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

400+ Followers! & Some Random Pic Spam

Great googly-moogly!  LOL I have to say I'm tickled pink as well as flattered.  Especially as sporadic as I've been posting lately, as behind as I am with comments, that I've managed to make & break the 400 mark.  Thank you, each and every one, for taking the time to stop by & listen to me ramble about polish & life in general.  =)

I'm not exactly behind posting, at least as far as nails are concerned, but there are a few things I've been wanting to put up, so I'm just going to add them here for some visual interest =)

I'm going to start with just a few pics from the flower show, I went with Mom, Grandma & Uncle the day after Easter.  When you first entered, there were all these cool butterflies hanging from the ceiling:

The theme was up & away or something like that, so they had a little hot air balloon:

Then of course lots of flowers ... I always have a little trouble because often shooting with the flash washes everything out, but no flash & everything is fuzzy.  So I was disappointed with a lot of my pics but here are some that turned out half-decent:

Next bit of randomness, Sam at work got a new tattoo, and I thought it was pretty cool.  She got the design from a stained glass window, I think it would be a great design to recreate on my nails:

Our garden at home is loving this early spring!  My strawberry patch has soooo many flowers, and there's lots of decorative stuff blooming too:

At Grandma's house, her plum trees are blossoming:

We've got ducks in our neighborhood too ... they seem to think our yard is a fine place to hang out:

And, last bit of randomness, is a pic of Dude I snapped yesterday.  He was rolling in the grass just prior to this, but I missed getting that =)

I hope all 400+ of my followers, and all my other loyal readers by other means, are having as nice of a spring as I am so far.  Thanks - always - for reading =)

~Colette