My Bloom.Com Order

I was SO excited to get my Bloom.Com order.  It arrived Wednesday, just about a week after placing my order.  The shipping was free which is always exciting.  I paid $13 for my Plum District coupon/gift card and my total came out to $40.50 - with the gift card being worth $40, that means I only paid $13.50 for all of this stuff. I love that! Guilt free shopping has got to be one of the best natural highs, ever!

I must say I am quite impressed with Bloom's packaging. It arrived in a bold black box and had lots of hot pink tissue paper, along with bubble wrap and the larger packaged air.  The polishes had come unraveled from the bubble wrap, but all of the additional packaging kept them safe.

How cute is that?

The invoice included a nice handwritten note from my new beauty BFF, Jenna! Such a nice sentiment that they take the time to do that.

The 3 free samples I was able to choose came with a high gloss card in a cute little bag.  The back of the card suggests reviewing the sample products online for my fellow beauty fiends. (In nicer words, of course.)

 My first Zoyas!  I've always heard such great things about this brand and was so excited to be able to try them at such a great price.  I choose Neeka, Maya and Mira.  I also got POP Beauty Jade Metal and thought I've give CND Stickey Base Coat a try. All of that for $13.50!

Realistically, I probably won't order from Bloom.Com again unless there is another exceptional offer such as the Plum District one.  If I'm looking for something that I can't find elsewhere, I would definitely consider them as their shipping is free and I hate paying for shipping.  Their package felt so personal and warm; it was a delight shopping with them!

Halloween Shatter

Black Shatter is such a harsh looking finish; I really think it only works for Halloween.  I like my pink shatter, the rest I could do without.  I wanted to create a Halloween color scheme for this mani so I used Orly Green Apple and Orly Life's A Peach with OPI Black Shatter.  Topped with a coat of OTD TC, and this was a simple and quick manicure!

I used 3 coats of both Orlys to obtain opacity.

The green and black look inherently Frankenstein-y.  I removed this after about 12 hours of wear; I have a hard time loving the Black Shatter, really. Blarghork.

Halloween Dotticure

Some of my favorite holiday inspired manicures have more to do with color themes than more literal designs.  I love colors and I love playing with colors, so I decided to make somewhat of a Halloween dotticure for the occasion.

It's not deliberate in your face Halloween, but I think the colors give a nice nod to the holiday!  I started out with two coats of Revlon Royal Cloak. Such a pretty color, I really do think it could place in my Top 20.

Two coats of Royal Cloak, OTD TC.

I wore RC for a day before I added the dots, so there is a bit of tipwear.

For the white pattern, I used BM209 with Konad Special White.  After it dried, I used 3 additional colors and covered up some of the white dots.  I used Orly Green Apple, Orly Liquid Vinyl and OPI A Good Man-darin is Hard to Find for the dots.  Then I added another coat of OTD TC. I love my dotting tools. So much.

AveYou Haul + Essie + Magnetic Nail Polish

First we'll start with my aveyou haul!  Their warehouse (?) is about an hour from where I live, so I got it the next day! THAT WAS EXCITING. I used my kgb gift certificate code thing and after all the math is done, I spent around $40 on $80 worth of stuff! WHOOO!  Aveyou.com still has a code you can use, "GiveMe15", without the quotes, and you'll get $15 off a purchase of $75 or more.  The code is good until January 2012.

On to my pretties!

Warm & Fozzie - Excuse Moi - Ski Teal We Drop - Teenage Dream

Da Bush - School of Hard Rocks - Changing Lilac - Turquoise Wave

I have two from that haul to show you now.  The first is Essie School of Hard Rocks.

3 Coats. Easy!

Then I got bored and decided to put Turquoise Wave over it.  This was my first time using the magnetic polish so it's not perfect, but I like how it came out!

It's so cool in real life! Ohmigod it looks 3D.  When you move your nails back and forth and stuff, it looks like you're looking at something with those dorky glasses. Love it! Easy application, easy to figure out, my pinky was the first shot - can't you tell?  I love how it looks.  These were $15.50 each so I will not be buying anymore, probably ever. But I'm glad I got two pretties to play around with now.

What do you think of the magnetic nail polish trend?

Revlon Facets of Fucshia and a FAIL

This manicure started of so unsuspecting!  It was pretty and had depth, it was fun to look at. Sometimes my creative juices get flowing in the wrong direction.  I have a wonderfully fabulous "WTFAIL" manicure for you a little further down.

Three Coats of FoF

I'm pretty sure it's three coats, at least!  If it's not three, its two.  I cant remember as I did it about a week ago.  I need to take notes when doing them, because I never remember )=

Lovely!

It's a much less obvious Halloween polish.  Black and purple certainly can create an eerie feel.  I didn't like this one and had passed on it a ton.  Finally I saw it and just couldn't resist.  I've seen hundreds of wonderful swatches and I caved. They're all enablers. YOU HEAR THAT? YOU'RE AN ENABLER.

It only cost me $3.59 at Harmon so, I didn't pay full drugstore price (around $6) for it. Application was surprisingly easy.  Love this one, definitely recommend.  This one is from the same collection as Starry Pink.  They're both in the Expressionist Collection.  There is one more I need to wear, Blue Mosaic. Oh its gorgeous, too.

ANYWAYS.. ONTO THE ANOMALY.

What's that kitty? You sense fail? OH NOOOOO.

Let me start by explaining what I wanted to do, what my vision was.  I wanted to make a jelly sandwich sorta. I wanted FoF to be on the bottom, and then use a different jelly over top. But I wanted to sanwich some konading in between the layers. Well, it didn't work so well. And it didn't look so hot. But here it is:

Started off by stamping.

Then I put 2 coats of a blue franken jelly. And one coat of
a GitD Pumpkin glitter polish. It got ugly fast, didn't it?

Blarghork.

Happy Halloween time!

Scrapbook Punch Out Thingy Tape Manicure

Hey gurlfran! I've been so sick this week.  I thought I'd kind of "walk it off" but I really didn't.  I waited too long to go to the doctor which prolonged my misery.  I went on Friday, finally, got some medication and I'm getting much better now, yay!  I literally did NOTHING this week. Seven straight days of pure crap.  Anyways, when I wasn't curled up sleeping, I had some energy to play with my nail polish. I revisited an old idea.

Sometime early this year, I used a scrapbooking punchout thingy with scotch tape, tutorial seen here.  This time I used different colors;

I started out with two coats of Ulta Tutu Cute.  Perfect formula and application, really.  I couldn't have asked for a better application.

IT'S SO PRETTY RIGHT? I love purple (=

I used China Glaze Four Leaf Clover for the green and blue painter's tape.  It's much easier to work with than scotch tape as it doesn't peel and shred as easily when removing it from the punchout thing.

Sealed with a coat of Out the Door TC and done! Groovy, baby!