Updated Polish OCD Spreadsheet

Really, sometimes I think my spreadsheet is overly ambitious.  When I set it up I tried to think of everything I might possibly ever want to track ... and as a result there are a lot of things that never get updated.  I am happy if I can keep up with adding new hauls on when I buy polish - I almost never go back & update stuff like the column that tracks whether there are pics on the blog ... or how much I love the color or other notes.  I do try to keep the "opacity" column updated - if there is a "K" marked that means that the polish works for Konad stamping.

 

So, I hadn't updated the version shared on GoogleDocs for like, months.  I don't know what made me tackle it today, but I did.  I realized that I hadn't added my state fair purchases or even my bundle monster stuff to the image plates tab, so I put them on there quickly ... I thought at one point I'd find & embed some actual pics of each plate on that tab but I couldn't get it to work properly the first time I tried it & I never went back to try again... maybe eventually ... big maybe LOL.

 

Anyway, if you'd like to check it out, you can view my updated stash list HERE.

 

Thanks for reading.

500th Post =D Stash Pics!

Yes, unbelievable I know - 500 posts. I'm in awe of my own self =) Thanks for taking this journey with me. I love all you guys & have no plans of going anywhere anytime soon. Random AWOL outages may occur but I'll always return with a backlog of NOTD spam to share =) Like this past week actually LOL ... but I'm off with a half-day from work, so my holiday weekend starts RIGHT NOW, and I'll tell you about all the upcoming posts at the end of this one =)

I also have to say, doing my tutorials on YouTube has given me a new appreciation for all of you that read my blog - because a lot of you are nail bloggers yourselves, and I often take for granted that even those of you who aren't, you all have pretty good polish knowledge.  Some of the questions I get in YT comments can really test my patience LOL!  I try to keep it polite even when I'm frustrated, but for example so many people respond that they're using tap even though I try to say every time that I'm using filtered water.  Maybe they don't have the sound on is what I always tell myself ... I'm considering adding closed captioning, but I don't know when I'll get to that.

On to the stash!  I've got lots & lots & lots of polish pics.  I kind of wish I had a lightbox so I could take some super-nice bottle pics ... maybe one day.  I've also mostly updated my Polish OCD spreadsheet, and I will be uploading the fresh version to GoogleDocs soon.  While organizing things, I came across a shoebox of polish that my mom gave me & I thought I'd already cataloged, but turns out I hadn't - so I have more than passed the 1,000 mark LOL. Total current bottle count - not counting base or top coats, or dupes of the same colors - is now up to 1,033.  And that's actually not counting the 12-piece BB Couture Cantina collection that arrived Wednesday, not to mention my 2nd Zoya exchange haul!  Those will each get their own posts, and once I add those 24 polishes to the spreadsheet, I'll have 1,058 bottles O.o

Here are my Helmers, in a neat little row - the box to the left is an industrial amount of cotton, I bought it at Sally's earlier this year & have barely put a dent in it.  I have to admit they normally have a week or 2's worth of polishes I've recently used & haven't put away yet on top, but I cleaned it off just before taking this:

I did a little rearranging of my polish when I got my 3rd Helmer, and I do kind of try to keep brands together, but my polish is mainly sorted by color.  That's just how my mind normally works, especially if I'm marbling & a particular polish does work, I want to be able to go to a single drawer to find a replacement, not all over the place.  I lined my drawers with no-slip lining so the bottles don't move around when I open the drawers.

The top row of drawers is all supplies & extra stuff.  L-R:  marbling experiments, extra topcoats, nail foils, painter's tape, pinking shears - supplies for patching, glitter, rhinestones & etc - brushes, dotting tools, Konading supplies & special polish:

2nd row L-R:  Purple #1 - Purple #2 (this is the only color that has 2 drawers!) - Holographic:

3rd row L-R:  Duo-Chromes - Blue & Turquoise - Glitter:

4th row L-R:  Red (which I obviously need more of!) - the Blue/Green overflow drawer (this is my only empty drawer ATM but both the blue & green drawers are nearly full so it's between them ) - Chromes, Silvers & Greys (could use some more grey also):

5th row L-R:  Pink (I don't even like pink that much ... I don't know how I got this many LOL) - Green & Teal - Black, Vampy, White & Off-White:

6th row L-R:  Nude & Sheer - Yellow, Orange, Gold - Brown & Bronze:

Now, you're probably thinking something along the lines of "Holy crap that's a lot of polish!!"  Well, I'm actually not done yet.

Everything in the Helmers is polish that I've already worn.  I keep my unworns in plastic shoeboxes, and for some reason I keep those all sorted the reverse, by brand for some reason. And I have more than any normal person would consider sane.  But I like having a lot to choose from LOL, and when I have a coupon or there's a sale, I don't want to wait & miss out.  So I end up with this:

#1 Franken box (even though I've yet to franken ... mostly empty bottles & dupes) - #2 mostly Sally Hansen, (some old from Dollar Tree finds) - #3 mostly old Maybelline (more DT) - #4 more Maybelline including some newer colors - #5 more Sally Hansen, Orly, Revlon - #6 Claire's Nina Ultra Pro, Sinful - #7 Essie, Color Club, Misa, Bariell, Ulta, Milani, and some misc. brands - #8 OPI, Sephora by OPI, Nicole by OPI, L'Oreal, some misc. - #9 China Glaze, Nubar - #10 Finger Paints, Wet 'n' Wild, Zoya.

So ... that's my stash =)  No video for now, but it's on my to-do list LOL.  Just for fun, here are some numbers overall (not including the BB or my coming Zoyas:  Out of my 1,033, I have 49 different brands.  I have the most Sally Hansen at  174, 2nd is China Glaze at 122, 3rd place is Maybelline at 108.  The Sally Hansen & Maybelline numbers are so high I think mainly thanks to Dollar Tree LOL, China Glaze more because I think it's on of my most favorite brands.  I have 54 OPI, 26  Zoyas, 17 Urban Decay, many of which are quite old. So many others of course but I don't want to bore you too much with numbers =)

I hope you guys enjoyed all the stash pics, and I have lots of manis to edit pics for also.  I haven't really posted this week, but I've been doing my nails almost every day.  Upcoming posts include:

• Naked Nails from a few days ago
• White w/ blue & red stars
• Red & blue funky french
• PHD Book Cover Challenge NOTD (still wearing this - I LOVE it)

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Polish OCD - My Stash in Excel

So, when I originally started my spreadsheet, it is was pretty basic - just brand & color really.  Then as time went on I thought of more & more I wanted to add – what collection was it part of, when did I buy it, are there pics on my blog?   Is the color dark, light, medium ... soft, strong, neon?  Is it a shimmer with a secondary color peeking through?

I still think of things I want to add, distinctions I want to make, & I have to decide if I really need to track this or that, if I want to add ANOTHER column & then keep track going forward, or if I ever in life would get around to backtracking & filling in what’s already on the spreadsheet.  Answer to that last is probably no ... I don't even go back & make notes like I intended to, except in very specific cases.  Maybe I can make that another resolution =)

Anyway, I recently uploaded my spreadsheet (846 bottles & counting) to Google Docs.  Click HERE if you'd like to check it out, or there's now a link on the right sidebar - right under the link to my YouTube channel.  Feel free to leave a comment or drop an email with any questions to my personal quirky sorting system LOL.  I'll also accept swatch requests, although I make no promises on how long it may take me to actually fulfill them!

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Sunday Post-A-Thon: The Stash

I know it's been like, ages & ages since I promised pics of the filled Helmers. Well, here is the proof that I didn't forget. I think there will still be some considerable rearranging going on, because since I'm leaving all of my unworns in shoeboxes (&, uh, other places ...) there's still a lot of sorting to be done, but so far so good. You can see that some drawers are a lot fuller than others, but if I just adjust a little I've got plenty of room for expansion. Here we go, top to bottom:

Left = Duo-chromes. Right = Best Konad polishes & some of my other nail-art supplies:


L = Purple (the fullest drawer LOL). R = Holos (which I have a ton more unworn):


L = Blue, turquoise. R = Glitter:


L = Teal, Green. R = Black, Grey, Silver & White


L = Gold, Yellow, Orange. R = Brown, Bronze:


L = Red (I was surprised I have so few). R = Pink, Nude, Sheer:


And, just a glimpse of the piles of unworns still waiting to be sorted, in boxes, on top of my desk, and on top of my dresser:


All of those will eventually fill up the rest of the room in the drawers =)

I think I'm just about done posting for today. Going to answer comments for the past week & then I'll have time to catch up on everyone else's blogs =) Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Helmer Time =)

Yes, finally! Pics from start to finish through the assembly. At $40.00 each, I consider these to be pretty reasonably affordable. They hold up to 500 bottles of polish, depending on what size of bottle you have, and although I am still procrastinating & haven't actually put any polish inside them yet, I am going to be taking the opportunity to sort my polish by color instead of by brand as it is currently.

So, as many pictures as I did end up with, I kind of feel like I should have chronicled the shopping trip also - it was my first time to Ikea, and man is that place HUGE! I didn't think we really needed to go through the showroom, but I ended up being glad I did, because while I knew the Helmers came in 3 colors - white, red & silver - the real-life colors were quite a bit different than I thought. I knew the latest version of the white is really more of eggshell cream from reading other blogs. For some reason, I had the red in my head as darker, like a cherry wood kind of color? No, the red Helmer is like a fire engine. It's bright. I ended up going with the silver, which really is just grey. Nice & neutral.

Now, on to the pics =) Here's a couple of the box:


See how methodically this thing is crammed into the smallest possible space?:


Now, while I've heard some horror stories about Ikea's instructions, I didn't have too much trouble - once I got over my initial astonishment that there are NO written instructions. Literally. The only word that appeared in the manual was the misleading "click" which I'll discuss when I get there. Still, the pictures proved to be self-explanatory enough that I did not have to call the store ... as the little cartoon character illustrated:


Count your pieces of course, lay them to the side - the only tool you'll need is a screwdriver.

The first step in installing the uh ... well excuse my technical terms here, but I'm going to call them the little ledges for the shelves. They're nothing fancy, you don't actually have a drawer slide - in fact, one of the display pieces at Ikea was put together pretty poorly & several of the drawers didn't pull out smoothly at all, but all of mine are fine. The ledges basically slide right into place with little tabs:


Once you've done all 6 on both side, you get to put the base on - and this is the one step that I thought the illustration was very misleading:


No way in hell would I say these pieces "click" together. You have to push HARD to complete this step, but once I realized how much force I actually needed to use, I still wouldn't call it difficult.

Slide on the back panel, then secure it by bending this little metal tab down like so:


The top basically just slips on, then you put the casters on the bottom. I'd say they're pretty decent quality, only downside is they don't swivel, but I don't plan on moving these around much so I don't care that the maneuverability is cut down a bit; This step uses 3 screws, one further securing the base to the sides, and 2 securing the caster to the base:


Now to the drawers - I will admit that I folded up 2 or 3 of the drawers inside out & had to flatten them & fold them the other way, so just pay close attention to all the little arrows & stuff in the diagram:


The handle attaches to the drawer-fronts with 2 screws, and then the front is secured to the body of the drawer with more bent tabs:


Same with the back:

Repeat 6 times, and you're done!


Now, I also read that since the drawers are metal, if they're not completely full the polish bottles tend to slide around in there - thankfully, I also read the solution, which was some gripping shelf liner:

I feel like I've treated this kind of like a review with all the details & pics LOL. Overall I am very happy with my Helmers, they were easy to put together & I can't wait to fill them up - and then of course take some pics to share =) Thanks for reading.

~Colette

A Pretty Good Dupe & NOTD

Well, I'm able to post this morning because I'm off of work (Yay for no work! Boo for mandatory non-paid time off!). I'll be headed shortly to my grandparent's house to have lunch & hang out for the day, but I've got what I consider some pretty good stuff to post up first.

To start, I didn't think I'd ever post stuff like this, but I find the impulse is irresistable. Oddly enough, I picked both of these up Wednesday, and it didn't really occur to me at the time how similar they were, I just knew that I really really liked dark purple-blue with fuscia shimmery bits. When I was entering them into my database (which is named Polish OCD because it really is a little obsessive - and I'm OK with that) I realized I was describing them with the same terms, and, well, take a look for yourself.

On the middle finger (left) we have OPI Russian Navy vs. Sally Hansen Spark on the ring finger (right). I was too lazy to swatch a whole hand (maybe I can work my way up to that) but you get the idea. Too bad it's nighttime in addition to winter because I would really like to take some pics in the sun. Also (obviously) did minimal clean-up.

It's hard to see on both of them, but please trust me they have some awesome pink/fuscia spark in there. The Russian Navy is a tad bit darker, but if I wasn't staring looking for the difference I don't think I would spot it. Also a little more glitter under some light. Although I don't normally say much about formula, in this head-to-head comparison I have to say I preferred SH. Although both are 3 coats in the pic, Spark was wearable at 2 coats, where the Russian Navy needed 3.

So I did that quick, and then I did my red manicure for National Wear Red Day. For some reason I don't own any red clothing currently, so this will be it for me today.

I'm not usually big on super-glittery polish, but sitting in my unworns was what seems to have been everyone's favorite red glitter from the holidays, China Glaze Ruby Pumps. Of course if you have this you know the pics do not do the glittery-goodness justice. And man, does the red show I am NOT as good at cleaning up as I thought.

This is my first manicure completely unadorned by nail art in I'm gonna say probably 6 months, and it's kind of nice for a change. With the schedule I have for the next few days, I think I'll wear this probably thorugh Sunday & be happy doing so.

Two last tidbits:

#1: After I finished adding Wednesday's haul to the Polish OCD spreadsheet, the new grand total on my stash is: 402. Yeah. & on my shopping list in my head is about 50 others that I want to order online & probably will in the near future. I mean, I NEED the OMG collection, just to start the list. It works with Konad for goodness sake! Oh yeah, and I have 12 Misas in the mail as I type. But after that, I'm going to make an effort to go on a No-Buy for ... a little while. I don't want to make any promises I'm going to break lol.

#2: I saw on the Today show today is also World Nude Day. I certainly don't feel as compelled to participate in that lol, but I didn't realize there was an official day for being naked .

Thanks for reading.

~Colette