My First Swap!

A few months ago I was contacted by Caroline from Shadow’s Nail Art about doing a swap.  I’d never done this before and was a little nervous at first as I didn’t know her or any of the other girls in the nails community.  The thought of buying a load of stuff and sending it off to a stranger felt a bit strange, but after mailing with her a bit I got a really good feeling about her and decided to go for it.

It wasn’t long before we were mailing back and forth about the polishes we wanted.  Well, what she wanted… I wanted ANYTHING, newbies are very easy to please.  Her main goal was to get her hands on the Essence Nail Art Twins, Magnetic Polishes and a few other of their products, so I stalked Kruidvat for weeks looking for her items. In the meantime she started gathering up polish that she thought I’d like.

We got completely out of control and the swap ended up being quite big!  It was SO much fun though!  She claimed to be a serious shopaholic, and it wasn’t long before I realized she wasn’t kidding.  I think she could shop any one of us under the table!

The list of items she was sending kept growing and growing and I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to match up with what she was sending.  Granted, she kept telling me not to be silly but it was my first swap and I really didn’t want her to be disappointed.

I think in the end we were both really happy with what we got.  Here are some photos…

My package to her:

Mostly Essence products with some Catrice thrown in for good measure.

Oh, another reason I was worried about the package arriving?

I couldn’t find my bubble wrap so I wrapped it in fake snow from my Christmas decorations. It was only once I got them in the ziplock bags that I realized it totally looked like I was shipping cocaine!

It did arrive though, it was a miracle!

Her package arrived to me first, and I was so excited to open it!

Her package to me:

Pretty sweet haul, huh?!  I’ve still not used even 1/4 of it, but my excuse is that I left for holiday shortly after it arrived!  Seriously though, at the time this package from her actually doubled my collection.

I really loved doing the swap and I wish I could afford to do it more often.  There are a lot of people wanting to do small swaps but the way our mail works is weird.  Unless something can fit in one of the flat pack envelopes (which most polish bottles don’t) I have to send it as a package.  It’s a flat rate for anything under 2 kilos so it costs me the same to send two bottles as it would cost me to send 20… granted, buying 20 bottles is more expensive but it somehow makes it feel like the postage is worth it.

Unfortunately, my beloved laptop is on its last legs, so rather than hoarding polish and sending packages, I have to squirrel my money away for the inevitable replacement we’ll have to buy sometime soon.  So no swaps for me for a while, I think!

P.s. It’s late and I’m feeling a little lazy so I didn’t list all the polishes. If you see something you are curious about leave a comment and I’ll let you know what it is!