The Birthday Haul

So yesterday I had a birthday, happens every year to the best of us.  My husband is a real sweetheart and spoils me rotten, especially going out of his way on my birthday.  This year, it turned into an epic nail polish quest through Tacoma and Seattle and we came out pretty victorious.

Here's an overview of the whole thing.  It's the second largest haul I've done, the first being when I was in LA before Christmas.  Some of it came in the mail too because I had a gift card, but most of it was a result of browsing around yesterday.  I was on the look out for decent sales and found quite a few BOGOs!

These are part of the nail mail portion.  I've been eyeing them around and debating whether or not I wanted to get all 3D with my nails and decided to give it a go.  I'll have a blog post and a mani experience with them up on the blog soon!

One of the things on my list that I didn't find was Revlon's Whimsical.  I'd kept my eye out for it at several stores, but after no luck, I spotted a bottle of glitter that reminded me of it.  I decided to try to franken something similar out of it.  These are my two test bottles.  I need to thin them out a little bit more, but I'll have a post about these frankens soon too!

I hit up Ulta by the end of the day and found some Barielle polishes on their sale rack for 99 cents.  The brown actually has a big chunk of glass missing from the bottom of the bottle so I don't know what it's called yet.

Ulta also had a few polishes from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection on sale, so I caved and bought them.

OPI Ink, on the left, has been on my wishlist for a while, but I just always pass it up for something else.  Not this time!  It was one of the very few that was full price.  I got Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow with a buy two, get one sale.

These...H&M and their novelty.  That's really the only reason I bought them, because they looked fun in their dual-colored, polka-dotted tubes.

Ulta does these polishes for a buy two, get two offer.  I picked up Pinata-Yada-Yada because I want to franken with it and Chic Peek because it was pretty.  The other two went promptly into my Whimsical project.

I popped in to Icing at some point to look for their magnetic polish, which I found and I will get to it eventually.  Their polish is always buy one, get one half off, so I picked out these two.  As pretty as After Party (Left) is, I may have to stick it in a care package to my BFF because it screams her name with its rainbow glitter goodness.

We walked through a Daiso store because my hubby and I miss Japan and wanted some green tea.  I picked up these funky looking things because they looked fun and outrageous!

I'd been eyeing Nubar polishes at a beauty supply in the mall and decided it was time to try them.  This is Unfaithful Red and her friend Amethyst.  I did nail wheel swatches of these and I am fascinated by them!  I'm certainly going to be showing them to you this week!

I found some China Glazes on sale as well!  I'd passed on Glittering Garland for a while, but it was $3 at the store where I found the Nubars.  Ultamate Holiday was leftover at Ulta for $2, so I picked up yet another bottle.  I am actually bummed about Wicked Style from the Electropop collection.  It's not that I didn't want it or don't like it, but I ordered it by mistake.  I intended to buy Dance Baby, but I was ordering a bunch of things and must have flubbed up my order.  I still want Dance Baby...but I'm not likely to get it after this haul! The last one in line is Concrete Catwalk, which came in the mail with Wicked Style.  I've been wanting it for a while, but usually it is the one sold out at the displays in stores!

Sephora sent me an email wishing me happy birthday and saying they had a free gift, so of course I went to get it!  I didn't get a picture of it, but it was a sample of two tinted lip balms.  I'm going to give them a try eventually, but there's no way I could walk into Sephora and not come out with polish.  This is the Wyndham flakey duo by Nails Inc.  I passed on the Finger Paints flakies because my Sallys sold out before even I got there and stalking Sallys here would be a lot of driving.  I still really wanted a green flakey though, so I bought this one.  I did a nail wheel swatch of these two and the dark green cream it comes with is pretty amazing on its own too.  

I stuck my head in Forever 21 and found these.  They didn't have any glitters, so I didn't spend too much time there, but I love the mint green one.  It has a beautiful gold shimmer in it!

We accidentally came across an American Apparel store when we went to the university district in Seattle.  I say accidentally only because I hadn't thought about it with all our other plans, but five minutes later I picked up three of the polishes I've wanted since I found out AA makes amazing one-coaters.

And finally, the Icing Magnetix.  I am super disappointed with these polishes for one reason: The brushes are completely destroyed.  I like to check my bottles before I buy them, but I got snapped at by a sales associate, "No testing!"  (This happens a lot in Claires and Icing, so I actually have avoided them lately, but magnetic polish!!  I needed it!)  In any case, they look like they were bent in half and crushed, in both bottles.  I'm going to trim them into a better shape, but I doubt that will even save them.  No clean lines for me =(

I also picked up a Color Club set at Ross that isn't pictured.  It's the second one of the Back to Boho Collection that I didn't own all of.  I had Nouveau Vintage, so now I have two of those.

I'm about to go put on my Super Secret Birthday present to myself and take some pictures, so stay tuned!  Thanks for reading!