Monthly Haul: July

Hi ladies! Even though I'm not posting swatches at the moment, I will still be sharing my monthly hauls with you. This month is a bit of a mish-mash, I did buy/receive a couple of these last month, but I was unable to post them because a) the IBD Just Gels hadn't arrived yet and b) 3 were for the piCture pOlish blog fest, so I didn't want to show them until after the post was published.

This month has also been a little tame in terms of quantity, well at least when compared to some months, a lot of this has to do with that I was made redundant two weeks ago, which SUCKS, so some of these were bought before that happened, and some were bought afterwards to give me a little pick me up.

Some of you may not be aware, but I'm now a fully qualified Nail Technician, so over the past couple of months I have slowly been building up my Gel Polish, Gel and Acrylic Powder collections. As this is more of a polish blog, I've only included the Gel Polish I've bought but if you'd like to see an Acrylic/Gel collection, let me know. As I trained with IBD products, those are what I've decided to use as a starter brand. Hopefully as time goes on I will take a few training courses with other brands too. I just wanna say a HUGE thank you to Jenny for being my US polish mule for these babies and saving me a small fortune!

I started off this month with a purchase from ILNP, which is becoming one of my favourite indie brands, their sleek packaging, gorgeous colour combinations and amazing customer service makes this brand stand out in the ever-growing crowd. When I saw the preview swatches for the new holos, I knew there were some I desperately needed, but having missed out on the launch and the ones I wanted selling out, I thought that was never going to happen. However, the lovely lady behind the brand, Barbra, informed me that she had held a few shades back from the launch and I would be able to paypal her directly for them! I think I actually did a little dance for that, so thank you x100000 Barbra!

Around my payday, Harlow & Co. had a re-stock of piCture pOlish, so I grabbed a couple I had been wanting whilst they were available. Also whilst I was browsing I saw this Girly Bits/MakeUpMom123 collab polish and thought it looked AMAZING so I nabbed that too.

After my ILNP and Harlow & Co. order, I swore to myself I wasn't going to buy anymore polishes...and then I saw that Ciate were having a 50% off flash sale for one day only. Ciate polishes have always been a bit of a hit and miss in my opinion, sometimes I love the formula, other times I hate it. But for £4.50 I thought it was worth trying again. I also bought Funhouse & Helter-Skelter, but they were not at all what I thought they'd be like so I sold them.

After my redundancy, I went into Sallys to grab some supplies for doing nails like tips, files, cuticle pushers, nippers etc and saw that they had the Hologlam collection in stock. I said a little prayer in my head and went to look for the last remaining polish I needed in the collection and to my excitement, they had it in! Although now I wish I had held off buying them at Professional Beauty as they were almost half the price I paid in Sallys, boooo.

Last but not least, we have my piCture pOlish purchase (say that 3x fast). This was a REALLY naughty purchase and after it was completed I did get a bit of buyers regret. I was doing a bit of 'looking but not buying' on their website when I came across the Everyday Deals page *uh oh* and found that if I bought 7 shades, I'd get 2 free...There's something about the word free that makes everything sound like a must have deal. After that the world went black and the next thing I knew I had 9 new shades on their way to me. But they're just...so...pretty....

Last but not least we have the 3 piCture pOlish shades I was sent as part of Blog Fest 2013, which you can see my post here. Technically, these should have been in Junes haul, but as I mentioned earlier, I didn't want to show them until the blog fest post was live.

That concludes the polishes that I received/purchased this month. As you can see it was a very piCture pOlish oriented month. As of this moment, I'm unsure if there will be any more haul posts over the next coming months unless I am able to find a job, so keep your fingers crossed for me!