Cult Nails Blog: February 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011

Announcing Maria's Must Haves Give-Away!

I am giving one lucky person some of my Must Have items. I can't live without these items, and I figured if Oprah can have her favorite things, then I can have my Must Haves!

Here's how the lucky winner will get selected: If we can reach 1,000 registered subscribers on the www.cultnails.com website by March 31st, I'll give away my must have items to one lucky person!

Go to www.cultnails.com and on the home page, register your email address to receive updates from Cult Nails

If we reach our goal, one lucky person will win all of this!

Want a closer look?

Orly's French Polynesian Island Spa Travel Kit for Hands

My favorite manicure clean up tools

Forever 21 gold bangles

Forever 21 silver bangles

Forever 21 gold cuff

Forever 21 silver chain necklace

Forever 21 silver hoop earrings

Forever 21 cocktail ring

Nars Blush in Orgasm

DiorShow Black Out Mascara

Bobbi Brown Tinted Lip Balm in Pink Raspberry

Evil Shades Cranberry Champagne Eyeshadow

Prestige Waterproof Eyeliner in Black

and...

Your choice of any two Cult Nails Nail Lacquers!

So what are you waiting for? Go register to receive updates from Cult Nails at www.cultnails.com today! Maybe you will be selected as the winner of my Must Have items!

Help spread the word of this give-away. We also made a video showcasing my Must Have items - check it out!

Good luck!!!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Spread the Word Special

I have received so many great comments, tweets & emails with amazing ideas on spreading the word! WOW! That is all I can say! You guys came up with some great ideas. The two that kept coming through was Free Shipping, the Buy one Get 1 and a Loyalty program. I have an action packed day today - driving an hour and a half away to meet up with a salon owner who heard about Cult Nails through Karla Sugar! HOLY COW! How exciting is that? I have sent Karla Sugar an email to see if she would like to do a review. I hope the answer is yes! Anyway this salon owner is also an award winning nail artist that was featured in Nails Magazine. Hopefully Cult Nails will be a product offered in her salon soon. Fingers crossed for me! Then tonight after driving an hour and a half back home I get to get ready to drive an hour back into Orlando to go see Blue Man Group. That is what Juan bought me for Valentine's Day. Can't wait! and in between those two things I am meeting up with an old High School friend for some lunch and to wish her a Happy Birthday! Can't wait to see her.

So while I have the most busy day, why not put the internet to work and get started on a weekend only sale. This sale will be good Feb 26 & Feb 27th only! And you get to choose. You can get Buy 3 get the 4th free or Free Shipping. (You can only choose 1.) So If you want to buy 3 polishes and get a 4th free - put 4 polishes in your cart and use coupon code B3G1. It's that easy. Free shipping will be good on purchases of 3 or more polishes and the coupon code for that is SHIP. It's that easy! You choose!

As for the loyalty program - that is something I have been wanting to do, so I will start coming up with how that can work. I will also be posting Maria's Must Have's on Sunday to help spread the word. Have a great weekend everyone!

Friday, February 25, 2011

I Need Your Help Ladies

As I try to figure out how to grow Cult Nails, I am finding it is a lot of work trying to do on your own. We don't have a Marketing budget right now as all the funds were spent on creating the colors we have done so far and the ones in the upcoming collection. Right now all sales made is going back in to the pot to make more polishes. We plan on creating a marketing budget towards the end of this year, so that we can hire a real PR company. So it is really all just word of mouth on the Internet spreading the Cult Nails love and hopefully that takes us through the first year! So far every one's support has been nothing short of amazing! I am so glad everyone is loving the colors and the formula! I am looking forward to making more of the colors you guys want in the future! I am working with a few bloggers to make their dream colors a reality, and that is so exciting for me! We are still working on the red holo - but I just don't want to get into the issues we are having with getting the materials needed to make this one happen! UGH!

ANYWAY - here is where I need help if you will call it that. We have spent a lot of time creating press kits. The kits include the 4 polishes and a CD-Rom with product information, pictures and company information. My goal is to get these press kits to Beauty Editors, Stylists, Manicurists and now onto the "big dog" blogs. Of course, I can't afford to send the product to everyone and the list will have to be small initially, but I want to try to get some PR started. With that said I have ZERO PR experience, so I am not even sure that this will work, but I figure I have to try!

So here is my question to you all. Does anyone have PR experience and if so can you just tell me if I am on the right track? Does anyone know of any Beauty Editors, Stylists or Manicurists that I should get this product in the hands of? As for bloggers, I am keeping a list of bloggers interested, I am trying to expand out of just nail blogs(although that will continue to be my main focus) and hit some beauty and fashion bloggers, but I haven't had much luck in getting them to respond to me(even when I am offering free product - go figure!. Although two of my ALL TIME favorite bloggers (1 nail that is breaking out and doing more beauty & 1 overall beauty) responded, and I sent them out products and now I wait holding my breathe for their reviews. (It could take about 2 months before we see them, these girls are seriously awesome at their reviews and there for are busy!) But as soon as they post, I will definitely let you all know!

Also if you have posted a review on your blog, please share the link here or on my Twitter page or on my Face Book page. Whether it is good or bad, I would love to see it! We send the links home to our parents each week too! Yeah I am corny like that! :)

LASTLY - Polish sales. My goal is to do random sales here and there on Twitter. But want your input. I can't afford to do as many sales as I would like right now since we are just starting up and I certainly can't afford anything crazy like 1/2 off polishes just yet, but I would like to do little things like free shipping or something here and there. So tell me what kind of sales do you want to see? I was debating on putting some sales here on the blog, but I like the idea of a quick sale on Twitter. But what do you think? Should they be here on the blog? On Face Book? I am open to all suggestions. Just let me know!

The links for my Twitter & Face Book pages can be found on the upper right hand corner of my blog! Come check me out there if you haven't already!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Almost White Polish?

I was trying to create a white polish with a tint to it, so that it wouldn't be a stark white. I made it with a pale pink. But I think it is too common or easy to find. I am wondering if I should try it with blue or purple or some other color instead. What do you guys think?

Here is what I made:

Sunday, February 20, 2011

At Home Manicure Video

As I try to increase the Internet presence of Cult Nails I decided to create an at home manicure tutorial. My friends are always telling me I should do a manicure tutorial video. I always think that would be pointless since everyone has their own way to do their manicure. Heck I have a few different ways of giving myself a manicure, depending on how much time I want to spend. So I decided to do a video of the basic, I don't have a lot of time, once a week manicure I give myself. That's not to say my polish doesn't change throughout the week as I am testing and making new colors, but once a week, I give myself a good manicure.

Now of course, I know many of you might not care to watch an at home manicure tutorial, so I added a little fun at the end of the video - just for you!

Let me know what you think!

Friday, February 18, 2011

Calling All Florida Bloggers & Followers!!!

By popular request - let's do a meetup! I have been "meeting" so many of you online, and the discussion continues to come up that we should meet in person or do a meetup. So let's get the party started! We can meet up for a lunch, if I can coordinate it, I will bring some Cult Nails products and manicure items and we can do out nails while hanging out, and we can even go on a polish shopping trip if we are so inclined!

If you want to join us complete the info below and I will gather all those interested and send out an email this weekend to start putting some plans together for us.

Join Me on March 10th & Rock the Red Pump!

I'm joining the Rock the Red Pump Project on March 10th and I urge you to join me! March 10th is recognized as National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. It is a nationwide initiative to raise awareness about the increasing impact of AIDS/HIV on women and girls. Women represent 27% of all new aids diagnoses.

The Red Pump Project is asking for 500 bloggers to join the 3rd annual campaign. They are trying to get 500 bloggers in less than 50 days to join up and Rock the Red Pump! I'll be Rocking these red pumps on March 10th:

I'll also be rocking Quench on my nails too! Let's all wear our red pumps or at the very least if you don't have red pumps, wear your favorite red polish. Whether you're a blogger or not, I encourage you to join the campaign and help raise AIDS/HIV awareness for women and girls.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

My Attempt at the Jason Wu Mani

I saw the CND Jason Wu mani and knew I had to try it! You can check it out on the CND Fashion Week Blog here.

It seemed like it would be simple enough. First I had to file my nails into an oval shape. Something I tried and failed at before. This time I got it right. But I tried the manicure on Valentine's Day after a few glasses of wine with my sweety. Um - don't ever attempt a manicure after a few glasses of wine! Here is what I ended up with.

I streaked my polish in applying it. Then the gold polish put gold shimmer all throughout the red - but not consistently to look good! Ugh! Darn wine! HA! I'll have to try this again soon. But my nail shape looks good right?

Oh and for those who did not make the final cut on your dream color being created, let me know. I am not reading the submissions that made it as I don't want any future collections influenced. I try to stay away from what is out there as much as possible. But on Twitter last night a few of us were talking and I am all about creating blogger colors. I have said that from the start - heck Living Water is a blogger color! I am being sent a few frankens from some people that will become part of a future collection already. So if you were "rejected" and want to join us for a reject collection, I will pick 3 - 4 for a collection and will continue to incorporate what everyone wants.

Oh and I keep getting requests to make Unicorn Pee. My take is, that it has already been made, that color belongs to someone else. But that doesn't mean I can't make it different and better! So maybe we will have some Unicorn tears in the future since so many people keep asking about that one color. I just have to find the time to franken some tears for you guys! So if you have an idea on how to make it different or better, let me know!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Our Trip to Universal Islands of Adventure

I am sooo not a Roller Coaster fan. They look so fun, but the reality is I panic just standing in line. I get so nervous. I'm afraid of heights, so the fear that a ride will get stuck while I am at the highest point freaks me out. I still go on them, because they are fun, but I have a hard time really enjoying them. So when B said she wanted to go to Universal for her Birthday, I was not all that excited. But it's her birthday, so we took her and her friend to Universal. I was excited that I would be able to check out the Harry Potter stuff. I have to say I have never read Harry Potter and I watched the first movie when it came out and that is it. So it isn't like I'm a fan or anything, but it just looked really cool. So I figured I would take you guys on a little photo highlight of our trip!

Don't mess with me! We bought our tickets in advance and then STILL had to wait in line to exchange them for tickets to get in the park. Seriously? So what the eff is the point of buying tickets in advance? After 40 minutes of waiting in line, we get to the front and the lady has no clue what to do with our FL resident tickets purchased on a military installation. She had to get someone, that was another 20 minute wait. Then the lead comes up and shows her how to do the transaction and sprints off. Well then one of the tickets came up invalid. After ANOTHER 30 minutes of waiting, the lead comes back and turns out the cashier tried to enter the same ticket number twice! COME ON!!! Seriously? While we were waiting Juan snapped this picture.

Hogsmeade. This looked amazing! I felt like I was in a different world.

Juan and me

Hogswart? I think that's the name of the school in the book. Sorry Harry Potter fans - I know I suck! But after visiting, this makes me want to read the books and watch the movies.

Waiting to get on the Harry Potter ride

I thought this was a funny picture. They actually show the baby in the belly! Too funny!

Enjoying some Butter Beer. I don't look to happy, you say? Well remember how I said my fear is that I would get stuck on a roller coaster? Well that fear became a reality! While on the Harry Potter ride, the ride stopped in mid ride! We were facing up a little, so it would have taken some work for me to really look down and see how high I was, so I tried to just stay looking up. But then the ride started again and faced us down and got stuck again! So now I was forced sitting forward looking way far down below me for like 3 minutes! Can I just say that 3 minutes felt like a lifetime? Oh and then there were these huge fake spiders all in the ride - the thing I am afraid of most after heights is spiders!!!! Why didn't anyone warn me??? SO yeah while the Butter Beer was delish, the ride left me a bit rattled!

Me being me, I had to get an outfit of the day pic in! HA! Except I probably should have taken off my sweatshirt first!!! I am wearing a ribbed tank and a scarf, jeans, OzBootz, Sweatshirt and of course some hoop earrings. Kat made fun of me for wearing earrings to an amusement park. Hey I left the bangles and necklace at home, so cut me some slack!

Juan tries to hit on Betty Boop! This lady really stayed in character - she had the voice down perfectly!

B loves taking bad pics of me - she thinks it's funny. So here Juan and I are in mid convo and she snaps the picture.

Here is the final pic. I was exhausted, so I kept my sunglasses on. I wonder what Juan is looking at? It's definitely not the camera.

Man I look tired here! I was ready to pass out by this point, but couldn't resist this picture opportunity!

And in case anyone is wondering, I was wearing My Kind of Cool Aid on my nails.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Cult Nails Presents Quench

It has been somewhat of a crazy week. Juan goes and picks up Living Water and Quench in Orlando tomorrow and we are in business! We can now say all 4 colors are ready, here and available. So this is now the official launch of Cult Nails! I am so excited to finally see this day! You have no idea! From this point forward I'll only be releasing collections as the entire collection becomes available. I think the excitement of it all just made me rush the release a bit. But now here we are. This day felt like it would never come! We have most all the shipping labels printed and envelopes ready. I will be completing the remaining few while Juan is picking up the polishes. We anticipate all state side orders to ship out Saturday morning. International orders will be shipped during my lunch break on Monday. Those have to be done at the post office and we have plans Saturday and won't be able to get to the Post Office during business hours to get them out, so unfortunately those have to wait til Monday. :(

Anyway, finally I have Quench up on the website. It is just a placeholder pick for now, since I had to send my sample pre-ship bottle out to a magazine for a listing on their website. (I was so excited that my polish was going to be on a magazine website - unfortunately, someone stole the box of polishes and the deadline was missed, so now we have to wait for another opportunity. I can't begin to tell you how depressing that feels!) So since some jackass stole my pre-ship bottle I couldn't take pictures of the bottle for the website. Boo! But hopefully we'll be able to rectify that on Sunday.

In the meantime, here is your first chance to view Quench. I know, some of you may be thinking that this is just another red. But I am a red fanatic. You have no idea how deep my love for the perfect red polish goes. I have so many reds and this one tops them all, well at least in my opinion! :) I can't wait to see what you all think!

Model's Own $130,000 Polish - I Wish!

I have been receiving so many great emails from people with the start of Cult Nails. I also love when people email me to tell me they posted a swatch on their blog. So I have been "finding" a lot of new blogs as a result lately.

Well on the Polished Life blog they had a post on the Model's Own $130,000 polish. The cap is gold and encrusted with diamonds. A lot of you probably have seen this already since a quick google search showed this announcement popped up in the Blogesphere back in Nov, but it was the first I have seen of it. Hey i've been a little busy working on Cult Nails, cut me some slack! HA!

I won't show pics here, since I don't have any and since I figure I can just redirect you to A Polished Life's blog here:

http://apolishedlife.blogspot.com/2011/02/models-own-gold-rush-130000-nail-polish.html

My jaw about dropped when I saw this! Here in FL that is the same price as a small house!Too bad we can't live in a polish bottle! I would love a bottle like this even if it wasn't real diamonds. It would just look so cool.

So have you seen this one already? What do you think?

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Pre-Sales Expected to Ship this Weekend!!! & A Message for Leslie

First things first - I am finishing up the Quench video and hope to have that up in the next day or two.

We are working on getting the Pre-Sale orders together. Today will be the last day for pre-sale and the last day for your chance to receive Quench free. I think we have about 10 left to give away. After today whether or not the remaining 10 have been given away - Quench will no longer be available as part of the Buy 3 get 1 free option. It will however be available for sale come Saturday!

We are expecting Living Water and Quench to arrive no later than Friday!!!! WAHOO!!! FINALLY!!! So we are busy printing shipping labels and getting all the supplies ready so that as soon as they arrive, we can have a Friday night packaging party and I can get everyone's packages in the mail first thing Saturday morning before leaving for Universal Studios for the day. Looks like Friday might be a long night! My fingers are crossed that by being proactive and preparing everything now, that it will be smooth sailing come Friday so that they can all go out on Saturday. Send me your helpful wishes on that!

The rest of this post is for my friend Leslie over at http://lessstressmenu.blogspot.com/

I created a sidebar link for the Cult Nails website and Leslie wanted the code so she could add it to her blog. So I figured I would just post it up here, since this is an easy place for her to get to it.

So Les - this is for you!

Just choose the add a gadget option while you're in the design mode for blogger. Choose the HTML code option. Leave the title blank. Copy & paste the information in the code box below:

You will end up with the image link that is shown above and when someone clicks on it, they will get directed to the Cult Nails website.

For the rest of you if you are still reading this and want to add this to your blog, of course feel free! Our website statistics allow us to see if anyone is coming over to the Cult Nails website from another website. It also shows us how many unique hits we get from that site. Meaning if it is one person clicking the link 100 times, it tells us that 1 computer clicked the link 100 times. This allows us to determine how many views and sales are coming from particular sites. While sales are nice - well sales are great - since that just means more colors and my being closer to my goal to work for just me in 3 - 4 years. But views helps get us exposure. We are looking at some options like pay per click advertising and things like that - but that unfortunately is not in our budget at the moment. If we did that it would cost us a color or two and we really need to focus on building our color library right now. So if you want to be a part of this grass roots effort and post the link - it would be appreciated. But I am sure many of you are also trying to make some money off your blog and I can totally understand and appreciate if you don't want to as well. Save that room for someone who can pay you! I'm all about that! I figured since I was giving the code for a friends blog, I might as well add you all in anyway. :)

Monday, February 7, 2011

Living Water You Tube Video

Here is the video for Living Water. It was an overcast day when I did the video. Once the sun is shining, I may redo this one. Can't wait to hear what you guys think.

I took a half day off work today to get things done and the morning has just sped right by me. I now have to jet to the office to work this afternoon. I think I should have taken the whole day off. Oh well, live & learn! Hope everyone enjoys their Monday!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Cult Nails Iconic Youtube Video & Tons of Pictures

I spent some time early Saturday morning swatching and videoing the 4 colors for the initial release. I still have a lot to learn about putting videos together and editing and all that fun stuff, but I managed to get the first four colors done. I am still putting the videos themselves together, but I will continue working on them and post them as they are ready. For now I have Iconic ready. Want to see it?

And now, how about some pictures?

Indoor lighting by a window

Outdoor in direct sunlight

Outdoor in the shade

So what do you think? Have you pre-ordered this one? Are you planning on getting it? I should have Iconic and the rest of the colors available next week. I can't wait to get them out to those of you who have already ordered and of course the rest of you too!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Sometimes Jeans & a T-Shirt is All You Need

This weekend was a day to get things done. I still want to look good while I am out and about - but I definitely don't want to get all dolled up. I might just add some fun accessories to my outfit - but for the most part, I keep it simple if I don't have plans.

The weather was nice this weekend in the low 70's, so a walk on the beach was in order before cleaning the Jeep. The t-shirt is just a plain white T that I grabbed at Dillards for maybe $10 a year or so ago and the jeans I scored on clearance at Charlotte Russe for $5! NICE! I added a funky ring and some big earrings just to spice it up a little. I love wearing a simple t-shirt & jeans. It is actually one of my favorite outfits!

Juan likes to get artful when he takes the pictures. This picture doesn't scream outfit of the day as it does posed picture. I don't think I will be listening to him for posing in the future. The problem is that I can't think of how to pose for these pictures. I look at fashion bloggers and they look so natural in front of the camera - me? I stiffen up.

I cropped the picture above because it shows the earrings better and the tattoo I have on my bicep. This is the last tattoo I got and the one that is the most noticeable. I think it is also the smallest one I have. I love tattoo's, I just don't have them in obvious places and I only have 4. I keep thinking I should do a post highlighting the tats, and I have even had some email requests asking for that. But half my back is pretty covered so the only way to really do it is with a backless shirt or something. Not sure I want to go there. Anyway, this one is of three hibiscus flowers and a little Coqui chillin' on a flower and a nice little blue swirl around it that reminds me of the water. So what do you think? Do you want to see the rest of the tattoos?

I was trying to figure out how I could showcase the ring - this is the only thing I could think of! Peace yo!

Oh wait, you want to see the funny pic of the day? Well earlier in the day we hit a local camera shop to see if they could give us some tips on getting better pictures for the site and of course we had our cameras with us. B loves that I take so many bad pictures and asked me to make a funny face. Here is the pic she took.

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