IEC Haul 2018

A quick search of my archives shows me the last time I did haul post was after last year's Indie Expo Canada; I was a bit more prompt with that one, as I was traveling with my lightbox so could take decent photos and also didn't leave right from the Expo to head back home as I did this year. I'm happy to report that all my new polishes made it back safe and sound and look just as good as if I'd gotten them documented right after I got them.

Onward, and let's start with the VIP bag, specifically the non-nail items, which I pulled out and took a photo of without waiting until I had my lightbox handy because I wanted to put the wax melts in a cool place as soon as I could. There's Relief Daily Cleanser with Pink Clay and Papaya Extract from Terrah Essentials, a scented wax sample from Rogue Lacquer, a wax melt from Under a Hula Moon, a bath snowball from SoGa Artisan Soaperie, and an eyeshadow from Clionadh Cosmetics.



There were two non-polish nail items in the VIP bag: some decals from Inspired Sense (which I failed to notice had a note on the card that said to come to the their booth for a prize, so that makes me sad) and a crystal file from Nail Stuff.



The polish shades for the VIP bags varied for some of the brands. I ended up with a fair few green ones, which I'm perfectly happy about. Left to right: Ever After Seaweed Facials, Girly Bits Very Important Polish, Native War Paints Special Effects VIP That's Me, Bees Knees Jefferson Starships, Fiendish Fancies Kaiju.



There were also a good number of purple polishes in my VIP bag, along with a couple other hues that added variety. Left to right: Paint It Pretty Only @ Expo Eh, Alter Ego Poised Heroine, Fair Maiden Violet Eyes, Colors by Llarowe You Like Eh, Beyond the Nail Cherry Beach, Turtle Tootsies A Rose Is a Rose.



Of course I bought a bunch of polish, too ... nothing like being able to see the pretties in person, and I had that big VIP bag with plenty of room left for purchases. Here we have Turtle Tootsies Indie Expo 2018, Canadian Exclusive, and Canadian State of Mind; Beyond the Nail Butterfly Garden, Royal York, The Junction, and Razzle Dazzle.



Turtle Tootsies had some cute gifts with purchase, too; I got this goofy cute pen stylus with the URL for their website, which I believe is re-opening July 1st:



I succumbed to Bees Knees to the tune of six polishes: Ghoul Got Your Tongue, The Fool, and The Magician (these first three are magnetics); Sparkle on Her Face, The Rise of Dick, Defender of the Rainbow (Proto 2; this was a surprise gift with purchase).



At Paint It Pretty and Ever After, I restrained myself (though after I left, I realized I restrained myself too much and didn't get the Ever After / Rouge duo; eh, stuff happens, and it's not like I didn't get plenty of great polishes). Paint It Pretty Bling Up Your Life at IEC and Blue Me Away at IEC. Ever After Quick Dry Top Coat (I know, I have lots of topcoats, but I got a chance to use this one at the polish making workshop and really liked it), Never Enough, and Raspberry Coolata.



CANVASlacquer ZzZZz Zap and Electric Avenue. Colors by Llarowe The 6ix, She's a Beauty, and Yes I'm Loonie Too.



Fair Maiden Siren-ade, The Illusionist, Wondrous Curiosities, Cinder Hella, Malice in Wonderland.



Alter Ego Gentle Benevolent, Clever Girl, Nice Boy, and She Matters matte top coat. Fiendish Fancies Mrs. French's Cat is Missing.



Native War Paints Special Effects Life in a Glass House, Border Crossing, Road Trip Snacks, and Touring Toronto. Cuter Cuticles Acetone Additive in Rose Petals (my first acetone mix-in).



My Indie Polish Toast of the Town, Queens Quay, and Started from the Bottom. Girly Bits (I bought so much they wouldn't fit in one photo easily) What a Bunch Abalone, Age Your Sage, and North of 42.



Girly Bits stamping plate, Not Common Mules (top row), Sparrow of the Dream, What the Hell Was I Thinking (start of bottom row), Zed, Dark Reflection, unlabelled mystery polish (gift with purchase), Small Batch Prototype 2038.



I also got a lot of colorful tissue paper ... this is just a sampling. :D



I haven't managed to wear, much less swatch, any of these yet. I do hope to get to at least some of them in the coming weeks (as well as the other three polishes from the IEC polish making workshop). Except I also bought a lot of polish on the trip to and from IEC, so I've got my work cut out for me.

Wheel Q10: Flakies

For this week's Nail Wheel Wednesday, I have an assortment of flakies from an assortment of brands. You will note that several are so similar as to be the same. What else is new, eh? Some of these are more mylar shreds than



(all over black creme base)

1. Finger Paints Colorful Dream (2 coats)
2. Finger Paints Psychedelic Hue (2)
3. Finger Paints Vivid Reflection (2)
4. Finger Paints Symmetrical Symphony (2)
5. Finger Paints Abstract Attraction (2)
6. Finger Paints Twisted (2) [base has darkened a lot since I put it on Wheel W6 in 2014; why it was in my un-wheeled section now I'm not sure, except maybe I got two bottles and forgot I got two bottles]
7. Color Club Snowflakes (2)
8. Fresh Paint Sugar Crush (1)
9. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Hidden Treasure (1)
10. Picture Polish Festival (2)
11. Elf unnamed (1)
12. Essence Nail Art Special Effect Topper Night in Vegas (1)
13. Revlon Transforming Effects Cosmic Flakes (2)
14. Kardashian Beauty Cabana Collection Sunset Champagne (2)
15. Funky Fingers Mermaid Tears
16. Funky Fingers Taken (2) [blue tint in the base has pretty much faded away]
17. Catrice Glitterazzi (2)
18. Nina Ultra Pro Island Fever (2)
19. L'Oreal The Magic Top Coats The Holographic (2) [this was an innocent bystander in a glitter polish bottle breakage incident, cleanup from which damaged its label]
20. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Glass Slipper (1)


Bottles 1 through 5:



6 through 10:



11 through 15:



16 through 20:

2300 Miles of Displays

I've been home long enough from my trip to have unpacked and caught up on laundry and put all my new nail polishes on my spreadsheet (well, except the bottles I got on my day trip to Spokane last week), so I've finally been able to go through all the display pics that have piled up on my hard drive since my last display post, most of them taken in the 2300 miles (3700 kilometers) between my home and Toronto (and yeah, I drove back, too, and via slightly different route than I took out, but I didn't feel right calling this post "4600 miles of displays" when so many of those miles were the same ones, just traversed several weeks apart).

This is likely going to be my most picture-heavy post ever, so if you are looking at this post on my main page and see a "read more" link, don't be surprised. I've avoided them until now, as I like to see everything on one page when I go to a site, but sometimes they're necessary (and I understand Google may penalize in seach results if a page is slow to load due to many photos, so I may end up using read more links more often to avoid that).

I saw the three fake nail sets for China Glaze Shades of Paradise at my Ulta before the polishes showed up. There's a mermaid scale with purple accents, a purpley pink iridescent, and a pastel blue with gold crackle accents. Oddly, they were in a display left over from the Chic Physique collection.



Sally Beauty had a China Glaze Shades of Paradise display with the fake nails plus the polish colors, though most were sold out by the time I got there. There was also a mini set, and a nail art kit with two colors of polish and some decals.

Wheel O10: Various Magnetics

Back to our regularly scheduled programming this Wednesday with a wheel of magnetics. They're popular in the indie world now, but not so long ago, it was easy to pick them up at retail stores, which is how I got the polishes featured in this episode of Nail Wheel Wednesday.



(all are two coats except for the LA Girl, which are one; some have enough texture that they would have benefitted from topcoat, but I skipped it in favor of moving on to the next shiny thing that distracted me the day I painted this wheel)

1. Ulta Put a Ring on It [these first four minis came in a set; the magnet is this ring on the cap of this first one]
2. Ulta Polar Opposites
3. Ulta Opposites Attract
4. Ulta Rules of Attraction [has a different formula than the other three Ulta magnetics; didn't get much change out of it, though perhaps I just wasn't patient enough]
5. LA Girl Magnetized [magnets for the LA Girl are in a piece that pops out of the top of the caps; different colors have different designs]
6. LA Girl Positive Charge
7. LA Girl Attract
8. LA Girl Electrostatic
9. LA Girl Repel
10. LA Girl Magnetic Field
11. LA Girl Magnetic Force
12. LA Girl Polar Opposite
13. Magna Nails Silver [magnets for the Magna Nails are on a separate piece which has a nail tip glued to it showing the color of the polish and the pattern the magnet makes]
14. Magna Nails Wind
15. Magna Nails Water
16. Magna Nails Titanium
17. Magna Nails Gold
18. Magna Nails Earth
19. Magna Nails Copper
20. Magna Nails Fire


Bottles 1 through 4:



5 through 8:



9 through 12:



13 through 16:



17 through 20:






















Destash notes:

Protective Nails of the Day

I am home from nearly a month on the road! There's so much unpacking and laundry and such to be done, most of which I haven't gotten to yet because a friend and her dog came up to visit for the weekend soon after I returned. I'm now one week into a manicure intended to protect my nails from the rigors of moving luggage in and out of hotel rooms as I drove back over three days and all the reaching into suitcases and the washing machine and dryer as I settle back in. If you've been reading a while, you've probably already guessed that it's fake nails to the rescue. This particular set is from Pretty Woman, some Designer Nails I picked up on my trip in (I think) Billings, Montana. I don't see any name on the box, just the item number PD1004. They're a long-ish coffin shape, most in a pale peachy pink solid color with a few accent nails in a coordinated microglitter finish.



There are 24 nails in the box; I didn't have any issues finding sizes to fit my fingers. I was frustrated that the accent thumb nails weren't the best fit for me, so I had to have plain thumbs, but that's just how it goes. I used the adhesive tabs to apply them; those seemed a bit short for my bigger fingers (all the tabs are the same height and just differ in width). I'd describe the nails as thin but sturdy; they didn't feel heavy on my nails nor did they seem too bendy to do the job of protecting my natural nail tips underneath. The shape was not something I'm used to—the corners on the tips felt very sharp and pointy to me the first day or so I wore them. After that, I either got used to them or they wore down and smoothed out a bit due to normal use. They still felt long to me but weren't as distracting.



As with most other pointy fakes I've tried, the edges of the nails tapered down too quickly to cover my real nails at the sides of the tips; that bothered me when I first put them on but then I forgot about it; the pale color of the fakes blended fairly well with my skin and nails so it wasn't obvious where the gaps were.



Within twelve hours of putting them on, I popped off the first nail when the sticky tab lost its grip. I re-affixed the nail with glue (also included in the box) and just kept doing that as the tabs failed. By a few days in, all the nails were glued on, and they mostly stayed (in a couple cases, a hard knock of a tip against a hard surface would dislodge them, but regluing was easy).



The last morning of my drive back, I melted the tip of my left index finger nail when I got it too close to a hot toaster in the hotel when fishing my bagel out. It didn't deform too much, fortunately.



After I got home, I decided to clip off the melted part of that one nail and shorten the others to match, filing them all into a more rounded shape that feels more comfortable to me.



I think I can get a few more days wear out of these before the gap at the base starts to bother me, so that's what I shall do. Perhaps I'll reward myself with a new manicure after I finish my unpacking!