Smitten with the Holidays - Holiday 2012 - Coming Nov 26, 2012

Group shot!

The Smitten Polish Smitten with the Holidays collection will be available on November 26, 2012 at www.smittenpolish.com! Here are some larger swatches and descriptions:

A Midnight Clear - Blue jelly base with tiny blue flakes.

Adeste Fidelis - White jelly base with rose, pale green and coppery glitters.

Flurry - Grey jelly base with light blue and iridescent glitter, as well as larger white square glitters.

Frost Fairies - My favorite, and probably the most difficult to photograph. This is a semi-sheer white jelly base with blue and aqua shimmer.

Greensleeves - Teal-leaning green jelly base with green shimmer as well as tiny green and gold flakes.

The Holly and the Ivy - White jelly base with dark red and green matte glitters in two sizes.

Grinchy Claus - Warm leaning green with gold shimmer.

Nuttin' For Christmas - rich brown with tiny red-gold flakes and deep red shimmer.

Sleigh Ride - Bright red jelly base with pinkish-red shimmer.

Merry and Bright - Inspired by Victorian Christmas cards, this is a muted berry jelly base packed with various sizes and shapes of copper and gold glitters.

Smitten Polish Restock Info

Hi, folks! Thank you all for being so patient waiting for the new collection to be released. I ran into some delays with my new bottle supplier and bottles got here later than I was hoping. They're finally here, and I'll be opening the shop on Thursday, October 11. 

As I did last time, I'm going to split my stock into two batches to try and accommodate people across as many time zones as possible. Half the stock will be listed at 1pm CENTRAL TIME and the other half will be listed at 7pm CENTRAL TIME on October 11.

Shades that are currently scheduled to be stocked are:

Hocus Pocus

Spice Cake

Wicked, Tricksy, False!

ERMAHGERD, CANDY CORMS

Confection

Glass Elevator

I Want It Now

You're Turning Violet, Violet

Pure Imagination

Winter Is Coming

Candy Kisses

Hillary's Dream

Mint Chip

I know there are shades that people want that aren't on this list. Some of them are out of production for the moment because of supply issues with some of the colorants I was using, and some are out of production because they just weren't selling. I find it difficult to keep up with stocking more than about 15 to 20 shades total, so shades will come and go based on availability of ingredients as well as demand.

And lastly, thank you all for being the very best customers anyone could ask for. It really means the world to me. <3

Smitten Polish Halloween/Fall 2012 Collection

Many, many, MANY thanks to my sweet friend Cilucia for taking these pictures for me. I was out of town and I just had no time to photograph them myself. She's a lifesaver. ♥

So here's the Halloween and Fall collection.

From left to right: ERMAHGERD, CANDY CORMS!, Spice Cake, Hocus Pocus, Wicked, Tricksy, False!

Swatches!

ERMAHGERD, CANDY CORMS! - Three coats on its own.

Spice Cake - This is slightly more brown in person. Three coats.

Hocus Pocus - This leans slightly warmer and less blue in real life. Cilucia used four coats, but I wore it at three coats when I wore it myself.

And lastly, Wicked, Tricksy, False! This is three coats on its own:

Two coats layered over a black creme:

And one coat over a black jelly.

These will be available soon! I can't give you all an exact date yet as I'm awaiting a huge order of bottles and I can't make these until those come in. I'm expecting to be able to put them up for sale during the first week of October. =)

Restock info

I'll be restocking the store this Wednesday. Half of the stock will be put up at 1pm CST and the other half will go up at 7pm CST. Hopefully this will give people across lots of time zones a chance to grab what they want. =)

Smitten Update

Hi, everyone. =) There are several things that I wanted to let you guys know:

1. I plan to restock my store next week sometime, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. I'll announce it here and on Facebook (www.facebook.com/smittenpolish) 48 hours prior to the store opening. I'm also sending out my first batch of inventory to Llarowe this week, so there will be a fair number of polishes available between those two sources. 

2. This next restock will not be a pre-order. I know you guys love pre-orders, but I'm going out of town to visit my family in a couple of weeks, and I just don't have the extra time that it takes to do all the spreadsheeting and invoicing that comes with a pre-order. I'm sorry about that. =\

3. I'm working on the final iterations of my fall and Halloween shades. My plan is to start mixing those after I get back in town and to start offering them for sale at the beginning of October. 

4. I'm running into supply issues with the colorants that are used in Bluebird, Pink Lemonade and The One on the Right. Those will be offered at this restock, but I can't make any guarantees about their future availability. I do plan to start working on reformulating those shades with other ingredients, but A) I'm not sure how well that will turn out and B) I don't know how long it might take. I apologize for that, but that's the nature of this business - sometimes suppliers just stop stocking things we've been using. 

5. For my customers in Australia - the issues with the post seem to have cleared up on their own. One of my friends in Australia who had ordered actually talked to AusPost, and they said that there was a large batch of mail from the US that had been accidentally diverted to the wrong state, hence the delays. All of those packages have found their way to their recipients now, so I think we're good!

And, as always, thank you all for your continued support of Smitten. It really does mean the world to me. ♥

Smitten News and Updates

Hello, folks. I have some important bits of info for you.

1. For my Australian customers particularly, and all my international customers in general - I have had three packages now that I've sent to Australia that have either gotten delayed, returned to me, or have vanished to parts unknown. As stated in my shop policies, I'm happy to ship internationally, but once the items leave my hands, I really can't be responsible for what happens in transit. I'll happily replace bottles that are damaged, as well as send the correct color if I make a mistake and send the wrong one. As far as I know, there isn't an economical way to ship internationally with full tracking. I'm about to send a package to Australia via Priority Mail (at my own expense) to see if that arrives there any quicker and also to see if there's some tracking info that comes with that. If so, that might be a viable alternative. I'm really hoping to find something that will work without you guys having to spend triple the cost on shipping. But mainly I wanted my Aussie customers to know that there appears to be a problem somewhere along the way, and to let all my international customers know that I'm trying to find a solution.

2. The following shades will only be restocked until the end of this month: Lovely Lilacs, Fire and Blood, Huckleberry Pie, Moonbeam Dreams, Aquarius and Strawberry Tart.

3. The next restock of my Etsy store will be on Wednesday, August 15, at 6pm CENTRAL TIME. It will include all existing shades, including the Confection Collection, plus two new ones.

This one is Hillary's Dream. This is shown at 3 coats, but it also works well layered over black.

And this one is Candy Kisses, shown here at three coats. This one is a white base with pink and purple glitters.

I think that's all the news. Thank you all, as always, for the amazing support you all have been!

Smitten Polish Lovely Lilacs + an Update

Ok, whew! All the packages are wrapped up, and the batch is being brought to the post office today. =) Supplies for the restock have all been ordered (I hope), so now I'm just waiting for everything to arrive.

The nice thing about waiting for supplies is that I actually get to do my own nails. I love making polish, but I end up with totally wrecked polish and jacked up cuticles. Anyway! I decided to try to get some decent pictures of Lovely Lilacs. I find it very difficult to photograph. Photos out in the sun tend to wash it out, like these:

These pics aren't terrible, but Lovely Lilacs is actually much richer than these photos would lead you to believe. *sigh* This is three coats, by the way. It's pretty sheer, but the base color builds really well. 

So I rebuilt my light box today to try taking photos of Lovely Lilacs that way, and I think that these are much better. Not perfect, but better!

So there you go. Much better swatches of Lovely Lilacs than what I've had previously! 

Thank you for reading, and thank you all so much for your purchases and support! xoxo

Presenting... Smitten Polish

Hello, my faithful readers! I know that I have been absent a lot lately, and this announcement is part of the reason why. =) I have been wearing lots of repeats, and I have also been having camera issues (new one still hasn't arrived either, boo!). But the biggest thing is that I've been hard at work formulating my own line of indie polishes. So I present to you, Smitten Polish!

 My first collection is called Nommy Noms, and it consists of four dessert inspired milky glitter polishes.

I haven't gotten to wear all of them as full manicures yet, but I do have nail wheel swatches of all of them to show you. All swatches are shown at three coats plus top coat. 

First up, Blueberry Crumble. I have worn this one as a full mani. 

Next up - Mint Chip. I love this one SO much. =D 

Huckleberry Pie

And finally, Strawberry Tart.

I have a limited number of these up on my Etsy shop now. I'm in the endless cycle of waiting for more supplies to come in, and I'll be furiously making more polishes when they come in! My Etsy can be found at www.smittenpolish.com.

I have several more shades in the works already, including these two, Aquarius and Bluebird.

Whew. So there's my big announcement! I'm excited, but also incredibly nervous. 

Hope you all are doing well, and I apologize for my absences and sporadic posts. Hopefully now that I'm getting into the rhythm of doing this, things will calm down a little bit for me. And hopefully my new camera will show up soon!