Nail Polish Stash Part 6- Icing, Hot Topic, American Apparel, Finger Paints, Wet n Wild, and Nina Ultra Pro

Here's the next part of my stash; there's a few more parts left. If anyone is kind of wondering why I'm posting these parts so slowly, it's because I'm stalling until I finish taking makeup stash pics...which quite honestly might be a while since I haven't really gotten on them. I have parts of it done, but for the most part, it's nowhere near done...I was really bad about taking them this year...despite having no problems not growing my makeup stash so far this year.











As with the previous posts, if you want to see anything swatched, let me know..I might be a bit slow about it since I just started a new job, and I'm not allowed to wear makeup, polish, or jewelry at work..though I'm starting work in the afternoons for a while starting tomorrow, so it may get done anyways. (I've been cringing at my natural nails the last two days...they're ugly to me, but I can't stop staring...even after buffing them, they're still kind of stained/yellow) I did start swatching the Nubar Fortress collection, with comparisons, but I'm too embarrassed by the state my cuticles were in when I swatched them, and annoyed with the fluctuations in my light source to feel like posting what I already have, so I plan on redoing them. I think I may cave and maybe buy an OTT light if I can find them on sale/coupons. I've been holding out on this since I'd be getting this specifically for the sake of blogging and I'm not entirely sure I could really justify that in my head. More than likely I'll cave on this within a few weeks (bills come first though of course).

New mini set at Icing, Sally's extra 50% off Clearance Sale, and China Glaze Lemon Fizz

There's 3 topics today...the first being the new set of polishes Icing has available for Spring. It's a nice collection of pastel creme-like polishes with peachy pink shimmer. I find them kind of exciting, and will be slowly swatching them soon (the new Maybellines will probably come first..I'm wearing 2 of them right now, though one's on my toes and therefore won't count..lol) Anyways, the minis are 12 ml each, which is a pretty decent size for minis. (a full sized China Glaze is 14 ml, for reference). The set retails for $16, but Icing always has their buy one get one 50% off deal going, so you can always pick up a different, 2nd set of minis for $8, or one of their other polishes. They've also got a lot of nice colors on clearance right now too, so it's worth making a trip if you have an Icing's nearby. I'm a pretty big fan of Icing polishes, the brushes are pretty wide, so I find them easy to use, and I've liked the formula on all the ones I've tried so far.

Secondly, if you didn't already know, Sally's is having a sale right now where you can take an additional 50% off clearance items. It's a pretty sweet deal, I picked up 4 China Glaze polishes (pictured below) as well as a set of travel sized bottles, and Orly Twilight (not pictured), which was only $0.99! Depending on your Sally's stock will vary of course. By the way, all of the China Glazes I picked up were under $2 :]
Here's my NOTD with China Glaze stroll. It's indoor lighting because I didn't get a chance to take a picture during the day and I promised I'd swatch Lemon Fizz...It's a bit darker rl than pictured here, but you can see the cool finish of the polish. (My skintone's also not that color, though there's a difference in color between my two monitors so what you see may differ)
And as promised, here's Lemon Fizz. This is 3 coats, mostly because I wasn't too careful in the application after a certain mishap, (you'll see it later) I actually like this color way more than I expected to, though I still feel like the polish was never fully even. It's not to a really noticeable extent, but unfortunately, working in inspection for a period of time has made me overly observant to tiny defects and it will bug me from time to time.
This polish has a pretty unique quality to it...as in it seems to attract other living creatures..here you see my cat sneaking up on it...
And when I was applying it the first time, this little guy decided to fly into my nails, he got his legs stuck in, managed to pull them free, but still fell over and died on my nail halfway through my 2nd coat on my right thumb (and yes, I definitely make thicker coats on my thumbs, since I have trouble with thin ones on those fingers..haha). How's that for 3D art though? (I removed it of course, and started over, since I messed up a lot of fingers taking a pic of this)
Anyways, tomorrow I'll start posting my polish stash bit by bit. I know when I polled you guys you wanted to see both my polish stash and makeup stash together, but with the way I'm doing the pictures, it's not really feasible (the page would never load)

A couple of awesome duochromes and a few others

I've pretty much been changing my polish every day lately (I have the time and about a million untrieds..so why not?) Anyways, I'll start with the easier ones.

This ancient China Glaze is Tropical Ice. It's probably the only pink I own that I actually really really like the color of. It's a really beautiful warm pink that I wish I had a matching lip color for. Too bad the formula is a PITA. I tried 4 coats to smooth this out and it didn't really smooth out super well (It's opaque in 3, just oddly streaky for me) Out the Door topcoat smoothed it out really well though. The bottle that I have is in China Glaze's old formulation so maybe that has something to do with it? The color's discontinued, but Victoria Nail Supply still has this for sale so I figured I'd post the pic since I couldn't find a swatch of this anywhere else.
Next up is Icing Mint 2 Be. I'm not sure why, but I'm really obsessed with mint green polishes. There was no sun this day or the next day, so the picture is taken in cool natural lighting. In reality, this polish is greener than depicted below and contains no blue tones as this picture might suggest. This is my standard 3 coats, though it's opaque and smooth in 2. This was my first mani with Icing's polish and I'm definitely happy with the color and formulation.
From the Alice in Wonderland collection we have OPI Thanks so Muchness! is a nice, shimmery red. I'm not sure why I didn't manage to take a picture of this in natural lighting, but here it is. I didn't find this a particularly special color, but the sun also didn't come out this day so maybe it's much prettier in sunlight. This is 3 coats, again. The polish is fairly opaque in 1 coat, but the color lacks depth and is kind of flat. 2 coats gives a much richer color, and 3 coats is the same as 2 coats, so doing 3 coats was just due to my own preference. I chipped it on the other hand building a TV stand, so I decided to change it.
Now we've come to the duochromes. I got this baby (Savina Black Pearl) at Nordstrom Rack for $3.97, and it's pretty much the most amazing duochromes I own (though I think a more accurate description of this would be multichrome as it changes to multiple colors depending on how the light hits it) I did 3 coats again. 2 was fine, but I felt like 3 increased the complexity of the color.

Here it is in cool, natural lighting. Here it looks blue-grey with a hint of purple and green.

In warm, dimmer lighting this polish is green or teal (couldn't capture the teal well)


Here it is in more regular indoor lighting. you can kind of see the pinky-purple flash here
as well as some blue and green
In some lighting it's blue
and a picture with flash

Wasn't that cool? I probably should have used a shinier top coat, but I still find the color pretty amazing. I've been wrestling with the thought of picking up a backup.

The 2nd duochrome this week was Nina Ultra Pro Molten Gold. This is probably the one polish I own with a really strong duochrome effect to it. It flashes pink and God and all the colors in between (different shades of pink and peach) Again, I used 3 coats, though I think 2 was fine as well. Here it is in natural light:


Indoor lighting...here it is at a slightly peachy pink. It can get pinker than this, but it was hard to capture on my camera.
It can also go very gold colored, though I think it's closer to an orange here.
Anyways, that's all for now. I'll try not to be so lazy and swatch you guys some makeup soon, but I lack any sort of motivation to play with makeup lately, as well as the general lack of sun here lately, so we'll see.