Even More Displays

Yep, it's another display post. Last time, we saw some sets designed for gift giving; this time, I have more.

Ulta has a 10-mini set from OPI called The Top Ten. Colors included: Alpine Snow, Bubble Bath, Tickle My France-y, Kiss Me on My Tulips, Red Lights Ahead ... Where, Big Apple Red, I'm Not Really a Waitress, You Don't Know Jacques, Vampsterdam, Lincoln Park After Dark. It's a nice range of basic, classic colors.



At Target, they had a 14-piece set from Elf. Most of these are safe/classic colors, too, but there were a few more daring selections, including some glitter. The bottles are on the small side, but the packaging is large.



At Rite Aid, I spotted this 18-mini set of L.A. Colors Color Craze. It has some basic cremes and shimmers, too, and also some wilder colors and glitters. It's priced at $9.99, which is decent. I had to raise my eyebrows at the "value $45" on the label. Really, L.A. Colors? You think your minis are worth $2.50 each? I don't believe I've ever paid that much for a full size bottle (indeed, I have full size bottles of most of the glitters in this set, most of which I got at Dollar Tree for a buck each).



At CVS, I saw another 18-piece mini set from Color Theory. The bottles and colors look quite a lot like the L.A. Colors Color Craze set, and this is also priced at $9.99, but this set is valued at only $30. Curious.



I could probably fill up a whole post with brands like Color Theory that only seem to show up at the holidays for the purpose of selling gift sets, but there's so much else I want to get to. I do want to share one set that I found particularly interesting, from Color Concept; it's the Deck Your Nails Nail Art Collection, which has what I thought was a great variety of stuff: polishes, nail art stripers, decals, stickers, rhinestones, and stencils, along with instructions and some basic tools. For someone who was interested in nail art but didn't know where to start, this could be a great introduction.



In addition to a lot of gift sets, there seem to be a lot of nail strips in stores lately. I'd seen the Sally Hansen Salon Effects French Mani ones in the CVS Nail HQ before, but a recent visit to Ulta was the first time I'd seen a standalone display with them. There are eight of these: Excusez Moi (peach with white tip), French Twist (pink with white tip), Silver Lining (silver glitter tip), Pink Macaroon (pink glitter tip), Gold Cabaret (gold glitter tip), Polka Party (fuchisa dots on white tip), Noir Boudoir (black tip), Steel the Night (silver tip). I am curious about these, as it seems like the length of the strip will matter, unlike the other designs that they already have in this line.



Maybelline is in the nail strip game now, too, with eight designs under the Color Show line: Fierce in Fuchsia (hot pink snakeskin), Cheetahchic (black and silver cheetah), Sapphire Jewels (navy/silver/blue geometric), Divine Crocodile (green/white croc), Resort Couture (hot pink/black/grey chevrons), Metal Prisms (silver/gold/black/white geometric), Wild Reptile (orange/black geometric snakeskin), Midnight Lace (black/silver lace). I've seen these at CVS and Walgreens.



Kiss Nail Dress has some limited edition designs for winter (judging by the snowflakes on the display background, though what hot pink cheetah print has to do with winter I'm not sure). There are six designs here, though what they're called, I don't know because the fronts of the packages just have codes and I was too lazy to pick them up to see if they had names on the back. This display was at Rite Aid; I've also seen Kiss at Walgreens.





I also saw a display of French or Full strips from Kiss Nail Dress; these are designed so you can get two looks out of each strip, either a tip or a full nail decal. (This particular display had the hot pink winter cheetah shoved into it, too.)





Sally Beauty had holiday strip designs from Trendy and Bling.





Ulta had an Elegant Touch display with nail wraps plus kits of fake nails with strips designed to only cover part of the nail ("bespoke nail art" is what they called this combination).





At Bed Bath & Beyond, they had something called Tat-Toes, with some wild designs. These were $14.99, which seemed steep, but the package said it was 3 applications, so that's more reasonable per mani then.



There's stuff in the non-set, non-strip category as well. Rite Aid had a display of four colors of Mirror Nail from Hedy's ma.nish.ma: Gold Reflections, Silver Reflections, Blue Reflections, and Pink Reflections. In the bottle, these look like foil-y shimmers; the display photo hints at some duochrome tendencies.



Ulta finally got Zoya Ornate (link is to the swatches I did last month).



I shared the mini set of the Ulta OPI holiday exclusives last time; this time I've got the full size bottles, which they put out when the latest sale started. Last Minute Shopper is the berry red; Skip the Gift Wrap is green, and Gift Cards for Everyone is blue-leaning purple.



Ulta also had a Piggy Polish display that puzzled me. It was called Where Stars Rest and had three polishes in it: Far More than Rubies (a rose glitter that looked very much like the one they put out for breast cancer month), Glitter Me Timbers (a lime shimmer), and Three Cheers and a Tiger (orange bar glitter). I'm puzzled because a) there's no polish called where Stars Rest, and there's usually a polish that matches the name on these displays, b) these colors don't coordinate, nor do the names (though the last two are sort of nautical, I guess), and c) two of them look like Halloween colors, which should have been out a couple months back but weren't. I'd think this was a random assortment assembled from leftovers from other displays, but I've never seen any of these names before. Of course the Piggy Polish website is no help—their front page shows summer colors from I'm not sure which year.



In the category of solving a problem I don't have, there's Nail Pak from Duality Cosmetics. These are chubby bottles of polish that have a file and nail polish remover pads in their base. I don't find it hard to keep track of my remover and file, but I sure would find it hard to store these oversized bottles in my Helmer. I also exI took a photo of one next to a full-size China Glaze bottle so you can see the difference.





Because I apparently hadn't spent enough money at Sally's getting Christmas polishes, they put out new stuff to tempt me. First, there's China Glaze Cirque du Soleil, a 12-color collection.



I was still pondering which Cirque polishes I might need when I spotted the Seche Collage glittery topcoat on a nearby shelf. Purple AND glittery? You know I bought that immediately.



Finally, when I was making a tour of Rite Aids to make sure I hadn't missed any snowman polish colors, I found this new display from Revlon, Bubble Gum Days/Urban Nights. Eleven colors here (left to right): Optimistic, Sheer Sweetie, Bubbly, Heavenly, Enchanting, Girly, Urban, Trendy, Ritzy, Eclectic, Iconic. The urban side also has a matte top coat. In the back, there's Nail Brightener, Treat & Boost, and Cuticle Softener. Heavenly looks like another Lippmann dupe, while Ritzy appears to be a re-issue of Just Add Sparkle.



See anything that piques your interest? Or are you all shopped out already for the season?