NOPI Purple Yourself Together & Piggy Polish Finger Festival

I love these Marshall's/TJ Maxx finds! This is two coats of Nicole by OPI Purple Yourself Together. It's an interesting color, kind of in-between purple and mauve with a strong gold/copper shimmer.
I tried stamping over it, but ehhh... that's didn't turn out the way I thought it would so we won't talk about that. lol

On a few nails, I used a layer of Piggy Polish Finger Festival. It's such a nice dense holo topper! You can still see the base color, but it's just so pretty in the light.

China Glaze Be More Pacific & my first foray into stamping!

WELL! Stamping is NOT as easy as it would appear to be! lol
Between finding colors that work well together, picking polishes that stamp well, and transferring the image to the nail... yeah, there's definitely a learning curve here.
I used a couple coats of China Glaze Be More Pacific (that name makes me happy for some silly reason) then stamped this neato pattern from my first set of plates, BundleMonster 2014 Sun-Kissed Collection.
I thought it would look better matte so I used Sally Hansen Big Matte Top Coat, but even though I gave it lots of time to dry, it never did and all the under layers of polish got mushy so I took it off.
I'm still yet to wear a fully stamped mani outside the house... been doing lots of playing/swatching around at home... but when my skill level gets up there a bit, I'll be excited to rock the images from these plates, they're really nice.

Orly Masked Ceremony & Sally Hansen Pearly Whites

This look is a couple layers of Orly Masked Ceremony topped with Sally Hansen irridescent shard topper, Pearly Whites. Many times I want to like shard-y glitter, but I have a hard time with liking the look. This, though, is pretty cool!

I think it's because the shards blend in with Masked Ceremony, just leaving little confetti bursts of color. I got good coverage with Pearly Whites, I think that helps too... more sparkly shards = me liking it more!

I like Masked Ceremony on its own, but it kinda swallows its own glitters (white squares and fuchsia teenies) so another polish giving it that umph helps it along.

OPI Don't Talk Bach to Me & Orly Lavish Bash

This is one of those polishes that tooks me a while to come around to. I saw a couple bottles on clearance at Ulta for $.50 each... but ehhh, I wasn't loving them in the bottle, even though lime-y acid greens are totally my thing.
WELL.
I got home and started looking up bloggers' swatches and really, really liked it- especially for $.50!
I ran back to Ulta the next day and grabbed both bottles... no regrets!
This is two coats of Don't Talk Bach to Me then a layer of one of my all-time favorite glitter toppers, Orly Lavish Bash. It added just the right golden sparkle to Bach, without covering up the unique green color.
I think I'll need to wear Bach again soon... it'd look great with some spiders for Halloween!

OPI Blue Chips

This is officially my 100th post! So, yeah, that's kinda cool. : )

For a special post, I'll feature a special polish... this is OPI Blue Chips- an OPI Mystery Polish!

Until recently, I didn't know TJ Maxx and Marshall's sold polish, much less nice brands like OPI and Orly. I went to both stores and found lots of two packs of OPI polishes with unique names. Some of the polishes looked familiar though...
I found this lovely post on imabeautygeek.com and aha! Mystery solved!


I picked up several sets, this "Blue Chips" was part of one of them. Turns out it's really The Flowers are Blue-Ming from the 2012 Ulta collection. I'm not really a bright blue polish kind of gal, but the scattered holographic bits sold me... it's so pretty, especially in the bottle. This is two coats; it does dry kind of gritty and the holo bits don't show up inside very well. I meant to put a layer of Fairy Dust or Shine on Crazy Diamond over top, but I forgot. Next time!

Orly Pebble & Sally Hansen Debut-Tint

This is Orly Pebble, I picked it up as part of a two-pack at Marshall's. Love this color! Totally worth the $3!

It's interesting how different the two photos turned out... the color is more like the top photo.
I used two coats of Pebble, but not every nail really needed two coats. A while ago, I read on a blogger's site how much she loved Sally Hansen Debut-Tint and I'm so glad I took her advice and picked up a couple bottles of it on clearance at Ulta- it's awesome!
Debut-Tint doesn't just add gold shimmer, there's also copper and green in there, though the pictures don't do it any justice.
I'm holding a bottle of ShinfulShine Prosecco, someone was asking if there are any dupes for Prosecco out there and I think this layering combo is a decent recreation if you can't get your hands on the hard to find Prosecco. I had to trade for mine, local Walgreen's seem to be slimming down their SinfulShine offerings lately, but thankfully some of the core colors can be found at WalMart.

And yes, I have nubbins again. Le sigh. My right pinky got caught in my dog's collar and snapped right off, all the way down. It would take too long for it to catch up to the others so off they all came. : (

YAY for good deals!

Last Tuesday morning, I went out hunting for good polish deals and happily, I found some!

I picked up the last bottle of Color Club The Uptown whose formula has recently been reformulated so now I have a backup. Ulta's clearance section has supplied most of my collection, this trip I found a lovely maroon shimmer by SpaRitual with the prettiest name- Days of Wine and Roses. It reminds me of the book I'm reading, 'The Passage' by Justin Cronin. So yes, I did get this half for the name. : D

Five Below had the Halloween glow-in-the-dark polishes, but I didn't pick any of them up. I may go back for the orange Pumpkin King, but this time I picked up several backup bottles and the rest of the neon rave collection and Varsity Blue.

It was the first time I looked for polish in Marshall's and they had a great selection! It was hard to limit what I brought home, but a two-pack of Orlys and a couple of the OPI Duos with mystery names needed to come with me, also a pretty blue Mariah Carey glitter.

And finally, the main reason I went out, I grabbed a couple Essie nail strips from Dollar Tree! I found the two styles that I wanted, I'm happy about that. I've never worn nail strips/stickers/etc so we'll see how that goes some time in the near future...