Archives: August 2009

These lovely little guys were bought at a chocolate store called Woodhouse Chocolate which is in Calistoga. I’ve been there a few times now and the chocolate is soo yummy and pretty. You can find them here, if you are so inclined…

Howdy folks! Diamond Cosmetics has a great new collection out for fall 2009 which is comprised of six new colors. They vary in color from nude to green and from sheer to shimmery.

I have only reviewed a few of Diamond Cosmetics colors so far, but from what I have seen I really like them. Not only do they have great colors that don’t all play it safe, they have a great formula, are “big three free” and are very inexpensive at only $2.00 each! Check ‘em out!

Angelic

Angelic is a nude/pink sheer color. This is a very professional looking polish and would be great for a job interview or something that required your nails to look clean, yet understated. What I love about this one is that it’s so shiny even without a top coat! This was two coats.

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Hello and welcome to my shiny new website! I am totally excited about the new Vampy Varnish and hope you will be as well.

VV History

Vampy Varnish started nearly one year ago with a fairly basic blog format. I wanted to see if I really liked blogging and how time consuming it would be, etc. before I committed to anything fancy. Well as you probably guessed, I love blogging and have so much fun with the site I don’t plan on giving it up anytime soon!

Why the Change VV?

I am a Gemini that’s why. Just kidding. But in all honesty, I DO tend to get sick of the same thing fairly quickly so I wanted a new look and feel. I also wanted A LOT more usability than I was getting with my previous, very limited blog service. I wanted to stretch out and spread my wings, as they say. Also I felt I had so much more to say and show than just the subject of nail polish (don’t freak out on me). This site will still be mainly dedicated to nail polish, so rellaaaaxxxxx . If you want to see other areas then you need to actively click the other tabs or corresponding pictures. In other words, if you don’t give a rats ass about anything except nail polish, that’s totally cool, you don’t need to ever see anything else here. But if you are interested in checking out more personal posts and pictures, you can check those out on the tabs or pics.

I had thought about just creating a totally separate website dedicated to all these “other” posts but then noticed that I got a lot of comments on non-nail polish related articles. I figured that just as I like things other than nail polish, so does everyone else, so it might be a nice change of pace for you guys! Deep down I am a writer first, wannabe photographer second and nail polish blogger third. At least that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

What Tabs & Pics are you talking about?

You will see towards the top fold of the site a box with five tabs called Varnish, Looking Glass, Love!, Poppycock and Critters. The default will always be Varnish and you will see all Varnish related posts there. The main picture on the home page will be a nail polish picture taken from my latest nail polish post. If however you are feeling adventurous and decide to click the Looking Glass tab, you’ll see a category devoted to random pictures I take with a corresponding post.  Next we have Love!, which will be pics and posts related to things I totally love, whether it’s makeup, stuff I have laying around my house or whatever. You can think of the Poppycock tab as being like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Ok, actually don’t think of it as *junk* per se, more like a mish-mash or hodge-podge of various pictures and posts that don’t fit anywhere else. Finally we have the Critters tab, which will be pics of, what else, my animal family and possibly other cute fluffy things.

I ‘m also really happy to have a box in the top right called Daily Photo, which will feature a random photo I take. Oh and please don’t literally hold me to the “Daily” part of Daily Photo, I might not always have time to change it on a daily basis!

The Rest

You will still find all the same information you did on my other site here, nothing has changed as far as that goes. If you see along the very top I have tabs called Home, Categories, About, Press, Contact Me and RSS Subscribe. Most are pretty self-explanatory, but I want to point you to Categories for a second. All my previous posts had categories associated with them so people could quickly search for say, all blue nail polish or all polish by OPI. All you need to do to find them is click that link to find them all. I plan on re-arranging these in an easier way soon, but haven’t gotten to that yet.

My Monthly Archives are all there on the right and below that are my Pages, which is the same as the top tabs with the exception of the ‘Links’ link. If you click that, you’ll go to another page that lists all my links to sites I like or sites such as where to buy nail polish. I didn’t want to have these on the home page anymore, it’s too cluttered for me. However I do still have some on there, we’ll get to that in a sec.

Under that section you’ll find another box with 3 tabs called Comments, Tags and Links I Love. Comments just shows the latest couple of comments people have posted. Tags is a list of some tags I attach to various posts (brands or colors, etc.), which can be another way to search for stuff as well. Then the Links I Love tab lists just a few of my fav websites. I will periodically change these out so everyone gets some “face time” on my home page.

Under that we have My Twitter feed and a link to join me on both Twitter and Facebook.

The very bottom of the site has a large black box with a few more ways to look for things such as most recent posts, most popular tags, archives and the RSS feed.

In Closing

I am extremely happy with how the site came out and really think you guys will like it. I kind of had it in my mind that I wanted to design and code a new website all myself since I have created websites before and know HTML and Dreamweaver, etc. BUT it probably would have taken me 10 years and looked like crap in the end (and no one uses HTML anyway) so I am really glad I went with Delicious Design Studio. They worked hard and made the site look and feel great and I thank them for it! I also want to thank one of my loyal readers (you know who you are) for being so sweet and offering to design my new logo, it’s fabulous and I am eternally grateful!

One Last Thing…

Please know that this design isn’t changeable at this point, so if you send me a comment saying “Wow I like this part but can you move that column over to that side?” the answer will be (a sweet and gentle) NO!

One Last Thing Part Deux

If you see any bugs, please email me and let me know about them so I can get ‘em fixed ASAP. Thanks!

This is the Oyster Point shoreline in South San Francisco. I work on the campus you see there in one of those large buildings!

Chase is my 15 year old (yes I did say 15) puppy dog. He’s a Border Collie mix from Hawaii! My hubbie adopted him from a pet store in a mall on Oahu, if you can believe it. He’s the sweetest doggie and doesn’t look or act a day over 12