Nail polish organization!!

I'm so excited for this post!!
Ryan and I went on an intense cleaning spree Sunday, and then the pile of my nail polish in the corner & all of my makeup on the windowsill (our bathroom has terrible light for makeup!) was just unbearable. We had looked into getting a helmer when he ordered a new desk from IKEA, but the shipping for a $40 set of drawers was $55!! Insane. So we went on a journey to Michael's & finally bought a Melmer!
Sidenote: Why does Michael's have their storage all over the store? 2 or 3 of them were in 3 or 4 different areas. We made a complete circle of the store before we finally found the right one!
I have to say: the melmer is AWESOME. I like that it's not as big as a helmer, I like that it's stackable/expandable, and I love that it feels really solid. From looking at posts about it, I was under the impression that it was thin metal, but it's wood with a really nice heft. I really love it!

So first, here's my polish before:

I have 140 polishes. There are about 120 here, and then another 20 (glitter topcoats, sinful colors, confetti) hiding in my closet. This is just hanging out on the floor next to one of our bookshelves in the dining room.

I'd run out of room in the boxes, so this little baggie had been getting more & more full over the last couple weeks.

These boxes hold whole collections -- OPI Muppets & CG Hunger Games -- and then the two smaller boxes have base/top coats.

Two tupperwares full of polish! Zoya, Essie, Orly, random stuff in the first; Milani, SH CSM, CH, & OPI in the second.

This is what I built! Ryan helped a little, but it was really not complicated at all.

Ta-da! All built! Polishes in the melmer, makeup in the pink shelves, polish remover, polishes for giveaway, and the complete collections are up top.

Here's the top shelf. At the very front are all of my base & top coats. A base coat for every brand, 3 quick dry (SV, poshe, & out the door), and a couple glittery top coats. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure & Sinful Colors live here. This drawer also has the random small groups like Pure Ice, Del Sol, NYC, & Confetti.

The second & third drawers I've organized very differently from normal. I really really really like it, but as you can see there isn't a whole lot of room to grow. That means at some point I'll have to go back to the normal, boring way, but for now...

I haven't decided which of these works better yet, so there's a picture of both set ups.  I ADORE being able to see all of the polish. Honestly, I'd almost rather have 2 Melmers set up like this than 1 Melmer set up the normal way. Although, if this is how I plan on storing all of my polishes, I could probably get a drawer set with shallower drawers? Something to consider in the future.
Clearly, this drawer holds mainly Zoya, Essie,  Orly. It also has a couple Hard Candy, since they're square bottles, and a few of the nicer polishes that I only own a couple of.

Here's drawer #3! OPI & CG. Isn't it just way more beautiful this way? Even if it does hold less than half as many as normal...

So here's what it looks like as you pull the drawers out:

Really beautiful. And really easy to decide on a mani color! Or at least, easier. Sometimes I'm just really indecisive...

And now, onto the makeup! I know I haven't blogged makeup here, and that's for a good reason: I'm not really into it. A lot of the time, I'm too lazy to wear any!! But you ladies are influencing me, so I've been trying to do it more often, and to step out of my comfort zone a little. Ryan has even commented a several times in the last few weeks on how good he thinks I look, so apparently it's working!

 I bought this at Target my freshman year of college. They also had them in blue & clear. I'm sure they're still around, especially late summer/early fall when college kids are moving.

The top drawer. I love Everyday Minerals -- I actually just got new foundation & concealer, as well as some samples, if anyone is interested in a review? -- so that's a lot of this! Original Glo foundation, concealer, and a  few of their mini eyeshadows. Sephora brand eyeshadow primer. A few eyeshadow palettes -- I love the shit out of this Revlon palette for an easy natural eye; the Hip duo is a really pretty shimmery nude + a great dark purple, and the 8-pan WnW palette is seriously my favorite and I really want to buy the others.

2nd drawer is tools -- tweezer, brushes, etc -- plus eyeliner & mascara.

3rd drawer is odds & ends. Safety pins & a brooch; the aforementioned EM samples, some Aveda perfumes, a couple lip sticks, a mini CND solar oil, & some argan oil.
As far as makeup goes, I'm seriously low-key. No blush, only one eyeliner & mascara, lipsticks I rarely wear... But it's good to have, and I love that it's all in one place. I also have a kit full of bits & pieces in the bathroom that I will probably switch in and out, but this is my base zero for now.

Yay! Organization! Makeup & polish all in one place, both looking pretty and being clean!

Let me know if there's anything in here you want to see!

NCAA Tournament Nails, take 1!

This past weekend was the beginning of the NCAA tournament! As I've talked about before, I'm a HUGE Kansas fan. My husband and I watched both rounds with his boss, who is a descendent of Phog Allen, and if you know who he is, let's be friends! :) So here are the nails I rocked for the whole weekend.
Yes, that means I didn't do St. Pats nails. Basketball is WAY more important to me!!


I started with 2 coats of Essie Waltz.

Waltz is a really pretty sheer. I also have Allure & Marshmallow. Allure is a super sheer wash of barely-color; Waltz is more opaque; Marshmallow is practically-opaque white. They cover all 3 of the levels of coverage I could want really nicely.

Then I reached for some blue & red glitter! A lot of people weren't super pleased with the Muppets glitter, because they weren't opaque, but that's my favorite kind of glitter. I love to layer & sponge & play with glitter, and the clear-based glitters are really great for that!

I used Gone Gonzo & Gettin' Miss Piggy With It for this. GG was actually significantly denser than GMPWI, which I found interesting... but I'm not sure if that's true or if I just shook it up a little more vigorously and got the glitters re-suspended better.

This isn't a sponge gradient; with glitter, I find it much easier to just put a large dollop at the tip, spread it across (kind of like a french!) and, after wiping all the excess off the brush, use short strokes to spread it down the nail a bit.

We played on Friday & Sunday, so I wore Waltz by itself on Thursday & with the glitter for 3 days, and when I took it off Monday morning it was still flawless. These nails made it through two games, one of which was a freaking nail biter (though thankfully, not literally! I think I've really truly broken the habit!), AND building a Melmer (pictures of that coming soon!), which I find so impressive. I really really loved how this looked. It was exciting but still very lady-like, and my nails looked incredible.

And here are a couple pictures from my dslr; I tend not to take pictures of my nails with my dslr, as I don't have a macro lens, and my point & shoot is really high quality, but for some reason I actually did take a couple this time!

Are you rooting for a specific team this tourney? And do you do your nails to show your support?

Sinful Colors Neptune

Ah, Sinful Colors. I love you so much for being insanely affordable with amazing colors. I have a love/hate relationship with your formula because it's so hit or miss, but thank you thank you THANK YOU for making Neptune pretty much flawless.

These pictures are 2 coats of Neptune. Slight tip wear, because it's day 2 of wear, I am always too lazy for top coat, and I play piano. But it was chip-free on day 4 when I took it off, so it's definitely getting my approval.

The last picture is the most color accurate. It wants to photograph really BLUE, and it's not. It's a little more cornflower-y than most of these pictures show. I tried to correct the next-to-last photo, but I think it's a little too purple, though still fairly accurate. The last picture shows that it is darker and a little richer than that electric blue in the first picture.
The first coat was streaky & ugly, but the second evened it all out. And what a GOREOUS shimmer. It's like the big brother of Essie Coat Azure or Smooth Sailing. In fact, I bet the three of them would make a gorgeous ombre!

China Glaze Hunger Games: Foie Gras & Fast Track

Foie Gras was fine. A nice enough taupe. It has a lot of purple undertone, but I saw a whole lot of brown most of the time. Two coats, no top coat.

These aren't my best pictures ever. Forgive me. I only wore it for a couple days, and then I switched it up for Fast Track. I had a job interview on Thursday (which went well, but also made me not really want the job that much...) so I figured I should go with something a little more "normal."
Again, two coats, no top coat.

I ...think? I like this color? I still haven't quite decided. It's nice enough, but in some lights it looks really awful on me. And sometimes the gold shimmer pulls a little green? Maybe that's just me, but it weirds me out.

I promise a non-Hunger Games polish next!

Gray Matter

My second Misa! These pictures are from last month, & my nails look so short to me here! But the polish is still gorgeous. It's "just" gray, but it's so much more than that.

One flawless coat, no top coat, & it dried really quickly.

This closeup is the most amazing shot:

It's speckled! Not shimmery or glittery. Speckled is the only word that fits. So gorgeous. Now that I'm looking at these pictures again, I want to put it back on...

China Glaze: Hunger Games - Smoke & Ashes

Let's be honest: If you're a Hunger Games fan, you will get this polish, even if you think it's not your cup of tea. Who isn't supporting District 12?!

I thought this was just a black with a little bit of shimmer, but whoa. The shimmer is seriously incredible.

All of these pictures are 1 coat, no top coat.

Here you can see the shimmer looking a little bit blue but also a little bit green. It depends on the light!

Formula is absolutely spot on. Yet again, this is one perfect coat. Dear China Glaze, I love you.

Smoke & Ashes really does mostly just look black probably 85% of the time. If you look at it from close up, you can always see the shimmer, even in low light. But then in the sunlight... well, you've seen the picture! Some seriously gorgeous blue shimmer.

A lot of people have said that this is a blackened blue base, not a true black, but I'm going to disagree. Even if it is something like #00001D in hex, with just the slightest amount of blue, my eyes sure can't see it. They just see black with pretty blue shimmer. Yes, when the light catches it, it sure looks blue, but I really think that's just the shimmer.

So to sum up: crazy opaque black with crazy beautiful blue shimmer. Yet another Hunger Games polish that I love so much more than I expected to.

China Glaze: Hunger Games - Agro

I have so many other manis to show you (I'm a couple weeks behind on here vs real life), but I got my China Glaze polishes yesterday, put on Agro, and FELL IN LOVE. So here are some pictures, because I don't want to make you want to see them!

Agro is a mossy green with a great shimmer. It's almost a metallic, vaguely frosty shimmer, but not at all in a brushstrokey way.

First, here are a few pictures in the shade.

These are all just 1 coat. There is a little balding going on at the base of a couple fingers -- see the ring finger -- but that is all entirely my fault. My brush was a little wonky; it was a little fluffier than the China Glaze brush I'm used to, and it had one piece that went out a bit to the side, but it wasn't bad enough to be a hindrance. One coat that looks this good this easily is an A++ in my book.

Super gorgeous, right?! It makes me think of a mossy, shady forest in the sumer. I love it.
But wait. It gets better.

Super shimmery in the sun! And look at it out of focus:

Some of that shimmer looks a little holographic to me! It's all sorts of pretty colors.

All of these pictures are clickable to make huge, but this is the one you absolutely HAVE to see large! The index finger is in focus, so you can see how pretty the polish itself is, but the closer fingers show you some of this seriously amazing shimmer! I haven't seen anyone else mention this, so I was not expecting it, and it is INCREDIBLE.

To sum up: I love Agro! Now to choose which HG polish to use next...