My Zoya Exchange Haul!

Before I get to the pics, I'd just like to touch on just a couple things I learned doing the exchange:

#1 - shipping polish is hard.  Well, maybe not hard but annoyingly rule-bound.  How do you people who do swaps - especially international ones - handle it?  I went to the post office to ask what I had to do, and you have to mark the box specially, it has to go ground, not air since it's "hazardous," and they told me they won't ship internationally.  Are Fed-Ex & UPS different?  What a freaking hassle.  BUT:

#2 - I don't know why I don't see more people talking about the donation option of the swap?  You don't HAVE to mail your polish to Zoya.  It states in the exchange rules (once you actually start the exchange, not just on the front kind of promotion page):  "The Zoya Nail Polish Exchange is simple. Just gather your old used or unused bottles of nail polish (any brand) that are laying around, collecting dust and send them to us or donate them. In exchange we will send you an equal number of brand new Zoya Nail Polishes. All you pay is $3.50 per bottle for shipping and processing. There is a minimum of 6 bottles and no maximum (exchange or donate as many bottles as you want as often as you would like). We will send out your new polish immediately, you can donate or send us your old polish anytime"  I also emailed them, asking if it made any difference where the donation is made & if they require anything sent in as proof of the donation.  This is the response I got:

"Hello Colette:

Thank you for your interest in the Polish Exchange! You can donate the polishes where ever you would like if you do not want to send them in for us to dispose of properly. Many people are donating to the Salvation Army, women’s shelters, girl scout troops, etc. We do not need proof of donation. Your order will automatically be processed once submitted if you are paying by credit card. If you are paying with a check, your order will be processed once we receive confirmation that the check has cleared.

Thank you"

So, I'm saving myself the cost & hassle of mailing in my 12 bottles & I'm going to donate them.  It's almost too easy - seems like this would leave the way open for a lot of scammers?  I may even do another order before the end of the month since I saved money on the shipping.

Anyway ... on to the polish!  That's what you're really here, for right?

From left to right, top row:  Dovima, Harley, Jinx, Kalista, Rihana, Elke.  Bottom:  Jo, Malia, Pinta, Mimi, Ivanka, Charla.  Mom is hot to wear Harley.  I've already worn Mimi & loved it =)

Since I only took one pic of the haul, I thought I'd post up a couple of bonus pics.  Frisky, in the middle of polish-land between my untried shoeboxes & my Helmers:

And the sky last night, after a series of quite serious severe storms the sky was still doing some pretty ominous-looking cool stuff:

That's all for now.  Going to try & get the pics of the 4th of July water marble edited... At this point I'm actually finding editing the videos for YT easier than the pics LOL, because it's just the video & like 2 pics, vs. all the pic reviewing, picking & choosing, cropping & etc that goes with a full blog post.  So if I don't get it up tonight, if you would like a preview, you can check out the tutorial on YouTube HERE.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette