Sometimes I wonder what the chemists in nail polish labs are thinking. They have such a different view on putting colors together or maybe it's me. When I ask for a Navy blue with green and blue glitter just slightly peaking through, what would you make me if you were the chemist? How about an aqua base with LOTS of ice blue glitter that leans green?

I have had several rejects in my quest to make Tierny's dream of Living Water perfect. The down side is that glitter tends to "eat" the polish. So it has been a delicate balancing act. We have it right now and it is in production, but some of the rejects are gorgeous. One in particular is so friggin' glitterful and gorgeous I can't stop thinking of it. I am actually wearing it as my manicure now. Everyone I have shown this reject to is just as awe struck by it's beauty. I talked to the lab to find out what will happen to this color. If I reject it, they can sell it to someone else. I love this color so much, I can't bear to let that happen. I think I may just buy it and make it part of a future collection.

But enough about that color - I am not going to show you that one. Instead I am going to show you another equally beautiful reject. This is one that isn't going to make it into the line. Why you ask if it is so amazing won't this one make it in the line? Well because I feel like I have seen it before. Maybe not exactly this one, but pretty close. So I will show it to you and you can tell me which color you think it matches. This is a deep green that leans aqua with some ice blue glitter.

We went to a friends house for dinner tonight, so we stopped on the way so I could take another shot at the outfit of the day photo. Juan hates the shirt I wore - it's one of my favorites. Maybe you can break the tie...

I'm still here, promise. It has been an insane week at work and then when I come home it is life with the family and working with the lab on finalizing Living Water & Iconic. What a week. I was so stressed at a few points in the week, that I wondered what I got myself into. But I made it through and hope to try to come up with some blog post ideas this weekend. I am still working on polish colors for the Spring line. I have some that are waiting on approval. I also have a few other things up my sleeve as well. But for now I will keep those to myself. I'll share as soon as I can.

I am hesitant to show pictures before approval anymore, based on a few things that happened recently. But I want to show you guys some pics. I just received my free Zoya's - well Kat actually picked the colors, so I will probably show you guys those. I also plan on taking some good pictures of Iconic this weekend and was thinking of taking some pictures of the rejects to share here. While they may be rejects now, they may make their way into the line one day anyway - we'll just have to wait and see... :)

Anyway, for now I am calling it an early night and relaxing and then back to work tomorrow. But if you have purchased My Kind of Cool Aid, I would love to see pics, whether you put them on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, MUA or elsewhere, share your link here! Thanks for sticking with me!

I took some outfit of the day pictures today and wasn't happy with how they came out. The wind was whipping all over the place - the outfit wasn't translating right into the pictures, so in the end they just weren't blog worthy. Well some are actually funny and since apparently you guys like those I will probably post them later when I am not being lazy. But I will start posting the outtakes of my outfit of the day posts when there are any.

In the meantime I figured I would show you an old outfit of the day that I just never posted for some reason.

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I am trying to combat a caffeine withdrawal headache at the moment. I decided to give up soda this year. I usually have a soda a day in the afternoon or evening. I started with the afternoon headache as soon as I quit. It has been getting better only coming back every few days, but today I barely had my coffee this morning so the headache is in rare form. Lucky me! I took some Advil, so I hope by the time I finish this post the headache is gone. (Fingers crossed)

I haven't posted another brand of polish on here in a long time, but today I am making an exception. I won't provide a review but I will post the pictures. I went shopping with Juan Friday night to go pick up a book for my daughter and get my eyebrows threaded and while walking through the mall, we walked into Trade Secrets which I believe must have all the Katy Perry OPI's that people are missing from their stores! They had a complete set up in the front and the back of the store. A display full of just Shatter and the Serena Williams colors with yup - more Shatter! I guess Shatter is not a big thing here yet - because not one bottle was gone! I have some old Cover Girl Crackle that has seen better days, so I was excited to grab this one. While looking around, Juan informed me that he was reading JBrobs blog Polish Insomniac and she was looking for this one, so we grabbed her one too. I email back and forth with Jessika on occasion - she has served as a Cult Nails sounding board on more than one occasion, so that had a lot to do with it. But yes if you have a blog and it's on my blogroll and you comment here often, odds are Juan is reading your blog! He likes to get involved. Sometimes I have to tell him to dial it down cause it just creeps me out a little. This is my passion - he can go play his guitar! But really it is so sweet that he gets involved and wants to see what is out there. He is very involved in Cult Nails!

SO ANYWAY - after some polish haulin' which I haven't done in forever, I couldn't wait to get home and play. I grabbed the mini bottles of the Katy Perry collection, Shatter and Glow Up Already from the Burlesque collection.

It was like Christmas when I came home, the girls went nuts for the Katy Perry collection and Shatter. (Imagine that, in a house full of pre-teen & teen girls!) Each girl wanted to try a different color. I couldn't wait to try Glow Up Already!

Here is Glow Up Already




And just a little hint, I am planning a major give-away! The give-away will have some of my favorite makeup items like Nars Orgasm blush, Dior Black Out mascara, Bobbi Brown Pink Raspberry Lip Balm, Some fun accessories and more(like some Cult Nails Nail Lacquer! We are working out the details still. I'm unsure if I am going to do it for number of followers here, likes on , Followers, Registered User's on the Cult Nails site or once a certain number of bottles gets sold. This give-away is intended purely to help spread the word of Cult Nails, which will hopefully mean more fun polishes in the future. So I need to make it a good one. Once I have the details sorted out, I will let you all know. So if you want to get a head start check out all those pages! :)

Hope everyone has a great week! I'm off to do my nails with Living Water! Can't wait to share this one with all of you! REAL SOON- I promise!

Or maybe you guys want to see how cool I can be posing for an outfit of the day picture? It doesn't get cooler than me baby!

How about a distraction then? "HEY LOOK OVER THERE!!!!"

I have been getting a lot of emails from people asking if I will offer a pre-sale. After much thought on whether or not I wanted to do this and how it would work, we made a decision. I will offer the pre-sale! YAY!

Here's how it's going to work. Put all three colors in your shopping cart and check out as if you were purchasing the polishes. You will be charged once you place the order. I will send My Kind of Cool Aid now and then I will send Iconic and Living Water once they arrive! You end up paying just one shipping charge and receiving all three polishes without waiting for My Kind of Cool Aid. Easy!

Of course if you just want to order one polish as a pre-sale, you can do that too!

Now for all of you who have been early supporters - I'm not leaving you hanging! Check your email, we created a coupon code for you so that you are getting $3 off shipping for ordering the other two. So this way you are not paying more for shipping because you were an early supporter! So just check your email!

We are anticipating receiving both Iconic & Living Water in just 3 - 4 weeks. Can't wait to finally have them in my hands! Check out the website at: http://shop.cultnails.com/

Before today's post, I just want to thank everyone for your support! I am overwhelmed by how supportive everyone is being! I truly feel my dream becoming a reality now! Thank you! By popular request, we are working on a Pre-Sale option for those who want to order all three colors, and receive My Kind of Cool Aid now and the other two once they arrive. We are looking at all our options for this where we won't lose too much on the additional shipping expense on our end, while not charging you more shipping on your end. Which also means then creating a coupon code for all of you who have ordered MKOCA already, so that you are not paying more for shipping than those who are waiting patiently. Once we get all the details worked out, I will post the information on here for everyone!

In the meantime, in between packing and shipping orders, I have actually been able to maintain a little bit of a life this weekend. A fellow polish addict recently pointed me to the blog Chloe Conspiracy and I am LOVING it! Well on one of the posts, she featured these ceramic hands from Urban Outfitters that hold your accessories.


I keep all my accessories in my closet. It looked good - nothing special, but they were displayed nicely in there so it was easy to pick out which accessories to wear every day. On the down side, my closet needed more space for my clothes and shoes and so I needed to figure out another option.

Well I have this weird cabinet with a counter in between my shower and closet. It is the strangest place to put a cabinet in a bathroom. I have no clue why they would put this there instead of putting a linen closet. I have hated this space in my bathroom since we moved into this house. I placed a bowl of rocks and shells, a towel rack with a towel and my electric toothbrush on this counter. SOOO ugly. A few weeks ago I decided to display some of my makeup on it. I decorated with stuff around the house, and it looked good, but then I saw the ceramic hands. It became clear in that instant that I should use this space for my accessories! So while in Orlando this weekend I stopped in Urban Outfitters to see if I could find the hands. I tried to order them online, but they are sold out. They had three left in the store. The polish collector in me wanted to grab all three. But I was good and only grabbed one.

ANYWAY - I spent some time moving most of my accessories out of my closet and out to the counter in my bathroom. I haven't finished yet, I need to buy some more hooks to hang the necklaces on and maybe even a second earring holder, but seriously - you just want to see what it looks like right? OK OK here it is...

I can't believe how busy I have been this week. I think I am obsessed with shipping orders out too fast. It started with a goal of shipping within 24 hours. Then I ran out of pure recycled bubble mailers because I completely underestimated how many orders I would get right out, and I had to go all over town with supplies in my car looking for recycled & recyclable mailers (Which probably killed my whole earth friendly stance for the night). I finally found some, sat in my car packaging the polish and hit the post office so they would be out first thing in the morning, to find more orders upon my return home. Guess where Juan took off to within a few minutes of my being home? Yup back to the post office! (It's literally walking distance from my house - so it isn't a HUGE inconvenience or anything.) I know the orders don't HAVE to go out right now, but I just can't wait for you guys to try the polish and let me know what you think! I'll get back to shipping within 24 hours of your order soon though.

I have been getting a few questions on International shipping that I wanted to address here. The website has International shipping as $15. However, if are international and want to place an order, we can get you a shipping quote and send you a PayPal invoice. We are looking at shipping costs internationally and we can get to most places for $5 for 1 bottle or about $7 or $8 for the 3 bottles when they are all ready. We are working on all this now. So feel free to email me and I will let you know the cost. Sound good?

Now on to Iconic. I took the pictures of Iconic before we went home in December. I remember now why I never posted them. I needed to shape my nails real bad at the time and I couldn't get the pictures to show the true amazingness of the color because I was in a hurry. I can't retake the pictures right now because I am testing out how long a color lasts. (Part of that fun formula testing for approval and all). But I wanted to show you Iconic.This should be ready for sale in about 3 weeks. Can't wait!

Iconic is a deep berry creme with red flakes shimmering throughout. I kept getting stopped when I wore this one. Everyone wanted to know what I was wearing. I knew I had a hit as soon as I created it, but the reaction from others earned it a front runner for the launch. I promise to take better pictures soon. Oh and these are clickable to make larger so you can really see the fiery flakies!

A lot of what I have to do for color creation is try to create the color I want and then send it to the lab for them to re-create it. It can take me several attempts over several evenings before I get one color exactly how I envisioned it. Once it is right, I send it to the lab with a description of the color and description of the finish I am looking for. I then get a sample back and will have to go back and forth with them and have them adjust the sample until the color and formula are perfect. Some colors take 7+ iterations before they get the color and formula exactly how I want it. It is a LONG and time consuming process. I started all this in July and will most likely see three colors in February. It's crazy!

Anyway I am already working on finalizing my Spring colors and will be sending in my Summer colors soon. While we were on vacation I received a first take on one of the Spring colors. When I opened the package, my first reaction was "um who's is this?" See, I sent in a nudish color with shimmer. What I received is a taupe/brown creme. WTF! But even though this was a fail and it was going to need to go again, I ended up falling in love with this color. I mean I am really LOVING this color. I also have a red from them that wasn't right, but is AMAZING. As a result I am looking at adding the colors into the collection. That means we may end up with 4 or 5 colors for the release instead of 3. I'll keep you guys up to date.

Now on to the taupe/brown. This color is so pretty to me. I don't know how they came up with it based on the color I sent them. It is like 2 shades darker and missing the shimmer. They use color matching software to get it right - but I mean they could have at least double checked it with their eyes before sending it. But then again, I wouldn't have gotten it if they did. I have nothing like it, but admittedly I have bought barely any nail polish since July. So what do you think, should this get into the collection? I love how it takes on a different hue based on the lighting.

I was so tired today. I just wanted to sleep all day. It was such a struggle making it through the day at work today. I just couldn't get energized no matter how hard I tried. My friend sent me a text to get together for wine, and I was just to tired to contemplate doing anything other than coming home to lay on the couch. But not 5 minutes after walking in the door, Juan tells me we are meeting some friends for some Redberry Yogurt. It didn't seem too bad, some yogurt and home and then I can lay down. But I looked as tired as I felt and needed to get myself together - fast! I was already dressed for work, so there was no need to change, but even though I had makeup on I still looked tired. So I wiped my face clean with some cold water and cleaned out my contacts to try and make myself feel less tired. I threw my hair in a ponytail because ironically a ponytail makes me look less tired. and decided to play with an EvilShades shadow that I have been drooling after since I saw the sample included in my last purchase. I have never worn a red shadow before so I was a little scared, but it was so pretty, I just had to try it. I put it on and it was so dark, that I smudged it until it was half strength. I need to figure out how to play with shadow to make this work - but even just smudged on - it was still amazing. I felt awake and pretty and just a little WOW!





Now it's off to a lush bubble bath with my pimp glass and a magazine. Night ya'll!