Major Nail Haul

Today's second post is to "show off" my nail haul I came home to yesterday!  I was only expecting an order from Pam at Girly Bits, but what I came home to was a lot more!  Let's go take a look :D

Look at all those envelopes!

First up is my Girly Bits order.  This was my first time purchasing from Pam, and I couldn't be happier with what I got :D  Now, some of these are for Christmas gifts, so I can't show you everything but I will show you what I can ;)

Left to Right:  Girly Bits Hocus Pocus and Roger That in memory of Brady Rogers

Look at those beauties!  Ohh la la!!! :D  Hocus Pocus is a holographic topcoat that can be applied to any colour to make it holographic :D  Can't wait to try this out!!  Roger That is a medium blue holographic and oh lordy!  LOL!  It's absolutely stunning (stay tuned for my post about it in a couple days)!  I purchased this because a) I loved the colour of it on the website, b) I wanted to try it for my first holo, and c) the money is going to a great cause (the story behind the polish can be found here)!  Girly Bits polish can be purchased in Pam's online store.

Alrighty, next up my Elixir Lacquers' order!  Again this was my first time purchasing from Nicole over at Elixir Lacquers, and again I couldn't be happier with what I got :D  None of them are gifts, they all for ME, so here's what I got!

Left to Right: Elixir Lacquers Miss Kitty's Mee-yow, Tease, A Mermaid's Tale

Holy cow!  I'm so excited to try all of these!  Now, with my well-known fixation for purples Miss Kitty's Mee-yow was the first polish that appealed to me in the store, so I had to get it :D  Then, I saw Tease, and with it's pink base with a beautiful purple pearly shine it was obvious that I would have to get that one too, lol!  Then I saw A Mermaid's Tale.  This is a beautiful teal-green with glitters, similar to that of a Mermaid's tail ;)  I have nothing at all like these in my collection, so they were all in my shopping cart faster than you can say "did you really need those?!"  Elixir Lacquers polish can be purchased in Nicole's online store.

Next up is my "swap" from Amanda Smythe from the Julep Swap Facebook group.  This was my first time doing a swap with anyone, and it went smoothly :)  I didn't have anything to swap with Amanda, so I offered to pay for it rather than swap.  She accepted my offer and this is what I got :D

Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum

Now, I know what you're thinking -- "but Erica, you already have one of these!"  I know, I know, but when I left my original one down at Shannon's, I thought "maybe I will be able to get this before I see Shannon again."  So I purchased it from Amanda and it came in the mail, just in time for Shannon to decide to come home for a few days and bring my original Julep Reveal with her, hahaha!  Figures!  Ah well, I'm hoping this works miracles and my toenails become healthy and start to grow faster, rather than them cracking off every time they grow out causing ingrown toenails and me wanting to just chop the whole toe off completely to avoid the hassle!  I will likely need both tubes before they start to grow out happy and healthy anyways :)  The Julep Reveal can be purchased on Julep's website, or if you want you can try out the Julep Swap Facebook group and see if anyone has it available for trade/swap or purchase.

Remember to stay tuned for my more in-depth posts about both my Girly Bits and my Elixir Lacquers hauls tomorrow and Thursday :D

So that's my haul for today -- what do you guys think?  I will be doing swatches over the next little while with these beautiful polishes :)  What are you looking forward to seeing me swatch?  Has anyone else purchased these items or from these lovely women?  What did you think of what you got?

Julep Reveal Take 2

Hey everybody!  Sorry I didn't get a post out last night.  We are having a little internet issue so over the next week and a half I will be doing my best to get posts out!

So about a month ago I posted about Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum, but because I left it at my sister's when I went to visit a week into my treatments, I had to stop treatment so I was unable to show you the progress with my toenails.

However, my darling sister came home this past weekend and she brought with her my serum!  She's awesome :D  So I took "before" pictures again on Sunday and started the treatment again.

Day 1

Left Big Toe

Right Big Toe

I will continue to update this post on a weekly basis to show the progress of my nails.  Now remember, these toenails have had some trauma so it may take longer than the 2-3 weeks Julep says results will be seen in.  The story of what happened along with the original "before" pictures can be found in this post.  Come back in about a week to see my progress over the week with these :D

*UPDATE* -- Day 7

Left Big Toe

Right Big Toe

Ok, so it's been a week since I restarted my treatment with Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum on my 2 big toes.  Though I haven't seen a vast improvement with growth, I think they both look healthier if nothing else.  I have been applying the serum to the sides of the nail, along the cuticle, under the free edge as directed and even "painting" the surface of my nail with it.  I don't know if this extra bit helps or not, but it's worth a shot.  I figure my new nail is growing underneath the top nail (gross, I know) so if it helps get the nutrients into the new nail, I'm all for it :D  Maybe for next week I will do a comparison chart with both toes and each week's picture -- I will work on that this week :D

*UPDATE* -- Day 14

This week I have compiled a "progress report" of sorts to show the progress so far with the treatments rather than an individual photo of each toe.  I apologize that the most recent picture is darker, the sun went down before I could get a picture with natural light.

Again, I don't see a huge improvement this week, but I think that there has been some progress since day 1 :)

*UPDATE*  -- Day 21

Sorry I didn't get this update done for you guys yesterday.  Here is my final progress report for the Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum

My final verdict is this -- I think this product helped with the look of my toenails, they definitely look healthier if nothing else.  I think it was hard to tell with the overall "growth" of them because the actually growing part is taking place under the "dead" nail on top.  So what I have done, and I will be working on, is getting the remains of the top nail off my healthy nail growing in so that we can really look at the growth the Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum helps with.  It's going to take a bit of work to get down to the good nail, and maybe a trip to my local chiropodist to get the final bits off so we can really study this :)  This is what I should have done before starting the treatment in the first place, but I was just so excited to try it! :D  I will be sure to announce on my Facebook page when I will be starting the treatment again.

Thanks for following along with this adventure!  I hope I can bring you beautiful pictures of my toenails in the very near future!  I so badly want to paint them, but treatment comes first, polish second :D

Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum

Hey everyone, I know this blog post is really late, I'm sorry!  Just a forewarning -- this post is about trying to cure damaged toenails.  There are no "gross and gorey" pictures though.

I wanted to blog about the Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum I got in the mail and posted about yesterday.

As I mentioned, I am having problems with my big toenails growing.  I think it was about 5 years ago now, I was wearing a pair of heels at work (I work in an office) that I loved because I could wear them with skinny jeans; running shoes look funny with skinny jeans in my opinion.

Anyways, after wearing them for a while I was finding that my one big toe (my left one) was really sore at the bottom of my nail, along the cuticle.  I switched to wearing running shoes for a while and then went back to my heels, not worried about my toe because it wasn't hurting anymore.  After a few more months of wearing the shoes, both toenails were sore in the same spot, worse than the first time so I stopped wearing the shoes altogether.

As my toenails began to grow out I noticed cracks in the nails, like they were broken.  They continued growing out and then I began getting excruciating pain in the outside corners of my toes, where the ends of my nails were (I liked to keep my toenails cut fairly short).  After finally taking a trip to my family doctor (I hate doctors) I found out that I had likely jammed my toenails by wearing the heels I loved and now was developing an ingrown toenail because the nail had cracked.  YIKES!  For those of you who have either done this or have had an ingrown toenail before, I'm sure you know and can feel my pain.

The doctor prescribed some antibiotics to clear up the infection caused by the ingrown toenails, and told me to roll up small pieces of cotton balls and wedge them in the side of my toenails between the skin and the nail (to separate the nail from the skin) as well as a little under the corners of the nail so it wouldn't try to dig through my skin, but grow up over it.

So after this I thought "ok, perfect, I can do this..."  Yeah.. it kept coming back.  As my toenails grew out it kept growing out broken.  At this point I'm ready to cut off my toes so I don't have to deal with them anymore.

So then, 3 years ago, on the Victoria Day long weekend Tyler and I went hiking with his sister and her family.  Little did Tyler and I know that this "hike" would involve crossing waist- to chest- (I'm 5'3) deep water in a fast-flowing river to get to a waterfall they wanted to find.  Oh and torrential downpours and a thunderstorm - it was a great day!  So long story short, spending 6.5 hours in shoes that were drenched caused MAJOR problems with my toes... with them being in water/moisture that long must have caused "insta-infection" in my toe because when I got home and into bed, it was all I could do to not cry out in pain.  I heard my sister going to bed and called for her to come and help me.  I had managed to get extra pillows and get my foot elevated but my toe was throbbing something fierce (like a migraine in my toe).  She came in and looked at it and it was almost twice its normal size, I thought it was going to explode.  She wanted to stick it with a needle to let the infection out and I told her that if I knew it wasn't going to hurt like a you-know-what I would let her do it.  We resorted to an ice cold cloth to wrap my toe in.  The cold disappeared from the cloth almost instantly, that's how hot my toe was with trying to fight the infection.  She took the cloth and ran it under water again and put it back on m toe and it felt better.  I slept like that all night.  And because my family doctor at the time knew what he was doing, when I first went to see him he gave me refills on my prescription so I went and got that filled again and started taking the antibotics again.

Since then I have had the unbearable pain of an extremely swollen toe once more and I have been to a chiropodiatrist about my toes to try to get them fixed up.  I am STILL working on it and waiting for them to grow out properly.  My cousin, who is an esthetician, says that if you damage your toenail right at the root, it takes at least a year to grow out completely... :S

SO!  With all that background information, you can understand why I would be interested to try out the Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum to try to help get my toenails growing faster and healthier.  Here is the "claim" for the product from Julep:  "Specially formulated to address nails that are weak, thin or prone to ridges.  The first-ever nail serum to use groundbreaking protein-peptide technology to transform the health and strength of nails.  Peptides stimulate keratin genes and cell proliferation to boost strength and speed of nail growth.  Visible results in two to three weeks."

They also have this before and after picture on their website when you click on the Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum for more information.

Source

I really hope that my toenails have similar results!  I would be very happy if I got the same results as shown in the before and after picture provided by Julep :D

So here is my "test subject" -- my big toes!  This is day 1, before I started using the serum.  I started using it on Tuesday night, that's when I got it in the mail.  I will update this blog post with these same toes after 1 week, after 2 weeks and after 3 weeks so that we can all see if the serum really lives up to its claims!

You will notice, if you look, both nails have what I think is a nail growing in underneath the top/damaged nail.  I can't tell for sure this is the case yet.  Also, on my left toenail you will see a crack in it about half way up -- this is the break in my nail that keeps occurring :(  And nail polish gets stuck in it (as you can see)!

Also on my left toe, the top right corner, this is where the corner of my nail has yet to grow out past the skin at the end of my toe.  I'm hoping with this serum, this nail will (quickly) grow out past the end of my toe, similar to that of my right toenail.

I still think that the top layer of both nails need to come off to let the nail underneath grow properly, if that's what it is.

It's not that I want to prove Julep wrong, I want to prove it does work :D  I am really hoping and praying it does -- I just want my toenails to grow back normally!

Have you used Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum?  Did it work like they say it does?  Let me know what you think of it :)