Nail Party @ My Place

 I recently had a group of friends over to play in my nail polish. A friend of mine has 4 daughters ranging from 13 years old to 8 years old. Needless to say, they had a blast. I also included a couple others to round it out. We had fun. Everyone picked out colors and konad/bundle monster images to stamp. Then I did the manicures to show them how stamping works.

They all have pretty good taste. Several reached for my HTFs! I'm not stingy, I let them use them.

Deb picked China Glaze TTYL to stamp with GOSH Holographic. She wanted something "not too flashy..." Which fit well for that combination when in normal indoor lighting. Then I took her to the balcony and told her it would come alive! They were all amazed, and I was so proud. :)

Do you share your stash with others and have nail parties?

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Orly - Fowl Play (@ Midnight!)

That's right! I got my hands on some of the Orly Fall 2011 Collection. I was disappointed that I couldn't find it in the local beauty stores I was stalking.... then I couldn't seem to find it on the websites I frequent to buy my nail polish either! Ugh. I then went to the Orly website itself to drool over some pictures, and come to find out they have a way to buy direct! I didn't know that, but I do now and I took advantage of it! Click here if you need to get your hands on these polishes as well! $7.50/bottle (which is what I would've paid in the stores) shipping for the 3 bottles I bought cost me $6.50, which is reasonable to me seeing as how desperate I was to get these polishes! Check them out!

The much anticipated Orly - Fowl Play!

 This is what it looks like in most lights. It's a very dark, rich, plum shade with awesome glitter & flakes.

Check out "Let Them Have Polish" that did a recent post about Fowl Play, her pics show the flakies and glitter soooooo much better than mine!

This is where I played with the ISO setting to let in more light to show the base color better. Not realistic, unless you are standing directly under the sun. ;)

I was very grateful to get my hands on OPI Merry Midnight during my first (and last) dusty hunting session a while back. So I do have some swatches to share! Hooray!

The following two pictures are just OPI Merry Midnight. It has a more red-purple base, while Fowl Play is slightly more blue-purple. I no longer have Merry Midnight to do side by side comparison, but I hope from this you can get the point. I remember Merry Midnight's base being jelly and it was not quite as dark as Fowl Play comes across. Both are gorgeous polishes. I don't think they are exact dupes at all, but they are eerily similar. So much so that I personally don't see the point in owning both. No doubt you can get your hands on Fowl Play for a cheaper price tag, so go for it. :) But from what my memory of Merry Midnight.... I do have a slight preference to it, because I feel like the glitter/flakies in it popped more than Fowl Play.

What are the other 2 Orly Fall collection polishes I bought? Well another bottle of Fowl Play,  of course, because I have a feeling it will be HTF seeing the frenzy revolving around it. I also got Nite Owl because the one swatch I'd seen looked so lovely. So I will be sure to share that soon!

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OPI Merry Midnight

Thank goodness for Abby at Lovely in Lacquer! She taught me how to dusty hunt! My adventure started today. I overslept a bit so it was near the end of the day, but I managed to call a few salons on my side of town. I have to mention that a few were VERY rude to me for even suggesting the fact that they would also sell nail polish.... Well, exxxcccuuuuuuuse me! On the other hand, several places were very friendly. :) I managed to wrangle my sister into going with me and we hit up 3 salons before they closed for the evening.

First stop was a bust. They had junky 1/4 full OPI bottles and mostly Sation, which I was not interested in. Left empty-handed.

Second stop was one that I knew had OPI DS hard to finds, because I friend of mine had gone there and gotten a manicure using OPI DS Vintage. They had some true beauties! I picked out 4. OPI DS Glamour (from my wishlist!) OPI DS Original, OPI DS Shimmer? or Diamond? I don't remember, and wait for it.... wait for it..... China Glaze OMG DV8!!!! It was missing the label on the bottom, but I knew what it was! All of these were 3/4 full and I wanted them so desperately. When I carried them to the front, they said they would only sell them to me if they had a spare bottle. :( And of course they didn't have back up bottles of any of them :(( The lady was super nice and assured me that she could order any nail polish and get it in just 2 days for me, if I could wait that long.  She said she would order them for me and call me when they came in. I'm thinking to myself.... "Yeah right, you're going to call me in 2 days and tell me that they're discontinued..." But I just smiled really sweet like, and said that would be fantastic, couldn't wait to hear from her. I'm not going to be holding my breath though. :( Left empty-handed.

Last stop 10 minutes before they closed we marked another salon off my list. This salon didn't have any DS polishes, but I found Merry Midnight! Hooray! And the best part.... it's BRAND NEW! Obviously never been used before. I tried to hide my excitement. The only other polish I picked up there was OPI Dating a Royal which was just a great periwinkle blue that I liked the look of. (I'll swatch that soon) Then this lady told me that she didn't have back up bottles of either of these! She said the same story about ordering them, 2 days, etc. :( "Oh, ok then." And as I put my cash back in my pocket... she said "Or you can buy these now, and I'll order replacements for the salon." Ah the power of money! That's great! I came home with two beauties! She charged me $10 each and I couldn't be happier!

 I see why this has become so hard to find, it is absolutely stunning. Truly unique and sophisticated.

Here is the deal though: I know I won't use this polish to it's full potential. I rarely just have straight polish without art on my nails. And despite it's beauty, this is just not a color I would wear that often. So I let my sister list in on evilBay. It's new and only been used for this one handed swatch seen here. And before you get your panties in a bunch..... we're not listing it for a ridiculous price. She placed the starting bid at $9.99. That way we at least make back what I paid for it. And if it goes up from there, well that's not on my conscience. So please don't send me hate mail about it. :) The link to the listing is here if you're interested. If it doesn't sell on eBay, then it can live amidst my collection and I will still be happy.

 It reminded me of Cult Nails Iconic because of the berry/flakie combination. But just in the bottle shots you can see that there are quite different. OPI's flakes are smaller and more concentrated, while Iconic has larger flakes that are more dispersed. And the base colors look completely different... berry vs blue-ish/purple jelly.

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