Cross Boarder Hauling

Happy Friday! Cannot wait for the weekend and hopefully some Spring-like weather finally!

I was very busy this past weekend, lots of cooking, I had a sweet 16 birthday party to attend and I even managed to cross the border on Sunday for a few hours to do some shopping! Although the main polish goal I had in mind was to find my remaining must haves from China Glaze's Spring collection, City Flourish, I did end up finding some other hidden gems. Lets start off with Wal Mart, not my usual go to spot when I cross the boarder, but my mom loves it. Lucky for me they had polish on clearance! I picked up the following L'Oreal Paris polishes.... plus a regular priced Pure Ice :)

Bananarama Love and Mango Mania.

Bananarama Love is a sheer, yet creamy yellow jelly, one - two coats are shown in my swatches below.

Mango Mania is a pure orange jelly. I can see myself using this for some squishy syrup nails! This was the most true to being a jelly out of the three I picked up. One - two coats are shown in my swatches below.

one coat

two coats

Creme de Mint and Be My Clover.

Creme de Mint is a sheer, yet creamy medium green jelly, one - two coats are shown in my swatches below.

By My Clover is a deep blue jelly-ish base with golden teal shimmer. This kind of reminds me of OPI's Catch Me In Your Net (and the rest of the dupes) now that I look at it again. I may do a comparison to se how similar they actually are, but if my memory serves me correct, By My Clover is more opaque. Two coats are shown in the swatch below.

Next Stop, Sally's! Unfortunately I did not find The Grass is Lime Greener and At Vase Value, there were actually only two spring shades in the display and I already owned them (I was actually wearing one as well). I luckily I was still able take advantage of the last few days of the BOGO China Glaze promo with the purchase of their latest Surprise! collection.

Don't Be a Flake and Glimmer More.

Glimmer More is another glitter topper which consists of small metallic magenta hex glitter and pink, yellow and peach matte hex glitter. I used one coat in the swatch below, however It was more of a dabbing motion than a stroke when applying.

Don't Be a Flake is a glitter topper which consists of a clear base and holo baby pink, matte black and mate blue hex glitter. Two coats are shown in the swatch below.

Last stop on my shopping trip was Big Lots. I had heard that Sephora by OPI's were popping up in several locations, but the store I frequent never really carries the fun polish stuff. To my surprise I found some great polishes... all for $1.80 each! I must say I was kind of disappointed to find some polishes I already owned (and purchased at FULL PRICE originally).

Indi-go With the Flow and Spark-tacular! Top Coat.

Indigo With the Flow is another glitter topper made up of light cornflower blue hex glitter in various sizes. It reminds me a lot of Essie, Stroke of Brilliance now that I see it on the nail wheel. Two coats are shown in the swatch below.

Spark-tacular! Top Coat is a glitter mix of small, medium and larger hex glitter in a variety of colours; green, yellow, orange, blue magenta and silver. Two coats are shown in the swatch below.

I Found a Pot of Gold and It's Real 18K Gold Top Coat.

I Found a Pot of Gold is  a gold glitter made up of micro and small gold and holo glitter, scattered with larger diamond shaped gold holo glitters. I had to fish around a bit to get the diamond glitters on the nail. If I were to use this for a full mani I would leave the bottle upside down over night in an attempt to get more of the diamond glitters on each nail.

And last but not least, It's Real 18K Gold Top Coat. It's exactly what the name details, shards of actual gold pieces in a clear base. This polish sold for more at Sephora than the other Sephora by OPI's, however I still got this one for $1.80!

I was never a huge fan of the gold/silver top coats, although I must say I does look nicer in person, and I figured for less than $2.00 it was worth trying out. Two coats are shown in my swatch below.

Hauling - LOTS of polish

Lots and lots of polish today!

First I will start off with a purchase I made on Amazon, I picked up a few of the new Holiday China Glazes and Nail Tek Foundation 2 ridge filling base coat. The China Glaze polishes I picked out, from left to right: Twinkle lights, Holly-Day and Glittering Garland.

I have a close up of glittering Garland for you, such a pretty shade. I have a comparison between this and a polish from Last years Holiday collection from Orly, Meet Me Under The Mistletoe coming up soon. As always with my purchases from Amazon, these were all free with my Swagbucks.

Next, some polishes from the U.S that I purchased at a Rite Aid and Wal Mart. Left to right, Wet n Wild Fantasy Makers, Creepy Pumpkin and Black Magic ( I'm pretty sure this is the good one lol), Sinful Colors Nail Junkie and Pure Ice Heart Breaker.

I absolutely love Nail Junkie, but I know it's nothing new. I have a close up of Black Magic because it looks so cool! There is some silver and orange microglitter in there! didn't see that in the bottles they sell at Shoppers, so I picked it up.

Next are the newest additions to my China Glaze OMG collection, L8R G8R and 2NITE. So excited to add these to my collection. I had originally just wanted these 2 and DV8 (DV8 the MOST!), so to own all 3 now is great, plus I got GR8. But I feel like I want more... it's really bad, but I love these holos so much!

Some closeups of the awesome holographic/prismatic effect. Oh yeah, got these on eBay unfortunately.

These next 3 were a surprise buy, saw them at Winners, picked them up because they were glow in the dark lol. But they actually give off a different colour of glow than the standard green! The Blue polish has a blue glow, the pink has an orang/yellow glow and, well the green is still green lol. The one thing I love about the pink and blue polishes is that they are pretty pigmented with colour, I think I could actually build them up to wear on their own with out a ton of coats. I wish the green were the same, but it's more of a topcoat with some glitter. These color Zone polishes have no names.

And last but not least, the randoms lol. I picked up Orly Fresh a couple of weeks ago reduced at Sally's for $1.99! The other 2 I got at a L'Oreal sale a while back now, nothing too special, I kind of regret picking up the Maybelline's Outloud Lime, I technically don't really need it.

Marine Blue by L'Oreal looked impressive in the bottle but I haven't tried it out yet.

Pink Wednesday with Glitter!

Today I have a pretty coral pink jelly from Pure Ice. I don't have many of these polishes because I don't think they sell them in Canada! The only place I have seen them is in American Wal Marts, and that is where I picked this one up.

Dreamy is a coral pink jelly packed with pretty pastel light reflecting glitter. I thought since this was was jelly it was going to be hard to get opaque, fortunately only 2 thick coats were needed! Even better I didn't get any bubbling :) It dries to a matte-ish finish so I topped it off with Seche Vite and it stayed super glossy :)

The photos below are most colour accurate. I had some trouble with the brush that came with the bottle when I purchased it, it was not properly inserted in to the handle. Seeing as how I was not going to be in the States any time soon at the time, I used superglue to make sure it stayed in there. When I applied the polish to my nails I had no issues, which was good. I hope the super glue holds it in for good.

Ohhh, look at all that glitter! I had been putting off wearing this polish for the longest time because of the glitter. I haven't worn glitter in a long time because it can be such a bitch to remove. That being said, removal of this polish was great, easy and mess/pain free.

Do you own any Pure Ice polishes? If so, are there any that you would recommend? I am heading to the States on Sunday so any suggestions for Pure Ice polish would be greatly appreciated :)

Hauling Again Part 2... U.S

Hello ladies,

Today I have part 2 of my hauling from the last week of February. As you know I headed to the U.S again the last weekend in February and I wanted to make sure to check out some of the stores I missed on my list he first time around, this included:

Wal Mart

Rite Aid

Big Lots

Other Dollar Tree's

The first stop was Wal Mart.

The Wal Mart in The U.S. carries a lot more brands that the ones in Canada. Nail polish wise some brands that are not in the Canadian stores include:

Love My Nails

Pure Ice

Hard Candy

I really wanted Lava from Hard Candy but it was not included in the display. I did however find Sky, Beetle and others. Nothing really caught my eye so I moved on.

I ended up finding a polish I never thought I would, NYC, Love letters! Such a great layering polish, and for less than $1.

I also saw for the first time the Wet n' Wild quick dries. Only one colour, but this one was on my list, Party of Five Glitters.

The last 2 polishes I picked up were from Pure Ice, Busted and Dreamy.

Busted is comparable to the new Sally Hansen HD polishes or the Orly Cosmics, similar finish and definitley a duochrome. The only drawback? This polish is super sheer, I didn't expect that at all.

Dreamy is a pink jelly with tones of irridecent glitter packed in. I have a feeling this one may be sheer too. I also got a defective bottle, the brush wouldn't stay in properly :( I had to super glue it back which lead to much frustration and spilled glue.

Next I spotted some NYC's and Wet n' Wild fast dries. I picked up NYC's Love letters, an awesome duochrome, shimmery top coat, for 99 cents. I can't believe I actually got my hands on this one. It was the last one at the location I visited.

I also picked up Wet n' Wild Party of Five Glitters, the infamous close dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday and/or Milani's Gems. I had been wanting this polish for a while, but never spotted them in Canada. I went to a local Wal Mart last week and I finally found them, but it was very picked over, maybe only half of the collection was there if that, plus it cost more than the U.S.

Next stop, Ulta :)

Again Ulta is pretty cool, but the last time I checked it out I didn't find anything I really needed. This time I had a coupon for $3.50 off a purchase of $10 or more so I picked up another polish from OPI's texas collection, Houston... We Have a Purple.

I had seen this one and though it was a cool colour, but I found that in some pictures is cleaned more red and was not terribly unique. I decided to pick it up any ways and try it out for myself. I have already worn it as a full mani and the finish is awesome!

Since the polish was $8.50 I purchased a mini location that was on sale for $1.99 in order to get the $3.50 off. My total at Ulta came out to under $8!

Across from Ulta is Sally's, which I LOOOVEEE so much more than the Canadian stores I've been to. They are cheaper, usually well stocked and from what I've found even friendlier! They even have better promos, I had missed out on some of these the last time around.

Bubble White was buy one get one free. I have seen reviews of this brand on youtube and it's supposed to work pretty well for cleaning stained nails. It was $1.99 for both.

The first thing I looked for when I walked in the store was the Crackle display... it was out, but totally empty! The sales associate let me know that they put it out 2 days earlier and they went fast! A display that was overly stocked was the Tronica collection. I ran over and scooped up the colours I knew I had wanted since I saw the promo pics, High Def and Techno Teal.

High Def is a light cornflower blue, I also hear that the shade is comparable to 2NITE from the OMG collection.

Techno Teal is a deep blue/green turquoise, this shade is comparable to DV8 from the OMG collection.

Both of these polishes have scatured prismatic glitter. I tested them out on a fake nail and they are pretty opaque in 1 stroke. I need to see if these will work well for Konading.

I'm sill kicking myself for not picking up Laser Lime :( I even checked a Sally's in Toronto last week but they didn't have that specific one. Since they had a promo going on, I picked these up in the States for $3.99 each

Lastly in the Niagara Fashion Outlets, I found a Fragrance store that offered 10 NYX makeup products for $10! Me and my sister got 5 each, my stash included:

Blue Ave. A sheer flakie topcoat with green and orange flakies of different sizes.

Purple Ave x 2. A sheer flakie topcoat with blue flakies.

2 lip glosses, one is a sheer red with gold shimmer, the other is a sheer orange with small pieces of gold glitter.

I picked up 2 of purple ave because they looked different in the store... when I got home they looked the same :( I actually already had one at home, but it looked totally different, weird huh?

I had never used NYX lip glosses before but these are awesome, love the colour and the formula. they have a little brush for application, really happy I picked these up :)

Stores I checked out that didn't have what I was looking for was:

Big Lots - they had Revlon's, but none that appealed to me
Dollar Tree - the one I checked out had nothing

I wanted to check out a Rite Aid and CVS but didn't end up passing by one.

So there you have it! I'm going to try to control myself for a little bit regarding hauling. I have some China Glaze Crackles in mail which should be arriving any day now. I have some cool ideas for those so we will see what happened. Hope you enjoyed my post :)