This order was prompted mainly by ONE nail polish: China Glaze Choo-Choo Choose You, from the Fall 2014 All Aboard collection. I was browsing some nail polish blogs looking at older nail polish collections and came across it. I mainly wanted it for the colour but… a part of me wanted it for the name:
(I may own the Lego minifigure of Ralph, holding this very card!)
So I had to order it, and a few other items came along for the ride:
I was giddy with excitement as I revisited the H&M Beauty department – this time with the intention to BUY! 😀 My first visit was shortly after the launch and I was filled with longing for all the loveliness, but left me empty-handed AND empty-hearted… but now I am FULL… of makeup!
I had mentioned last year that one of the brands I wanted to try was H&M Beauty, and now I’ve fulfilled a lifelong wish (too dramatic? 😉 )
This online order was actually my first official makeup purchase of 2016! Since most stores were closed on New Year’s Day I decided to place an online order to commemorate the occasion. However, with our Canadian dollar being so crappy, I was somewhat selective in what I was willing to pay. So I decided to place an order from a Canadian discount makeup site: SaleEvent.ca They sell mostly drugstore brands like Revlon, CoverGirl, Maybelline and some higher end brands like OPI and RoC – all at discounted prices, and many of the items are discontinued colours. Back in October, fivezero made a purchase from the site and I went to bookmark the site for future reference, only to discover that I already had it bookmarked – duh! 😛 I’ve never ordered from them before until now:
I ordered it on January 1st and it arrived on January 5th – pretty impressive turnaround time. And that Revlon nail file was a freebie they included.
I caught wind of this deal through fivezero, who regularly features nail polish deals on her blog. For the past year I have not been able to partake in the sales but not anymore! This Zoya nail polish deal was too good to pass up – it’s for 4 free nail polishes, and the only cost is for shipping!
I just placed an order for the following:
Pasha – soft, pale, taupe-kissed beige nude with silver frost and the barest hint of silver microglitter. (swatch image from here)
I visited RINSE Beauty Bar this past Wednesday for a Paradise Manicure, which was the prize I won from Cat of MyLipstickAddition! 😀 I took the day off to meet up with a friend for lunch and decided to get some pampering too.
It was quiet and relaxing since it was just Julie (the lovely and friendly nail technician) and myself at the salon during my visit. As Cat mentioned on her post about her experience at RINSE, this salon features natural beauty products – even all of their nail polishes are 5-free, cruelty free and vegan. I really appreciate the fact that everything they used not only looked good, it was good for me as well. 🙂
This polish should really be renamed to “Bait and Switch” because it’s some shady business going on here! Firstly, I spied this polish in a random dusty Guardian Pharmacy on the bottom shelve behind some Revlon polishes. It was covered with a fine layer of dust but I was quite pleased with myself for finding a Milani nail polish since Milani isn’t readily available here. I think the lady at the cash was surprised someone wanted to buy this polish – it’s likely sat on the shelves for 4 years since the Neon collection were released in 2010 (I bought this polish last year). There were a few Neon shades in the display but the vibrant purple colour called “Rad Purple” drew me in:
The important thing to note about this polish bottle is that it is opaque, which I didn’t even notice until I got home and opened the bottle. Now for the bait and swatch…
I decided to feature this OPI polish from the 2012 Skyfall collection since the newest Jame Bond film, Spectre, is due to open in North America tomorrow. Even though this polish is from the Skyfall collection, the name is actually from the 1999 film which featured Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau and Denise Richards:
Ugh, give me Daniel Craig any day!
OPI The World Is Not Enough is a gorgeous taupey pewter shimmery polish:
I picked it up from a dusty salon supply store that was shutting down last year, so I got it for only $5!
This post is dedicated to fivezero. I had lodged a complaint on her blog a few weeks ago because I felt she had been featuring too many orange nail polishes on her blog lately. I mentioned that I only owned 2 orange nail polishes whereas she had 20 minimum. Well, it turns out I actually own 3 orange nail polishes, and in the spirit of Halloween, I will showcase them here:
L to R:
• Essie Braziliant
• L’Oreal Nail Color Orange You Jealous
• Essence #46 Wake Up! (this was the one I didn’t realize I had)
I’m testing out something different for this post – a black background! I’m not sure how I feel about it – I think it makes colours look wonky. I mainly did it for the Halloween-y theme of orange and black. 😛
Today’s post is dedicated to Julija of Infinitely Awkward, and pays homage to fivezero’s megaposts. In one of the comments, Julija asked me how many Illamasqua polishes I owned – I did a quick count from my inventory spreadsheet, and the answer was: 47. 😮 (Correction, the number of unique shades is actually 44, I purchased back-ups of certain shades which I will indicate with an asterisks) Arguably, Illamasqua are one of my all time favourites in terms of formula and colour selection. Up until last year, I had easy access to the brand but unfortunately, Illamasqua decided to exit from the North American market. Many of the ones I own were purchased during the clearance sales. Here is my Illamasqua collection, grouped by colour:
I also recently purchased these nail swatching spoons – I’ve been looking for ones with short handles (on the right) rather than the long ones that are meant for display purposes (left):
I’m pleased with these shorter ones, now I can see swatches of all my polishes easily and store them on a ring. I’ll probably do series of nail polish megaposts with other brands in my stash. Here we go – every single shade of Illamasqua nail polish I own swatched. These are listed alphabetically and shown with 2 coats (no base / top coat) – shade descriptions are from Illamasqua’s site where possible.
This post was prompted by a review of the Doves and Roses’ review of Essie Spun in Lux in which she talked about how quickly the polish chipped. I had purchased 3 polishes from the Cashmere Matte collection from my birthday haul but I had yet to try them. After reading Anne’s review, I was a bit apprehensive about the formula. The Cashmere Matte collection came out earlier this year with 6 shades ranging from ivory all the way to a deep blackened navy – I bought the mid-range shades (as I’m wont to do!):
I’m not a fan of matte finish polishes but I bought these with the intent to apply a topcoat over them to bring out the neat blue shimmer.
stash matters 