HPB Presents: My First Indie Brand

This month's prompt for the Hobby Polish Bloggers group on Facebook is a very fun one - the theme is "my first indie brand."  This theme actually happened at an ironic time - I'll be coming on 2 years of having this blog, and my first indie polish is what prompted me to start blogging in the first place :D

My first ever indie brand was Colors by Llarowe.  I won a giveaway the creator was having of one of her discontinued polishes, and once it came in, I was hooked!  I'd never seen polishes like that before in stores, and when I went online to look at more colors by that brand, I was in awe of the holo!  It was all addiction from there ;)

The polish I won was "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes."  It is a lovely pale brown jelly with a pigment reminiscent of that "unicorn pee" stuff everyone talks about.  I decided to pair it with another Colors by Llarowe "K-9" and created this mani:

CbL still remains one of my favorite indies, especially for the way the super holographic polishes tend to watermarble!!  

Do you remember your first ever indie polish?  Tell me about it in the comments!  And be sure to check out the other fantastic posts below :D

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An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Blogiversary!

Today marks  my 1 year Blogiversary!!  That crept up on my so fast - April completely flew by!  I decided that, to celebrate, I would re-do a mani featuring the first indie polish I ever got that started this whole indie nail polish journey of mine - "Smoke Gets In Her Eyes" by Colors by Llarowe!

"Smoke Gets In Her Eyes" is a light brown jelly with a dark pink/green shifting shimmer throughout.  Opaque in 2-3 coats, depending on how thick you layer - I did 3 thin coats and topped with HKGirl Glisten & Glow.

I won this beauty in a giveaway CbL had last year, and it is the first indie I ever owned!  I remember receiving it and thinking, "HOLY CRAP!  This is amazing!!"  It was unlike any polish I'd ever owned before, or seen in stores, and I knew I'd want more :)  Hundreds of bottles later, here I am :P

So funny looking back on the last year and all the things I accomplished - improving my clean-up and swatching process, improving my pictures, realizing I can do nail art and feeding that talent, establishing relationships with some pretty darn fantastic indies!  I've done a lot in a year with my little blog!  What started out as something I thought nobody would read, something that was just a fun thing for me to do outside of being a mom and a wife, has grown into a passion and a gateway to meeting some wonderful people in this industry, makers AND bloggers alike!  It's been so much fun, and I look forward to the next Blogiversary!

To celebrate my 1 year, I'll be doing a giveaway, most likely starting Monday, so keep your eyes peeled!

"Smoke Gets In Her Eyes" Colors by Llarowe - Pictures and Review

Told you I was a fan of painting my nails ;)  A good portion of my blog will be pictures and reviews of polishes, not just because I enjoy painting, but also because I enjoy spreading the word about great polishes.

This Polish Post is about a retired color of polish called "Smoke Gets In Her Eyes" by the brand Colors by Llarowe (FB page here: https://www.facebook.com/Colorsbyllarowe ).  I actually won this bottle of polish in a giveaway a few months ago.  When it arrived and I first tried it, I immediately fell in love with the color, and the brand!  Below are some pictures of the polish.  You will have to forgive my short, uneven nails - the middle finger decided to bread AFTER I put the polish on, so I filed it down and rounded it out for the sake of the pictures :P  I also ask you forgive the dry skin around the cuticles.  I have precious little time to pamper my hands at night, and polish is the most important for me over getting rid of the dry skin.

The pink color on my pointer finger is a Sally Hansen satin polish.  The other four fingers are Smoke Gets In Her Eyes.

  

 Here's a picture of what the polish looks like when outside, but not in direct sunlight.

Managed to capture the green iridescence that seems to show when you are indoors by the window.

This color is pretty neat!  The color itself is a grayish brown with some beautiful red/orange glitter shimmer in the sunlight.  Indoors, as seen above, it shimmers green at certain angles.  It's really a lovely polish, and a more subtle holo tone.  The polish stayed on for a good 3-4 days with no chips or damaged tips (again, would probably have lasted longer on someone who is not a mom of two small children :P ).  

The fact the polish is such good quality made me want to buy more of the same brand - so I did!! The new polish will be coming in this week and next as Llarowe fulfills their shipments.  They had a re-stock last week and tons of their colors were retiring.  They've got lots of giveaways going on currently on their facebook page due to hitting their recent milestone of 100,000 "likes" (congrats to them!), so I highly recommended giving them a "like" yourself - and be sure to click "get notifications" so you know when those giveaways are happening!

New polish coming in means more Polish Posts in the near future :D  Stay tuned, subscribe, leave me a comment if you'd like - especially if you have a blog you'd like to share! Until next time ^_^