Update, May 18: Holy crap, I miss you guys! I miss my blog!
I wanted to take this time to update everyone on the status of wacie.com. I truly hoped that my camera lens issue would have been resolved by now. My autofocus gear box finally came in from China, but to actually do the repairs, I have to buy a screwdriver set to open non-standard Canon screws. Yep, this means more waiting, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer. I cannot apologize enough for this long hiatus. I miss blogging and I’m dying to get back to it.
In the meantime, maybe you, reader, will make an appearance here as a guest blogger!
As I’m sure you know, I use a camera to create content for wacie.com. I’m sure you also know that it’s not easy to manually focus a camera with one hand. This week, my lens’s autofocus broke, and until I have it repaired or replaced, I won’t be able to take photos for the blog. Until this issue is resolved, there will be no new posts by me.
This is also a call to any readers who are also bloggers. If you’d like to be a guest blogger on wacie.com, do send an email to the address on the Contact/Disclosure page.
Welcome back, reader! Today’s post is something a little different. I don’t we don’t usually talk about things like mosquito repellent on wacie.com, but since I have the opportunity to do so, I will. I live in Florida, where the mosquito is the Zika-virus-carrying state bird, so there’s no better place to test it than in my back yard.
This is a press sample; I was sent this sample product by Smart Stuff on behalf of Brandbacker. My opinions of this product are not influenced by free stuff.
Smart Stuff’s mission is to make effective products that aren’t dangerous or harmful to use. We’ve all used those repellent sprays that have weird chemical smells, leave oily residue on skin, and contain irritating ingredients. Smart Stuff gives us another option: effective insect repellent that contains natural botanical ingredients. Take a look at the ingredients list. You’ll notice some tried-and-true ingredients, like eucalyptus, soybean, and cinnamon oils. You’ll also notice what’s missing — DEET. Though DEET is generally safe and very effective at repelling insects, it can be irritating. It’s also a strong solvent, capable of breaking down synthetic fabrics, plastics, and varnished surfaces. Yes, that includes your nails. (This is a nail blog, after all.) Smart Stuff also avoids using synthetic chemicals, parabens, PABA, petroleum, phthalates, gluten, and artificial colors and fragrances.
The first thing — and likely the first thing I noticed about the spray — was its scent. It smells strongly of peppermint. Luckily, as it absorbs, the scent diminishes, but is still there, so those who are sensitive to strong smells won’t have to deal with it for long. It absorbs pretty quickly; it feels wet for a few seconds and then soaks in. After it absorbs, it leaves no residue or oily feel, which is probably my favorite part about it. Most importantly, I gave this spray a good testing; I wore it outside every time I tended the garden for about five days, and had no bites at the end of the evening.
The Smart Stuff Natural Insect Repellent retails for $15.99 on their website. They also make sunscreens and skincare products.
This is a press sample; I was sent this sample product by Smart Stuff on behalf of Brandbacker. My opinions of this product are not influenced by free stuff.
I have to talk about something difficult today, and I’m not really sure how to do it, so here goes. wacie.com suffered a catastrophic loss of data this weekend, resulting in the past fourteen months of posts being lost. The web host I use had a hardware failure and lost all the backups, and I didn’t keep any of my own backups, so all that work really is basically gone. Google caches the pages without the photos, but recovering photos in their original quality is going to be a bigger, more difficult task. Please bear with me while I work through this. I hope to be able to restore a majority of the posts in the future. I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.
I’m just really disappointed about the whole thing. wacie.com is a big part of my life, something I spend a great deal of time on each day, and I’m so sad and so frustrated to have a year’s work suddenly be lost forever. Moving forward, I’ll do as much as I can while maintaining the regular posting schedule. I’ll redo any swatches I can’t recover. I want wacie.com to continue to be a resource for indie nail polish info, so that’s why I won’t be giving up on it. I just wanted to apologize and get back to work.
March 19th Update: The blog is mostly restored now. I scraped what I could from Google’s cached pages; I got all the text back, and I got mostly-complete sets of thumbnails of images. If you’re a maker and need better-quality photos of swatches, please contact me. Otherwise, I hope the restored entries, though compromised, are still helpful and relevant. Thanks for understanding.
Today is the second anniversary of wacie.com! Two years ago, I posted a mani and wrote some stuff about it. I didn’t know what to expect then; it was my first time owning my own domain and really running a website myself. I really had no idea that, two years later, I’d still be doing it. I am amazed that I’ve come this far. Just like I did last year, I want to share some stats and numbers with you to show how the blog has grown and improved in the past year.
Julep was the brand featured in the most Manicure Monday posts; last year it was Sally Hansen. Blue-Eyed Girl is still the most-swatched brand. Pink was the most often-used color; last year’s was blue. Gradients are still the most common nail art technique. A lot has changed since last year, so make you look at last year’s post to compare.
This year saw a lot more swatches than last year. The swatches even outnumber the Manicure Monday posts now. At this time last year, Swatch Saturday was just getting started and I was only a few bottles in. Wacie Nail Company was still in its very early stages and I was crazy with experimenting. This year saw the introduction of Swatch Sunday and the Summer of Untrieds, which really beefed up the numbers. Indie polishes were used 107 times, way up from the ten or so I used last year. Glitter was used in 92 manicures. 35 manicures used accent nails, mainly swatches of glitter toppers. Last year I estimated 617 bottles in my collection; this year I count 987, which means I’ve purchased 390 polishes since March 2014.
The next year of wacie.com is going to be really exciting. I hope that you, dear reader, will stick around to share it with me.
Today is the one year anniversary of wacie.com! I can’t believe I’ve been sharing my polish obsession/calling for help for an entire year. A lot has happened since I started doing this. I bought a ton of nail polish, I started my own brand, and I’ve made a lot of awesome friends in the nail blog community. It’s been a fantastic experience. To celebrate, I’ve compiled some stats about the blog, made some charts, and decided to post them for all to enjoy. Yeah, I am wicked fun at parties.
Sally Hansen is the most often used brand, being used in a total of 16 different manicures. Blue Eyed Girl Lacquer was the brand swatched the most times. Blue was the most often used color, and gradients were the most frequently used nail art technique. Here are the graphs!
Some other numbers: Glitter was used in 63% of all manicures. 22% of the polishes featured on the blog were made by indie brands. Four of them I made myself.
I have 617 bottles of polish. I’ve only used 133 on the blog. Before I started the blog, I had less than 200. 79% of my collection hasn’t been on the blog yet, and even fewer have been used at all.
I have posted 74 manicures this year.
The numbers this time around were small and a little boring, but next March, I think they’ll be a little more interesting, if you can say that about arbitrary nail polish blog stats. Whatever, I think it’s cool. Here’s to another year of wacie.com!
