My Nail Polish Swatch Book

Yeah, sounds weird right? And at first, when I was creating it, I thought to myself, this is either the stupidest or best idea I've ever had. You tell me. LOL!!!

My friends all seem to like it. It was certainly easier that fiddling around with 400 swatch spoons to pick a color. All my polishes are in drawers and I don't like people messing with them (<-contol freak much??).

Anyway, I swatched my whole stash to spoons but I still wasn't satisfied. I felt like people would just pick the first polish they saw and not really put much time into looking through the spoons. I mean, when I started glue-ing down the spoons, I realized I don't notice most of my collection either. The spoons just aren't practical. They're better than nothing, and maybe this isn't perfect either, but this is about ten steps up from rifling through spoons. So I'm happy with it.

It's not quite finished yet. I have all my close to 400 spoons glued in. I would like  add a cute polish picture to the front cover to fill the frame and maybe add some tabs with the brand names.This scrapbook was $3 at the local craft store.

I only filled about 6 pages total, so there's plenty of room to grown and I divided the spoons by brands, leaving room for me to add more spoons at a later point, when I buy more of that particular brand. 

I also considered doing this on a large piece of poster-board, but ultimately just went with a book. 

Here are a couple of pitfalls I overcame while completing this project: 

1. I wrote on the spoons with black marker. So when I went to glue the spoons down onto the black pages, I couldn't even read the words. So I quickly scrapped that idea and used white scrapbook paper between the spoons and the pages. 

2. I started using plain old Elmer's craft glue for gluing down the spoons. I tried it on a page and let it dry over night. Well, when they dried, I picked them up and the spoons just started falling off. So you need something a little stronger. I switched to a glue specially made for gluing rhinestones. It's sold at any craft store. It's good and strong and holds well, even when you shake and bend the pages. 

3. Don't glue the spoons too close together. Otherwise, when you bend the page, there is no "give" and the spoons will push each other off. If you look closely at the photos, you can see that I left a very small gap in between the spoons. This is a necessary step!!! 

So what do you think of my Nail Polish Swatch Book??? Can you see the value in organizing your swatch spoons this way? What method are you currently using? 

Updated Stash Shots and Spreadsheet

I finally updated my STASH LIST and stash pictures on MY STASH PAGE

I am up to 313 bottles of polish. To everyday people who see my collection, this is a ton. Compared to most of my polish friends...this ain't shit. :) 

It sure does feel like a lot to me. Like I said yesterday, I made an agreement with myself that I would not outgrow this Helmer. I'm not on a No-buy, I'm on a Selective-buy. 

Here are pics of my lovely red Helmer from IKEA and the contents.

How many bottles are you up to?? 

What's the number that would categorize one as an addict? :P

It makes me wanna wag my tail: NAIL MAIL!!!!!!! Cult Nails, Ebay, Swaps, Stash Shots and a Negative MyGlam Review

WOW!!! All this mail on one day?!?! I felt like it was my birthday.

Remember the cracked bottle of Cult Nails Captivated I showed you guys last week? Well I emailed them and Maria said she'd ship me out a new bottle. Upon opening the package I was surprised and delighted to find that Maria sent a bottle of the Limited Edition Seduction instead of a replacement of my Captivated. SCORE!!!! I have a friend shipping me a new lid for the cracked bottle which is still completely use-able with a new lid. No complaints from me on the mix up. 

Here's a couple items I can cross of my WISHLIST. They were sent to me by my friend Cherie from Enchanting Cosmetics. 

OPI Did It On 'Em 

OPI Super Bass Shatter

From the OPI Nikki Minaj Line 2011

I received MyGlam Bag last week. The reason you didn't see the contents posted on my blog, is because half of them were missing. Yep...they gave me a half empty bag with items listed on the card that weren't there. So I mailed them and they said they would send replacement items in 1-2 weeks. Lame. That does nothing to make up for their mistake. Personally, I think they should have mailed the missing items and refunded my $10 for the month. OR they could have mailed out a whole new replacement bag. Just saying. 

Here are some nail polish wipes I ordered off eBay. They were less than $5. They are WAY TOO SMALL. I'll stick to cut up felt. I used these to remove regular ol' polish today. No glitter or art. It took me like ten of them. 

NOW, Last but not least, check out this swap from my friend Gina. Oh my gosh. She literally brought tears to my eyes. She said she was sending me a bottle of Revlon from my wishlist. Look at all this wonderful swag she sent!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness!!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever met someone, and right away, you feel like you've known that person forever? That's Gina. I feel like Gina and I are kindred spirits. She's sweet. She's funny. She's thoughtful. And could she have  been a more perfect polish present picker??? I loved all this great stuff. 

Look  at all these gorgeous colors she sent. WOW!

How thoughtful was she to add to my collections? 

Here's my CND Duos so far. I love these sets. I love to layer and these are perfect. 

Here is my Hard Candy collection so far. 

Here's my OPI collection. Pretty small. I'm not a huge OPI fan. Every now and again I see something original I like. I know some people are addicted to OPI but I don't think they are the best game in polish. They are easily duped. So easily, that they dupe themselves. 

The END

Nail Mail From My Friends Cherie and Gina: *crosses items off wishlist*

So I got to take a couple of items off of my WISHLIST PAGE today. YAY!!! 

And it was all thanks to my friends Gina and Cherie. Here's some pics. 

 Here's my swap from my friend Gina. I had been lemming OPI's Pirouette My Whistle and she picked it up for me. Along with a gorgeous bottle of Essence (my first), some decals, candy and some really awesome lotion that made my hands feel like silk. I was only watching for a lonely bottle of OPI, so when I got this wonderful little packet of sunshine, I couldn't stop smiling. It really made my day. Seriously!

Essence Choose Me, OPI Pirouette My Whistle

This color is amazing! It's a blue jelly polish with gold and blue shimmer. Is she inside my head?? This is perfect for me. Here's 2 coats of Essence Choose Me.

And now I can cross this beautiful baby off my list. Here's 2 coats of OPI Pirouette My Whistle. It's a glitter polish with large white hex glitter and small silver glitter throughout. It's even more lovely in person. 

And lucky me, I got two lovely nail mails on the same day. Here's a package I got from my friend Cherie. You can follow her on Facebook at Enchanting Cosmetics.

I collect these little tombstone WnW, so I was pumped when Cherie said she found one I didn't have and would send it to me. Yay!! I have NO IDEA how many of them there are. Every time I think I've got the entire collection, I see a new one. I've researched and if I'm correct, I still need Vampy Red, The Black Magic(the bar glitter one), and Black Pearl. I already have 3 other ones: Black Magic, Night Glow and Creepy Pumpkin. If there are more than that...please tell me, I'm clueless. 

I have had the Zoya Mod Matte collection on my wishlist forever. Cherie gave me my first one of the three. I love it! Now I just need Lolli and Mitzi. I'm a tightwad when it comes to Zoya so I usually don't buy unless they're running free promos. 

2 coats of Wet n Wild Purple Potion: a black jelly polish with fine purple glitter

2 coats of Zoya Phoebe: a gorgeous matte finish ocean blue.

TransDesign.com Super HAUL!!! Swatches and Review: PIC HEAVY

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.