The BEST Nail Mail!

Wow! Yesterday I got the best nail mail EVER! I documented it in a series of blurry photos in the half dark and now I'm going to share all of them with you!

First, here's how it happened: I saw a post on my friend Thithi's blog, ::pretty::tough::nails::, where she featured Orly Miss Conduct and I commented and said something like, oh I must have that beautiful polish! And she commented back and said, you want it? give me your address and I'll send it to you! And I said, No way! And she said, Way! And seeing as she had admired my CrowsToes Tequila Sunrise post, we decided to swap the Orly for the CrowsToes.

I've never done a swap before but I've read about them on perfumista and nail polish enthusiast forums so I know that a swap is never just a swap. That is, you don't JUST swap, you send, like, a care package and include surprises and goodies and such. So I put together a modest box of polishes including the CrowsToes and a few others and a luxe little nail brush and sent it off. And then what should come in the mail but a HEAVY package stuffed with a bazillion polishes!

Here's the package being opened by John with his manly pocket knife, who knew he was so keen on polish swaps?

"Message for you sir...."

Awww! 

Look at that! There's a nail buffer and lavender hand lotion and boxes FULL of polishes plus there's another one in the bubble wrap!

Three minis nested in the cute little NerdLacquer Box!

Oh! My very first NerdLacquers! Outed by a Probot, Cuprum and No Medal for Chewie! THREE NerdLacquers! *squeal*

In the bubble wrap, For the Twill of It, a duochrome from the new fall Essie collection!

The OPI box is stuffed with polishes!

Here's Orly Miss Conduct! I'm gonna be swatching this baby soon...

China Glaze Atlantis! Sorry it's so blurry but I was so excited my hands were shaking!

Orly Purple Poodle from their brand new fall Surreal collection!

Nubar's famous duochrome Purple Beach! This has been on my wish list forever! I feel a comparison post with this one and Essie For the Twill of It coming on...

 

ANOTHER NerdLacquer!! The Ring!! Gosh, Thithi!!

AND an Elevation Polish!! Azure Caverns!! I've wanted this, like, forever!! *squeal-o-rama* Thithi, how did you KNOW?!

LOOK at all the goodies!!! Squeee... *chokes on own saliva, coughs for five minutes*

Well! *wipes eyes* Thithi, your generosity is unmatched, you are the fairy godmother of nail polish, the BEST! I am going to feature every one of these on my blog. Thank you sooooo much!!

What do you think, Eleanor? Am I not a lucky lucky blogger to have a friend like this? Veritably washed by waves of benevolence and altruism! I better get swatching, eh? *happy sigh* Ah, me!

love,
Aunt Liz

Pretty Serious Nail Mail

Excitement alert excitement alert!

When I posted my photos of Pretty Serious Daphne's Birthday back in May I received a 20% off coupon code to use on future Pretty Serious purchases. Pretty Serious Cosmetics is a fabulous indie polish and artisanal cosmetics maker from Australia with a worldwide following now thanks to the internet. Well they've released two new collections since then and that 20% off code has just been burning a hole in my metaphysical pocket (I'm renaming that no-buy of mine, "low-buy" m'kay?) the whole time so I finally ordered four more polishes.

They're heeeeere!

happy box 'o polish from Pretty Serious Cosmetics with holographic (hard to see that in this pic) Daphne bumper sticker whoop!

Daphne with Pretty Serious packing slip

carefully packed beautifully boxed Pretty Serious polishes, left to right: 88mph, BSOD, Morning Java, My Darlin' Clementine

Pretty Serious polishes l to r: 88mph, BSOD, Morning Java, My Darlin' Clementine -- showing off lovely packaging

box tops with color-matched name labels, back of each box has complete ingredients list

Pretty Serious sparkling in the sun l to r: 88mph, BSOD, Morning Java, My Darlin' Clementine

ditto

*happy sigh* time to get swatching!

What I got, with descriptions from the Pretty Serious website:

88mph -You're about to see some serious shit! 88mph is our tribute to the Delorean from Back to the Future. It is a metallic foil mixed with gold, copper and silver with a touch of holographic, time ripping sparks. Great Scott! From the new Hit the Road collection.

BSOD - All your friends will stop and stare at this beautiful blue jelly packed to bursting with blue glitter. Don't make the critical error of passing this one up! Disclaimer: Any instance of Blue Screen of Death while purchasing this product is a complete coincidence. Quite possibly the coolest coincidence ever, but still a coincidence. From the Hello World! collection.

Morning Java - Rich coffee brown with golden bronze flecks, this polish is bound to speak your language! From the Hello World! collection.

My Darlin' Clementine - Now y'all know what Huckleberry Hound's been singin' about all this time! A new addition to the Seriously Random collection.

Nail mail is all kinds of wonderful but never more so when it's a box of handmade custom-blended polish from a favorite indie polish maker.

They've got mine!

love,

Aunt Liz

Nail Mail!

Hey Eleanor, yesterday I got some awesome nail mail. Let's look...

two boxes...

OMG! One is from Llarowe.com! Gotta open up that one first...

peanuts, ugh...

carefully packaged polishes from Llarowe...

Llarowe packing slip...

bubble wrap cocoons...

they're heeeeeeeere!

my new Hare Polishes, from left to right: Electric Flame, Medusa Luminosa, Party Palace, Afterglow, Return to Nature

Woohoo! New Hare Polish! *does Hare Polish happy dance*

Oh, and what was in the other box? Zoya Wednesday, finally arriving after I won it on ebay a while back. I'd been lemming this polish for soooooo long. Now I've got it. And it's mine.

Zoya Wednesday

So now it begins, which Hare to try first? Ever want to do so many things at the same time that you end up not doing anything? Well you know that's not going to happen here! I can do a quick swatch of all of my new Hare Polishes, one polish per nail, on one hand, and swatch the Zoya on the other. 

And I think I may very well go do that right now.

Later, tater!

love,
Aunt Liz

Box o' polish from Pretty Serious Cosmetics!

Earlier this week I got a package in the mail from Pretty Serious Cosmetics, an Australian indie company. Luckily for us Americans, Pretty Serious has a distributor in the US that facilitates sales to individuals here because apparently small international shipments of flammable product from Australia are a legal no-no.

Wanna see what's in the box?

nail polishes from Pretty Serious Cosmetics!

how adorable is this packaging? LOVE!

from l to r: Mummy Mush, Elliot, Claris

Mummy Mush, Elliot, Claris

Mummy Mush bottle shot, shimmer shimmer shimmer!

Elliot bottle shot

Claris bottle shot

prrreciousss!

Mummy Mush, Elliot and Claris, artisinal polishes formulated in Australia by Kaz of Pretty Serious Cosmetics.

I wanted to swatch them ASAP, of course, was hoping for a couple of sunny days in a row to do this, but we keep having cloudy days here. Cloudy days with the spits, one after the other. It was cloudy the day I opened up the package, can you tell by the darkish photos? Personally I love cloudy days especially windy spitty cloudy days like today, but they're not the best for taking pictures of nail polish. So all my photos in this post are a wee bit dark.

The first polish I swatched was Mummy Mush, which is just full of golden shimmer in a pinkish tinted translucent base. To avoid VNL (Visible Nail Line, where your nails go from the pink of the nail bed to white at the tip) I thought I'd start with a pink base color. I chose Off The Record Pink from Sation from my stash. Here are Mummy Mush and Off The Record Pink together and a pic to show you what Off The Record Pink looks like by itself...

Pretty Serious Mummy Mush and Sation Off The Record Pink

Sation Off The Record Pink, pretty sheer stuff -- I can't remember whether this is two or three coats

In retrospect, I wish I'd swatched Mummy Mush by itself. Here's how it turned out over Off The Record Pink...

glowy!

you can see the pink peeking through, I wish I could have photographed this in the sun

"the claw," modified version

The next one I tried out was Elliot, the blue one. So very pretty! It's a very saturated sky blue, the color you see when you look straight up into the sky on a brilliant cloudless day. This is a very pigmented polish, no VNL here. The silver shimmer you see in the bottle is not so obvious on the nail, but I think it would be easier to see in direct sunlight. Which is in short supply around here lately, as I mentioned.

Pretty Serious Elliot, you can see a teensy bit of that silver shimmer here and there

frrrresh!

Pretty Serious Elliot

Love it? Love it! That was two coats of Elliot.

Finally, there is Claris. Claris is a bright milky pink with lots of golden shimmer that is not shy. The golden color of the shimmer together with the pink gives it a summery corally look. The polish itself is slightly sheer and jelly-ish. I only did two coats and it turned out gorgeous but I think it would be even better and more true-to-color with three coats.

Pretty Serious Claris

Pretty Serious Claris, modified claw

shimmer shot!

Pretty Serious Claris -- tres fem, no?

Oh and look who wandered into the bathroom to help with the photography...

Cheeser, lookin a bit wild-eyed and goofy... CUTENESS!

All in all, I loved my new Pretty Serious polishes. I think I could do better with Mummy Mush. Next time I will not use "underwear" (this is what polish enthusiasts call colors that are worn underneath sheer polishes to avoid the Visible Nail Line). And I will wait for a sunny day. I think Elliot was my favorite, it is just so blooooooo! Both Elliot and Claris dried to a nice "squishy" glossy finish, yummy.

Til next time, Miss B.

love,
Aunt Liz