Recent NOTD: SpaRitual Solitude, Plussed

SpaRitual is one of the brands I've gotten involved with only recently. It doesn't seem that widely distributed in the places I frequent; I've never seen it in a bricks and mortar store, and only a couple of my go-to online retailers stock it. I did see SpaRitual swatches pop up in my travels around the blogs and boards and some of those piqued my interest, especially when I read that the brand is affiliated with Orly, one of my favorites, so I ordered some bottles and swapped for a couple more. Solitude, a dusty purple creme, is the first one I've tried for a full mani. I used two coats of this color, but three would have been better, since I noticed a few thin spots after I got the topcoat on.





I wasn't as enamored with this one on my nails as I was with it in the bottle; it seemed to lose some of its interesting dustyness. It was fine, really, just not quite what I'd hoped. Maybe it would have been better in the sun, except we didn't have so much sun while I had this on. I wore it by itself for a few days, hoping it would grow on me, but finally had to spice it up with a stamped funky French a la Fingers. I chose the houndstooth design from Konad plate m63. For the stamping, I used Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup in Carnelian Chrome, which I bought from nailXchange's blog sale (which she appears to have extended until today), and which I chose especially for this mani because it was pink and would likely annoy Fingers. What can I say, we just have that sort of relationship.



There's a certain amount of wonkiness in both my stamping and my freehand tips, but on the whole I was happy with it, and it was certainly a lot more interesting than Solitude alone.



I only did the tip on my thumb to mix things up, and used OPI RapiDry instead of my usual Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat to seal on the chrome.



Chromes are something, along with Prisms, I'd like to see Sally Hansen bring back. Sally seems to have a short attention span, so maybe one of these rounds of lines coming and going she'll revisit the good ideas from the past. When the chromes were first out, I don't think anyone was stamping, and they're great for that.