Sparkled Beauty

I hope everyone has a great start of the day celebrating Love (or the lack of it, in my case). No pink or hearts on here today, just black and glitters of countless shapes, sizes and colours. More me!

This is Candy Lacquer City Girl. The name is perfect, since this is one crazy polish.

The glitters are very dense in the clear base, perfect for layering. I didn't have to fish for anything, just swirled my brush before pulling it out of the bottle, then dabbed on the nails.

I can see white, red, pink, blue, green in round, hex, square and bar forms. Big glitters, small glitters, you name it! Click the pic to see the glitters in full size, and you'll believe me.

The base colour is Orly Goth, a black with some subtle silver shimmers.

I figured with that many colours of glitters, a black base is appropriate to feature them all and none gets lost in the base. And I couldn't be happier with the result. City Girl looks amazing and so much fun on the nails.

To add to all this prettiness, the name City Girl is very nostalgic to me. I used to be one, had lots of friends to hang out with and lots of fun stuff to do almost every night. All that was gone the day I left home :( Not that I don't like the life I have right now, it's just different and I can't help but feel isolated sometimes.

Maybe that's what life with a kid is supposed to be like, especially when your friends have kids too lol. The good thing is you don't feel alone on days like Valentine's. She is my +1, and she's there with me to take advantage of those 2-for-1 deals that restaurants put out today. Gotta love that!

Enough with that sentimental stuff. Here's a bonus pic of City Girl in the sun, with, again, snow in the background. Not the smooth new snow, but the messy melted snow that we have a little too much of lately :) Been wearing my rainboots 3 days straight because of the slushy sidewalks and curbs!

And a close-up is a must with this beautiful polish. I love City Girl for the colours (yes there's pink glitters in there), shapes (yay for no heart-shaped ones) and the emotion associated with its name. See, love can be nontraditional but picky :)

I was talking to a guy friend, and he said today is a day of disappointment to men. They never feel like they have done enough, and it has to be better than what they did last year. I just laughed it off, but maybe women feel disappointed too for the same reason lol. Unless you are one of those rare cases that your other half surprises you every day with how much he/ she loves you.

Anyway, have a great day today and don't buy too much chocolate (50% off) tomorrow :)

This is a huge collective haul from different places at different points of time. I was waiting on things to come in the mail to post them all together :)

I jumped on the W7 bandwagon in a heart beat as soon as I saw all 3 shades I wanted were in stock on Nail Polish Direct.

I didn't know much about this UK brand other than the fact that they made cheaper Nails Inc Sprinkles alternatives, only £1.95 a piece vs $11.

From L-R: Mosaic (dupe of Nails Inc. Pudding Lane), Salt n Pepper (close to Nails Inc. Sugar House Lane) and Lava Flow.

The brand only has these 3 shades with this type of glitter mix so far that I know of.

W7 is also known for some cool duochrome shades, I took full advantage of the cheap shipping - £2.95 for 9 bottles.

First row: Metallic Mercury, Metallic Jupiter and Metallic Neptune

Second row: Metallic Mars, Metallic Venus, Metallic Saturn and Diamond top coat (free with purchase of 5 W7 nail polish).

Shipping took a bit more than 2 weeks. My Metallic Saturn came without a name sticker, I tried to email and FB them with no answer. This turned me away from ordering more from them (was lemming some Barry M), so be warned.

With Shoppers' very first BOGO event on nail polish about 2 weeks ago, I got:

- Quo Center of Attention (from a LE display)

- Nicole by OPI Back to Reality... TV (Kardashian Kolor 2012 collection), Coral Denominator (One Less Lonely Girl collection, supposed to be a Canada exclusive originally), and A Million Sparkles (a 2012 shade).

I was glad to see Shoppers starting to offer some great sales like this. The key point to success is to pick the location with good stock level.

From the Cult Nails birthday sale near beginning of the month for $7 a bottle (reg. $10), I got:

- Annalicious, Feelin' Froggy, Manipulative (all are to be discontinued soon), and

- I Got Distracted. I've been eyeing this one for a while now, glad to finally own it.

Shipping for 4 bottles was $8 to Canada. I am already looking into another order, cause Cult Nails is coming out with the colour changing top coats, hard to resist.

Killed 2 long time lemmings via Ninja Polish: Floam and Sticks 'n Stones, $9 each.

These weren't on sale or anything, but they were really really hard to catch whenever they were back in stock on the site. They sold like hot cakes, I was just lucky that day.

Floam was originally from Nail Venturous but now is bottled under Ninja Polish brand, I'm not sure what the story is, doesn't really matter though.

Canada shipping starts at $3.50 for the first bottle, then $1 for each additional bottle.

I heard about Candy Lacquer over at a few nail blogs and loved the shades they offered. The day their etsy store opened, great shades were sold out within 5 minutes. Craziness!

I missed out on the great LE shades, only got Honey Bee, City Girl and Argyle, $8 each. These are glitters with interesting shapes and combination, definitely stand out to me.

Canada shipping was $5 + $1 for each additional bottle. A little higher than I wanted, but it was worth it to splurge on these.

A CP from the US, thanks to a blogger friend, for some shades that I couldn't get here at the time.

- Revlon Moon Candy in Supernova and Cosmic. These have showed up at our Walmart now :)

- Sinful Colors in Why Not, Dressed to Kill, Let's Meet, Leap Flog and Cinderella.
This wish list was before the drama that Sinful had with nail bloggers. I'm glad to have these colours now, but probably won't buy anymore until I hear some good settlement.

I did really well at Sally this month. These are from 2 different trips - one when I first heard the China Glaze Summer Neons collection was on clearance for $3.29, and one when clearance items were extra 50% off (last weekend).

First row: Beach Cruise-R, Under the Boardwalk, Ride the Waves

Second row: Hang Ten-Toes, Love's a Beach, Surfin' for Boys, and Orange You Hot.

Still missing the green and yellow :(

Other random shades on clearance, also at Sally.

First row: Finger Paints Go Van Gogh; and Late Night Rendezvous (Summer in the City collection)

Second row: Orly Forever Crimson; Sterling Silver Rose; After Party and Dayglow (Feel the Vibe collection).

No sign of the great bright shades from Feel the Vibe nor the Orly Glam Fx :( If you can find them, you'd be one of the luckiest people in the world.

This last bunch was a surprise, as I thought they were long gone. Crackle fever might be over, but I couldn't resist the shimmers, especially when they were $1.50 each.

So here are China Glaze Glam-more, Luminous Lavender, Gleam Me Up and Jade-D.

It's always a good idea to call your store before heading over, as I found Sally's sale isn't necessarily the same across provinces. I had one fail trip where a sale hosted at my friend's store was not at mine.

Layla is on 30% off at Lawtons this week, the best sale I have seen on it so far. The price came out to be around $11 after discount.

Lawtons only has the shades from the first release, so I only got Flash Black and Ultra Violet (which, by taking picture, I realized that I grabbed a tester of, lol).

The OPI Spiderman collection was on clearance, $3.49 a piece. I got Number One Nemesis and My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

Phewww, that is all, for now :) Hope this is a fun read for you on a Monday.