Oh what a night! We packaged 600 bottles of My Kind of Cool Aid last night in little bags with a business card. My friend and cousin came over to help with the task. Actually my amazing kids filled the bags with the polishes for me on Monday and last night we added the business cards. Juan had the fun of packing the boxes and today $6,000 worth of polish is making it's way to Los Angeles, CA to the HollyRod.org Foundation. We were asked to donate product for the gift bags for their annual Design Care event.  HollyRod supports education and assistance for individuals and families who are dealing with Parkinson's and Autism. I do not have a personal association with either of these things. However, I am a huge fan of the show, The Talk in which Holly Robinson Peete is one of the hosts. I DVR the show everyday. It is my guilty pleasure. (Although this Casey Anthony trial has been ruining that for me for several weeks now! Grrr!) From watching this show I have seen how much this foundation means to Holly Robinson Peete and what it means to the families her foundation has touched. I admit a few episodes during autism awareness month this past April even made me teary eyed! Through her openess and desire to make people's lives better, even though I do not have a personal connection to either Parkinson's or Autism, I now have an emotional connection.

The day My Kind of Cool Aid finally arrived!

When I see how passionate about this Holly Robinson Peete is, I see it matches my passion for Cult Nails. One of my goals for Cult Nails is to be a supporter of organizations that make a difference in people's lives. So when I was asked to donate, there was no way I was going to say no. We don't have a lot of money here at Cult Nails. I haven't paid myself yet. Everything is going right back into growing the business and making more polishes and better polishes. Our personal finances have been stretched from Cult Nails  and life and with a husband in the military, we are far from rich. But we are a very fortunate family. We do not go without. Outside of Cult Nails I have a decent job. We have amazing family and friends who have supported us from day one - including you guys! So I knew we had to figure out a way to support this amazing organization. If you have a minute, I suggest you check out their site today.
 

This is me posing when our first color My Kind of Cool Aid arrived! Day 1 of Cult Nails!

I am trying to think of a way that we can do some sort of promotion where the proceeds or a percentage of the proceeds go back to the HollyRod organization as well. So be on the look out for details on that soon.

My Kind of Cool Aid - do you have your bottle yet?

Shall we get back to some 4th of July inspired manicures? This one is only inspired by color. Otherwise, it has nothing to do with the 4th really! But, since I'm not one to typically go all out there on a themed manicure, I thought I would try something with an accent nail that had the Patriotic colors without being themed to the typical 4th style.
I used Quench as the base for my manicure and then did an accent nail using blue and clear Rhinestones.

So this should be fun. Out internet is down and we are getting the run around from our cable company.
First they told us there was a outage in our area, then they told us there was no outage, and that someone will have to come out. Unfortunately I have too much going on at work and can't stay home on Tuesday for them and neither can John. So that means we had to schedule someone to come out on Wednesday instead. No cable - no internet! How the heck will we survive? LOL!

Thank goodness for Smartphones. I am able to still run Cult Nails and here I am posting on my blog from my phone! Let's see how well this goes.

My goal was to show several 4th of July inspired manicures this week, since I know many of you here in the U.S. are planning and plotting your manicure. I created a few 4th of July inspired manicures last weekend. I figured this would give me some time to decide on how I wanted to wear my nails over the 4th weekend. Maybe it will help spark your creative juices too.

I'm going to share a different manicure with you every few days up until the 4th. On the 4th I'll post my final manicure choice!

First up - I had a dream about this manicure. In my dream I used a wavy image plate design and made my nails look like a flag waving in the wind and then did my thumb in blue with some rhinestones on top to mimic the stars on our flag.

When I woke up and looked through the 60+ image plates I have, none of them had the wavy design from my dreams. I did find one a little close, so I went with that one. Here is what I used:

I trimmed my nails again last night. I swear I have ADD when it comes to my nails. I go from wanting them long and square to long and pointy, to short and round to short and square. Good thing my nails grow fast!

On Friday I was loading some stuff in my trunk and I hit my hand and three of my nails. It hurt so bad, I thought when I looked at my hand that the nails would be broken from the impact. Amazingly, my nails were fine. When I took my polish off after filing my nails yesterday, I was able to see the damage. I have a few white "stress" marks from where my nails bent from the impact, but amazingly no breaks or bruising. I wonder what will happen once the area becomes part of my free edge?

Thought I would share it with you all. My nekkid nails! Even with the stress marks, I think they look pretty good!


Then I wanted to play at taking pictures of me and my camera. I see so many pictures people take like this and they look so cool, I wanted one too. HA! I tried to pose my hands though so you could really see my nails. I really want to try to do one like this that is in better focus with one of my polishes on. It gave me some ideas.

I was going to post a video today and when I went to work on it, I realized the quality was inferior. So I decided I will redo the video this evening and I will get it posted by Monday instead.

But while I was cleaning my living room, there was a paper with my daughter's handwriting on the coffee table. It can't be personal if it is just out there right? So of course I just had to read it. Turns out she wrote down some quotes. I imagine she saw them online and for whatever reason was moved to write them down. I think these are good enough to share, so I leave you with that this weekend.

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it."

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

"I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one."

"Be heard
  Be strong
  Be Proud!"

She didn't write who said these quotes, but great none the less. Hope you all have a great weekend!

But since I am not one to leave well enough alone, I decided to add some orange crackle to the mix. Big mistake! The colors blended together too much. Then as you can see here once I added a top coat (Ring finger and pinky finger), it really melded together!


In Cult Nails news, we reached 1,000 followers on Twitter! Wahoo! To celebrate we are giving $5 off any order over $30! So that is like free shipping for most people! It could also be 2 free polishes if you order the Convert Pack! The Convert Pack is $75 that's $15 off, with this coupon you get another $5 off! Which is 9 bottles for $70! So if you haven't converted, now is your chance! Just use code: CONVERTED at check out!

Our polish cult is growing every day! It is so exciting for us to know that everyone is who has tried our product is loving it! We put a lot of work into Cult Nails so it feels good to see so many repeat customers and amazing reviews!

But of course we can't stop there! We still need to keep growing in order to be an existing company years from now. Our focus is on creativity, quality and of course customer service! Our goals right now are still working on the fun of creating a holo. I won't bore you with the details, but essentially the price of the necessary ingredients is outrageous, so we have a lot more polish to sell before we can afford it. :( The plus side is that when we can afford it, with the minimum requirements to buy, we will most likely have an entire holo collection! WAHOO! I can't wait for that day!

Besides the holo fun, we are looking at ways to get our product into magazines! I just can't imagine opening a magazine one day and seeing my polish in there! I think I would buy every copy of that magazine and send it to everyone I know when it does happen. (And yes I said WHEN! It will happen!) Now if I can just figure out how that works. Do I just call them? Send them a press kit? What do you put in a press kit? All these things I need to learn and have no clue. LOL! I will get there though. I am taking a week off work soon, so magazines, look out, your phones will be ringing! (Isn't it funny that I am taking a week of work, and I am planning on working that week? Well I very well can't sell nail polish while doing my day job!)

I would also LOVE to get my product on TV. I mean interviews with the news, the ladies on The Talk wearing my polish since they love to talk with their hands and tease us with their polished fingers everyday, the TV shows at night. You name it! Now if I could just figure out how to get my polish in the stylists hands and in the hands of the wardrobe dept...

Do I stop there? Oh no dear ladies! I want to get Cult Nails in stores and salons across the world!  Again, I need to work my butt off on my week off calling salons and visiting local salons. (Can I just say sales makes me nervous! eek!)

In the meantime, I am focusing on getting the word out there here on the blog with all of you guys, on , and YouTube! I am having some contests to encourage more followers too.

On I am going to give the entire collection away (1 of each of the 9 colors we currently have) to one lucky follower once we reach 1,000 followers! So if you don't follow us on yet, I suggest you head on over ! (We are really close, just 50 followers to go!)

On  we are offering the same thing and I am making a point of logging onto k every day. Once we reach 1,000 likes, one lucky liker will win the entire collection (1 of each of the 9 colors we currently offer). The page is pretty cool too - you can access our store and YouTube channel right from our page! So head now and follow us on as we call in our house.

A bonus to following us in those two places is that we will post occasional promotions that are or promotions only! I will not come back and post those on the blog anymore (I think), so head on over and follow us!

Lastly - it has been a while since I have done a blog give-away, so I am working on one that I can do real soon. So keep following us here too!

Oh and least I forget, we have really struggled to get subscribers to the Cult Nails news! We do not bombard your inbox with junk ads. We will only send out press releases and specials. Promise! As an added bonus, once we have 1,000 subscribers I will give away Maria's Must Have's! That is a collection of my favorite beauty products like: Dior Blackout Mascara, Nars Orgasm blush, Bobbi Brown tinted lip balm in the oh so hard to find raspberry tint color, waterproof eyeliner, bracelets, earrings and necklaces and of course some Cult Nails polishes! (I think there is more in there too, I just forget!).

So see you follow us and you can win prizes and get special promotions just for you! And if you don't win, you can always buy the polish and have happy little cult fingers! So what are you waiting for? Don't just step into the Cult, jump right in and be a premier member! :) And of course if you have any suggestions or ideas, I am always open to them!

Yesterday I posted a tutorial showing how to do a Snakeskin inspired manicure. I wanted to try the light version on my toes, but I wasn't happy with how it came out. I think the darker version on my toes would have looked better. But I did decide to try the light version on my hands and loved the look! So I added a picture of the light version on the video and am posting some pics here of the light version. I am envisioning this in multiple colors. I am really liking this manicure!

What do you think of the light version? I am thinking maybe I should have done the tutorial with this one. Oh well.

Closeup!

Many of you may have seen or heard of the $300 real snakeskin manicure that was featured on the Today Show back in May. If you haven't, click here to view the clip. There were a few things going through my mind when I saw this manicure. My first thought was - that is disgusting! I do not want to wear the skin that fell off a snake. Although after Juan left me a "Present" in my car of some snake skin he found hanging in a tree, I suppose I could have done this $300 manicure for free! LOL! But no thanks, I'd rather not.

But while I thought it was gross, my next thought was, It does look hot! There has got to be a way to do this without the using the real deal. I looked for some Minx or Sally Hansen snakeskin inspired nails strips and came up empty handed. (I have a feeling that will now change soon.) Since I knew I had to try it, I decided to break out the Konad plates after seeing someone's attempt online somewhere, where she actually freehands the pattern on. Sorry, but that's too much work if you ask me. OK I admit, too much skill. I need something easy.

Picking the colors wasn't easy. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go with a green effect or a brown effect. I didn't know if I wanted to make the pattern in a light color like on the Today show clip or dark in color. But then I thought, hmmm, I have a new color coming out in August, why not use that one. Once that color was selected the rest was easy. I opted for an edgy Fall look that I think looks amazing! It is too early in the summer for me to really want to sport this manicure, but I thought I would do the tutorial and take it right off. But I fell in love with it and did the rest of my nails! I plan on wearing it for a few days.  I now even plan on doing a snakeskin pedicure using the lighter colors instead!

I hope you enjoy the tutorial and I look forward to seeing everyone's take on this look!

While at Premiere Orlando I grabbed some LCN Magnetic polish. I couldn't wait to try this out! I have the old L'Oreal magnet in purple, but unfortunately I got it in a bum swap and the magnet did not work! This is a polish trend I have been dying to try! So when I saw the collection of 8 magnetic colors and two magnets, I was all over it. Little did I know there was a learning curve here! I kept hitting my nails with the magnet!



Here is take two:

                                              

I woke up this morning to a comment on my blog and a few emails. Nothing new you say? Well this was totally different, a lot of you wanted to "alert" me to the post that Polishaholic did comparing Captivated to Icing's Tiger's Blood. I don't know if the emails were sent to me as a Hey thought you'd want to know or as someone wanting to stir the pot, but I'll take it as the first one.

My first reaction was WHAT? How could this happen? But let's be honest - I am somewhat certain as to how this happened. I have shared so many things about this business with you all and it is a very tight lipped community, so there is only so much I feel comfortable sharing, because I do after all still have to work in it in order to continue to create polishes. So I will try to be as careful as possible here, because I don't want to call anyone out, especially when I myself can only speculate how this happened. I am not sure I will ever know with 100% certainty, but that won't stop me from trying to find out either.

So here is the basics of it all. You can not trade mark colors. I know I have said this before, and I am sure it won't be the last time I say it. Once a polish color is created, anyone else can have that color too. It's really just that simple. I am working on some "basic" colors to add to my collection as I feel there are just some basic colors that every polish line should have, the nudes, the reds, the corals, the pinks... You get where I am going with that. But there are only so many versions of each color out there. I can add my spin to the color, but in this process I realize that my spin will still most likely have a dupe somewhere. If I let myself get caught up in no dupes to the basics, I would never have any. I can't do that. I can just continue doing what I am doing and hoping for the best.

The more fun and creative colors though take so much more work. There is sometimes a franken, but I always tell the lab to take liberties. I feel like sometimes what they see may be better than what I thought. It happened with Iconic for example. My version of Iconic did not have the gold shimmer in it. The lab added that in and I fell in love and went with that version vs my original version. With My Kind of Cool Aid, I let go of a version that made it's way into another line. Whether I turn a color down or not, someone else can buy it. I thought someone else could only buy it if I turned it down. How wrong I was!

Recently a polish company came out with something we'll call "schmackle".(OK so WE know it's been around since the 80's, but still.) Well of course I called my lab and asked if they could make me some "schmackle" in colors I want. The answer was an immediate NO WAY MA'AM. The company that was bringing "schmackle" back put a protection order(or something - I don't know the exact name) not allowing the labs to create it for anyone else for several months. So the public labs hands are tied and they can't make it in any color for anyone. Now the companies that have their own lab can go ahead and make it and the companies that are overseas or buy from overseas can get their hands on it as well. I know because I looked into it.  But those of us little dogs working with the main public U.S. labs = not happening right now! Of course that led me to the question of - wait I thought we couldn't protect our colors? The answer was: well if you have enough money you can temporarily hold it from anyone else. Darn it, I don't have that kind of money!

When we created Captivated, it was one that was an up in the air color. I asked the lab for a coral polish packed with glitter. I wanted something with maybe some gold glitter thrown in. But I didn't want a straight up glitter polish, and I didn't want something with micro glitter like Living Water, but I wasn't opposed to that option. I gave the lab complete liberty. So in this instance they created some options and sent me swatches. So instead of the sending me one color and me not liking it and opening that color to being sold, I thought I was reducing my risk by asking them to just make enough for a swatch and if I like how it looks on the plastic nail, then they can create it for me. Captivated was one of five coral options they sent me. When I saw it, I knew it was the one. I didn't envision it like that at all, but I knew at that moment it was exactly what I was looking for. I requested them to send me a sample bottle so I could test the formula. Then with some revisions a final sample was sent and approved.

So here I am left to wonder, did they send me Icing's polish? Or did Icing like my polish and buy it? I don't know which came first on this one. I am heartbroken and feel a little played by my lab though. I mean why would you sell the same color to two people at the same time? Sound a little like the whole OPI Catch Me In Your Net vs. Zoya Charla anyone? I know all my colors may be duped eventually. I know I run the risk of it even happening at the same time like with so many major polish brands. It is after all a color. I get that. I know that I may inadvertently dupe another color, because as much as I love nail polish, I don't know every color in existence in the polish world. I actually go through phases where if I am creating I stop looking at other blogs and collections, because I don't want to be influenced.

I, like many of you love finding dupes to colors and know a lot of them exist. I would be nieve to think that none of my colors will never have a twin. I just wish it wasn't so immediate. And of course I wish if there is a dupe to my color, that it would be a more expensive dupe not a cheaper one. Because honestly I can't afford to reduce my prices. As far as my customers are concerned, let the best price win. But the reality is the more I buy, the less I pay. Unfortrunately I am not in the financial position to buy in quantities that would reduce my prices, much less drastically reduce my prices! If I put polishes out for $4.50 a bottle I would lose money. I just can't do it. Icing, I am sure buys the polishes by the truckfull and so they can afford to have a lower price point. I don't have that luxury.

Regardless, Which came first? The Tiger's Blood or the Captivation?(Kind of like the chicken or the egg if you will.)  I don't know. I don't know if my lab will even admit to me which one did or if they even made Tiger's Blood. Whenever I ask if they made this color or that color, they tell me they can't release that information. But come on, the proof is in the bottle! It is what it is. I guess that definitely makes Captivated Limited Edition though! No point in remaking it if it can be found elsewhere!

Anyway, I know you may not all care, but as open as I have been thus far, I don't think now is the time to not be. If I didn't respond to the emails I received, then I think I would have just gotten more emails. How many times have we all read or written, that we wished companies would just be honest with us. So for those of you interested or who care, there it is.

I will close by saying while it sucks, it is kind of cool to know that I am coming up with colors other people like major companies or major polish brands are wanting/using. It makes me know that I am doing something right! :)

Edited to add: As a result I decided why not have an Icing on the Cake sale? So buy any two Cult Nail polishes and get Captivated for $4.50! :) Use code : Icing at checkout. I'm going to do the sale through Friday June 17th, 2011. I couldn't resist a good reason for a sale!

So Juan decided to create a Cult Convert pack for those of you who still have not joined the Cult. All 9 Cult Nails colors for $75! WOW!
Here is what we decided to do. We are going to put the entire collection together for $75 until the next collection releases, then this offer goes away. We will also not be offering any more Buy 3 Get 1 Free sales in between collections. :( I shed a little tear on that one. They are my favorite kind of sales! What we will do is make the buy X get Y free during pre-sale events only. The the X & Y will be based on the number of polishes in each new collection. But that doesn't mean we won't be offering sales! We will still be offering random sales, but they will most likely be percentages off and free shipping offers and stuff like that. The biggest and best sales will be for Pre-sale events only. So that the most loyal Cult Members get rewarded the best.

But in the meantime if you want to ensure you are in on the Cult Happenings, make sure you sign up to receive email announcements from us here. We have only sent out two announcements in the past few months, so don't worry about us bombarding your inbox! But do look for one soon about the Cult Convert pack! We still haven't reached 1,000 subscribers! :( But once we do I will give away Maria's Must Haves! So if you haven't subscribed yet - do so now!

And if you haven't converted to the Cult yet, get your Cult Convert Pack here! It's like buying 7 1/2 & getting 1 1/2 free! LOL!

I have a ton of nail looks ready to show you, but I am opting to do an outfit of the day post instead. I tweeted Friday night about the sale going on at The Gap. They were having 40% off Women's clearance. I keep a mental list of items I "need" clothes wise to round out my wardrobe. I like classic styles for work since they will almost always stand the test of time. I don't mind spending more on clothes I wear to work, but since I love a bargain, I couldn't resist the sale.

I walked in and tried on a champagne colored jacket. It was nice and I was about to grab it. But they had a great sales lady working. I was rather impressed since it was a mall store. But she walked up made small talk with me & Juan, showed me some other clearance jacket options and instead of buying one jacket for $25 on clearance, I bought 2 jackets, a navy one for $20.60 and a light pink one for $30. Thinking about it I should have bought the champagne one too! LOL!

I couldn't wait to wear the jacket, so I decided today would be the perfect day. Here is the jacket and how I wore it.

This is about as happy as you'll see me in the morning! The pics came out crappy. It was already 77 degrees out and it was only about 6:30 in the morning, I had to hurry up and go, and the salt air was pretty thick.

I hope everyone has some great plans for the weekend. We actually have no plans this weekend. I can't even tell you how awesome that feels. Although, even though we have no plans, I have a lot to do, so hopefully I will be able to get it all done while fitting in some absolute nothingness in between all that. So this post will be fairly quick so I can get to the pool with Coco and start the weekend with some of that fun nothingness.

I woke up this morning and put together and edited a gradient manicure tutorial video I did last weekend. This is my quick version of a gradient. I know a lot of you (including myself sometimes) use 3 colors for a gradient, but when I am running low on time, but feel like a funky manicure, I do a one color version. It took me longer to put this video together than it took me to do the entire manicure! LOL!

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to go to Premiere Orlando. Premiere Orlando is a trade show for licensed beauty professionals where you can learn about the latest products, and purchase products at a deeply discounted price. I first heard of Premiere Orlando about 6 years ago when I was living in Colorado. I thought, if I just lived in FL I would find a way to go to this show. But since you have to be licensed, I didn't think it would ever happen unless I went to nail school.

This year I started wondering though if maybe I should look into exhibiting at some trade shows, so I decided to see if I could get in to Premiere so I could see how the whole thing works. I wasn't planning on blogging about it, but since I was tweeting about it, I decided, why not put some of it on here too! I actually didn't register to attend before the deadline for Premiere, so I didn't even think I was going to be able to go, but I sent the application in with an explanation of my blog, a writing sample and explained that I recently started my own line and wanted to check the whole thing out in case I could exhibit next year. I was granted a media pass to get in! I was so excited!

One of the bonus' to Premiere is that they sell the polish and nail related items on the cheap at these shows! The pricing is for licensed professionals use, but I had zero problems getting the discounts! YAY! But perhaps that's because they hope that it would be featured on the blog? I did have my media pass around my neck after all. And a lot of the booths asked who I was with and most were pretty excited that I was with a blog! That was a great feeling! I'll let you know what I ended up getting at each booth.

The first booth I visited was OPI's. This is just the nail polish side of the booth! They actually had 2 booths at the event. Look at all that OPI polish! It doesn't look like it was busy - but this was the most packed booth! Everyone was clamoring for the Shatter, they couldn't keep the displays filled!
They sold the polish 6 for $23 and the Shatter for $2 for $10. Retail for OPI here is $8.50 a bottle. I grabbed 7 polishes and 2 shatters from OPI. I got the silver and turquoise shatter and Skull & Glossbones, Steady As She Rose, Stranger Tides, The One That Got Away, Hawaiian Orchid, Modern Girl and Go on Green. (I'll post a pic of everything I got last.)

Next up I visited the Essie booth. I didn't buy anything here. I have never been a huge fan of Essie. I have a few of their polishes, and I like what they have, but I don't know, I can take them or leave them. Maybe I'm just jealous because I want to be Essie! I have to say that their booth was one of my favorites esthetically. I actually planned on coming back and buying some, but then I spent too much money on other polish and couldn't do it!


Next I hit up the Dashing Diva booth. This booth focused more on their acrylic and french tip line. They did have a few polishes, but if I remember correctly they only had about 12 colors with them. Such a shame, I really wanted to check out some of their colors. They had their polishes at 6 for $16. Dashing Diva retails for $8 a bottle, so this was a significant savings. I grabbed Tira Miss U, Greenport Grunge, Astor Place, Butter Me Up, So Much Melon Drama, and Underground City.


I was so excited when I saw the Nubar booth. I had no idea they had an entire line of acrylic and gels. They even have a gel polish! Amazing at how much this brand has grown! It gives me hope that I will be able to continue to grow the Cult in a similar manner! Unfortunately this booth was so busy, I could barely check out all their polishes, much less get a good picture. Nubar had their polishes priced at 8 for $25 plus get a free bottle of Diamont with the purchase of 8 bottles! WOW! They normally retail for $7.49 a bottle. I am a huge fan of their product, so I had to buy 8 bottles of course! I grabbed Pink Creme, Petunia Sparkle, Brown/Gold Glitter, Hot Red, Orange Cream, Baby Blue, 24K, and Star Sparkle and of course my free bottle of Diamont!



 The Zoya booth was more conservative compared to the others. But hey the brands quality speaks for itself. I am a huge Zoya fan and totally intended on buying some Zoya, but they weren't selling the bottles individually. Only in kits. They had the 3 Touch polishes for $12! Why the heck didn't I grab them? They retail for $24 for the set or $8 individually! Grrr! So mad at myself over that one! They also had some of their collection kits that retail for $48 on sale for $24. But again I didn't buy any. But I did buy a large 32 oz bottle of Remove for $12. It normally retails for $25, so that was a great savings. But then when I got home I realized that I could have purchased 5 bottles for $50! Darn it! Oh well! Live & learn!



The CND booth was another packed booth! They had a bunch of techs applying Shellac there. It was too crowded in there, so I actually didn't bother going into their set up area to see if they were selling polish or not. A shame, cause I am a huge fan of their stuff too. I would have loved to get some of their polishes, but my wallet is probably happy that I didn't!

I also visited a random booth of nail salon supplies. They had a bin full of crackle polish for $2 a bottle. I grabbed 8! Yeah cause what I need is more crackle polish! I grabbed a metallic purple, A baby blue, a white cause hey, it was $2, a red, a neon orange, a regular orange, a teal green and a gold.

From there I went to the Real Gold booth. They sell clear top coats with real 22K gold glitter in yellow gold or white gold and a pure silver glitter top coat. I was gifted both a bottle of the gold and silver by the owner. I talked to him about letting me retail his product on my site because they do not sell it online anywhere. Only direct to salons. So you might actually be able to purchase this from me soon if we can work something out!

Another booth I visited that I didn't take a picture of was the LCN booth. I grabbed a Magnetic Polish kit from them and it was my most expensive purchase! The magnetic polishes retail for $12.61 U.S. and come with 1 polish and 2 magnets. I grabbed a kit with 8 magnetic polishes and 2 magnets for $50 and two of their crackle polishes. their crackle retails for $8 U.S. and I got them for $4 each. I think I may have just about every crackle polish color possible at this point! The magnetic colors I got are Iron Magic, Fuschia Attraction, Ferromagnetic Blue, Magnetic Moments, Amazing Mauve, Copper Seduction, Green Temptation and Nude Charm. For the crackles I purchased Pink Hurricane and Blazing Yellow.

 The last booth I visited was the Cheeky Monkey Booth. Cheeky Monkey had the smallest booth of all and they were by far my favorite booth! I have been dying to try this brand but for $15 a bottle and international shipping, I just could never justify it. I met up with Kari from the Oncebitten blog and Kimberly from Libby's Pink Vanity blog and they are the ones who actually alerted me to the Cheeky Monkey booth. I  have to say the energy the polish brand markets was alive and well here! I just wanted to stay and hang out with them all day, their spirit was so infectious! Cheeky Monkey has the same bottles as Cult Nails - but admittedly, theirs are cooler. I love how they have the color name printed in various fonts all over the bottle and that the cap is not shiny. I have to admit - I wanted to be them so badly at that moment! They had their polishes 5 for $35!!!! Are you friggin' serious? I just finished saying I was NOT going to buy anymore polish! I blame Kari & Kimberly for this!  I grabbed Lucky U, BFF, Romp, Earth Momma and Tease.

So all in all it was a very good nail day! I can't believe how much polish I bought! It's a good thing RBL wasn't there or I would have been in trouble! I didn't see all the booths. My friend came with me and she wasn't feeling well, so I didn't want to push her too much. I was just glad she came.

Premiere has shows in other locations. If you live in the Orlando area or a few hours away, I would definitely plan on seeing how you can get into the Premiere show next year. If you are a blogger, you can apply for a media pass. they don't grant them to everyone, but it is definitely worth applying. If you know a licensed beauty professional, get them to get you into the show! I saw several women with their husbands and I know of one friend who went with her stylist. So it is definitely worth it if you are able to get in and live within a few hours. But only if you don't have to pay to get in. If you have to spend the night in a hotel, I don't really see this as being worth it unless you plan on spending $300 or more in polish and hair care. In that case, you can still probably see a savings. But I would definitely check out the Premiere Shows website to see where else they are going to be and if you are close by see if you can get in!

Here is a picture of everything I got!

I know I haven't done a lot of swatching of OPP (Other People's Polish) lately, but with this haul, you're going to be seeing more OPP posts! Are you ready?