Happy Christmas!
Today is our big celebratory day around here. Tomorrow will be the day we sleep in real late and watch Netflix all day. Or maybe the Doctor Who special if we can get our hands on it! Today is also the day I show you some of my "other" favorites this year, starting with Indie polishes...which certainly continued to be a huge trend this year, if not THE trend of the year.
Best Indie Polish Line(s) of the Year - I Love Nail Polish & Femme Fatale Cosmetics & Lynnderella
I base these choices purely on the fact that if I had spare money around, these were the lines I was going to look at first to spend it. They continuously put out amazing collections and blew polish making out of the water this year, for me.
My collections of each of these may be small by so many standards, but I don't expect it to stay that way for long!
I Love Nail Polish - this was a sleeper for me. I saw it around, I swept it under the rug. ILNP got more and more play on blogs, I took a little more notice...truth be told, before ILNP, no "chrome" type polishes swayed me. Like holos, I just didn't "feel" them. But the minute ILNP sent out their Press Release for the Christmas collection with that beautiful polish Nostalgia, I died a little inside. Within a week I had bought 5 (which is alot for a girl with no job but a very sweet boyfriend who cant say no!) - I'd also received a couple of the ILNP holos from Nory (Fierce Makeup and Nails) previously and with all of these new pretties in my collection I just pawed and gawked. Ok, now, yes...the polish is BEAUTIFUL. Holo, chrome, whathaveyou, it all works. But it's a complete package with ILNP for me. They have a real BRAND that you can tell they worked very hard on. As a hobby designer I can appreciate the work it takes to market your brand, and they have worked at it! Printed mailing boxes, tissue paper, product boxes, labeling....all of it. The bottle was clearly considered, its gorgeous and has a rubberized handle (imagine the packaging of nars products, that sleek black rubber finish), a beautiful tall, round shape and a FANTASTIC brush! I could probably go on and on, but just go buy some and see for yourself.
Femme Fatale - When this Australian brand burst on the scene, I took immediate notice. Glitter everywhere! As soon as I saw my first one I had an FF wishlist. Hard to resist and at first, kind of hard to get your hands on, I waited. I never managed to get them on Llarowe, they seemed to never be in stock when I had money, and buying from AUS is just not an option I enjoy because the shipping is so expensive. So color me THRILLED when a new US supplier hit the scene stocked to the ceiling with Femmes!! Color4Nails became my number one source for all the Femme Fatale polishes I could shake a stick at. True, it took awhile and good bits of patience for them to stock the Halloween shades I wanted, but in the end my patience won out - my collection is small but new, and I imagine it will become much larger in 2014!
Lynnderella - the one-time controversial Lynnderella brand makes an appearance here as one of my faves of 2013. With the help of my friend Ashley (Smashley Sparkles), I was reeled back in to the world of Lynns and all the glitter your nails can eat. It was a fab year for Lynnderella's and I didn't let that pass me by. I found myself in a great group of Lynn collectors who "inspired" me to grow my own. When the year started I had my lonely one Lynn - Connect the Dots. I've since grown it quite a bit, considering the price is definitely on the higher end of what I LIKE to spend on a polish, but my boyfriend appreciates my love of Lynnderella's and he lets me splurge on them occasionally. The fact that Lynnderella opened her own shop and handed the reigns off to her very kind brother helped to grow my affections greatly. They are now readily available and there is no amount of LE's you can't find at any given time.
Chirality is a brand I was introduced to by Debbie (The Crumpet) and soon after, I was asked to review for them. Chirality is a husband and wife combo team that couldn't BE MORE AWESOME. I have a ton of weird things in common with them and I just adore them as humans. The fact they make insanely great polish with a cult following is really just a bonus. This year they dropped some amazing collections and limited editions - including their Year One Polish to commemorate their anniversary as well as Amanda's amazing health milestone, and they chose me to be the exclusive swatcher. That was definitely one of my biggest 2013 highlights, to say the least. Their Halloween offering, Nails from the Crypt, really broke their mold as far as ONLY being a holo polish brand or ONLY being a glitter polish brand, by releasing a bunch of different polish finishes, and they killed it!
Indie Honorable Mentions:
Cult Nails - Fetish
Elevation Polish - Limestone
Femme Fatale - Cinders of Sleep
Femme Fatale - Eventide
Glitter Daze - Browny Bear
ILNP - Cosmic Barney
ILNP - Nostalgia
KBShimmer - Sand in My Stocking
Mentality Polish - Overcast
My Ten Friends - Star Bright
Rescue Beauty Lounge - Turn It Around
Ruby White Tips - Janes Lemming
Stay tuned tomorrow for the Mainstream Honorable Mentions!
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