CosmoProf Las Vegas - Blogger Meet-up and Show Day One

By now, I'm sure many of you reading this have seen other blog posts about the amazing gathering of beauty bloggers that converged on the CosmoProf tradeshow in Las Vegas, Nevada.  So much to see, do, touch, feel, and experience there!  This is my take in summary with more to follow in detail as the days pass.

The show was HUGE. The only way to see it all was to go down every row and have a plan. I didn't have a plan when I first arrived at the show and I quickly realized my folly. So, I wandered a little aimlessly that first day and found the Nubar, Zoya, Color Club, China Glaze booths and checked on a few others that looked like fun. Then I bumped into Beauty Judy!

We chatted for a bit and, this being my first show, I asked her how to go about it, she gave me some pointers when I asked for them and she was so nice and helpful and that woman has some gorgeous skin. To me, it looked absolutely flawless. She was heading over to and appointment over by the OPI booth so I tagged along to see what OPI had going on. We parted ways as I approached the OPI booth where I learned lesson #1.  Take business cards for the BLOG too!

This is "Eggplant Mosaic." Please ignore the dry skin. :)

It looks like this before you apply it over silver foil polish:

I was there to learn about the business and the channels for marketing Fashionista Nails, which is how I labeled myself with my badge...this made the booth guardians at OPI nervous and they denied me access. "Manufacturers Only" I was told. When I left, I bumped into Judy again who mentioned two other bloggers had just tweeted that they were inside the booth.  Kind of gave me one more reason to remember that OPI isn't my favorite brand. I like them well enough, just like others more.  Those other bloggers names I shall not mention, but they had a BLAST in there so you'll have to read about that should they tell me I can share. I don't want to share before they do and I'm soooo behind on my blog reading!

After a few hours of the "crazy zig-zag pattern of silliness," I headed back to the hotel, got out the laptop and my notebook and made a plan. (Lesson Learned #2 - use the tools provided to make a plan to see the show.)  I put together a list of the booths I had to visit and then revisited the list and put them in numerical order. This made the next two days sooooo much nicer.

Krystal of Polish Galore took it upon herself to organize some fantastically unbelievable cool things for all of the bloggers to do together.  Monday Morning we met with Deborah Lippman who told us about her upcoming collections - full post to follow shortly.

Monday Night we dined and talked with Katie Cazorla of The Painted Nail and The Nail Files reality television show. She was fun, funny and truly enjoyable. She'd be a delight at any party. I sat way at the other end of the long table so I didn't get to chat much with her, but that's ok. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Melissa, Katherine, Jen, Michelle, Maria and her bestie Ana. Suffice it to say, we were having our own fun at the far end of the table. Katie seemed to enjoy the time with us and I sure hope she did as much we enjoyed having her join us. There were pictures taken, but I don't have any. :( Help!

Tuesday