Hauls: Two great deals from eBay

I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to eBay.

My husband always falls asleep before I do, so I wait until I hear him snoring, and then, BAM! I open up the eBay app on my iPhone and start shopping! This is probably not a good habit, since I already have too many nail polishes and other random crap, but I can't help it. I haven't gotten to the point of needing an intervention or an episode of "Hoarders" yet, so I think I'm doing OK.

Anyway, I have two hauls to share with you today from my late-night eBay sessions. Basically, I don't bid on nail polish unless (1) it's extremely cheap or (2) contains one of my long-time lemmings. In November, I found a deal by eBay seller "sexytrxy" for a damaged lot of Wet n Wild polishes. From the pictures and my communication with her, the polishes worked fine; they just had polish on them from other bottles. I bid on them, and won the auction for just $1.04. Shipping was $4.99, so I ended up with 10 Wet n Wild polishes for just $6.03!

This auction lot included "Limitless," "Flirty Rose Creme," "Femme Fatale," "Deep Wine," "Nail Fortifier," "Heart's Desire," "Inferno," and "Jade," as well as two unnamed polishes. I didn't have any of these colors, so I was happy to get them for about 60 cents a bottle.

More recently, I found an eBay deal for a collection of 12 polishes from different brands. At first, I was like, "Meh, I don't really need these," but I noticed a little gem in the picture from eBay seller "eskimooz":

Yup! Tucked in between a $1 Art Deco polish and a mid-price CG polish was "Ruby Slippers" by Essie! This is one of my top lemming polishes, so I just HAD to bid on this auction! Luckily for me, I was able to get this auction lot for just $7.99 plus $5 shipping. That means I got my "Ruby Slippers" and 11 other nail polishes, including 2 Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears, for just $12.63. Again, I got a dozen polishes for about a buck each! Woohoo!

Here's what I got in this second eBay haul:

I received two Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear polishes in "Going Green" and "Twisted Pink;" L.A. Colors' "Rainbow Glitter;" Cover Girl Continuous Color "Copper-cino;" my first Confetti polish in "Belle of the Ball;" my first LaRosa polish, a crackle in "Hot Orange;" L.A. Colors Art Deco striping polish in "Bright Orange;" two more N.Y.C. polishes in "French White Tip" and "Empire State Blue;" my first two Shades of the Seasons polishes in "Black" and "Yellow;" and my first Essie polish, the fantabulous "Ruby Slippers." AWESOMESAUCE!

I've got another eBay haul coming from an auction I won this morning, and I think I can finally say that I don't need to stalk eBay for rare OPIs... I can't wait to share the results from that haul with you! If you've read my other blog posts, you should be able to guess which VHTF OPI I've finally acquired! Wooohooo!

Can't wait for the mail to come! ;)

Holiday Nails: Christmas Crack!

By now, you've seen hundreds of nail art designs for Christmas. I'm lazy and not patient enough to recreate those designs for you. Instead, I have a couple of images I'm calling "Christmas Crack."

These designs feature Pure Ice Crackle: "Show Stopper" (a red crackle polish) over different greens. In the image above, the greens are: Icing "Lucky Luis" (first two nails), Max Factor Diamond Hard "Momentum Moss" (red and silver diagonal stripes), Sally Hansen Color Quick "Green Chrome" (vertical crack and red glitter striping), China Glaze "Zombie Zest" (red glitter striping curves and cracked swoosh), and China Glaze "Mistletoe Kisses" (random vertical cracks). If my nails were long enough, I would have done them like the swooshy design.

The designs above have the same "Show Stopper" red crackle polish over Max Factor Diamond Hard "Momentum Moss" (diagonals), Sally Hansen Color Quick "Green Chrome," fake mislabeled OPI green color (two nails), and then some green color that I can't identify. Oops.

Basically, this was an experiment to see if the Pure Ice crackle would work better on these greens than it has for me in the past. I have tried using "Show Stopper" over white, but ended up with a smeared pink mess. I let the greens dry a LONG time before using the crack polish, so most of the designs turned out ok.

Do you have any of the Pure Ice Crack polishes? I also have the white one, but I'm not 100% satisfied with it or the red I used for these swatches.

Day 4: Green - Sally Hansen Quick Color: Green Chrome

Thanks to a tip from Nouveau Cheap, I was able to find this awesome green from Sally Hansen at Big Lots. Yup, Big Lots -- one of my top two favorite stores (it's tied with Dollar Tree for numero uno). My dad once said, "How can you get this close to a Big Lots and NOT go in?!?" I totally agree.

I got one of each color they had since they were just $1.50 each. I'd never used the nail pens before Thanksgiving, but they work great. I painted my nails with the red chrome while standing outside in the cold Thanksgiving night waiting for Toys R Us to open for their Black Friday sales. I just shook up the pen, pumped the end a few times, and had shiny red-pink nails in just a few minutes. Granted, doing a manicure before an insane all-night shopping trip might not be on your to-do list, but if you're in a rush, I highly recommend these Sally Hansen pens -- especially if you can find them at Big Lots. I also saw these at my local Dollar Tree recently, and they had the blue chrome there that Big Lots hadn't, so of course I had to buy it. =)

The only problem I had with this green was the brush. Look at this mess. What the hell, Sally?

And since I painted these in a hurry at the library, I decided to try a new crackle polish over top of the green for day two of this manicure. I used Funky Fingers: Teal Scales, which I got for about $3 at a store called Five Below, a discount store similar to Big Lots and Dollar Tree, but nothing costs more than $5.

Too bad the shimmer doesn't show up on the nails as well as it does in the bottle.

So, have I inspired you to go to Big Lots, Dollar Tree, or Five Below? I usually have really good luck finding interesting nail polishes there. How about you?