Haulage Week! Essie, Illamasqua, Smashbox & W7

2016-03-282017-07-01 fivezero10 Comments

This week, I’ll be posting about some little hauls I’ve made recently, rather than swatches and reviews. The reason for this is that I have a busy week ahead of me—my little peanut is going to be two!—and didn’t have enough swatch posts written up in advance! Things should quiet down for me by next week, so I look forward to doing a whole lot more swatching, soon.

Here’s the haulage post schedule for this week:

Monday: Essie, Illamasqua, Smashbox, W7
Tuesday: Zoya
Wednesday: Perfume (Ellen Tracy, Jennifer Lopez)
Throwback Thursday: MAC
Friday: Essence, L’Oréal, OPI

So, today, we kick off with a combo of products from Essie, Illamasqua, Smashbox, and W7: all of which I found at Winners (the Canadian TJ Maxx)!

The Essie product is a 3-pack of mini nail polishes from last year’s Bridal collection. It turns out that I already have two of the three (Hubby for Dessert and Worth the Wait, both also in mini form; the third shade is Brides To Be), so I’m going to return this. D’oh! This is why I need to get my nail polish tracker up and running ASAP…

Haulage! Winners (January–February 2016)

2016-03-012016-09-23 fivezero5 Comments

Happy March! Another couple of months, another couple of Winners hauls! I would probably spend a lot less money if I didn’t live so close to a Winners.

Color Club 4-pack minis in Desert Valley — **Color Club** 4-pack minis in Desert Valley
Image: colorclub.com

Color Club 4-pack minis in Seven Deadly Sins — **Color Club** 4-pack minis in Seven Deadly Sins
Image: colorclub.com

These Color Club packs were marked down to CA$4.99 each! Actually, the next day I went back and saw them red-tagged (clearanced) to even less: $4 each, but I decided not to be obnoxious and return/repurchase for a $1.98 difference. Not all of them were clearanced, as well, so who knows what Winners was up to that day.

Linea Pelle — Satchel (Orange with Gunmetal Hardware) Review

2016-01-292017-06-21 fivezero16 Comments

Photobucket is down after a week or so of intermittent craptitude—therefore, in lieu of the Essie Retro Revival polishes I was getting ready to post, I’m doing a quick review of one of my favorite handbags!

Linea Pelle, the Los Angeles-based leather bag and accessories company, has been one of my favorite bag designers for several years. Their name literally means leather line in Italian. It’s a bit funny, because the first time I came across Linea Pelle bags, namely, their popular Dylan line, I didn’t like them much. They just seemed too laid back and casual to me, with their soft shapes and unfinished leather edges. But, when I spotted a well-worn Linea Pelle in the wild, I was bowled over! They’re gorgeous in real life! (This is basically the opposite of what happened to me with YSL’s original Muse and Sac de Jour bags: I drooled over photos of them, but when I saw and handled them in real life, I was quite disappointed.)

Their only drawback, in my opinion, is their poor-ish service to Canada: I recently tried to have an order shipped to a US-address, but they wouldn’t let me pay with a Canadian billing address even though they would, obviously, for a Canadian shipping address. Plus, then I tried to ship to myself in Canada, and they wouldn’t allow Canadians to use their current discount code. WHAT?! And, the one time I’ve ordered from their site to Canada, I think they shipped UPS, which is literally the worst service you can use for Canadians, since the brokerage fees are crazy. So, I don’t order from their official site anymore.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave many options in Canada for buying Linea Pelle bags! Hudson’s Bay used to carry them for a brief time, perhaps a year, but they aren’t to be seen anymore—replaced by Botkier and Liebeskind, it appears, neither of which is really my cup of tea. So, you can understand my excitement when I spotted some Linea Pelles at Winners back in 2011! Here was my chance!Read More »

China Glaze Nail Lacquer in Wood You Wanna?

China Glaze — Wood You Wanna? (Nail Lacquer) Swatch & Review

2015-10-022017-07-16 fivezero15 Comments

Collection: China Glaze 2015 Fall, The Great Outdoors

Welp, my low-buy’s not going that great! I spotted a slew of colors from China Glaze’s new fall collection, The Great Outdoors, at Winners and decided to pick up…several. This is the first China Glaze collection I’ve been wowed by for some time now! I got Cabin Fever, Check Out the Silver Fox, Free Bear Hugs, Pondering, Sleeping Under the Stars, and Wood You Wanna?

Finally, Wood You Wanna? (82711) is a highly metallic pewter with a deep mauve-taupe base and dense, dark silver shimmer.

China Glaze — Cabin Fever (Nail Lacquer) Swatch & Review

2015-09-252017-07-19 fivezero20 Comments

Collection: China Glaze 2015 Fall, The Great Outdoors

Cabin Fever (82713) is one of a few iridescent polishes in this collection. It’s a cranberry pink-to-caramel bronze duochrome with a metallic finish. The pink has a touch of plum; the bronze has a touch of antiqued gold.

Winners Canada Haulage, NARS, SpaRitual, Anna Sui nail polish

Haulage! My Winners (The Canadian TJ Maxx) Purchases for Summer 2015

2015-09-022016-09-23 fivezero22 Comments

As we are entering the fall months on this first day of September—though fall doesn’t technically begin here in Canada until September 23—I thought it would be a very responsible idea to enter a low-buy for the upcoming season. After all, I’ve gotta start saving money for those post-holiday deals, right?

Plus, the Canadian dollar is so weak at the moment, and prices are slowly going up. We’re down to 75¢ to the US dollar, guys! It hasn’t been this low since the 90s, I think.

So I have resolved to “shop my stash” more and stop buying so much bloody nail polish until December. You might start to see reviews of things I bought over a year ago…

To get myself in the mood for a low-buy, here’s a roundup of my Winners purchases since about April. That’s about five months, basically since my last Winners haul post, so this post is really more like: Purchases for the Second Half of Spring, and Summer.

Now, I love shopping at the TJ Maxx stores (that’s Winners and HomeSense in Canada, though we also recently got Marshalls, too). They’re obviously a bit hit/miss, but the hits can be fantastic!

Leighton Denny High Performance Nail Colour in Message in a Bottle

Leighton Denny — Message In a Bottle (High Performance Nail Colour) Swatch & Review

2015-07-242017-08-23 fivezero23 Comments

Brand: Leighton Denny

Leighton Denny is a brand which I, being in North America, only vaguely recognized. When I recently spotted some of the brand’s polishes at Winners, I somehow recollected that it was a British brand, although I suppose with a name like Leighton Denny, that’s not much of a leap to make!

According to his website, he’s a nail tech to the stars who has worked with celebrities like Kate Moss, Penélope Cruz, and Adele. He’s also an MBE, which is pretty impressive considering he started his career as a humble forklift operator! (OMG, maybe he knows what the Queen wears?!)

Now, the colors available at Winners were not many, and I ended up selecting a taupe shimmer, which seemed to be one of the more unique colors available. I’m guessing that it’s named Message In a Bottle for the Police song, though I suppose that is a common enough phrase that it might not be! (The other shades aren’t all named for songs, à la Deborah Lippmann.)