I did some shopping at TransDesign.com the other day and here's what I picked up
They had a really wide selection of polishes from a lot of different brands.
I snagged the On The Edge 5 piece collection from Barielle. These are a new brand to my collection.
Do Unto Others
Gotta Have Fate
Buddha-ful
Sweet Addiction
Lemon Drops
Lemon Drops- a bright yellow creme
Sweet Addiction- a turqoise/green cream
Buddha-ful-a light blush creme with green flakie glitter. This was easily my favorite of the set.
Gotta Have Fate- a very neon orange creme. Think construction cone.
Do Unto Others- this is a slightly lighter green than the Sweet Addiction, but not very much of a difference. Shame on Barielle and any other polish company that puts together a set with two of the same colors. I've noticed China Glaze does this a lot and I think it's really annoying. As if there aren't enough colors in the spectrum that you couldn't think of a 5th color to throw in the set. Bah!!!
All of these, except the China Glaze are new brands to my collection. The first two were very inexpensive. Only a dollar and some change. So I wanted to see what they were like in person. I love inexpensive polish. Guilt free baby!!!
Sation Bumpin Beige
New York Summer Golden Orange Glitter
China Glaze Ray-diant
Misa Krystal Water
Misa Summer Love
The lid on my ChG was a hot mess!!! Chipped all over. I know I'm picky, but this kind of stuff bothers me.
Bumpin Beige- a tan creme polish
Golden Orange Glitter- a medium-density small orange glitter polish
Ray-diant- one of the new Prismatics. This is a slightly green tinted, highly-dense foil glitter, with scattered rainbow glitter throughout. I love this!!!
Krystal Waters- this is a lovely metallic/glittery aqua blue. The name is very fitting.
Summer Love- this is one of my favorite polish hues: fuschia. This is a metallic/glittery fuschia pink polish
And lastly I got some new CND's. I really like this brand. It's a good quality long lasting polish and I love that they do pairs in boxes like The Plum Truffle Collection you see here. This is my third boxed set from them. I am a sucker for them. I also picked up a standard black and white polish because I am ready for new ones in my collection
Plum Truffle
Plum Truffle Sparkle
Oilslick
Washed Down White
Plum Truffle- a vibrant plum purple creme. The picture does this polish no justice. It's SO RICH!
Plum Truffle Sparkle- a medium-density, fine, pink glitter polish
Oilslick- a bluish-black creme. I wanted black, but out of the bottle, this polish has a slightly blue tone to it. Not a big deal, but I was expecting the blackest of black.
Washed Down White- a slightly off white creme polish.
I also got a new nail towel. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a sloppy polisher. So I always use a towel, with a disposable cloth matt on top of it.
It will replace the funky dishtowel seen here. :)
Here's some other odds and ends a picked up.
I have been wanting to try water decals for a while. I hypothesize that they will work better on natural nails than decals I've used because they are really flat and lay more flush with the nail. I also got my first roll of striping tape so I can attempt some new tape manis. I got the gold tape.
I got a double tipped nail art pen. It has a striper and a drawing pen built into one. The pen below is a tool for nail art. It has a needle sharp point for drawing. Until now I've used my finest dotting tool for drawing. So I'm curious to see how this will work instead.
Upon further inspection, this is just a mechanical pencil with a needle in it instead of lead. So this could easily be duplicated at home.
I picked up this nifty bottle holder to try. Nothing too special here. I thought it would be more heavy duty than it is. It's really just a piece of lightweight rubber. They say it holds all bottles, but apparently the maker has never seen Julep polishes.
I have been looking for something to replace my color wheels for my visual polish index. So far nothing was cheap enough or what I felt was more useful. I like these. Now I can group my polishes together on color wheels by brand or color or whatever I please. Also, I can remove chips when I'm photographing them, no cropping necessary.
My one issue with these, is I don't feel these are accurate portrayals of how opaque the colors are: not that the color wheels are either, but they are slightly better. Regardless, I do like these and I will be switching my swatches to these. I like using a visual index because it makes looking for colors easy. I don't have to rifle through my Helmer in search of a particular hue. It also makes it nice when you're doing other peoples' nails because they can easily pick what polishes they want to use.
I know, I know...pretty awful. But I think I got a lot!! And if you look at individual prices, they are REALLY GOOD! So I may have won the battle for lower prices, but I did not win the war.
