnamon more. (I was sure I would adore Autumn because it was described as copper and Cinnamon was more brown/bronze, but Cinnamon just has some magic oomph that I never quite understand. I dunno, I guess I like bronze more than I thought.)

Mami Martha (LE)

OK, here is KL Polish Mami Martha:

This is a limited-edition polish that has been available the last two years for breast cancer awareness month. (I think that Mami Martha is one of Kathleen's grandmothers.) It's no longer showing up on KL Polish's website, so it may not be available until next October, if the pattern holds. I didn't get this last year, but this year I thought it looked very pretty and fresh and decided to go ahead and get it this time.

(I got Grinch polishes in the mail today, woo!)