IEC Haul

As promised, today I've got the goodies I got at Indie Expo Canada. I am traveling with my lightbox (that's not strange at all, right?), so was able to take proper bottle shots of everything eventually, but first here's a quickie pic of all the VIP goodies on my hotel bed just after I'd unwrapped and sorted everything out. Polish, of course, but also a stamping plate, nail decals, emery board, soap, eyeshadow, a bath cupcake, and skin/hair serum. Well worth the price of the ticket, for sure.



I couldn't wait until after I set up the lightbox to try some of the bath products I got from SoGa, so they didn't get the glamour shot treatment. These bath snowballs looked so pretty; it was hard to pick just a few. I got Northern Lights, Cucumber Melon, and Lemongrass & Sage.



I used Northern Lights first and almost hated to toss it in the bathwater and see those gorgeous colors fizz away. I'm glad I did though, as it smelled great, sort of fruity and floral and woodsy at the same time, not overpowering but strong enough to linger on my skin for a while after I dried off.



I shared my creations from the pre-con polish making workshop in my other IEC post, but here they are again just for the sake of completeness. I love that Pam had special IEC labels for the fronts of our bottles and also made custom name stickers for the bottoms once we'd decided what to call them. Mine are Lost in the Forest, Flair Purple, and Bonus Flakes.



VIP bag polishes, part one—Girly Bits V.I.Polish, Superficially Colorful Lacquer Stealing Your Thunder, Fair Maiden Toronto Sunrise, Colors by Llarowe O Canada, Fiendish Fancies Red Herring, and Tonic Taking on Toronto:



VIP bag polishes, part two—Great Lakes Lacquer Love at Hyatt Regency, Bliss Toronto, Ever After Diamonds Are Forever, Native War Paints Sun Bathing on Lake Ontario, Alter Ego Generous Beauty, Hit the Bottle On the Loose with Chartreuse:



VIP non-polish goodies:



And now on to all the nail stuff I bought—please keep in mind I've been on a very low buy for quite a while now, so these were the first indies I'd gotten in well over a year, so I had some serious pent up demand.

Girly Bits—on top are Ultra Holochrome Powder and SFX Nail Powder in Alchemy; bottles are Brick House, Stayin' Alive, Le Freak, Refresh! Refresh! Refresh!, Sugar Beach, and Lost in the PATH.



Beyond the Nail—Holo Blue Microglitter, Fiddlesticks!, 416/905 (IEC exclusive), Tee Dot (IEC exclusive), and Space Cadet. This is a new brand for me.



Great Lakes Lacquer (also a new brand for me)—The Jewel of Ontario and Indie-cent Exposure (IEC exclusive); Native War Paints—Picnic in Trinity Bellwoods, Meet Me at Union Station, and Scaling the CN Tower, along with a mini of cuticle oil in Birthday Cake.



Alter Ego (yet another new brand for me)—Olympic Contender, B Informed, Precious Heart (IEC exclusive), Silver Cocktail, and Courtney's Frogspawn Coral (coral as in coral reef, not the color).



Fair Maiden (again, new brand for me)—Twilight, Cruel Summer, Northern Exposure (IEC exclusive), Moonstone.



Pahlish (not new to me, of course) Graffiti Alley (IEC exclusive) and Fiendish Fancies (new to me) I Want My Cake!, Lycanthrope, and I Can Feel Myself Rotting.



Moo Moo's Signatures (yep, new to me)—Cowgirl's Broken Time Machine, Yeti-Moo, The Last Ninja, and Mission Impossible in Toronto (IEC exclusive).



Ever After Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and License to Lacquer, Colors by Llarowe Can We Have Trudeau?, Hit the Bottle Midnight Pumpkin, Electric Indigo, and Peacock Shimmer. Ever After and Hit the Bottle are new brands for me.



Whew. And there were a couple brands I didn't buy from but wanted to. Next time maybe I should try the approach of studying the shopping guides ahead of time and making a list and trying to stick to that. It's not really my style but it might help with the feeling of overwhelm that set in at a certain point.

I couldn't try everthing right away, of course, but did sample a few things. I started with two of the Hit the Bottle stamping polishes, grabbing a Salon Express plate from the box of stamping supplies I brought with me from Idaho (like the lightbox, totally normal thing to take on a road trip).



I stamped over my existing mani (the layered one topped with Bonus Flakes that I shared in my IEC recap post with Hit the Bottle Peacock Shimmer and Midnight Pumpkin. Since I don't (yet) have a clear stamper, my double/shadow stamping leaves a lot to be desired as far as alignment, but it's fun. I still need to practice more. When I'm going to manage that I've no idea. Retirement is busy, y'all. Oh, and see how part of my plate up there is nice and shiny and part is cloudy from acetone? I learned from mrsrexy that a rough-ish dish towel will clean up that cloudiness. (I used yellow towel in the background; it's a sort of waffle weave, while the one mrsrexy had was terrycloth.)



When it came time to start swatching, I chose the brightest of the lot, Fair Maiden Cruel Summer (thank for the earworm, FM). It's an orange-y coral with pink shimmer.



I used three coats on my nail. The shimmer is subtle but gives depth to the color. It's so bright I thought it might dry satin like a neon, but it didn't; my swatch is without topcoat. This is a great summer color for sure.





Next I sampled Fiendish Fancies Red Herring, because I had to know if my instinct that this would look good on me that led to me swapping away the warmer toned Harlot was correct. I think it was. I did three coats of this red shimmer, though a bit more care in application (yes, I was rushing again) would probably have made it fine with two coats.





Finally, I had to swatch some Girly Bits, as without Pam there would have been no IEC. I did two coats of Lost in the PATH, then added one coat of Refresh! Refresh! Refresh! on my ring finger for a subtle accent. Lost in the PATH is a purple shimmer; Refresh! Refresh! Refresh! has blue to green shifting flakies in a transluscent base.





Lost in the PATH is just the sort of polish I associate with Girly Bits; it looks equally good in indirect light (above) as in direct light (below).



I'm happy with what I got at IEC, definitely. I didn't get every exclusive and limited edition I saw, so feel good about having some restraint. Almost all of the ones I bought were shimmers; the era of the glitter topper seems to be over for now.