Indie Polish Insanity

Holy crap, I'm obsessed with Indie polish. Seriously, you have no idea how many times a day I'm on Etsy looking at polish. Well today I have for you the rewards of my spending, a huge Indie haul! I know Indie's have sparked a bit of controversy lately but honestly I have yet to buy an Indie I didn't love! Besides a few Lynnderella's that is, but I will save that story for another day my friends. I confessed about my new found matte glitter obsession and there's a ton in this haul. I also just got my light box I ordered. I used it for these, so let me know how these pictures look compared to my others! Here's a sneak peek of all the amazing polishes I have to show you today!

I know, I know, you can't stand the anticipation any longer! What are these beauties you may ask? Well why don't I show you! WARNING: THERE ARE AN INSANE AMOUNT OF PICTURES AHEAD!

First up is F4 Polish. This is actually two separate orders. I loved my first order so I placed a second as soon as I got it in the mail! Here we have Pink Penquin, Pink Salmon, Strawberry Shortcake, Snow Capped Moutain and Mint Chocolate Chip! I've already posted about Pink Penquin-->here<-- and I'm sure you will see some more F4 posts soon!

Now we have my two Pahlish polishes that I was just dying to get my hands on! Toxic and Timeless & Train Underwater (I almost wrote Train UnderWARE). Aren't they just gorgeous!

Next up is Lush Lacquer! LOOK AT ALL THAT GLITTER, I died. Slime Time and Spring Fling.

Last but certainly not least, are my Amy's Nail Boutique and Lac Attack orders. Mmmmm, I love me some matte glitters! Amy's Nail Boutique- Preppy and Cotton Candy. Lac Attack- Jewel of the Nile.

Are you guys as obsessed with Indie's as I am? What was your first Indie polish you bought? Let me know below! 

F4 Polish- Pink Penquin

Yay! I have another Indie polish for you today from another Etsy seller, F4 Polish! After stalking their Etsy for a bit, I decided to place an order and have sense placed a second! In my first order I picked up Pink Penquin, which I'm going to show you today, as well as Snow Capped Mountain which you will see soon! I got mini's of both and their shipping was SUPER fast. Now I know your going to think I keep meaning to put "Pink Penguin"instead of "Pink Penquin" but that's what it's called and I suppose there's a reason for it.

Pink Penquin is a black and white glitter with larger pink hexes all in a clear base. I was hesitant to buy it at first because I'm not in love with black and white glitter like most seem to be. I just don't really like the look of it and I'm sure that has to do with me not really liking clear based glitters. I made an exception for Pink Penquin because I could tell it was going to build up to almost full coverage and it does. The picture below is three coat and as you can see there isn't much nail showing through. It applied very smooth and had a good amount of glitter in one coat. One coat would be the perfect amount if this was over another polish. I did add a coat of Gelous just to smooth things out. I really do love it on, and I can't wait till my second order gets here! I am seriously loving the matte glitter trend, and I have purchased an ungodly amount of matte glitter polish in the past few weeks. Aka, there will be another haul post soon! The foil method will definitely be needed to remove this baby!

Excuse any pesky glitters you may see, they refused to come off!

Three coats of F4 Polish- Pink Penquin

One coat of Gelous

One coat of Poshe

Are you into black and white glitters? How about the matte glitter trend?

Re-Swatching My Stash!

Hi everyone! I hope all of you are having an awesome week so far! I have a pretty bad cold so I've been trying to chill as much as possible. That said, I have been keeping myself VERY entertained with what I'm about to show you! I just put together my second Melmer and am in the state of organizing my stash. I was really getting fed up with my swatch wheels of all my polishes. Does anyone else get annoyed when you fill up a wheel with a brand, color coded I might add, only to buy a new polish and it not be swatched with the others? It annoys the crap out of me! So I have all these swatch wheels with who knows what colors on them because I was just tired of keeping track. In come the 250 nail swatch sticks (I have no idea if this is what the're called) that I ordered off Ebay! Oh, these babies are awesome! Especially if your like me and hate the inconsistency of swatch wheels. You can order them in batches of 50 and they come with a long double ended screw to hold them together. I opted to use binder rings for mine but more on that later. They're pretty inexpensive. I paid around $20 for all 250, including shipping.  I may be crazy for starting the project of re-swatching all my polishes, but believe it or not I quite enjoy it...yes I'm weird. I have for you a picture of my Zoya collection all nice and organized!

It pleases me to know that I can get new Zoya's and still have all of them swatched in one place! I chose to use binder rings for mine because it's easy to take the sticks off and add new sticks on. I also chose to label mine with stickers as opposed to writing on the stick. Did I have a reason for doing it that way? No, I just wanted to make it more complicated for myself :P

Here's a picture of the supplies I used.

   - Nail sticks

   - 1.5"binder rings

   - 3/4" X 1 1/2" labels (theres 504 of these so I won't need a new pack any time soon)

   - Nail polish of course!

So I think it's safe to say that I have a couple days of swatching and labeling to do! How do you guys keep your swatches, or do you swatch at all? Let me know! I'm always looking for new ways to organize!

The blog is getting super close to the 100 follower mark! I'm so excited to do my 100 follower giveaway, so if you guys could share my blog with your friends that would be amazing! Don't forget I'm also doing a giveaway when I hit 50 Facebook likes as well! 

Gradient String Mani

GAH, sorry for the lack of posts in the last week! I've been busy with family stuff, but I'm back with a super fun mani for you all today! I've been messing around with gradient nails for the past week, none of which I got to properly photograph. I decided it was time to do a gradient nails post when I had a hankering to try out a string mani as well. I thought to myself, why not combine the two! So I have for you my first gradient string main! I decided to make the base a gradient instead of gradienting (which is probably not a word) the string effect, and I love how it turned out! I'm not much into nail art but both of these techniques are very easy to do. I may do tutorials in the future but for now check out The Nailasaurus tutorial for the gradient effect and Manicurator for the string effect! By the way, my left hand, aka photography hand, turned out WAY better then my right hand. I suppose it will get easier to do my right hand with some practice. I should also mention that my topcoat bubbled, which has never happened before. I have a feeling it was just because of the texture of the strings so if your trying this, I suggest possibly adding two coats to finish it off :)

A few posts back I mentioned that Poshe makes my Zoya's shrink, and I have found a solution! If you use one coat of Zoya Armor topcoat then one coat of Poshe, no shrinkage!

One coat of Julep- Hayden

Two coats of sponging with Julep- Hayden and Zoya- Lara

Strings with Zoya-  Reagan

One coat of Zoya Armor

One coat of Poshe

Zoya- Zuza and Wednesday

I must say that I am very impressed with Zoya's Beach & Surf collection! The creams are opaque, and the foils are gorgeous! I've seen a few mani's combining Zuza and Wednesday. They have all been so pretty that I had to try it myself! Zoya describes Zuza as an "oceanic turquoise" which I think is totally spot on. This is definitely a color I can see myself wearing all summer long. I was afraid that Wednesday would be like something I already had, but it isn't. I just can't stop staring at my nails! Do you guys think Zuza is the perfect color for summer?

Two coats of Zoya-Zuza

Two coats of Zoya-Wednesday on accent nail 

One coat of Poshe

Nail-Venturous- Floam

GAHHHHH, I finally got my hands on Floam! As soon as I got my package I knew I had to put it on! Believe me, it lives up to the hype. I'm sure most of you have seen pictures of, or at least heard of Floam, which is from the mastermind Amy from I'm Feeling Nail-Venturous. Her polishes can be found on her Etsy (which from what I can tell will be closed for awhile) as well as on Ninja Polish. Restocks of Floam have officially become a site crashing event for Ninja Polish, which is what happened last time they stocked. Be sure to keep your eyes and ears open if you plan on snatching this polish.

Floam amazingly withstood three days on my nails. Which is a lot to say because my job is a mani killer. Close up, you can see the gorgeous matte, neon blue, yellow and green glitter. Yet from far away they almost fade into a super pretty, bright turquoise. I did three coats of Floam, but if you used a base color you could probably do one. I really just wanted to wear it all but it's self and really let it shine. I am seriously IN LOVE with this polish and I'm sure you guys will be seeing it again soon.

Three coats of Nail-Venturous- Floam

One coat of Gelous

Two coats of Poshe

I also want to add a thanks to all of you who liked Jessica's Nail Tales Facebook Page! Only 32 more likes to go!

Holy Nail Mail!

It's nail mail time!!! I have a swap and some haulage to show ya! I had set up a swap a little while ago in one of the nail polish groups I'm in on Facebook, and the wonderful Traci from The TraceFace Philes had me! Did I mention how awesome Traci is? You should really go check out her blog! Besides the swap, I did a lot of buying this month. Some of which isn't show in the pictures because it's either for swaps or presents! I managed to get quite a few polishes off my wish list. Even the super elusive Nail-Venturous- FLOAM! *coughcough giveaway coughcough*

First up is my swap with Traci! In the same order as the picture, she got me China Glaze in Raydiant, Polarized, and Full Spectrum. Venique in Top Thong (am I the only one that thinks this is a rather odd name?). Anise in Wrapped in Clouds and Exotic Choice. Depend Cracked Effect in 5006 and 5009. H&M in Pink and Metallic Blue. Thanks again Traci <3

Next is my Zoya Earth Day order! Again, same order as the picture. Wednesday, Zuza, Shelby, Rory, Lara, and Reagan. Gorgeous much?

Finally, Nail-Venturous! Now these are from two different orders. Toxic and Pinkerbell I ordered from her Etsy shop and I got Floam from Ninja Polish. If any of you tried to order from Ninja Polish when they stocked a week ago or so, you know the site crashed and wasn't working pretty much all night. I was somehow able to put an order in that included quite a few goodies ;) Might I add that the OCD in me hates that the Etsy and Ninja Polish bottles are different...

I think it may be time to put together my next Melmer...

Zoya- Zara

So, I amazingly have a non glitter polish to show you guys! I picked up Zara back during the holidays when Zoya was having all those crazy promotions. When I got my package, Zara was the first one I wanted to wear. Yet some how I'm just getting around to wearing it! Ah, I do love a good purple and with a golden shimmer none the less! The shimmer in this polish is amazing! This to me is a perfect polish. A little on the sheer side, but totally build-able. I only have one problem with Zoya's. What is it you might ask? THEY SHRINK LIKE CRAZY! Now this may just be me, but Poshe makes them shrink within an hour of application. I do have the Zoya Armor top coat, of course I forgot to apply it before Poshe... The point of this is that I had to rush to take pictures of my mani before it shrunk. Don't get me wrong, Zoya is one of my favorite brands and with all the promos they do, who wouldn't love them! Hopefully next time I apply a Zoya, which will be in the near future seeing as how I ordered six during the Earth Day Trade In, I will remember to apply Armor beforehand. I shall let you know how that goes! On to the pictures!

Three coats of Zoya- Zara

One coat of Poshe

I though I should also let everyone know that I will be having two giveaways in the future. One for when I hit 100 followers and one when I hit 50 likes on my Jessica's Nail Tales Facebook Page!

Also be warned for a major nail mail post sometime within the next two weeks. I've been a very bad girl ;)