*All products purchased by me.*
Hey everyone! I hope the holiday shopping weekend has treated you well. I snagged some awesome boots for a screamin' good deal and stocked up at Ulta, so overall I'm pretty happy. Yes, yes, I know I'm supposed to shop for other people for the holidays, but the deals are so good for stuff I need that I couldn't pass them up! I did get a few gifts grabbed though, so all is not lost.
I've got a lovely Sunday Similarities post lined up for you guys today. I do need to mention that I had a catastrophic break on the middle nail of my swatching hand (of course!) and so had to nubbin-ize everything else. Unfortunately, my quicks have all grown out on my other nails so I couldn't trim them quite back to the length of the broken one, so things are a bit uneven at the moment. But now that I'm all stocked up on Nail Envy again, I hope to have them back in ship-shape soon! On to the photos!
I wanted to show you a couple of purple linear holographics today. In the photo above, you can see Gothic Gala Lacquers' Odin on the left and Cirque's Fascination Street on the right. Both of these polishes are deep purple with a strong linear holographic effect in the bottle, but let's check them side by side on the nail, shall we?
Here I'm wearing 2 coats of Odin on my index and ring fingers and 2 coats of Fascination Street on my middle (nubbin-nubbin) and pinky nails. Odin has a softer appearance and leans toward a heather-y purple shade where Fascination Street is more of a blurple. The linear effect on both of these will knock your socks off in direct sunlight...rainbows! rainbows for everyone!
Beautiful formulas on both, each smooth and creamy and opaque in 2 coats. I am showing a coat of Seche Vite on each of these, the Cirque dries with a semi-matte finish, so you'll want a top coat to shine it up. I think that these are different enough that you may want to own both, but for the conservative polish hoarder (Ha!) they are both in the same color range so maybe one or the other could fill the void. Fascination Street is the first indie polish I ever purchased for myself, so it has a special place in my heart. Odin was another one that I knew I had to have after Samantha posted photos of it on Facebook...so really, there's no way I could chose!
*All products purchased by me.*
You can still find both of these polishes, although I think Gothic Gala is out of stock on Odin at the moment (I just bought it last week, so I'm pretty sure it hasn't been discontinued). Anyway, when it's available, you'll find Odin on Etsy for $9.50 for a full size 15ml bottle. Fascination Street is available on Cirque's website for $15 for a full size 13.2ml bottle. Gothic Gala Lacquers is currently running a Black Friday sale so be sure to check out her Facebook page for details on that and follow Cirque on Facebook as well...cuz they're both awesome brands!
Thanks so much for reading!
Howdy, everyone! It's Wednesday and that means it's time for another ABC Challenge post! We're up to "H" now and I had an idea to do something fancier than what I did, but, quite frankly, I'm exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. It's been a long week and it's not looking to get shorter any time soon. That said, a great mani always makes me feel better. And this manicure is pretty darn fantastic. Without any more gilding the lily, here ya go:
What you're looking at is the slightly dimmed glory of Fascination Street by Cirque. I say "slightly dimmed" because there was absolutely no sun today for me to get outdoor photographs of this loveliness. I should mention that the "H" in this manicure stands for holographic. FS is a strong linear holographic polish with a dark purple base. This beauty simply stuns you in the sunshine and I highly recommend snagging a bottle from their website as soon as you can! FS will set you back around $15 but it's so totally worth it! I've paired it here with a bright purple Color Club polish (no name as it came in a set I got at Marshall's) as a base.
I'm hoping the sun might peek out tomorrow so I can get a couple of photos of this in it's true glory, but, as I scored 4 Orlys and 2 China Glazes at Sally's today for under $30, I somehow doubt Fascination Street is going to stay on long enough for the sun to come out. So many lovely polishes, so little time!
Speaking of Sally's, they have a great sale on Orly, 2 for $11 plus I had a 15% off coupon on any purchase over $20. China Glaze polishes are also $1 off with a coupon (found in their in-store circular) through tomorrow. I do love a little retail therapy!
Please stop in and take a look at the other gals who are participating in the ABC Challenge. You can check them out via the thumbnails below. Thanks so much for reading!
Howdy, everyone! This is my first attempt at a scheduled post so we'll see if I can pull it off...seems pretty simple, which usually means it isn't lol
We're on to Day 26 of the 31 Day Challenge; nails inspired by a pattern. I originally wanted to do houndstooth because it's just so awesome, but even I'm not crazy enough to attempt that free-handed and I don't have stamping plates yet. I have a few on order, but to be honest, I can't remember what patterns they have and I'm pretty sure I won't seen them til the end of the week anyway.
So, my initial ambitions thwarted, I decided to go with a harlequin pattern instead. Here's how it turned out:
I started with a coat of Wet 'n' Wild's Wild Shine in French White Creme and then used blue painter's tape and pinking shears to create the diamond shapes. I painted over the tape stencils with Cirque's Fascination Street (not that you can tell from this photo, but FS is a lovely, lovely purple holographic. Seriously, rainbows everywhere in sunlight...not so much in my crappy house lighting). You can see in a couple of places where I should have been a bit more careful with the stencils, but on the whole, it turned out pretty well.
I'm very excited about tomorrow's challenge wherein I shall be inspired by artwork! Tune in to see what shapes up. Thanks so much for reading!
