Monthly Archives: February 2012
Zoya LE NYFW Boxes
Yes. I succumbed. I couldn’t help it. It was the fault of my friend Katie. I didn’t think I needed the new Zoya LE Boxes for New York Fashion Week. She made me think otherwise! LOL When she posted pix of the Peter Som Box and said how much the green was different than any she’d ever seen, I knew I was in trouble. If she hadn’t seen it and didn’t have it in her collection, it was a good bet I hadn’t and didn’t either! I have at least 100 Zoyas. Don’t make me go upstairs in my polish area, pull out the overflowing Helmer and count them all. Suffice it to say they fill an entire drawer and also go into another drawer! Ack! HOW did that happen?!?! Aren’t I the OPI lover?
But not one to leave well enough alone, I figured if I was buying one NYFW LE Box I had to have the other. Like a set of matching book ends, dontcha know?! So I also have the Bibhu Mohapatra Box. Since I was late to the party, I wasn’t able to buy them directly from Zoya. I bought them on eBay from a seller who was charging the same $24 price that Zoya charged, so she was probably an authorized dealer. That’s good because I’m not fond of eBay scalpers or bidder stupidity (lemming mentality). She also gave me discounted shipping and after ordering over the weekend, they arrived Tuesday, even with a postal holiday yesterday. She also included a couple of beauty samples. Idk if there will be any of the LE Boxes left by the time you read this, but she has a nice selection of beauty items in her store you might enjoy. Check her out at THIS LINK.
OK, now here’s the kicker. You’ve seen the names of the bottles in the Peter Som collection haven’t you? Evvie, Audrey, Katherine. Katherine? Is that right? That’s what it says on the Zoya Page doesn’t it? BUT, what does your bottle label say? Mine is Katharine. Katie was quick to contact Zoya for an explanation for this. They sent her a new sticker with the Katherine spelling! Should I or shouldn’t I? 
Did you buy the NYFW LE Boxes? Do you plan on doing it, if you can still find them at a reasonable price? Will you actually use them once you get them? That’s always my biggest problem. Now that I have a true collector’s item, do I dare use it? What will you do?
Win Year of the Dragon Polish in Nail Network Giveaway
I have to say blog followers are awesome. All of you! A couple weeks ago my friend Chelsea from The Nail Network was so close to 600 followers and she was hoping to hit that magic number so she could have a giveaway. Since I knew her prize was TWO of the new color changing polishes from my Year of the Dragon collection, I did a quick little blog asking if we couldn’t reach that number and get the party started. WHOA did y’all ever respond!
The Nail Network is now nearing the 700 mark! And with just days left in her giveaway, I bet the numbers just keep on growing. She is giving away BOTH The Conjuror AND Pendragon to ONE lucky winner! You can see swatches on my shop page.
So get over to her blog now and sign up to win!
CLICK HERE CLICK HERE CLICK HERE
Tagged blog, color changing, conjuror, free, giveaway, glitter, nail network, pendragon, polish, soflajo, swatch, swatches, Year of the dragon
Come to Mama Zoya, OPI, CND
Haha, that title sounds funny. I could tell you that when I get my new nail polishes I just scoop them up in my arms and bury my face in them. Would you believe that? Do you do that? Haha, I have to say, I don’t quite do that, I do that with my 4 Kittehs, not my polishes, regardless of how much I love and enjoy them!
I did get some fun polishes last week from a couple of my bloom.com vouchers that I bought in December from various deal sites. When you come across them I say Jump on em. Hell Yeahs! I bought them for one half the value of the products on bloom and shipping was included. I did end up having to ante up another dollar or two on the orders, but I’m very happy with what I got.
First, here’s a picture of the two bloom boxes. I thought they were so clever!
And now what I got!
Obviously you see that cute little Holland mini collex. I can’t wait to try them. I love the minis and buy them if I don’t plan on buying the whole collex and they’re different from the regular size bottles I’m planning on getting. The two regular Holland collex I got were the purples. Hey, don’t judge me. Everybody has their favorite color! LOL I got Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI? and Vampsterdam. That other OPI is You Don’t Know Jacques. I have all the suedes and had all their mates except this one. NOW my collex is complete! The two CND Sparkes are Jade and Crimson. I already have Sapphire and Amethyst. I’ve been told Copper is amazing, too. Next time! And last but not least I got the Zoya Flecks collection – Chloe, Opal, and Maisie. I had resisted, but getting them for half price can change a girl’s mind pretty quickly. And we are entitled to change our minds, right? And I really like that name Maisie! Then of course there were the samples. I’ve used all of them. NOT FAIR! Now I want to buy some of those products, too!
So how did I do? Is my haul one that you would have chosen, too? Are you out there googling those deal sites looking for bloom vouchers right now? I AM!!!
Tagged amethyst, bloom, chloe, cnd, copper, crimson, dutch ya just love, holland, jade, maisie, nail polish, opal, opi, sapphire, soflajo, vampsterdam, you dont know jacques, zoya
The Traveling Nail Polish Heads Around the Globe
Hey girls, guys, bloggers, non-bloggers! We have a new group on facebook called The Traveling Polish. Our goal is to have 100 people join and snap pictures of their mani (or pedi, why not?) with the polish, include a local postcard, and send it to the next member on the list. This sounds like lots of fun. With so much imagination out there I can only dream of what some of these manis and the backdrops will look like!
So far we have members from warm tropical climates like Florida (beaches, palm trees and pina coladas!) Hometown midwestern places with beautiful flowing fields and cool, crisp lakes. Northern and Western cities, both large and small. Countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. And we’re looking for YOU to put your city, state, country on the map till we hit our majical 100 mark! There is still time left, but with more and more members blogging about it, and at more than half our member goal, those remaining spots will fill up fast! The start date of this journey is March 1st. So hop on board TODAY!
CLICK HERE — CLICK HERE — CLICK HERE
Foie Gras to Mardi Gras, It’s All Debauchery
I love Fat Tuesday. If you’ve ever been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras or the Islands for Carnivale, you’ll understand. The costumes. The colors. The floats. The beads. The parades. The people. The parties. It’s really fun. It’s really colorful. It’s really crazy. Of course the meaning behind it is all religious, but be in one of the famous carnival cities leading up to and during the celebrations, and you won’t care what the reason behind all the raunchiness is, you’ll just know you want to go back again and again!
So in honor of Mardi Gras, I’ve got a cute little mani I did last night. I admit. I did steal the idea. But I put my own spin on it. I talked with Danielle, because as great as her idea looked, I was worried about the goopiness factor of the glitter. She said that yes indeed it was a little thick. She wasn’t kidding! So I’m including her picture on the left and mine on the right and explaining the differences. For those that know me they KNOW my FAVE colors are purple and green so of course Mardi Gras colors are my favorite colors.
Danielle used Milani Gold Lame as her base coat and topped it with the Color Club Scent-sous Sugar Plum Yum that came out around Christmas. I told her how much I liked these polishes together. She said that irl the gold polish crinkled up under the CC glitter. Gasp! But it still looks really good to me! Idk if she used base coats or top coats.
For my mani I used a base coat of Zoya Anchor. My color base coat is one coat of Sinful Colors This Is It. After drying I put on a coat of SC Frenzy. After drying I applied a coat of SC Call You Later. After letting that all dry I coated with one application of CC Sugar Plum Yum. I tried carefully using the glitter so I could get it over the entire nail and not in little clumps. That was a bit of a challenge. Some places are definitely more dense than others. My final coat is Zoya Armor. I ended up putting two coats of that on. I didn’t use Gelous in between because I didn’t feel these glitters were too bad and didn’t require that extra coat of glitter tamer. I like the little bits of small glitter showing through the big pieces of glitter. What do you think about the two looks of this very similar mani?
Since I had a training class today I wanted to enjoy some fun with them for Mardi Gras. So I took a bunch of beads that I bought at Dollar Tree and before we started I threw them out to the group. It was a lot of fun since we spent the first half hour dancing for our cardio and everyone was laughing and happy about getting their beads. I always hand out a small token for each holiday. Last week for Valentine’s Day they got cute little hearts with mazes in them and a little bb that you had to move through the maze. Since most of them are in the group to watch their weight, I don’t usually hand out candy and they really appreciate that I don’t sabotage what they are there for! See the beads on the floor? And maybe you can see some of them still have them on while doing crunches before class ended. I like my fitness classes and training groups to have fun with their workouts. It makes it that much easier to keep up their goals of exercising and getting/staying healthy!
We finished up tonight in a very un-Mardi Gras type restaurant and went to one of our favorite Chinese places. Mom and I were probably a sight with our Mardi Gras beads and colors! I hope you had fun today (and tonight), too. So what did you do to celebrate this last day before Lent, and do you practice this religious tradition?
Tagged anchor, armor, beads, call you later, carnival, carnivale, chinese, color club, crunches, dollar tree, exercise, fat tuesday, frenzy, gelous, mardi gras, scent-sous, sinful colors, soflajo, sugar plum yum, this is it, valentine day, workout, zoya
Help Chelsea Reach 600 for Fabulous Giveaway!
Hey All!
My friend Chelsea wanted to have a giveaway at her 600 follower milestone. At the time of this post she has 5 more to go! Last week she asked for TWO of my Year of the Dragon polishes to include as one of her prizes. Of course I said yes! She has been so good to me with obtaining my Valentine gift for Joe (see my earlier post of the infamous China Glaze Wizard of Ooh and Ahz collection). And she also reviewed my polish when I first released it. Her nails are so stunning, I actually had to read through the post to believe it was really my polish! HAHAHA
So let’s get The Nail Network up to 600 as soon as possible!!!
CLICK HERE – CLICK HERE – CLICK HERE!
Tagged china glaze, giveaway, nail network, polish, soflajo, valentine, Year of the dragon
$40 Bloom.com voucher for $16!
ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!
WOW – Yep you read that right! Do you currently have an account with giltcity? If not, click here to sign up for your account and savings! The voucher is for $40 worth of merchandise at Bloom.com (OR you can use it on another item on their site), and is normally $20, but with this offer you get a 20% immediate discount off that, so you get the deal for $16! Again – WOW!
Baby Baby One More Time … Last Valentine Post
So I’ve showed you all the fun and fabulous gifts that Valentine’s Day 2012 brought my way. Here’s my last one. It will be a quickie. It’s all about my Baby and Me! I LOVE plants with a passion and I’ve turned our patio into a serene oasis where we relax together at night. One of the plants I love are Orchids, and Joe gifts me with a new plant on many special occasions, like Valentine’s Day. This year was no exception and he gave me a beauty to add to my Orchid, Bromeliad, Fern garden. This one also has a couple of other tiny plants that I haven’t looked up yet, so I don’t know if they are a type of orchid, too, or not. Here’s a pic I took when it arrived on Monday, my day off work.
NOW, what do you think I got him? He’s a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan. He knows all the lines to the movie. We watch it every time it’s on (well HE watches it, I usually do other stuff and just peak at it periodically, it’s HIS favorite movie, not mine, haha). I had no idea what to get him. I get him Wizard gifts usually for his birthday. The girls in my groups can tell you the quest I was on last fall. So when I saw one of the girls post ORIGINAL bottles of China Glaze Wizard of Ooh and Ahz bottles up for swap, I thought THAT’S IT! I immediately contacted her and we worked out a pretty sweet deal and I was able to acquire these two bottles for his collection. The only stipulation he told me was – I am NOT going to wear them! I have a man who doesn’t wear polish! But a mani wouldn’t hurt him once in awhile! LOL
So we both feel these are the most eclectic items he has in his Wizard of Oz collection. Would you agree with that?
Tagged ahz, bromeliad, china glaze, collection, fern, garden, ooh, orchid, original, valentine, wizard of oz
Secret Valentine Haul
Most of you reading this blog are in at least one of the nail polish or makeup groups that I’m in on the internet or Facebook. A lot of the groups do a secret pal type swap for different holidays. I’ve done Secret Pumpkin, Santa, and just recently Valentine. It’s a lot of fun to plan your gift and also to receive your gift. In one of the groups I’m in I was lucky enough to actually receive the same person to gift both Santa and Valentine gifts to. She’s a sweetheart who lives up in Mooseland, as we all jokingly refer to her Canadian home. Since I’m down here in warm sunny South Florida it is pretty fitting that she should be my secret pal!
On to the fun! Her nickname is Red and I just couldn’t resist the temptation of red for Valentine’s Day. On her card I wrote – I couldn’t remember if they told me to buy all the red polish or all the polish for Red. So I did BOTH! And here’s the box full of red I sent to her (and also included a pink organza bag of rawhide chewy bones for her pooch)! And I gifted her with my reddest polish from SoFlaJo’s Year of the Dragon – Dragon Heart! Yikes, there was one slight casualty, you can see the back bottle on the right with the red top. The lid was not on tight and a little polish leaked out, but she told me it wasn’t much and the bubble wrap contained it all. Whew!
Now on to the Secret Valentine package I received from my group! I was in awe when I opened it. Not only was it full of yummy milk chocolate, which IS my FAVORITE chocolate and/or candy ever, but I also got a lovely blue Sally Hansen HD polish, Spectrum. Purple and blue are two of my favorite colors! My SV knew exactly what she was doing with that one! BUT, she blew me away with a polish I’d never seen before – NOX Twilight Disco Darling. What a gorgeous silver holo glitter! OMG, WHAT do you think I had to do? Hell yeah! Hit the google button looking up that polish line. Big mistake. Now I need them ALLLLLL!!! Ayeyiyi But of course she wasn’t done YET. The pièce de résistance of this gift included TWO MORE amazing items! A Specialty Valentine Card she had made for me by Sarah Trumbauer Creatives. With an OPI bottle on the front of the card, this gift really touched my heart. I got into nail polish collecting with my attraction to OPI and I’ve never lost that love of my favorite brand! AND the gift that actually brought tears to my eyes when I saw it – a DRAGON phone case for my iPhone! All these gifts touched me so much that someone actually paid attention to my posts and comments in my groups to be able to send me, someone she’s never met in person, everything that I would LOVE!
I hope your Valentine’s Day was as fun as mine was. BECAUSE I’m still NOT done!!! ONE MORE Valentine post. Then I’m going to bed! LOL
Tagged blue, canada, disco darling, dragon, dragon heart, etsy, glitter, hd, holo, holographic, iphone, milk chocolate, mooseland, nail polish, nox, opi, pumpkin, red, sally hansen, santa, sara trumbauer, secret, silver, silver glitter, soflajo, south florida, spectrum, twilight, valentine, Year of the dragon
A Second Day Late Valentine’s Day Post!
I did a really weird mani for Valentine’s Day. I was hoping it would turn out as I envisioned, but at least it turned out! I wanted to have a really light polish with a GITD design over it that wouldn’t be obviously visible. So I used Essie (which anybody that knows me knows is a brand I hardly ever use and have very few of) Shift Power. It’s a gold barely there polish that I was able to get away with using only 1 coat of! (After applying my favorite base – Zoya Anchor.) Then I used Kiss peel off stencils and the pink Expressions GITD polish I’d picked up last year at Dollar Tree. I painted on hearts and flowers. I topped it with a coat of Dragon Heart from my own Year of the Dragon polish line to keep the GITD from being visible. I wore it for two days. It was fun. I will keep experimenting because I’m sure it could look really nice if I wasn’t in a big hurry. So take a look!
Tagged anchor, base coat, dollar tree, dragon heart, essie, expressions, gitd, glow in the dark, gold, kiss, mani, nail polish, pink, shift power, soflajo, stencil, valentine, Year of the dragon, zoya
