2 Year Nailversary Giveaway!

Okay so I'm about a day late, but April 9 is the anniversary of my very first nail polish post! I actually started this blog in June 2010 as a jewelry post, but after three dinky posts I let the blog gather dust for over a year, and in 2012 my nail polish obsession had reached the stage where it needed it's own blog :)

It's been a bumpy ride, since I have been alternating between extremely busy and extremely broke for the past four years of my life, so I've only made ~115 posts in two years, but hopefully things will be looking up soon! I have a convention coming up, some new polishes and techniques to try, a functional camera, and most importantly, a job. True, the job does take up a LOT of my time and I have very little time for proper nail art, but I'm slowly learning to balance things out.

On to the giveaway! Since this is mainly a nail polish and jewelry blog, I will be making two prize packs.

Prize Pack 1: $50 credit at my Etsy store + free shipping

I have used a collage of some of my existing jewelry to show what you can get with it, but if you want you can also commission an original piece just for you! If it's within my skill set, I'm happy to do it.

Since there are a LOT of pictures, the rest of the giveaway (and the rafflecopter) are under a friendly readmore cut :)

Prize pack 2: Nail Polish Around Israel grab bag

I am taking you on a tour of Israel, via nail polish! One or two nail polishes from (almost) every Israeli brand, with a fair distribution of colors and finishes so that there's something for everyone. Many of these are things I've swatched before, but I'll put a short descriptions under the polishes here that I haven't. Also, a few of these are rushed crappy quality swatches (I ran out of time *shrug*) but I will try to switch them out over the next few days.

Gade Vintage Silver (swatched here)

Gade Hypnotic Red

Hypnotic Red is one of the most aptly named polishes I have ever encountered. It's a glorious metallic candy apple red, truly mesmerizing to look at. Not even a hint of brush strokes. My swatches don't do it justice, this has to be seen in person to be believed. Two easy coats for full coverage.

Life 351 (swatched here)

Laka 205

Laka 205 is a smooth yellow gold metallic polish from their recent "Glam" collection. It's a tiny bit sheer, so I used three coats, but I really like the way it looks with a glossy topcoat. Minimal brushstrokes too, and I applied this in a hurry so possibly with more careful application this would be totally smooth.

Laka 203

Another color from their glam collection- Laka has released some duds, but this polish shows that they're really stepping up their game. Amaaaaazingly deep fuschia crelly with a hidden shimmer. It's not so visible in indirect light, but it adds a subtle oomph to the polish's effect. I have a feeling I'm going to wear my bottle of this a lot.


Beauty Care Pearls On Nail

Beauty Care is a funny animal- they're a super cheap brand, with polishes retailing for about $1.50, but there are some surprisingly decent polishes in their lineup. They don't release new collections, and I wouldn't recommend their base coat or top coat, but there was an impressive enough selection that I'm actually raffling off three of their items. These two caviar bottles, which- I mean, you can't go wrong with caviar, and this lovely lady below:

Beauty Care 95

This was a complete dark horse for me. I bought it thinking it was a fairly innocuous glitter topper, imagine how surprised I was to discover a strong duochrome shift! This is two coats over black, and it has a very distinct shift between blue and green, passing through turquoise on the way. And it's not a shy shift at all- it shows up at pretty much every angle.


Careline 359

This is a delicate little shimmer topper made of microflakies- two coats on my nails here, but a great way to add a subtle shimmer on top of any old thing. It does not build to full opacity (my ring finger is five coats and still fairly sheer), but it applies evenly right from the first coat.

Careline Peach Sorbet

And here we've reached my first crappy swatch. Hopefully I'll have this replaced in a day or two, but in the meantime you can at least see that it's a great springy peach cream, perfect for the current weather. It dries very glossy and provides full coverage after two coats (although if you have very long nails you might want to use three).

Chic Peacock (originally swatched here, but my swatching skills have improved considerably so these are new pictures)

This is really special to me, because it's my very first Favorite Polish Ever. Practically a one coater, and so very deep and complex- it's not a duochrome but it has SO many different aspects to it. I still have a special place in my heart for it, even though I've amassed a mountain of polishes since buying it. I even have a couple of spares in case it goes out of production!

Chic Fun Fun Fun

This was also a first for me- the first time I fell in love with a greyed-out cream. Once again, a two coater and a high gloss finish. I'll replace this with a better swatch soon!

Superficially Colorful Giggly (swatched here)

Jin from Superficially Colorful has generously supplied me with two bottles of Giggly- one to swatch, and one for the giveaway. Check out the full swatch post!

GlitterBunny Rainbows On Crack (swatched here http://fedoraharp.blogspot.co.il/2013/08/i-met-glitterbunny-today.html)

This one is a slightly bittersweet story- Glitterbunny was the first indie polish maker in Israel, but she recently closed down production for good. I managed to nab a couple of bottles in her last restock (although not quite all the ones I wanted), so I'm giving away a bottle of Rainbows On Crack as a sort of last hurrah. It's a lovely violet linear holo.

The rules are fairly simple: Two entries are mandatory- your email address and the country where you live. All of the others are entirely optional, you can fill out as many or as few as you'd like- but each one increases your chances of winning the draw!

Note: One optional entry is to reblog the link to this post on tumblr. I think I formatted it correctly in the rafflecopter widget, but in case I didn't, you can find the post here, and please just put the url to your own reblog into the widget.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!