Cyber weekend (polish!) sales

Here's a few polish sales I saw that are still in effect now that Black Friday is over. I'm sure there are more - I may add on to this if I find more!

KB Shimmer - 25% off through Monday with code BLACKFRIDAY25

KL Polish - last chance (I believe I saw that they're finally shutting down for real next week) - everything is $2.99. There's still some good polishes left, too, I'm having to resist the urge to go get some backups! Meanwhile, Kathleen's new brand Lights Lacquer has 20% off everything, too. There's only, like 7 polish colors there so far the last I looked, but there are a couple I've been eyeing there too.

NeVerMind Polish - 30% off storewide, no code needed, thru Dec.2 (and a free top coat and free shipping with $50 orders)

Enchanted Polish has 25% off "select colors" through Dec.6 - I usually think that can mean anything, so I checked, and it's a pretty wide selection of colors. (Their brand-new Winter 2020 collection is naturally not included!)

Added:
Live Love Polish has their Just Call Me Holo trio marked down to $28 from the regular price of $48. They also have others marked down.

ILNP has 25% off everything (and double reward points) with code BLACK. It says "Black Friday Weekend" so I assume that's at least through Sunday, if not Monday too.

...and a non-polish one, just because it's apparently someplace that rarely has sales - Glossier has 20% off everything. (Ends Monday, it says.) I've never tried any of their products but I've been eyeing them for ages - everybody seems to love them!

TBT: "All-time favorite" polishes from 2016

I was rummaging around in old planners and I found a list from late 2016 of my all-time favorite polishes. This may have made it into the blog in some shorter form, or not - I poked around and didn't see anything like that offhand. But I thought it was interesting because there were so many polishes here that I'd pretty much forgotten about completely! (Others of these I've talked about ad nauseum - I'll add some pictures and links to this as well, although I'm not promising links to every single one. I have pages for that.) (Above: PS VT-100)

So here's my "long-list" of all-time favorites, three years ago. I sorted them by brand here (but I also put the full list at the bottom of this entry the way I originally wrote it down). I don't think I really started buying indies until 2015 or so, which is why there's not very many of those.

Indies

• Dollish The Angels Have The Phone Box
• KBShimmer She's Beyond Kelp!
• Lucky 13 Aurora Borealis (see picture below)
• Lynnderella Blue Rouge (pic below), Orchid of the Year
• Nail Pattern Boldness Elderberry
• Pahlish Pyrite
• Rescue Beauty Lounge Bubblegum Punk (pic below), Locavore, Pretty Gritty, Scrangie 2.0 (pic below)
• Top Shelf Candy Corn Cordial

Mainstream (meaning, for my purposes, brands you can easily find in a store)

• China Glaze Agro, Are You Jelly?, Bat My Eyes, Dorothy Who?
• Cover Girl Outlast Pyro Pink
• Jesse's Girl Glee
• L'Oreal Jolly Lolly
• Milani Purple Gleam
• Nyx Salon Enchanted Forest
• OPI Alcatraz Rocks, An Affair In Red Square,* Peru-B-Ruby
• Orly Fowl Play, Sweet Peacock
• Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Mermaid's Tale
• SH Diamond Strength Private I
• SH Insta-Dri Chop Chop Copper, Quick Jeanius
• SH Triple Shine Slick Black, Wavy Blue
• SH Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue, Pumpkin Spice
• Salon Perfect Who Ya Gonna Call?
• Sinful Colors I Love You, Nail Junkie, Winterberry
• Wet n Wild Spoiled Cougar Attack
• WnW FastDry Dancer Is The Best Reindeer
• Zoya Aster, Carly, Chloe, Cinnamon, Daul, Ivanka, Remy, Reva, Rikki, Rory, Suri, Teigen, Zuza
• Zoya Matte Velvet: Posh
• Zoya Pixie Dust: Carter

Boutique, overseas, other

• Aldo Gold Digger
• Barielle Elle's Spell, Jordana's Skinny Jeans
• Butter London Knees Up
• Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream
• Hard Candy Trailer Trash
• Julie G Butterflies and Rosebuds
• Misa Spinning Out Of Control
• Nfu Oh #51 (pic below)
• Petites Blackberry
• Pretty Serious Elliot, Party By The Pool, Poltergeist Puddle, VT-100, Yuki-Onna
• Sephora by OPI I Only Shop Vintage, Traffic Stopper Copper
• Square Hue Victorian End, Vogue

*I actually destashed An Affair In Red Square a while back, not because I didn't like it any more but because I felt like I had other things that were more or less dupes for it, and I wasn't wearing it. But I still think it's awesome.

I dug in my pictures and found these, from 2015. This is Lynnderella Blue Rouge over something pale:

 
Aurora Borealis over Zoya Cynthia:

RBL Bubblegum Punk on its own (I've mostly worn it as a top-coat, though - as you can see, it's super-sheer):

Nfu Oh #51 over Zoya Neeka:

RBL Scrangie 2.0:

Here's the list in the order it was originally in, for what it's worth - I don't think the order really means anything, though!
Alcatraz Rocks
Pacific Blue
Bubblegum Punk
#51 (Nfu Oh)
Trailer Trash
Pretty Gritty
Blue Rouge (Lynnderella)
Carter
Pumpkin Spice
Cougar Attack
Mermaid's Dream
Elderberry
Dancer Is The Best Reindeer
Reva
Aster
Cinnamon
Ivanka
Traffic Stopper Copper
Locavore
Chop Chop Copper
Sweet Peacock
Who Ya Gonna Call?
Candy Corn Cordial
Gold Digger
Scrangie 2.0
Bat My Eyes
I Only Shop Vintage
Glee
Aurora Borealis
Orchid of the Year
Pyrite
Elliot
VT-100
Yuki-Onna
Rikki
Zuza
Remy
Daul
Suri
Enchanted Forest
Wavy Blue
Agro
Quick Jeanius
She's Beyond Kelp!
Slick Black
Mermaid's Tale
Spinning Out Of Control
Nail Junkie
I Love You
Winterberry
Dorothy Who
Carly
Rory
Chloe
The Angels Have The Phone Box
Posh
Teigen
Party By The Pool
Poltergeist Puddle
Vogue
Jordana's Skinny Jeans
Victorian End
Peru-B-Ruby
Fowl Play
Private I
Are You Jelly?
Purple Gleam
Butterflies and Rosebulds
An Affair In Red Square
Pyro Pink
Elle's Spell
Blackberry
Jolly Lolly
Knees Up

TBT: Turn On The Northern Lights

Here is OPI Turn On The Northern Lights, from sometime in late 2017:

I forget how much I love this polish. I really need to go dig it out!

BCA: the not-pink-but-still-sorta-pink contingent

These three polishes are (in case you can't read the picture below!) La Resistencia, Valiente, and Choose Hope. These are the last installment from the Breast Cancer Awareness box. I saved these for last because they don't look particularly pink - but they all have pink in the formula somewhere.

La Resistencia is from Leesha's Lacquer:

(again, descriptions in quotes are from Cosmetics Sanctuary) "a silver holo based solar polish that changes to pinkish lavender in the sun, as well as having pink flakes." I knew that solar polishes existed but I've never had one before. I work evening shifts and I don't really spend a lot of time in the sunlight, but I'll have to make an effort when I wear this!

Valiente is from Colores de Carol:

"a silver linear holographic with pink shimmer and holo flakes" - here you can see the pink in the bottle, in my picture, not so much on the nail. (Added: I did wear this one as part of a skittles mani, that picture is here!)

Choose Hope is from Poetry Cowgirl:

"a pale metallic pink to gold to green multichrome with turquoise metallic micro flakes" - you can definitely see the pink in this when you look for it, but it still reads mostly silvery in the light I'm in right now. It's the darkest of these three (but still not extremely dark, as you can see - I would call it a pewter color).

I have not tried any of these yet, I think partly because I got in pink-pink-pink mode during most of October and then transitioned right into fall colors after that. I think these silvery things will be great holiday polishes, anyway! None of these are brands I had tried before, but they were all brands I knew of and had been interested in trying previously. (Colores de Carol, especially, has been around for some years, I think. But the other two are no newbies, either.)

BCA corals & neons

This is the neon and coral-leaning portion of the Breast Cancer Awareness box. (Actually they are still pretty pink, they just looked slightly more coral next to the other pinks, and I had to divide them up somehow!) (Note that the bottles seem to have gotten out of order between the shot above and the one below.) BFF - Breast Friends Forever - is from Pepperpot, Pink Strong is from Rogue Lacquer, and This Woman's Work is from Necessary Evil.

As previously, polish descriptions are from Cosmetic Sanctuary.

BFF: Breast Friends Forever from Pepperpot Polish:

"a bright raspberry pink scattered holographic, with gold and blue shimmer and rainbow hex glitters" - I have to note I'm not really going to have anything substantial to say about these because I haven't tried any of them yet. But Pepperpot is a brand that always has really cute stuff and I'm looking forward to finally trying one of their polishes!

Pink Strong from Rogue Lacquer:

"a neon Barbie pink with crushed gold flakes added in" - I'm looking forward to wearing this one, particularly. I do have several Rogue polishes and I like them a lot.

This Woman's Work from Necessary Evil:

"a burgundy (cold) to pinkish red (warm) to candy pink (hot) with added shimmer and scattered holographic." Thermals don't usually do much on my short nails but I'll report back when I finally try it!

The Neverending Box: dark pinks

Okay, it's not quite neverending - but this was a really big box. This installment is the dark pinks.

The middle one is noticeably not as dark as the other two, but these are all darker than the other ones we've looked at from this box.

They are There Will Be Time from 6 Harts, Fight Like Hell from 77 Lacquer, and Keep Calm and Fight Cancer from Supernatural Lacquer.

There Will Be Time (from 6 Harts) is the lone creme from this box:

The Cosmetics Sanctuary post that I've been getting my descriptions from just calls this one "a deep purple leaning fuchsia creme" - I haven't tried this one yet other than this swatch, but it looks very pretty.

Fight Like Hell (from 77 Lacquer):

"a medium raspberrry pink crelly base with copper shimmer and crimson shimmer flecks" - I haven't worn this one yet either, although I've picked it up and admired it a couple of times.

And then we have Keep Calm and Fight Cancer (from Supernatural Lacquer):

"a blackened magneta with linear holographic, holo micro flakes and purple to red to gold multichrome shift." I wore this one on my thumbs when I did the pastel skittles on the rest of my fingers. I really liked it.

Still a couple of installments to go - the coral-leaning pinks and the things that don't look very pink at all (although apparently they do have pink in them, I'm told). Will I get them all up while it's still October? It's gonna be a close thing, one way or the other.

The middle ground of BCA polishes

More indies from the Breast Cancer Awareness box - this bunch is the medium pinks - not pastels, which I've already shown, and not coral-leaning and not very dark - those sets are still to come.

So as you can see above, these are Hope from Ethereal Lacquer, Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow from Polish 'M, and Wind Beneath My Wings from Music City.

Hope (Ethereal Lacquer - which is the only one of these three brands I had tried before)

(Again, I'm using Cosmetics Sanctuary's descriptions - which I suspect may have come from the makers of these polishes, since they're quite detailed!) "a dusty rose pink with iridescent chameleon flakes and red to green aurora shimmer" - I haven't worn this one yet, but I intend to because I really like the swatch.

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow (Polish 'M)

"a deep fuchsia with iridescent shifting flakes, gold flakes, red holographic glitter and a very subtle aqua flash" - again, haven't tried it yet but definitely want to. It almost appears to have some texture to it in person. (I almost decided to try this earlier today before settling on the one below.)

Wind Beneath My Wings (Music City Beauty)

"a magenta creme based scattered holographic with blue fantasy flakes mixed in" - I have this on right now, and "magenta" is exactly the word I would have picked. Under the overhead light in my living room, it looks almost red. But I haven't seen it in daylight yet. The holo & flakes are also not terribly apparent right now, but again, sunlight will presumably help with that.

I just looked at the Music City website and all of their polish names seem to be songs. (I just thought that might interest somebody!)

Here is Wind Beneath My Wings on my nails (not the neatest application I've ever done, sorry!)

I like it - but then darker pinks are totally my thing so I figured I would.

BCA-themed skittles

This is the pale-colors contingent out of my Breast Cancer Awareness month box: Great Lakes Lacquer Never, Ever Give Up Hope, Bee's Knees Third Time Is The Charm, Anchor & Heart What A Wonderful World, and Heather's Hues Think Pink.

I actually have three of these on right now as a skittles manicure, along with a darker one and a more silvery one. I like it. (I thought the Anchor & Heart one was too close in color to the Bee's Knees, so I picked out some other things where I thought the difference would show up more. Although actually I think it's different looking enough that it probably would have been fine, really!)

So let's see, the Colores de Carol that I'm holding in this picture is the one polish that's not in the pictures above. It's called Valiente.

Top to bottom, these polishes are Think Pink, Third Time Is the Charm, Never Ever Give Up Hope, and then Valiente on the pinky. And I put a coat of KL Polish Wishbone under all of them - even my thumb, which was much darker. Wishbone is sort of a pale taupe/tan color. Not that close to white at all but light enough to look fine under stuff like these colors. I'll talk about the color I had on my thumb (and also the one on my pinky) later on, but for the record the thumb was Supernatural Lacquer's Keep Calm and Fight Cancer. It's a nice dark magenta-ish color.

I'll keep using the descriptions from that blog post I linked to last time, because I am not good at figuring out everything that's in a polish like some people seem to be able to do! That post was from Cosmetics Sanctuary.

Great Lakes Lacquer Never, Ever Give Up Hope:

"

"a petal pink linear holographic with a strong gold shimmer that shows slight shifts to blue and green" - it's very pale, so much so that with Wishbone under it, particularly, it read as very neutral, almost as a pale rose-gold rather than pink.

Bee's Knees Third Time Is The Charm:

"a baby pink creme base with red to orange to green shifting aurora shimmer" - this one is what I would call a true baby pink, but it has a noticeable shimmer (even if you can't see it in the picture above!).

Anchor & Heart What A Wonderful World

"a bright coral pink crelly with blue to purple aurora shimmer, and various sizes of glitter in pale mint, white, pink, and teal" - this is the one I didn't put in the skittles mani, because it was too similar to Third Time's The Charm, but since it has noticeable glitter in it, it doesn't really look the same at all.

Heather's Hues Think Pink

"a ballet slipper pink based scattered holographic and a strong iridescent shimmer that shifts from blue to pink to gold" - this one is my favorite of this bunch, although again, I like them all. I think I like it because it reads as slightly purple (maybe that's the blue shift that causes that).

Oh, and these were all new brands to me except Great Lakes Lacquer, which I had bought one polish from previously.

BCA polishes I've worn so far

As I said previously, I bought a large box of indie polishes themed for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. These are limited edition, so while it's possible you may be able to find a few of them on individual brand websites, many (maybe most) of them are probably not findable. The thing I love about this box is that there are no cremes - it's all shimmery and flaky and such. (Correction: there may be one creme, but even that one is shiny enough that I swatched it without classifying it as a creme in my mind!)

I decided I would wear these all month during October. There's no way I will get around to wearing all twenty of them but I did wear four in the first half of the month (which are in the same order I wore them in both the picture above and the one below).

So the first one I wore was Quixotic Unbreakable, then Fair Maiden Dancing In The Rain, Turtle Tootsie Save The Woman NOT The Boobies! (ha), and Lollipop Posse Such A Wonderful Thing To Love. I liked all of them but I'd say the Lollipop Posse is my favorite so far. Dancing In the Rain was probably my least favorite but I think it needs something underneath it so I'll have to try that one again later. (I'm guessing many of the pale ones would benefit from undercoat - actually I think all of these except the Quixotic would.)

A lot of these brands in this box are ones I have not owned previously, so I'm happy about getting to try lots of new brands. The only one of these four I had tried before was Lollipop Posse.

Below are wheel swatches (and nail swatches, at the very bottom). I think all of these are two coats on the wheel, and 3 coats on my hands - that's one reason I'm talking about undercoats. Also I just found somebody who had a press sample of this box - Cosmetics Sanctuary (hereafter referred to as "CS." She has much better-quality pictures than mine, and also much more detailed descriptions. (Actually, if you follow the link and look closely, she also had the bigger-size box than mine. Mine had all of the polishes except the Cuticula top-coat, but none of the non-polish items.)

Unbreakable from Quixotic Polish:

This is super-pretty. CS's description was "a vibrant strawberry pink crelly based scattered holo with orange to pink shifting shimmer." It's very shimmery, right up my alley.

Dancing In The Rain from Fair Maiden:

Pale pinks tend to not be super-flattering on me, so that may have been my problem. I really like this, though. CS's description: "a delicate light pink crelly base with ultrachrome chameleon flakes that flash all colors of the rainbow, and fiery aurora shimmer."

Save The Woman Not The Boobies from Turtle Tootsie:

The fact is, I'm a sucker for just about anything with flakies. I'm not usually really big on white polish, but I liked this one a lot. (CS's description: "a white crelly base with pink shimmer, pink flakes and assorted pink micro glitters.")

Such A Wonderful Thing To Love from Lollipop Posse:

Like I said, this one is my favorite so far - but it is really sheer so be ready for that. I used three coats and there was still noticeable nail line. CS's description here: "a rose pink crelly filled with green aurora shimmer and a combination of iridescent flakes that shift in shades of purple, pink, and green."

I do have swatch pictures of all of these now so I'll try to get the rest of the pictures up while it's still October, at least. It'll probably be in several installments.

(Also, I'm at home sick today and I'm ready for a new polish and I'm contemplating a skittles thing, so I can use five different polishes. We'll see how this goes.)


Oh, I almost forgot the on-the-nail pictures. Several of these have been up on Instagram already, but not all.


Such A Wonderful Thing To Love:

Save The Woman Not The Boobies:

Unbreakable:

Dancing In The Rain:

BCA box tease

Here's a preview of what I bought lately:

This wasn't taken in good light, so most of these are much prettier than they appear here, but this is all 20 of the polishes from the 2019 Breast Cancer Awareness box. (There was an even bigger version that included some things that weren't polish, but I just got all the polishes.) So there will be many swatches and nail-of-the-day posts upcoming, assuming I get around to actually taking all those pictures. The first one I wore is already up on Instagram, though (here).

(I mostly wanted to put this picture up to show you what a good job they did at getting 20 entirely different colors into the mix!)

Happy Lipstick Day! (very belatedly)

(This is another one of those things I hadn't gotten around to posting.)

I didn't know there was such a thing as National Lipstick Day, but apparently there is (it was July 29), and Ulta had a sale when it rolled around, which is how I came to buy a whole bunch of lip products. Ulta also had a little bonus package if you spent some certain number of dollars ($25? I'm not sure), which was this:

This is, as you can probably see, an assortment of lip treatments. I've tried most of this and I like it fine, also though trying to get the lip masks to stay on my lips was pretty comedic. (Yes, there is a selfie, but no, you're not going to ever see it. It's really not a pretty sight.)

I only bought one thing that was higher-end, because it was about half-price and that put it more into my price range. This is Urban Decay Lo-Fi lip mousse.

This looks like it would be the kind of color I like, but on the lip it's awfully neutral-looking. I've been wearing it some, though, and I do like the texture of it - I don't think it feels very much like a mousse, though. Note that the thing sticking out on the right side is an applicator, which retracts back into the package when you close it - kind of cool.

All of the lower-end stuff was marked down as well, so I just tried a bunch of different things. Here we have a Nyx Lip Lingerie, and three Maybelline Super Stay products, two of the Matte Ink line and the other one an Ink Crayon.

I'm not worried about showing swatches for these four, because you can see the colors quite clearly from the packaging and it's pretty accurate. Mostly I think the top two are too neutral for my taste. (I was determined to try the Lip Lingerie because I kept seeing people talk about it, but this was the least neutral color they had, and, guess what, it's just not me! I should know better than this by now, since it's what I always end up thinking.) The matte ink in the pinker shade is okay but I inevitably like the red-violet one much better. I actually like the ink crayon most of all - I need to go back and see what other colors they have but I still like the less-purple fuchsia very well. The colors here are Treat Yourself, for the Ink Crayon; on the Matte Ink the more purple one is Creator and the pinker one is Inspirer. (I don't seem to have the Lip Lingerie color name anywhere handy.)

While I'm on the subject of lips, here's the Tarte lipstick that I bought on sale at Sephora.

You can see that I've been using this a good bit - enough to wear down the shape of it, anyway. The color on this one is Sea Goddess.