Guest Post! Melissa!

Another Guest post for you lovelies!!! Today is Melissa from Melmyissta! 

My obsession with all things nail and polish started in January 2011, by discovery on YouTube of meliny using konad. So it was not a polish infatuation that started it all, but nail art stamping that I wanted to replicate.

The online shopping started:

From [www.wowsocool.com] a selection of special polishes and accessory implements.

From [www.bundlemonster.com] the first series bulk set of stamping plates.

The stamping plate set arrived quickly at my doorstep, but I waited a little longer for the polishes and stamper, to be able to begin my creative nail art.

The cheapest nail polish I could get was from the brand Ulta3 at $2 each and in a fantastic array of colours.

At the time the newest season polishes on display all had the word "Fever" in their name.

My favourites were Twilight fever and Gold rush fever.

Then of course I looked online, at vogue forums [http://forums.vogue.com.au/showthread.php?t=291498], where the reviews and opinions about all the colours in the Fever collection detailed their shimmers and prettiness in the sun.

And that Twilight fever was a dupe for an expensive ($2  vs. $30) Chanel polish. Before this, I had no idea was a dupe was. We as polish collectors use quite a bit of jargon I think..

Of course I went back to the shop to get them all.

• Blossom fever

• Gold rush fever

• Midnight fever

• Pacific fever

• Royal fever

• Twilight fever

 

The polish I have continued to pull out and wear the most would be Twilight fever. I also regularly use Midnight fever as a dark base to layer polish. And an extra bottle of Gold rush fever I have thickened up so that I have a gold stamping polish for $2.

So there you go, its not just 1 lonely polish, but an all consuming hoard of colours and nail stamping art that I wanted to take part in.

Thanks to Robyn, for letting me guest post on you blog..

My blog is at melmyissta [http://melmyissta.blogspot.com.au/]

Thank you Melissa!!! I was so excited when my first stamping set came in. Mine was the bundle monster second set. I loved it so much.

Don't forget to send in your posts to this series!!

Guest Post: Kelly's Mod About you!

Hi guys! I'm super excited to show you the first Guest post from my Polish That Started it All Series. Without further ado: Kelly!!!

Hi!  I'm Kelly from Ooh La La Polish.  I was so excited when Robyn asked for guest bloggers to show off the polish that got them hooked.  Before I got into polish and joined forums and started a blog, I would use an old eyeshadow brush and remover to clean up my manis.  I remember taking notes from nail techs when I'd go along with my mom or get a mani myself and then use those techniques at home.  Little did I know I'd start a blog and improve my skills ten fold.  Up until last spring I only had a handful of polish and would rotate between OPI Mod About You, OPI Off With Her Red, OPI Louvre Me, Louvre Me Not and a bright pink Sally Hansen.  I always gravitated toward OPI Mod About You and loved how it looked on my skintone.  It made me look tanner in the summer and always looked soft and feminine.  It was no surprise that it was the polish to really expand my horizons and cause me to look up swatches and jump into this crazy world of nail polish.  I remember needing a second bottle because I loaned mine to someone and never got it back.  Amazon told me to check out other polish that people were looking for and China Glaze For Audrey popped up.  I like to say Mod About You was my gateway polish because it opened my eyes to brands and colors I never imagined!  It's been at least a year since I used it though and I was happy to dust it off.  The formula wasn't all that great compared to other light pinks I've used.  It seemed chalky and streaky and required more clean-up.  Maybe if I added a little thinner the formula would be thinner and easier to work with.  I absolutely love the way it looks and think it's a great base for a fun indie brand glitter topper! 

Thanks to Robyn for allowing me to show off one of my oldies but goodies on her blog!  You can check out my blog at www.oohlalapolish.com. 

Thank you for joining me Kelly! I might have to track down a bottle of Mod About You! I was on a hunt for the perfect pale pink this winter (Damn you essie fiji!!!!) and this looks like it would fit the bill.

Do you guys own Mod About You?

Don't forget to submit your own gateway polish to me at roflbertz@gmail.com and like me on Facebook and Twitter because I feel dumb writing tweets to 2 people. lol. Just being honest.

Guest Post: Mommy Does Her Nails!

Continuing on with my series of Guest posts is Candice from Mommy Does Her Nails! 

Hey all - it's Mommy Does Her Nails with a story based on real-life events. That moment I became addicted to nail polish. Where it all began. 

The polish that started it all was actually a trio of polishes. You may or may not (depending on how new to the nail polish community you are) know about how generous Zoya's promos can be. Well they used to be even more amazing. 

I began my journey as a deal junkie. I surfed the web tirelessly for every good deal I could get my hands on. Relevant or not I bought stuff due to discounts and coupons. So when a friend saw the buy three polishes and only pay shipping she sent it my way. At the time I had my nails bitten down to bare nubbins and cuticles torns to shreds and often times bleeding. Painting nails just wasn't something I did.  Yet I went ahead and ordered three polishes that were in colors I thought I might like (I didn't even know about Googling swatches!) Trixie, Irene, and Gabrielle were on their way to me in a sea of other packages and mail containing deals. Probably to be looked at once and then lost in the cabinet of samples. 

But let me tell you. When that package from Zoya arrived and I pulled the glittering and gorgeous polishes from their box I was in total awe. It changed the way I looked at nail polish. There was also a spoon insert showing off the upcoming Spring release. I instantly painted my nails and began to prowl Zoya. You know. Just in case. Then my friend discovered Polishaholicas Anonymous. We joined and the barage of color combinations, polish brands, and upcoming release information sucked us in. Hook. Line. Sinker. We were total gonners. 

This was the beginning of 2011 and the sheer increase in creativity and tecniques has blown me away. It was a great year to begin as a blogger.

 Top to bottom: Zoya Trixie, Irene, and Gabrielle

 L-R: Gabrielle, Irene, Trixie

L-R: Trixie, Irene, Gabrielle

I seriously fan-girl squee-d at Gabrielle! I'm a sucker for an orange, and I may have to get it now. I don't think these posts are going to be good for my wallet! 

Once again, thank you to Candice and to all those who have agreed to send me posts. I'm going to make a new page up at the top for the contact info for this series because I would like to make this an on-going thing. Not every day like now, but once I get my new camera I'd like to do it at least once a week.

The Liebster award!!!!!

Hey everyone! I've been nominated for the Liebster award 3 times now lol!! I have been putting it off solely because I don't know anyone with less than 200 followers, So I put out an S.O.S. in the Polish Aholics Anonymous group and I will edit with people to tag once I get some people. Or if any of you know anyone with less than 200 followers who have a great blog, let me know! I'm going to answer the questions from my latest nominator Patty and Goldie's Day Off, just for ease of finding it (I should actually be doing homework) but if you nominated me and want me to answer your questions here on ROANH I will surely do so. So without further ado:

"This little award is all about discovering new blogs and helping those with less than 200 followers to get recognized."

Here are the rules:

1. Each person tagged must post 11 things about themselves.

2. They must also answer the 11 questions the 'tagger' has set for them.

3. They must create 11 more questions to ask bloggers they have decided to tag.

4. They must then choose 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers and tag them in their post.

5. These lucky bloggers must then be told.

6. There's no tag backs.


Ok so here are 11 random things about me:
1. The music I like tends to be anything I can sing to, if I have difficulty singing it, I wont listen to it. lol. So I listen to a lot of show tunes.
2. I've been at walmart for going on 7 years...bleck..
3. I'm 24 and I'm a sophomore in college...also bleck.
4. My dream job is to work in an insane asylum. (Work in, not live in! lol)
5. I'm the youngest of 7 and an only child. (My mother was married 3 times, my dad only 1)
6. I didn't go to my first bar until last november, and haven't been to one since.
7. I could eat taco bell 3 meals a day.
8. I have been engaged for nearly 4 years.
9. My fiance and I eventually want to get our master's degrees in Washington state.
10. In high school we only needed 2 fine arts credits to graduate, and I had 11. I took 4 years of choir, a semester of private lessons, an acting class, and an art class.
11. If you're familar with Shakespeare, there is always a point in his tragedies that is considered "comedic relief", my senior year of high school, my first speaking part was that of the porter in Macbeth, the comedic role and they cut out my monologue. So, I was the comedic relief with 3 lines. That I couldn't remember. I should have just stuck to the chorus in musicals lol.

My questions from Patty

1.  What made you start blogging? I read a lot of blogs, and I really wanted to try my hand at it. I had a blog back in the day that I deleted because I couldn't make myself post.
2.  What kinds of things do you do to make blog successful? I feel like I spam a lot. I am trying to post as often as I can, and I definitely look at what already brings people from google to my blog, and keep doing that.

3.  What would make you stop blogging? Time. As a full time student and a full time worker, I don't have a crap ton of time. Also, there have been times that I've considered selling all my polish, but that never had to happen!

4.  What inspires you? Many things inspire me, books, movies, other people, colors. Not one thing inspires me.

5.  What is your favorite nail polish? Oh god.OPI Mermaid's Tears, OPI Red Lights Ahead...Where? OPI Every Month Is Oktoberfest, Essie Orange it's Obvious! Essie She's Picture Perfect, Deborah Lippman Footloose, Zoya Chloe, Zoya Lo...ok i'm stopping now lol.
6.  Do you view blogging as a "competitive sport"  or a creative outlet? Creative outlet

7.  What is the best way to get followers? If I knew, I'd have more followers. lol.

8.  What keeps you going when you feel defeated? I try not to pay attention to pageviews and followers...I do this for myself, and I want to put my content out there for others to read. I want to get better at writing and taking photos, so this is a good way to do it. I do feel bad when I don't post because I want to people who read my blog to have content to read!

9.  How do you organize your blog? I don't really. Need to work on that

10. Where do you keep your nail station? Haha in my kitchen under our table and I sit on the floor and paint my nails.

11. What is more important to you pageviews or followers and why? Followers because they are the people that keep coming back!!

My 11 questions:

1. What is your dream polish?

2. Do you have a polish that you wish looked great on your hands?

3. Have you ever been on a roller coaster?

4. What was your favorite class in high school?

5. Do you have children?

6. If you could meet a famous person, who would it be?

7. How many of the people you know in real life know that you have a blog?

8. What was your first post?

9. What is one color you hate wearing on your nails?

10. quick, name 5 things on your desk!

11. What is on your nails right now?

My 11 tagged bloggers:

will edit to add people!!

The polish that started it all! + invite

 Hello Everyone! Today is a polish related post! yay! I want to apologize in advance for the low quality photos. I went in my bedroom to ask my fiance if I could borrow his phone (he was sleeping) to take photos and I was met with this conversation:

Me: Hey babe, can I borrow your phone?
Him: mumble mumble pick the red one, it's better.
Me: *laughs* what?
Him: you were asking about colors, the red one is better.
Me: I asked if I could borrow your phone.
Him: Oh. yeah.
Me: Where is it?
Him: What? You asked about colors...
Me: No, I need your phone.
Him: What for?
Me: Pictures for my blog
Him: You don't need to take pictures *rolls over and stops responding to me*

Gotta love half asleep conversations. My future mother in law once said "we have a bunny problem" in her sleep.

Anyway! So I get a new camera in about 30 days, so I chose to use my camera phone instead. It's old...so sorry if the pictures suck. But I wanted to talk about the polish that started my obsession with polish.

Essie Cocktail bling. I had already had a few polishes, I think I had a few from the Muppets Collection, and China Glaze For Audrey, among other drugstore polishes. But I wasn't full on into painting my nails. Then, on break at work I saw an ad for the Cocktail Bling collection, and I went into full on hunt mode. I searched high and low for this polish, and when I found it, it was love. I bought nearly the whole collection (except Brooch the Subject and Size Matters) and I've been obsessed ever since.

I still love this color, it's not my favorite, but I love it. It goes perfectly with my skin tone, making me look less red, and less tan. I'm weird...I like looking pale. I wish my skin was paler actually. It's a perfect shade of grey-blue. Above is 2 coats plus topcoat.

Now, I invite all of you to email me YOUR "polish that started it all" and a little blurb and I would like to do a series of guest posts chronicling our decent into obsession. If you have any friends who collect polish, have them send it to me! I want hundreds of these things!!! ok...maybe not...but the more merrier!

My email is roflbertz@gmail.com 

I thank you, and have a great day.

NPR: Blogging and the Real World

Hello Everyone! Today was my first day back to school from summer break. It was a fairly uneventful day overall, no one noticed my neon houndstooth nails and I have to deal with a bunch of rowdy fresh-out-of-high school, straight from the farm teenagers, but that's what comes with being a non-traditional student in Iowa (I live in Nebraska, but I go to school in Iowa, I literally live right next to the Missouri River, if I chopped down the trees, I could see it from my house).

There were two instances today where I realized that blogging may actually have some sort of impact on my real life. The first instance was in my English Comp I class, where the professor said that we need to complete twenty 20 minute "Journals" before the end of the semester, the topic can be anything we want, and my mind went straight to the blog. It takes well over 20 minutes to write a good blog post, and another thing she mentioned was that we will also be doing in class journals on a topic she picks but we can manipulate it into something relevant to our lives. The example she gave was someone having a fight with their boyfriend and instead of complaining about it, we would write it down in our journal. Instantly I thought "Ooh! pre-writing blog posts!" Once again, probably not an effective use of time, but I might be able to make it work. I wasn't looking forward to taking this class because technically I don't need to. I tested out of it in placement exams, but I got nervous the day of my CLEP test (it's a $90 test to get credit for not taking a class and I hadn't studied at all because I forgot about it, bad Robyn!) and cancelled (I didn't pay for it yet) so I decided that I would just take the class and deal with it and put the class to good use boosting my GPA (not that it really needs it). So we will see if I can manage to write papers that aren't about nail polish!

The other instance where I thought about this blog and subsequently you guys was when my art teacher (who turns out to also have a blog) had us go around the room and say our name, major, and our hobbies. I instantly got nervous and wanted to crawl in a hole and die (more on this later). But how do I tell a group of people I've never met before that I have a blog, and not only that a blog dedicated to nail polish?! If I had been doing this a while I wouldn't bat an eye, but I'm still new to this. So I said that I worked too much to have hobbies, which is a complete lie. I am at work 45 hrs a week, yes, but I still do stuff. I have this blog (which I have been neglecting...I apologize), I crochet and knit, I draw (also neglected), and I watch a crap ton of Mythbusters. Do you tell people you have a blog?  Better yet, do people who blog for a living tell people that they're a blogger? The whole concept confuses me. 

Now back to the whole crawling-in-a-hole-and-dying thing. I. Hate. That. Activity. I had to tell people my name and major and some random factoid about me four times today. I have zero desire to make friends with any of these people, most of whom I have nothing in common with. Now, I was an education major for a semester (so that makes me an expert right?), and we were taught that activities like this are important for building communities within classrooms, but I'm in college...why do I need to do that? I'm there to learn, not to be chummy with the kid from australia that has such a thick accent I can't understand what he is saying...I don't know...maybe it's just the anti-social weirdo in me. I feel more comfortable here, in blogland, where the people I talk to have something in common by default, otherwise why would I have readers at all? I don't know, am I wrong for thinking that that activity is completely idiotic?

Do you guys have any fun college stories to tell?  Maybe I'll have more in the future.

Sorry for the wall of text, I felt like ranting, and so I did. lol. Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow me in all the lovely places I have to follow (Twitter and facebook = Rantingblogger) <<shameless plug to get more than two followers on those places lol. Maybe I'd tweet more!

Robyn, Where have you been?!?!

Hello everyone! Sigh. It's been a long summer for me. The last couple months have been really tough. My fiance's truck broke down and we have been dirt poor. Like, super poor, at one point I had -100 dollars in my account. It's been rough. (Not asking for pity or sympathy, just sharing. It's getting better). The other day I got an eviction notice! I was freaking out because I had no idea why. Turns out the realty company that handles our rent lost my check! >.<  Luckily it has all been sorted out now and things are starting to look up!

So through all this crap I have not had any desire to blog. I'm sorry, but it's true. I've spent the vast majority of my free time attempting to knit socks. Key word in that sentence: attempting. lol. Do any of you knit or crochet? I'd love to see some of it if you do!

Next month I am recieving some extra cash that I plan on using to buy a camera. So hopefully the photo quality will bump up and everything will be super awesome again. But until then, it's far too difficult to get my fiance's phone as we are never home at the same time, and starting next week I will definitely not be home at the same time as him because I start back at college (I got my books today....whoooo 226 dollars for two books! and I still have to buy a damn passcode for another class, and I'm sure my art class will require me to buy something as well...college...expensive..on a side note, I saw someone's invoice at the desk today 4,000!!! at a community college?!?!!?!?! FOR BOOKS?!?!!?! hopefully it was really, really wrong...lol) so I am in desperate need for my own camera. Any suggestions? I should start researching this.

As for the Liebster award, thank you!!! I was actually nominated twice in the same day! lol. I will get to filling that out at a later date, because I need to get some food, and get to sleep. Have a great day!

P.S. on my nails today is OPI Every month is Oktoberfest. Beautiful. Get it. You need it.

P.P.S. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @RantingBlogger and Like my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/RantingBlogger! I'd like to get that moving. Start posting random crap about nail polish...or not about nail polish...Whatever you'd like!!!