Top 25(ish) Polishes of 2013!

Even though I haven't been blogging regularly, I still paint my nails quite often. There have been some beautiful polishes this year and I've decided to swatch out my top 25 or so. Whenever I use a polish in my spreadsheet, I rate it 1-5 stars. These are my 5 star polishes released in 2013 that I've gotten to use so far.

So let's see what types of polishes drew my eye this year:

Color: 26% were blue, 23% were green and 19% were blue. Quite characteristic.

Brand: 23% were Zoya, 15% were Picture Polish and Orly, KBShimmer, Julie G and Digital Nails each made up 7%.

Price Range: 30% were salon polishes, 27% were indies and 15% were foreign.

Finish: 30% texture, 30% holographic, 23% glitter

#25 SquareHue Flower Power

This green is a gorgeous, happy green. It was kinda streaky on the first coat, but perfect on the second. I had my doubts including this in my top 25, but one I got it on the nail, I knew it had to be there.

#24 Color Club Mamba

I picked this one up at an outlet store on vacation. It is the PERFECT red. Rarely needs more than one coat on me. I reached for this one countless times for Christmas manis and Texas Tech game day nails.

#23 Zoya Miranda

Texture was probably my favorite thing of 2013. I cannot get enough of them! I didn't get Miranda at first, but the pink is so pretty and feminine! It reminds me of a princess.

 #22 OPI Jinx

I also hesitated buying this one at first since there were so many orange textures that came out around the same time. I am so glad I bought this! It's got a touch of pink and a gorgeous gold shimmer. Summer in a bottle!

#21 Orly Melodious Utopia and #21.5 Elevation Stay Behind, Catch a Wave

I absolutely love these two together! Melodious Utopia has a gorgeous pink shimmer I couldn't quite capture. Stay Behind in a lovely aqua shade and CIRCLES!

#20 Colores de Carol April Fools

This polish makes me so incredible happy. It's a white based glitter, the glitters are square, it's got rainbow glitter and it's named after my birthday! It's like it was made for me. It's like a party on my nails! There is a little VNL after 3 coats, but I like it. I'd like it more if my nails were more even :/ 

#19 Orly Sparkling Garbage

Sparkling Garbage is too thin to make it looks its best alone, so I layered it over Cult Nails Riot. Riot complements Sparkling Garbage's teal-ish color and is a great base for it!

#18 Zoya Liberty

Another texture. I really can't get over them. This shade of blue it just so stinking gorgeous. It's like ground up jewels on my nails. 

#17 Sinful Colors Pine Away

A metallic green? How could I not love this? Another favorite for Christmas manicures.

#16 Salon Perfect Green Room

This seafoamy/teal-ish halographic underwhelmed me at first. But outside, it blew my socks off.

#15 Picture Polish Hope

My first Picture Polish on this list! They make gorgeous polishes and this is no exception! A gorgeous deep blue scattered holo with glitter.

#14 Picture Polish Ocean

Picture Polish nails scattered holos. The blue of this is perfect for the name Ocean. Beautiful! I should've gone for one more coat.

#13 KBShimmer Get Clover It

KBShimmer always has amazing polishes. I love the green base with sparkle and the gorgeous circle glitters. So perfect for St. Patrick's Day.

#12 KBShimmer I've Got a Crush on Blue

Another fantastic glitter from KBShimmer. This blue is so deep and amazing. The base plus the shimmer and holo glitter makes this polish mesmerizing.

#11 Zoya Godiva

Zoya Godiva is a neutral, which I typically don't like. But make it into a texture and I am all in! This was one of my first textures and led to my addiction with them.

#10 Zoya Sunshine

Once I hopped on board the texture train, I needed a navy texture. Who better than Zoya to make this? This is what I was craving so badly. So perfect for fall. Now I just need a texture the color of Zoya Zuza.

#9 Julie G Sugar Plum Fairy

This rich purple texture is perfection. And a one coater!

#8 Julie G Mistletoe

Julie G Mistletoe is the best green texture I've seen. It's like a Christmas tree!

#7 Picture Polish Freya's Cats

Freya's Cats is a bright blue holo. As with all Picture Polishes, they apply flawlessly.

#6 Digital Nails Stars at Night

A navy holo that's named after Texas. How can this be any better?! Digital Nails makes gorgeous polishes that reference so many things I love!

#5 Zoya Tomoko

Tomoko is perfect for Christmas nails. Doesn't it make you think of a party? Such an amazing metallic champagne color that is just so classy.

#4 I Love Nail Polish A Fresh Evergreen

I'm a sucker for nearly any polish this shade of green since it's so rare in mainstream polishes. Make it a holo and I will drool. This was my first ILNP and I am so impressed.

#3 Digital Nails The Ultimate Ginger

This polish was a part of the "Ladies of Who and Rory Too!" collection. It's a gorgeous aqua which I love and named after my favorite companion and one of her best episodes. So much love.

#2 Zoya Dream

Zoya's holographic polishes last year were fantastic and the follow up was even better. Such a deep blue with an amazing silver fleck holo. Mmmmm.

#1 Picture Polish Sea Jewel

This polish is my absolute favorite polish of all time. I actually ranked it 6 stars in my stash doc. The shade of teal is phenomenal and the metallic-y mesh finish is just utter perfection. I am planning on buying so many backups of this!

So those were my favorites of 2013. What were some of yours? Any that I'm missing and should try?

Cult Nails Riot, Orly Sparkling Garbage and Lac Attack Muggles

Hey everyone! I can't believe how long it's been since I blogged!!! Now that I've finally graduated college, I hope I can blog more regularly now. I graduated a week ago and hauled a bunch of polish in celebration. I used some of my new pretties for this mani :)

I started with two coats of Cult Nails Riot. This is such a gorgeous color! I love it a lot. Great application.

Then I used Lac Attack Muggles (a Harlow and Co. exclusive) and Orly Sparkling Garbage as an accent nail.

I think the colors in Muggles works perfectly with this color! I also think Riot is a great base color for Orly Sparkling Garbage. Sparkling Garbage applies great. Muggles takes two coats with some glitter fishing, but I think it was worth it :)

And I'll leave you with a macro shot of Muggles in all it's shredded glory!

I Can't Be a Hoarder if I'm This Organized, Right? Or "How I Made My Polish Stash Doc"

Several people have asked me how I organized my Polish Stash Doc since it is so ridiculously detailed. I've decided to try to write a post about it. Here we go...

The Beginning

I first made my doc when I had around 300 polishes. One of the earliest incarnations can be seen here. I started in Excel, but I couldn't get it to function the way I wanted. I wanted to easily sort it by Brand and Name. I finally found the functions I wanted in Google Docs. Plus, it's online so I can access my stash from anywhere, including my phone! The best way to get is your doc started it to just sit down and do it. Start by doing one drawer at a time and just knock it out. If you've never worked in Google Docs, here's how to start.

Go to docs.google.com. It will take you to Google Drive. Click "Create" and select "Spreadsheet".

It will open a new tab like this:

In the first row, put what categories you've decided to catalog. I started simply with "Brand" and "Name". I also centered and bolded the headings.

Then put in all your Brand and Color names.

To organize them, hover your cursor over the top of the column you wish to alphabetize (I'm organizing the name first, and then the brand). A down pointing arrow will then appear. Click the arrow and select "Sort Sheet A-->Z". Repeat for Column A.

As you can see, it has moved "Brand" and "Name" down into their alphabetical order.

To avoid this, go back a couple steps until "Brand" and "Name" are once again in the top row. Then click "View" in the toolbar and choose Frozen Rows > Freeze 1 Row.

This will lock the first row so that it is always at the top, like so. 

Now if you alphabetize your columns, your headings will stay in place.

If you provide the link to your stash list, viewers can only see it how you organized it and can't peruse it the way they'd like. There's a simple solution to that :)

To start, you need to change your settings so your stash can be seen by anyone. Click the "Share" button in the top right corner. It will bring up this screen. Under "Who had access" click "Change..." next to where it says "Private".

Choose either "Public on the Web" or "Anyone with the Link". Then click "Save".

Now, to share your Stash with others so they can sort it like they want. Click "View" in the toolbar and select "List".

It will then display your spreadsheet like this:

In this mode, viewers can use the drop down menus under each heading to filter the spreadsheet or click the title of each heading to alphabetize the spreadsheet by that column.

Now that we have the basic functions, let's move on to how my stash is catalogued. One by one, I added more and more columns of categories. My stash has the following categories (with descriptions of each heading, if necessary):

Brand

Name

Color Family- What basic color it is. The colors I have listed are Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Teal, Blue, Purple, Brown, Copper, Gold, Nude, White, Silver, Grey, Black, Multi, and Duochrome.

Finish- I have broken down my collection into the following finishes: 18K Gold Flake Top Coat, Crackle, Creme, Duochrome, Duochrome Glitter, Flakie Top Coat, Flakie-Colored Base, Foil, Frost, Glass Fleck, Glitter (these are full coverage and a clear base), Glitter Top Coat (clear base but not full coverage), Glitter-Colored Base (colored base, may or may not be full coverage), Holographic-Linear, Holographic-Scattered, Jelly, Jelly w/ Shimmer, Liquid Sand, Magnetic, Matte (dries flat with no shimmer), Metallic, Neon, Neon Shimmer, Shimmer, Shimmer w/ Glitter, Shredded Glitter, Suede (dries flat but with a shimmer). Finishes can sometimes be subjective, so don't get too hung up on them. 

Collection

Year

Used

Swatch?-This is for me to keep track of whether or not I have made a swatch stick for it.

Rating- I rate polishes after I use them from one star (hated) to five star (LOVED IT!). I do this so I can go through and reminisce about the greatest parts of my collection and use it to purge.

Color-This second color category is to get more in depth about the colors in polishes that might be made up of more than one. In this column I put the main color or base color at the start and then put whatever glitter colors or shimmer colors in parentheses. For example, for China Glaze It's a Trapeze I put "White (Pink/Orange/Yellow/Green/Blue/Purple/Silver)" in this column.

Color Scheme-Another color category?! Yes! And there's still another coming lol. This one is so I can easily find colors that are similar or for a particular holiday. I mainly use it for black & white glitters, Christmas colors and the like.

Notes-This is where I put if a polish had a special attribute like it's scented, glows in the dark, glows under UV, smells like skunk, etc. 

Misc. Info- This column is to help me remember if a polish was a gift (and who gave it why) or if I bought something in a sale.

Stamp?-If it works as a stamping polish.

MSRP-This is the full retail price for a polish. I tried to also make a column for how much I actually paid, but I couldn't remember too many of them :(

Country

#-This one is king of hard to explain. The second sheet of my Stash doc is my stash color coded. If you sort the Color Family column alphabetically, it doesn't put them in rainbow order. I decided to assign a number to each Color Family group so that I could scroll through the color coded list and it would look like a rainbow as illustrated here.

Drawer-This is for my own personal use so I can sort my stash how it's sorted in my melmers.

Finish Group-I created this column to simplify my finish column so I could make a pie chart to see which finish group I favor. I get really nerdy with all this stuff.

Date Received-This is so I can chart how bad I've been each month. I estimated for a lot of the older polishes, but they should be fairly accurate.

Keeping it Up to Date
To keep my stash up to date, it's always open in a tab in my browser. As soon as I get home from buying polish, I add it to my doc. When I order a nail polish online, I add it to my En Route sheet of my Polish Doc. This sheet has all the info I'll eventually put in my doc, but has it separated until my polish arrives. As soon as I decide I don't want to keep a polish, I add it to the Swap sheet of the doc.

Wish List
I originally kept my wish list up to date on Pinterest, but I decided to add it to my Stash doc so that I could add more information. In that sheet I have Brand, Name, Price, Supplier, Degree of Want (1-5 stars) and Category. There is also a key for what the level of stars mean because I needed to clearly define it for myself lol. It was originally just for me to keep track of what I wanted and how much I wanted it so I could prioritize. Then I added prices to see what I could fit in my budget. Then Christmas came around and I added suppliers so my family members might be able to find things I wanted. Then I added the Category column so that the girls in my birthday group could easily find polishes that are accessible to them in their various countries of residence :)

And that's the basics of my Stash Doc. Pretty crazy, isn't it? If you looked at my stash, you might've noticed all the other sheets within the doc filled with charts I made. I'll be writing up a post on that soon, but if you're too impatient, you can join Polish-Aholics Anonymous on Facebook and find the picture tutorial I did there :) If you have any questions let me know and I'll answer them for you!

Zoya Pixie Dust Partial Collection Swatches!

Hello all! I've been so sad I haven't really had time to blog, but I HAD to make time for these beauties! During Zoya's Color Your World Promo, you could get 3 free polishes and pay $10 shipping or spend $25 additinally to get free shipping. I realized I could get 6 Zoyas shipped of $27 and could not pass up that deal! I took the opportunity to try out some of the new Pixie Dusts. I am head over heels in love with them!

These all dry to a sugary finish. It's a little rough, but not at all bothersome (and this coming from someone who can't handle rhinestones or caviar nails). Strangely, I didn't even think to topcoat them because I loved the sand finish. They have great application. It was incredibly easy to get onto the nail. I used 3 coats, but if you have shorter nails or aren't prone to VNL like I am, you could probably do 2 coats and be fine. Wear time is also good. I applied these, went to bed, went to school/work as usual and then came home and took pics without any evidence of wear :)

First up is Zoya Nyx. It's a gorgeous light blue that's a little dusty. It reminds me a lot of Cinderella. When I first applied these, it also reminded me a lot of flocking manicures. Or paper heat embossing. Or just colored sugar. It's really fascinating!

In the Zoya pictures on their website there are little light glints. It honestly looks like that in real life. I felt like I was a real cartoon princess while wearing these and I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT!!!!

Next up is Zoya Vespa. She's a light sagey green. Not typically my color, but the sparkles won me over.

It reminds me of crushed up jade. I don't really have words for it, but it's really gorgeous.

On to Zoya Godiva! I used to hate nudes. I was appalled anyone wanted to wear them. Then I got China Glaze Fast Track and started to appreciate nudes (especially if they were sparkly!). This polish is amazing. I really really love it.

Going on it looks a lot like CG Fast Track and then dries to that amazing textured finish I've come to love. It was subtle and gorgeous all at the same time.

All of these polishes just seem extremely classy to me. The OPI ones, while gorgeous, are a little louder and bolder and fun. All these made me feel like a classy, pretty princess :) Vespa was probably my least favorite, but I still gave it 4 stars in my stash doc. It's still really fantastic and worth owning. I can't wait to get the rest of these and I hope they make more with this finish!

December Hauls

If you follow my Instagram, Tumblr or Twitter, you get to see all my hauls and purchases. It's really easy to upload to those platforms on the go whereas the Blogger app diminishes the photo quality a lot :( I've decided to compile all my hauls posts for you at the end of each month :)

I started off December by shopping at the CVS Clearance sale. I got the Milanis for 75% off and NOPI Khloe Had a Lam Lam and Sally Hansen The Real Teal for 50% off! Then I picked up Orly Miss Conduct, Angel Eyes and Devil May Care for B2G1 free at Sally's!

Then I got my Lac Attack's Magical Musings collection picks! I got Beauxbatons Academy, Holidays in Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, Dementor's Kiss and The Horcrux of It... I'm such a big Harry Potter fan that I want to complete my collection ASAP! I need to post my Hogwarts mani because it was seriously awesome!

I got my December Nail Art Society box. It came with Cherimoya Mystery and Blockbuster matte metallic polishes, rhinestones, nail glue and nail polish remover pads. I haven't tried it out yet but the polishes look gorgeous!

Then I went on an indie binge on pay day. I got Lush Lacquer Peppermint Kisses and Sugar Daddy, Lacquerhead Polish Rainbow Farts and Just Be Claus, and Pahlish A Partridge in a Pear Tree, Eight Maids a Milking and Twelve Drummers Drumming. I showed you Partridge before. I highly recommend it. It is one of the prettiest and unique indies I've tried.

My Christmas Eve Nail Mail! I got Makeup Your Face Snow Angel and Rockin' Round. This polish is so cool! It has round glitter! I put it over China Glaze Running in Circles and it looked just like a Christmas tree :) It also comes with snowflake glitter in a baggy so you don't have to fish it out of the bottle. I also got Zoya Veruschka from a girl in a facebook girl that was de-stashing. I've been lemming this for so long! It's the last Zoya suede I wanted :D

My dad got these for my stocking. Pop Culture Polish Snow Angel and Amy's Nail Boutique Alyssa. Snow Angel also comes with snowflake glitter outside of the bottle to make life easier. I'm not a super huge fan of Alyssa, but Zoya and Julep refuse to make one haha. It's cute but I wish it were a full-coverage polish and not a top coat. 

My mom's stocking gifts! I got Zoya Logan and Storm, China Glaze Fairy Dust and two Fergie polishes I can't remember the names of. I was kinda sad I got Storm instead of Blaze, but it really blew me away once it was on the nail!

Ashley from One Nail to Another was my Secret Santa in our birthday group! She got me the two snowmen, two frankens she made and China Glaze Winter Holly and Glitter All the Way. And how cute is that ornament?!?!

My aunt got me a gift card to Ulta for Christmas. I was hoping to get Zoya Blaze but my Ulta hasn't restocked it in weeks. Zoya is usually the only polish I buy there (unless I find something on clearance) because I can find most other brands cheaper elsewhere. I got OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls which several bloggers have sung the praises of and it was on clearance! I also got China Glaze Cirque du Soleil because the first Sally's I went to didn't have it.

My Sally's haul (minus Running in Circles)! CG Igniting Love, Def Defying, Hanging in the Balace, Get Carried Away, It's a Trapeze, Glistening Snow, Con-Fused?, Champagne Bubbles and Naked. All the Cirque and Holiday polishes were half off at one of the Sally's I went to! Naked was in a pack with Seche Vite for $5 and I needed more topcoat. The Magnetix was $.99! I love Sally's!

I was tipped off that Color Club Halo Hues were on Crowd Cut for $5 each + shipping! I got Halo-Graphic, Blue Heaven, and Cherubic. These are gorgeous! If you're still looking for them, this is the best price I've found online. I ordered the other three from here :)

And then my last polish purchases of the year. Revlon Girly and Heavenly and Sally Hansen Lava. I paid $8.49 for Lava, which was a lot more than I would have preferred but every display I found when they were came out was already sold out of it, so I jumped when I got the chance. Girly is similar to one of the Nails Inc Sprinkles I wanted and much more affordable. Heavenly is supposed to be a Deborah Lippmann dupe or Stairway to Heaven. I have no idea how close it is, but it is an amazingly gorgeous polish. I highly recommend it!

I also bought Orly Halo for 50% off at Sally's, Orly R.I.P. for $.99 at Sally's and China Glaze Whirled Away. That makes 60 polishes purchased/received in December. That's all I have to say about that.