Showing posts with label b: expressions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label b: expressions. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Wheel W13: Drugstore Glitters, Part 2

Continuing the series I started a couple weeks ago with Wheel U13, today I have multi and metal hued glitters from the drugstore brands.
 

(all have clear topcoat in addition to glitter coats noted below; some will need more/thicker topcoat if I decided to wear these in a full mani)

1. Mardi Gras unnamed (3 coats)
2. Mardi Gras unnamed (3)
3. Mardi Gras unnamed (3)
4. Heaven Island Lei (3)
5. Mardi Gras unnamed (3) [this & number 4 seem to be dupes]
6. Savina Sparkles (3) [almost a dupe for 4 & 5]
7. Black Radiance Girls Rock Swag Rock (3)
8. Mardi Gras unnamed (2 over half black base)
9. Mardi Gras unnamed (2 over half black base)
10. Black Radiance Girls Rock Diamond Sparkle (2 over half black base)
11. XOXO unnamed (2 over half black base)
12. Mardi Gras unnamed (2 over half black base)
13. Princessa Bits and Pieces (2 over half black base)
14. Mardi Gras unnamed (2 over half black base)
15. Expressions unnamed (2 over half black base)
16. Mardi Gras unnamed (2 over half black base)
17. XOXO unnamed (3)
18. Mardi Gras unnamed (3)
19. Mardi Gras unnamed (3)
20. Savina Charcoal Sparkle (2)

Bottles 1 through 5:
 

6 through 10:
 

11 through 15:
 

16 through 20:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Expressions Girl Ice Cream Nail Polish

Earlier this year I joined a Facebook group aimed at connecting people who have Five Below stores with people who don't, so the former can shop for the latter. I'm the former, of course, and have been enjoying exercising my shopping muscles in a way that doesn't make my stash expand so much. Here's what my kitchen counter looked like after I made the rounds of several stores to pick up orders in February.



Way in the back of that photo, there are some boxed sets. I was able to resist getting the one on the left for myself, even though the Disney princess bottles are cute, because the polish is water-based, and I've decided I don't want to deal with water-based polish anymore. Tried it; didn't like it. Have to draw a line somewhere. The one on the right, though, the ice cream polishes; those were chemical-based, and cute, and glittery, so I gave in and got myself a set.







Upon opening the first bottle to swatch, I was immediately hit with the strongest polish smell I've smelled in a very long time, and I've used Kleancolor recently. Not just chemicals, but super duper chemicals, and I say this as someone with a not especially sensitive nose. I decided to limit my exposure by doing Skittles swatches with these, putting two coats plus topcoat on. In the bottles, it looked like I had five different base colors, but on the three of the pinks looked very similar and the fourth was just a little lighter. I did have at least three different glitter mixes in the various bases, though, so that was good.



The other not so great thing I noticed about these polishes, besides the smell, was grey gunk on the threads of some of the bottles. This pink was the worst one:



It looked to me like the way the bottles were packaged, threads down, was allowing the super chemically polish to interact with the black plastic lining the cap, forming this grey sludge. Yuck.

I also wonder if this chemical reaction was changing the color of the polish, as on later trips to Five Below I noticed variation in the colors included in the sets, with some having a fairly vibrant light orange in them. Or maybe that's just due to randomness in how the sets got packaged; we've certainly seen color variations from bigger brands than this.



Normally I keep polish around at least until I swatch it on a wheel before I destash, but between the smell and the grey yuck, I decided to let go of these almost immediately. After checking that she wanted them, I included them as free extras in one of the packages I sent out to the ladies who'd ordered from my Five Below group buy. Looking at the photos again, I am a tiny bit tempted to replace them because I do like the bright glitter against the pastel milky bases, but I'm telling myself I have better versions of that look from indie makers.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

2011 Halloween Displays

I've slipped a few Halloween ones into my recent display entries, but today I've got plenty more. Still no Wet 'n' Wild On the Prowl, though--do they not understand I need my glitters?!

You may remember the $4.99 Sinful crack from my last display entry. I've since seen another display with the crack in it; this one also had three shades of nail polish to wear under the crack. I didn't even pick them up to see what shades they were; I'm guessing they're core. This display is called Breaking Light; I'm assuming that's an attempt to tie into the upcoming Breaking Dawn movie in the Twilight saga in a way that won't get them sued.



Sinful has also put out a Get Haunted display with nail art paint and nail polish (the Walgreens where I saw this had added some seasonal decorations of their own). Again, I think these are all core colors. I think Sinful is going to have to call a collection "All New Never Before Released" in order to get me to do more than take a picture and move on.



Ulta had the China Glaze Haunting collection, which consists of Near Dark (very deep olive green creme), It's Alive (olive green glitter), Haunting (black with silver glitter), Crimson (very dark red creme), Black Mesh (black crack re-release), and Ghoulish Glow (glow in the dark). Just to the left of this display you might see a tiny bit of the Orly Halloween display, which I am not including because it looked like the very same one as last year, with no new colors.



Meijer is a wonderland of Halloween polish. Let's start with the Fright Night Claw Polish in the coffin-shaped bottles (I've also seen these CVS this year). The display has six slots, but I've seen seven different colors of polish so far in different Meijer stores. The display below has Sinister (black creme), Toxic (green shimmer), Phantom (grey shimmer), Bloodshed (red creme), Voodoo (red glitter), and a blue shimmer that had no name on any of the bottles I picked up, but I've also seen Poison (purple shimmer). I might have to brave a trip to Wal Mart to see what they have this year, as last year they had an orange creme and an orange/black bar glitter in these bottles.



Continuing along the shelves and bins at Meijer, they have sets of four glow in the dark polishes from the Expressions brand, which I've never heard of before:



They also have individual bottles of Nite Lites glow in the dark glitter polishes from Diamond Cosmetics, nicely sealed so people can't sample them. I found four colors of these; they look to be the same ones as last year, but some of these bottles have a prominent Diamond Cosmetics logo on them, which is new.



Still at Meijer, there are sets of six mini polishes labelled "Phantom Frights", with bright cremes in orange, purple, and pink, a glitter with cresent moons and circles floating in a dark base, a black creme, and an orange glitter.



But the big draw at Meijer is the pumkin polishes. Last year, my store had them nicely lined up on shelves; this year, they've put them in mosh pits like they did with the snowmen last Christmas.



I spent some time one morning digging through the bins to see what all different pumpkins I could find and lining them up on shelves to get their pictures taken. (Fortunately no one cares if I roll into work a little later than usual, as long as I don't miss a meeting or conference call, and the Meijer employees are too busy to bother paying attention to me.)

Here are the cremes:



Here are the black light colors (I think those two pinks on the end are supposed to be the same, but one looks darker to me so I let them both pose for this shot):



Here are the pastel glow in the dark ones:



And the vibrant glow in dark ones (again with the two veryclose pinks):



The fine-grained glitters:



The hex glitters:



And finally the big, bar, and other glitters (the blue one second in from the left seems to have flakies, too):



Rite Aid has pumpkins, too, in displays with other Halloween cosmetics. Sometimes they put these in the makeup section of the store; sometimes they put them in the seasonal aisle.





Early this month, I shared the Fantasy Makers R.I.P. display at Ulta which had the dud black creme versions of Black Magic; I did find the same display at Meijer with the glitter version. I also found a smaller R.I.P. display at CVS with cosmetics and polishes; the polish shades in this one are Night Glow (glow in the dark), Vamp Red (very dark red creme), Black Pearl (not, as you might expect, a shimmer, but instead a black creme), and Purple Potion (black with purple glitter).



Finally, and this might not be strictly a Halloween display, but I've found it in the Halloween sections at both Meijer and Rite Aid so I'm including it: Rimmel London's Wicked Beauty, which has two polishes in it, Black Satin and Rags to Riches. (I think both of these are core colors.)



I am really, really hoping that posting this will cause On the Prowl to come out of hiding. How can I learn to love black glitter if I can't find it to buy?