Displays from a Few Summer Days in Canada

Today I'm finally wrapping up with the displays I saw on my early summer travels; these are the ones from Canada that I saw when I was there for IEC (and later for lunch and shopping in Windsor, which the border agent I encountered crossing back into the US seemed to find suspicious—travel to Canada twice in less than a week? what kind of American was I? Sigh.)

The first store I stopped at when I crossed the border was Rexall. There I saw a display for Cutex, specifically New Cutex Expert Care Manicure Solutions. Because I am old, I remember Cutex from back in the day, when it was a cheap drugstore brand that I bought with babysitting money. These new polishes are not cheap: 9.99 Canadian. The display I saw had slots for nine colors, eight of which were occupied when I got there. Front row: Walking on a Clound, Two Dozen Roses, Flower Pout, Pop the Prosecco. Back row: Lipstick Jungle, Passion Ignites, Fiery Temper. Much as I like to collect new brands and bottles, I skipped all of these on account of boringness. I have seen pictures of more interesting shades in this line, but I did not run across them on my trip. The rest of the display was filled with nail treatments, top coat, lotion, and remover.



I'm always happy to see an Essence display, even if all the polish is core shades, like in this Next Stop Summer shelf top I spotted at the Shoppers Drug Mart next door to the Rexall. Polish colors here: Sweet As Candy, Play With My Mint, Jeans On, #Lucky.



The GOSH display at Shoppers made me sad; three whole sections of makeup with one tiny tiny section for nail stuff, and not even any fun colors.



I haven't seen any new polish from L'Oreal in the US since last summer, so was extra happy to see the Le Vernis à L'Huile, which is oil polish (similar to the Sally Hansen Color Therapy, I'm thinking) in bottles that have a sort of quilted/segmented design, which is very attractive to my eyes. Wish we had these in the States, for sure. I first saw them in a shelf top display at a Shoppers. Shades here: L'Or, Café de Nuit, Moka Chic, Greige Amoureux, Gris Décadent, Vert Absynthe, Cobalt Indécent, Bleu Royal, Violet De Nuit. There were also Colour Riche Press-On Nails in the Moon About You design here; I thought at first they'd been just set there randomly, but there were slots in the display for those boxes, so apparently they belonged.



I'd mentioned seeing these to mrsrexy when we met up at IEC and she said there were more colors; sure enough when we popped into a Shoppers near the IEC venue, there they were in the nail polish aisle, tucked in among all the other brands. Top row: Crystal, Blanc de Lune, Nude Demoiselle, Dimanche Après-Midi, Jardin de Roses, Rose Ballet, Nymphea, Fuchsia Palace, Violet Vendôme. Second row: Coral Trianon, Chérie Macaron, Orange Triomphe, Rouge Sauvage, Carmin Parisien, Rubis Folies, Violet de Nuit, Grenat Irréverent, Noir Noir. Bottom row: Vert Epoque, Cobalt Indécent, Bleu Royal, Vert Absinthe, Gris Décadent, Greige Amoureux, Moka Chic, L'Or, Café de Nuit.



This Quo by Orly Color Amp'd display was mostly bare when I saw it, but I still thought it interesting to see the no-light gel was in this brand as well.



In the core aisle at Shoppers, I saw Quo by Orly Breathable polish, which seemed to be same shades we got in Orly Breathable in the States.



I was intrigued by the Revlon Spring Love by Maripier Morin display as it's been ages since I saw anything new from Revlon back home, but it turned out that these were not all new, and the ones I didn't recognize were not exciting. The caps did have pretty wraps on them, though. Colors here: Knockout, Valentine, Gray Suede, Urban, Eclectic.





I saw two Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure displays. First was for the Spring Collection 2017. Shades here: Stellar Style, Pink Pong (positions of these first two, World is My Oyster (marked new), What in Carnation, Dream Boat, Tropic Thunder. Display also had Dry and Go Drops.



The other was Beachside Bride, which had a different lineup than the ones in the States: Sweet Talker, Crush on Blue, Mauvin' on Up (marked new), Let's Snow, Gleam Supreme, Raisin the Bar. Also had Complete Care 7-in-1 treatment.



I've seen peel-off polish in the States before, and the Sensational brand, but not Sensational Peel Off polish, which again was a Shoppers find. Left to right: White Now, Wednesday We Wear Pink, The Okay Coral, Mermaid in the Shade, Lilac & Relax, Blue My Mind,



In a different Shoppers, I saw a different Sensationail Peel Off display; this one had more autumnal palette overall compared to the spring/summer look of the first one. Shades here: I Pink I'm in Love, Plum-p It Up, Winosaur (hah!), You Had Me at Merlot, Stop Metalling in My Business, Take Black the Night.



I was tempted by the Vitry Nail Repair Treatment at Rexall, as my nails too often look like the before photo, but I wasn't willing to part with $21 Canadian to take a chance that it would work better than all the other stuff I've tried.



I really I could make an effort to get up to Canada from Idaho; it's not that much farther than when I was in Michigan, but here there isn't a bustling place like Windsor on the other side, so pretty much I'd hit up the one Shoppers in town and be done with my nail polish hunting. Still, those L'Oreal L'Huile bottles are there, so maybe.

Wheels W6 and X6: Flakies

It's a two-for-one deal on this Nail Wheel Wednesday, as I feel like I should have put most all of these flaky toppers on one wheel and just done them over a black base instead of spreading them out over two wheels so I could swatch them on their own as well as over the black. All but a handful of them don't even have a colored base, so they don't really show up against the off white color of the wheel anyway.



(all two coats each)

1. FingerPaints Flashy [classic red to gold to green shift]
2. FingerPaints Motley [purple-ish blue and blue-ish green]
3. FingerPaints Flecked [green to blue shift]
4. FingerPaints Asylum [blue plus red to green]
5. FingerPaints Twisted [rainbow of flakies]
6. Nails Inc. The Donmar [red to gold to green]
7. Nails Inc. The Wyndham [green to blue]
8. Nails Inc. The Old Vic [purple-ish blue]
9. Nubar Opulent Pearl [rainbow; the fine shimmer in the base sets this one apart]
10. Nfu Oh 40 [blue to green, very dense]
11 to 20. Same as above, over black creme

Bottles 1 through 5:


6 through 8:


9 and 10:


Here are the most colorful flakies on their own over the off white wheel; you can see why I think this approach was ill-advised.














(all two coats except as noted below)

1. GOSH Rainbow [red to gold to green]
2. Essie Shine of the Times [red to gold to green]
3. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Hidden Treasure [red to gold to green]
4. Golden Rose Scale Effect 09 [red to gold to green but in a sheer light pink base]
5. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Princess Cut [white flakies that look like pale pastels in some situations, in a sheer light pink base]
6. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Glass Slipper [very pale pastel flakies that look white in some situations]
7. Color Club Covered in Diamonds [shredded flakies]
8. Studio M Covered in Diamonds [exact dupe of Color Club]
9. Studio M Fame & Fortune [shredded flakies in sheer hot pink base]
10. OPI I Lily Love You (3 coats) [iridescent glitter plus shredded flakies in sheer pink base]

Bottles 1 through 3:


4 through 6:


7 through 10:

















When it comes time to winnow my flakies, I believe I will be keeping all of the FingerPaints here, along with the Nubar (due to the shimmer) and Nfu Oh (due to the density and the fun bottle shape). The Nails Inc. can probably go; if any stay, it will be The Old Vic. Hidden Treasure has to stay, in part for sentimental reasons, but the GOSH and Essie can go. I'm undecided on the Golden Rose; the flakies are pretty much the same as others I have but the base is not, plus I think of it as special because I got it in a swap. Princess Cut can go; Glass Slipper is staying, at least until it goes up against this year's crop of FingerPaints flakies. Color Club version of Covered in Diamonds can go because Studio M wins that battle of the brands for me, being less common. Fame & Fortune and I Lily Love You stay. We'll see if I actually stick to these plans when real destashing happens (and my husband informs me it will happen, as we will be downsizing at some point after we retire).

Kit Celebration and GOSH Denim Delight

I've bombarded you all with photos over the past couple days and have a couple picture-heavy posts planned coming up, so today I'm giving us all a little rest with a simple post about just two polishes. (Someday Nail Wheel Wednesday will return, I promise. Or threaten, depending on your views on nail wheels.)

When Tracey and Melissa and I stopped at Rexall on our way to Girly Bits HQ, we each bought a bottle of Kit Celebration, a multi-color multi-size glitterbomb in a clear base. I thought it would pair nicely with GOSH Denim Delight from Shoppers Drug Mart, where we'd been just before we hit Rexall.



Celebration has medium and small metallic hex glitter in a range of colors—silver, gold, orange, blue, green, and pink—as wel as tiny silver glitter (or mabye it's silver and gold; it's hard to tell since it's so tiny).



Denim Delight is a dusty blue creme; I used two coats as my base color, then did a glitter gradient with Celebration. I tried to drag most of the bigger glitters toward the tips of my nails and leave the tiny ones closer to the base. I added topcoat to smooth everything out when I was done pushing the glitter around.







Overall, I like this combination, though I do wonder if Celebration would look even better over a different base color: deep berry red or forest green, perhaps. I'll be interested to see how Tracey and Melissa decide to use their bottles of Celebration.

Textures from Foreign Lands

I'm wrapping up this shortened edition of Texture Week with some polishes I bought during my recent travels. First up, a few I got in Canada last weekend (plus a domestic buy for comparison's sake). Left to right: Revlon Diamond Texture (from Rexall in Canada), GOSH Frosted Silver (from Super Drug Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada), GOSH Frosted Purple (ditto), Orly Plum Pixel (from Ulta in the US). Revlon I can get easily near home, of course, but I haven't come across this new core shade anywhere before (though I admit I haven't been looking super hard). GOSH I've only seen in the US in a couple of super fancy Walgreens stores.



Here they are on the nail, in the same order as above:



The silver ones were three coats and the brownish purple ones were two. The Revlon silver seems slightly finer-grained than the GOSH, but it's not something you'd notice unless you were looking for differences. The GOSH purple is a bit coarser-grained than the Orly but again it's not really that noticeable; the colors are pretty darn close.







The next two textures I have to share part of my haul from Minsk, IsaDora Sugar Crush in Ocean Crush and Purple Crush.



Ocean Crush is a turquoise with gold microglitter. Purple Crush is a slightly dusty purple with a medium hex glitter and microglitter. I used two coats of each, and you can see that Purple Crush is perfectly opaque but Ocean Crush still shows a hint of visible nail line.



I still haven't figured out how to hold two bottles at once.







Also in Minsk, I got three textures from the Lux Visage Sahara collection. I don't know if these have names since I can't read the words on the labels, but they do have numbers. Left to right: 67 (blue), 55 (orange), 65 (purple).



All of these needed only two coats and have microglitter in with the texture. 55 Orange has yellow glitter; 65 Purple has pink glitter, and 67 Blue has silver shimmer. I liked these a lot; if I'd tried them before I left Minsk I would have been very tempted to go back and scoop up more colors, luggage weight limits be damned.







And now I'll wrap up with a very special polish I got in Canada last Saturday: Girly Bits Bette Davis Eyes, which is part of the 80s Girl Bands collection that opens for pre-order on June 2nd at noon EST. It was very exciting to get a preview of the collection as part of our workshop and even more exciting to be able to buy some of them. Bette Davis Eyes is a light silver fine grained textured shimmer. There are tiny pops of rainbow color in the shimmer, which makes it more interesting. My swatch is three coats.





I know not everyone will want to wear Bette Davis Eyes textured, so I added topcoat to show how it looks shiny.





And finally here's a low light photo blurred to show how pretty the pops of color are in the shimmer:



I bought one more color from the 80s Girl Bands collection and Pam kindly gave each us a another color of our choice to review, but those aren't textured so they'll have to wait 'til next week.