The Stash: My Nail Polish Collection (and a disapproving kitty).

Hello!

Today I have a very exciting post for you. Pictures of my NP collection and storage!

I store my polishes in a Helmer. For those of you that do not frequent the Nail Board on MUA, it is a drawer unit from Ikea that is perfect for nail storage of nail polish, cosmetics, etc. It has six drawers and come in three colours: white, silver, and red. It is made of metal and is pretty sturdy (it feels pretty flimsy during assembly, but once completely put together, with the pretties inside, it is much better). One Helmer stores about 500-600 polishes, depending on the way one stores them, bottle shape, etc.

I love my Helmer! I bought it recently after I finally moved my collection from my parents' place to my apartment. I use the first four drawers to store my collection, and then other two are used to various supplies and what not. On to the pictures!

Here is the Helmer in full view. When I first saw it in the store, I thought it was tiny! My four Deborah Lippmann polishes (curtesy of my dear boyfriend, Alex), and six Butter London polishes are on top.

Here is a close up of some of my most cherished polishes. Now, onto the drawers...The pictures are all labeled, so you can see what I keep in each drawer.

That's all my collection. I also want to show you all of my swatch sticks (hiding in the back of the drawer in the last picture), but that will be for another post, because there are a lot! I have my entire collection swatches aside from my recent purchases. I just need to get more swatch sticks. Oh, and before I forget...Here is my disapproving kitty. I swear to God, his looks says: "Are you freaking kidding me?"

I hope you enjoyed looking at my collection, and thank you for reading :)

The Lacquered Princess.

NOTD: Zoya Indigo

Hello!

I hope you are all doing well today! Here is another NOTD post since the one from yesterday chipped slightly in the shower this morning. I decided to put on a pretty shimmery dark blue colour and call it a day. Take a look!

It is a dark navy blue colour, which hides a nice surprise. It has little holographic glitter sprinkled throughout the shimmery goodness that give the polish a little bit more...oomph, I should say. You can see the sparse glitter in the bottle and some on my nails in the last picture, taken with the flash. I especially like how shiny this is once I put my topcoat on. I used two coats for this, but if you paint it on in thick careful coats, you can get away with one, which is a great bonus (stamping, anyone?).

This is a quick post, which allows me to make another one! It will go live tomorrow sometime during the night, and I promise, it will be worth it :D

I hope you all have a great week, and thank you so much for reading.

The Lacquered Princess.

NOTD: Sephora Pantone Universe - Parachute Purple

Hello guys!

It has been a few days since I last posted. School started, so with that and work, I have been slightly busy. However, I did go shopping yesterday! I was in need of some clothes for Fall and new flats, and since my favourite clothing store was having an awesome promotion, I went to the mall. I stopped by Sephora because I remembered that the new polishes from their Pantone Universe collection were out. Let me tell you, they are gorgeous! I picked up only one, Parachute Purple because it reminded me so much of RBL Scrangie, that I do not own. They are each 11$ CAD, and come in a cute bottle (that is a pain in the butt to hold for NOTD pictures...) that houses 11ml of pure awesomeness. Let us take a look at what's up!

Now, as I mentioned above, it reminded me of RBL Scrangie and was sure it was a dupe. I unfortunately cannot get you a comparison pic, since I do not have Scrangie (or any RBLs for that matter...Gotta change that soon) I thought this would be perfect. However, upon closer inspection and some Googling, they are only similar, only the base colour is slightly different. You can find a post by SayAnythingBrooke here. I actually like PP more than Scrangie. I prefer the base colour as it is a lot more purple and less red based. It also looks darker and really, the purple base just looks better to me. Onto my pics!

It is a true purple, even leaning royal status. I think it is blue based and that is what makes it better than Scrangie, in my eyes. It has beautiful delicate green shimmer that adds dimension to the colour.
This is two coats of PP, followed by my favourite topcoat combo (more about that in a future post). PP is on the thicker side (I will correct that as soon as I get my hands on some thinner) and if I passed my brush on an area of the nail that already had colour, it seemed to drag the colour that is underneath. Regardless, it was opaque enough and if painting carefully, with thicker coats, it is possible to get away with only one coat, if ever in a pinch. Let me tell you, at first, I was not entirely sure about this colour...I needed major cleanup, and it was not looking pretty. Once I cleaned up and put top coat on, I fell in love.

And now, I want to tell you about my loss today. It is a sad sad day for me. I told you how I went shopping yesterday, right? Well, I came back with three Zoyas: Alegra, Indigo and Mimi. This morning, as I was deciding between Paracute Purple and Mimi (I was in the mood for some purple in my life), I wanted to take the two colours out of my helmer to kind of look at them together and make a decision. Well, unfortunately, Mimi slipped out of my hand and landed on the hardwood floors. God was it beautiful...the gorgeous glass fleck sparkle all over my floors...in splatters...while the lacquer itself was pouring out of the broken bottle neck. I dropped to my knees and almost started weeping over the broken bottle. I was still moaning in disbelief as I was cleaning and catching glimpses of the beautiful colour on the toilet paper that I was using. Mind you, this was my first ever casualty. When I see pictures of polishes that fell and broke, I barely believe it because it seems so unlikely to me. Well...let me tell you, it happens *insert sad face*. I MUST go back and get me a another bottle, that Mimi was so gorgeous...Please let's all stand for a moment of silence to remember her.

On a lighter note, I am slowly coming up with ideas for more posts. I made myself a sticky note with all of my ideas so please stick around for that. Also, please do not hesitate to contact me with yours! I will be happy to oblige, providing that I am able to :)

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Have a wonderful weekend!

The Lacquered Princess.

A Sparkly Nude

Hi!

Do you ever have one of these days when you feel like having something clean, yet sparkly? Yep, today was one of those days. I decided to do a pretty glitter gradient on a nice neutral colour that does not attract much attention. Glitter gradients have been popular for a while now, and since I haven't tried to do a proper gradient yet, I decided that it would make the perfect addition and play the role of the sparkle. For this mani, I chose Essie Eternal Optimist, which is a dusty pink nude. For the glitter, I decided on China Glaze Blonde Bombshell; a gold glitter that is made of various sized particles, and even small bar glitter that is barely visible (for those of us that think that bar glitter can give the nails a "hairy" look). Let's take a look at what the final mani looked like.

I used three coats of Eternal Optimist as it is a bit streaky. The final coat was needed to even things out. Blonde Bombshell (for some reason, I want to say that it is called Bubbly Bombshell...which is, if I am not mistaken, a magenta glitter buy Orly) is a pretty dense glitter, and is very easy to work with, especially for glitter gradients (I should probably count the number of times I used the word "glitter" in this post). Now, the colour in this pictures is pretty accurate. I was pleasantly surprised once I uploaded the pictures as this is the first time that I used the white kitchen light above my stove. Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

And can we PLEASE take a moment to marvel at my beautiful header? This was made by my dear friend, fellow nail polish fanatic, Laura, from Polish and Portal Guns. It is so gorgeous. So Laura, thank you so so much. I love it! I think that it is perfect for my little corner of the interwebs.

So ladies (and possibly gents?), this is it for my post today. I am planning to post pictures of my stash very soon, so please stay tuned for that.

I hope you enjoyed my sparkly goodness, and thank you for reading :)

The Lacquered Princess.

NOTD: Butter London - The Black Knight + Stamping + bonus NOTD.

Hi!

I have a fairly big post for you today. I am going to talk about two Butter London polishes, show you two NOTDs and even a stamping attempt with my new Bundle Monster plates!

First, let me talk about Butter London a bit. I love the brand. They are considered, I believe, a high end polish brand. They retail at around 18$ CAD and you can buy them, if you are in Canada, at The Bay. I have six of their polishes and they are all great. They apply perfectly, wear pretty well, and the colours are awesome! I will show you a colour from their latest collection, Autumn/Winter 2012. Actually, my dear friend Laura, from Polish and Portal Guns bought it for me when she went to the States recently!

This is Butter London Dodgy Barnett (BL has the oddest names...however, I do think OPI takes the cake when it comes to naming their polish!). She is a beautiful silver holographic polish. The rainbows are definitely subdued in this one but nonetheless, she is gorgeous! Let's take a look, shall we?

This is at three coats. See, the holographic effect is really not as strong as a typical holographic polish. It is perfect for those days when you want holographic, but you feel that it is too much, or that it is inappropriate for where you are going. It is also great for those of us that do not like a strong rainbow effect. The formula is a bit sheer, but the colour is opaque within three coats. It dries quickly, and it is definitely not a finicky holographic polish that requires an Aqua Base. And this is how she looks like in the shade, and as you can see, the holographic effect does not come out to play without the sun. It becomes a pretty grey colour, leaning to silver. It is definitely an office-safe polish, me thinks.

And now, I want to show you another Butter London polish that my friend Laura got me during her trip. It is called The Black Knight and it is a black jelly packed with magenta, blue, silver and gold micro glitter. I feel that on its own, it is a bit streaky and hard to apply, so I chose to a black creme to put under it. With Wet N' Wild Black Creme under, it is perfection in a bottle! Take a look.

I used only one coat of black, and one coat of The Black Knight and as you can see, the glitter is pretty packed in there. It is definitely very very pretty. And then, I decided to use the Bundle Monster plates that I got recently. Here is what I did.

For this design, I used BM-307 plate from their latest 2012 25 piece collection, and stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. Look, I have butterflies on my nails!

I also have to mention Bundle Monster as a company. I currently have all of their plate collections. The first set I ordered was the 21 piece set. The full nail designs on that one are tiny. They did not fit on my whole nail and so I did not get much use of it. However, the other small designs are pretty. BM then came out with a new set, the 2012 25 piece collection, featuring amazing designs, AND the images were as big as their 2011 25 piece set, which is older. At the time, I only had the 21 piece set that did not get used much. I decided to order the two 25 piece sets. I ordered them and got them very quickly, even though they were being shipped from Hawaii! To my disappointment, they made a mistake and packaged the older, 21 piece collection, that I already had and did not like, and forgot to put the newest 2012 set. I contacted them immediately and they sent me the set I was missing right away, no questions asked, no pictures, and definitely no extra charges. I got them the other day, and mind you, just as quickly as the first time. I absolutely LOVE that collection. The designs are so great, and again, the size is perfect for my nails! Yay for great customer service!

That is all for now, and I hope I did not bore and confuse you with my BM story :)

Thank you for reading :)

The Lacquered Princess.