Display Dump and Done for a While

Display Dump and Done for a While I don't really know where November went. I kept meaning to post here but didn't. I'm determined to not let the month end without something going up in this space, and as often happens I've got a bunch of display photos that have piled up in my folders, so I'm going to get through those even though some are for Halloween which is old news by now (not surprising since my previous display post was two months ago. That's okay. I've been feeling for a while that this blog is more a historical record than anything.

After I get this up, I'm going to take a break. My nails are in awful shape (maybe from being sick last month or from winter or I don't know) so I haven't swatched anything in ages much less done a manicure with polish. I even went to see family for the Thanksgiving holiday and didn't bother putting on fake nails or anything, just a treatment coat that wore off over the course of the week. I'm not the only one of my nail polish generation that's feeling this way; I've recently seen several destashes on Facebook from ladies I was close to on forums and such back in the day. So a break seems in order. Right now I'm thinking I'll be back in January after all the holiday hubbub, but who knows, I may decide to adorn my stubbies and swatch a holiday collection or something.

Meijer, which I was able to visit on my long weekend in Michigan in September, had Dashing Diva Halloween-themed nail strips and stickers.

 

At Sally Beauty quite recently, I saw a Dashing Diva Malibu Pool Party display with fake nails for both fingers and toes. Not sure if was intended to capitalize on the Barbie movie energy without paying for an official Barbie tie-in or what. Seemed very summer-y regardless.

 

Fred Meyer had a Disney 100 display with nail strips/sticker sets on top, fake nails in the middle, and glittery polish sets at the bottom. These are aimed at kids judging by the size of the nails/strips and the fact that the polish is water-based. I went ahead and got the strips/stickers set anyway, figuring I can use the latter on other polish/strips.

 

I saw some Essence polish at Meijer, what looked to be core colors of their gel line in a bottle I hadn't seen before, with the shade names printed front and center.

 

Essie's fall 2023 offering is the Step Out of Line collection, which I saw at Ulta. Front/bottom section: Step Out of Line (two slots), Meet Me at Midnight (two slots), Full Blast (two slots), Dance 'til Dawn. Back/top section: Underground Ball (two slots), Lights Down Music Up (two slots, sold out).

 

I shared the plant based Essie Love polishes I saw on my England vacation in my last display post. The first (and so far only) time I've seen them at home is at a Fred Meyer, where they hadn't finished putting up the shade labels or price tags yet.

 

I don't remember seeing the Essie Expressive Word on the Street collection before, though the internet tells me it's been around since at least March of this year, so here is it tucked into the core display wall at a CVS in Michigan. Left to right: Send a Message, World as a Canvas, Word on the Street, Spray It to Say It, Outside the Lines, and Unapologetic Icon.

 

Back in the day, Meijer had so much Halloween polish from brands that only showed up then. This past September, there were no pumpkin bottles at all, just this sad Fright Night display (and yes, someone had stolen the cap from one of the bottles).

 

Walmart had a Halloween Esssentials display of fake nails for $2.98 a set before that holiday. In my store (the only place in my little town to get nail stuff), they put them in the beauty section rather than with Halloween stuff. There were six designs: Spookin Spiral (grey, black, and white nails with spiders, spiderwebs, and marble motifs), Spiderella (white nails with black spiders and spiderwebs), Full Moon (black nails with white phases of the moon), Evil Twin (purple/black gradient), Spiders & Sass (black and orange nails with spiderwebs and spiders), and Dark Trails (black and lilac/grey gradient nails with spiderwebs and night sky motifs).

 

Meijer also had a Halloween Essentials fake nails display, but the assortment was slightly different. In addition to the sets in the Walmart one above, this had So I Creep Yeaaa (Pennywise the clown imagery) and Coffin Crawlers (red and white blood spatter). There is also a set misplaced here from another brand (see below).

 

In addition to the Halloween Essentials, Meijer had a smaller display just called Halloween Nails. There was one empty space and one filled with a Halloween Essentials design. The designs that were here (starting top left): Glow and Go (mint, lilac, and black with various creepy imagery), Spooky Vibes (black, white, and mint with stripes, spider webs, and spooky faces), 100% That Witch (orange, black and white with spiders, jack o lanterns, etc.), Fortune Forever (pink, black, and grey with fortune teller theme), Glowy Batty (black and white with bats and moons), FaBOOlous (black, white, lime green with ghosts and blood drips and scars), and Bling & Bones (pearl and black with occult-y imagery).

 

Kiss Halloween nails were lots of places; I first saw them this year at Ulta.

 

Meijer had two displays of the Kiss nails; there was some overlap in the designs.

 

 

CVS had a floor display that had the Kiss Halloween nails plus lashes.

 

The Kiss nails also appeared in one of those pallet-sized displays that Walmart puts in the aisles sometimes. This also had some LA Colors Lavish Nails sets with the Kiss sets on one side of the boxy display.

 

 

These LA Colors Nail Frill press on sets were on another side of the pallet display at Walmart that had the Kiss nails.

 

In mid-October, I happened upon this very picked over LA Colors Bewitched polish display in the soft goods section of Walmart ... hadn't thought to look there for polish earlier in the month. Thank goodness for labels on the display itself, so I could tell that the top two rows had held six shades of glow in the dark polish: Boneyard (white), Hayride (yellow), Screech (blue), Curse (pink), Be Weird (green), and Candycorn (orange). The bottom two rows looked to be core Gel and Diamond Crush colors: Frosting (white), Graphic (purple), Anarchy (black), Vampy (wine), Dream Maker (gold), Fierce (red), Fireball (wine), Wink (pink), Aurora Sky (blue), Shooting Star (silver), Constellation (chacoal), Flashing Lights (blue).

 

Sally Beauty had Morgan Taylor's On My Wish List collection, with regular polish in the front row and Gelish in the back. Left to right: Dew Me a Favor, empty slot for Bad to the Bow (moss green), A Hundred Present Yes, Gift It Your Best, Before My Berry Eyes, and Reddy to Jingle.

 

The most surprising thing I saw in this season of display hunting was a Nails Inc. and Froot Loops cereal collaboration which was sitting there seemingly untouched at Rite Aid a couple weeks ago. Hadn't heard a thing about this, though poking around the internet tells me it was released this past summer, and the polishes are scented. Single shades in front: #FOLLOWYOURNOSE, Toucan Sam Approved, Feeling Fruity, Toucan Play at That Game, and Ce-real Talk. The duo has neon shades: Face the Froot (pink) and Live Life Loopy (yellow).

 

Not all Ulta stores got the Nailtopia Disney 100 collection, which I'd first seen back in April in Illinois. An Ulta I went to in Michigan in September had a fairly well stocked section for them still. Starting with the 5ml minis at the top left: Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Piglet again (in the slot for Elsa, which is a darker pink or maybe purple—hard to tell from the little printed swatch), Olaf, Anna, Alice in Wonderland, Cheshire, Simba, Dumbo, and Stitch. Next to those are the 12ml classic cartoon characters: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Pluto, Goofy, Peter Pan (sold out), Tinker Bell. Bottom row has villians on the left: Maleficant, Captain Hook, Scar, Hades, Evil Queen, Ursula, Cruella, and Jafar. Bottom right are the princesses: Cinderella, Belle, Moana, Jasmine, Rapunzel, Tiana, Ariel, and Snow White.

 

At Ulta, I saw the summer 2023 OPI collection, Summer Make the Rules. It was picked over by the time I came across it, and had a couple colors from the Barbie collection shoved in there.

 

I never did see a display for the OPI Barbie movie tie-in collection at any of the Ultas I popped into during my travels. My local(ish) Ulta had a few polish colors and some fake nail sets on the "looks like clearance but everything's still full price" shelf.

 

The three polish colors left were Bon Voyage to Reality, My Job is Beach, and Hi Ken. Some poking around the internet shows me that the six shades not here were shimmers and/or pink.

 

Just when I'd given up on seeing an OPI Barbie display, I ran across one at a Rite Aid. It was missing some of the shades, too, which was not surprising as I saw it in mid-November, well after the movie came out. I was surprised so many of the pinks were still there since those usually sell quickly.

 

Back when I posted about the OPI xPress/On nails I wore on one of my trips earlier this year, 100% That Scorpio, I promised to share the other signs in a future display post. This is that post. When I came across the shelf where these were stocked in the Ulta I first saw them at, some of the signs were missing. Fortunately, I found them mixed in with other designs on an endcap nearby, so I rearranged things so all the zodiac ones were together.

 

Kiss My Aries, Free as a Sagittarius, and Leo AF:

 

Gemini'm a Flirt, OG Aquarius, and Libra on Chic:

 

100% That Scorpio, Pisces the Future, and Can-certified Sweet:

 

Practical Virgo Magic, Taurus-t Me, and Feelin' Capricorn-y:

 

OPI also has horoscope polish, some which share names with the xPress/On nail designs; I saw Big Zodiac Energy at Ulta.

 

Top row: #Virgoals, Taurus-t me, Feelin' Capricorn-y, Pisces the Future, Scorpio Seduction, Aquarius Renegade, and Feelin' Libra-ted. Bottom row: Gemini and I, I Cancer-tainly Shine, The Leo-nly One, Kiss My Aires (two slots), and Big Sagittarius Energy (two slots).

 

I saw OPI Terribly Nice, the holiday collection, at Sally Beauty, with some colors already missing.

 

There was a Cover Girl and Sally Hansen display at Meijer called Spooky Season Looks. The Cover Girl side was all face makeup (remember when they had polish?). The Sally Hansen side touted Eerie-sistible shades and was all core colors, including all the Miracle Gel toppers plus some mostly dark and mysterious Miracle Gel shades and a lot of Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear colors.

 

I didn't document the exact shades in the Eerie-sistable display, but I did get a closeup of the Miracle Gel Toppers in the core section at Meijer, since I'd not seen Glazed in person before. Left to right: Crystal, Moonlit, Sugar, Unicorn, and Glazed.

 

While the Eerie-sistle display didn't have them, Sally Hansen did release new Insta Dri colors ahead of Halloween. I saw the best stocked display at Meijer, with the Trolls collection on top and the Halloween glow in the dark colors below, along with some core colors in the bottom rows. (I later saw the Troll shades at Ulta tucked into the core section, and a smaller display at a Meijer that had all the Trolls and glow in the dark but fewer core shades.)

 

There are eight shades in the Trolls limited edition collection. Top row: Popalicious (two slots), Viva Power, Here We Go Again (two slots), Vacay Island (two slots), Black to Blakc (core color). Bottom row: Hole 'n Fun (two slots), Sisterhood (two slots), Bandtastic (two slots), Mount Rageous, Black to Black (core).

 

There are seven glow in the dark colors. Some of these look like re-releases to me but I haven't done the research. I am proud that I didn't buy any of these, reminding myself I haven't worn the ones I have from previous years in ages and ages. Top row: Trolls duo pack of Popalicious and Viva Power, Be-Witcha Soon, Eerie-sistible, Where My Ghouls At (two slots), Black to Black (core). Bottom row: Bat to the Bone (two slots), Ahead of the Carve (two slots), A Scare is Born (two slots), Fa-boo-lous, The Queen's Velvet (core).

 

I first saw the Sally Hansen Miracle Gel limited edition Gingerbread Kisses collection at Ulta, tucked in a section next to all the core colors. It was already sold out of (or more likely not yet stocked with; this was September) a few of the colors. Left to right: empty slot for Oh My Pearl, empty slot for Baking Spirits Bright, Jack Frosted, Whisk You a Merry Xmas, empty slot for Peppermint to Be, For Goodness Bake, Less Bitter More Glitter, and Dreams Crumb True.

 

At a different Ulta earlier this month, I saw the Gingerbread Kisses even more sold out, but they did have a Holiday Glaze gift pack shelved nearby which contained Peppermint to Be, Whisk You a Merry Christmas, and the Shiny Top Coat, marked "only here" on the packaging.

 

Walgreens had a free standing floor display that had the Gingerbread Kisses colors in it, but they weren't called that; it said "Oh What Fun!" at the top and included some core shades and fake nails as well as the limited edition holiday ones. They had a similar looking set to the Ulta one, but this had Baking Spirits Bright and the Shiny Top Coat.

 

The two gift sets of Insta Dri that were perched atop the Oh What Fun display at Walgreens were core colors. Candy Cane Wishes had ASAP Apple and White on Time. Orna-ment to Be had Powerslide and Clearly Quick.

 

Ulta also had an Insta Dri holiday set, again with core colors. It's called That's a Wrap and contains White on Time, C-hill Out, Powerslide, ASAP Apple, and Back to Black. I saw a picture on the internet of a four-pack set at Target called Ski-son, which had Powerslide, C-hill Out, Glos-sea, and Cinna Snap, but I haven't seen that one in person and likely won't as I try to avoid stores as much as possible during December.

 

I still miss the years when Wet 'n' Wild would give us Halloween polish collections. This year, their display at Walmart had one set of Fantasy Makers fake nails and no polish at all, just face makeup.

 

I was slightly mollified when I went back to that Walmart a week or so later and found a Scooby-Doo x Wet 'n' Wild pallet display that had a three pack of polish. Sure, two of them were cremes, but still the designs on the bottles were cute.

 

 

This might be a new personal best for number of photos in one blog post. I'd like to thank procrastination.

Big Display Catch-up

I need to paint more wheels before Nail Wheel Wednesday can resume. Today I've got displays collected both close to home and on my travels. It's been ages since my last display post back in June, so let's get going. I've been in a few Walmart stores lately, but only one them had a display for Bettina, a brand I don't recall seeing in a quite a while. This was pretty picked over, with colors in the wrong slots, but I still thought it was interesting.

 

One Walmart I was in had a display of various Dashing Diva nail strips, some with Halloween designs.

 

Also at a Walmart, I saw a new to me brand: Entity Clean. The bottles say they're breathable, so guessing they're like the Orly Breathable line. The ones I saw were shoved in a display for other brands, and I never found their proper place, so I'm not sure how many shades there might be total. The ones I did see: Pure Allure, Let's Be Honest, Light & Love, Lady in Pink, Top Coat, and Black Silk.

 

As far as I can tell, Essie's Handmade with Love collection came out this past summer, but I don't seem to have included it in a display post before. The best shot of it I have is this display at a Meijer I was in during my travels, which had the colors right next to those in Swoon in the Lagoon. Left to right: Piece of Work, Paintbrush It Off, Cut It Out, In Pursuit of Craftiness, Pencil Me In, Sew Gifted, Crochet Away, Handmade with Love, To DIY For. I did also see a display for this collection at Ulta which was seven slots wide and had the red/orange shades in the back.

 

Essie's fall 2022 offering is Off the Grid. I saw it first at Fred Meyer, where they'd tucked it under the fake nails for some reason. Left to right: Force of Nature, Risk-Takers Only, Hike It Up, Bold & Boulder, Off the Grid, Transcend the Trend. I've also seen the collection at Walgreens.

 

Fred Meyer had two shelftop displays of Halloween fake nails. This one has the imPress designs (and one set of nail strips from Kiss that maybe got misplaced).

 

And this one has the Kiss designs (and one Fright Night by Ardell set stuck in there that I never saw a whole display for).

 

At one of the Walmarts I was in, there was a section in the core nail polish area for Just Add Sun polishes, which change colors in the sun. There's space for 24 colors, though not all of them were there when I happened upon them.

 

You may recall the Kokie Green polishes I've shared this year. I did finally see them in the wild at a few Meijer stores in the Great Lakes states.

 

I try to remember to check the LA Colors section at Fred Meyer as that's where they slip in new stuff rather than have separate shelftop displays. This time the new stuff was Color Mania, some bright pearly shimmers. Left to right: Fandom, Hooked, Super Bloom, Squeeze, Fanatic, Chaotic, Lyrical, and Culture (of course the purple is sold out, so I'll have to check back).

 

I usually see Morgan Taylor at Sally Beauty if I see if anywhere, but this Plaid Reputation display was at Fred Meyer. Six shades: Follow Suit, Tartan the Interruption, Tailored for You, It's All About the Twill, Wool You Love Me, Tweed Me. I did later see a display of this collection at Sally Beauty, too.

 

I only managed to see one post-worthy thing at a CVS, four Poparazzi polishes in that uppper right section of the display where they seem to put the small seasonal offerings. The four colors here: Curfew, Snow Dusting, Into the Fog, and Not Your Basic Blue. Seems like more a winter set than summer but who knows how long they were there.

 

I got to pop into a Five Below store on during my recent travels and found a couple Pretty Woman displays I hadn't seen before. The first was Jelly Glaze. Six shades here: Royal Navy, Orange Crush, Yelly Jelly, Forest Glaze, Passion Fruit, and Mint for You. The two greens look very similar in the bottle, but I checked that they had different items numbers so can only assume they look different on the nail. I won't know because in a suprising turn of events, I didn't buy any of them, remembering how very many jelly polishes I have at home that I don't use much.

 

The second was the mostly empty Glow in the Dark, which was down to one polish of the six names on the display. The one color was in the slot for Light Show. The empty slots were Glow Up, Let's Rave, Luminous Ice, Flash On, and Fluorescently You.

 

I keep being thankful for Sally Hansen. Maybe they're not coming out with new lines as often as they used to, or quite as many special collections, but they haven't given up entirely the way other brands have. This past summer, they came out with another limited edition neon collection in the Miracle Gel line, Make Your Mani Pop. I saw it at both Ulta and Walmart, in a separate area of the core section. Bottles at Ulta, left to right: Un-cone-ditional Love, Worth Melting For, Anything is Popsicle, Lemon Drop Pop, Sea-riously Cool.

 

The one polish missing from the Ulta display above is a topper called My Flavourite, seen here at Walmart.

 

At a Meijer on the road, I saw a Sally Hansen display I haven't seen anywhere else, though I have seen the polishes tucked into core displays at places like Walgreens and Ulta. It had Covergirl makeup on one half and Sally Hansen on the other: Color Foil, Insta Dri Luxe Finish, Xtreme Wear, treatments and top/base coats.

 

The Luxe Finish Insta Dri shades were the most interesting to me. There were eight of those: Triple Threaqd, Silk Is, Glos-Sea, Sleek-a-Boo, Spill the Velvet-ea, Lavish Lilac, The Queen's Velvet, and Extrava-grey.

 

In late summer, Sally Hansen put out the Back to School limited edition Insta Dri collection, another collaboration with Sour Patch Kids. I saw this at Fred Meyer in a display that also had the Luxe Effects in it and a few core colors, too. The Sour Patch are in the front row, starting after the empty slot: Main Squeeze, Tis the Sea-sun, Your Pine-ness, Tropink, Plum-believable, Maliblue Twist, Pink Punch. Based on the little circles of color on the display board, I could see there were two Sour Patch colors missing from here. Some online research told me they were Red Berry, a red shimmer, and Simply Sublime, a pink/blue/yellow glitter topper, which I then ordered online.

 

In stores now, there's a ten-color limited edition Miracle Gel collection for The School for Good and Evil. This shelftop display was at Fred Meyer. Left to right in the front row (the back is core): Can't Settle Won't Settle, Fresh Villany, It's Better Being Bad, Magic Mirror, Lesso Go, True Beauty Comes from Within, The Storian, Not What It Gleams, Lovey Dovey, Good is Great.

 

Here's the display for the collection I saw at Walmart. The limited edition ones are in the top two rows, with core filling out the rest.

 

And here's how it looked at Walgreens:

 

There's also an Insta Dri Glow in the Dark collection out now for Halloween. I saw it first at Sally Beauty. Front row, left to right: Purple Potion, Witch Please, Creep It Real, Squad Ghouls, Fa-boo-lous, Ghosted. Back row: Gourd-geous plus core colors Black to Black, White on Time, Clearly Quick, Hail Cherry, and Cinna-snap. A couple of these limited editions (Creep It Real and Fa-boo-lous) look like repromotes, though the bottles are a bit different.

 

I also saw a standing display for these at Walmart but it was very picked over by the time I got to it.

 

The Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Hispanic Heritage Month display is all core colors, but it's more than any other brand did as far as I know.

 

There are three new Miracle Gel toppers in addition. So far I've only seen them tucked into the core section. Here they are at Meijer: Crystal Top Coat, Sugar Top Coat, Unicorn Top Coat.

 

I was surprised to see a Salon Perfect Halloween display at my local Walmart just a few days ago, as they've had Halloween stuff out for weeks. Guess this just showed up later; it was in the beauty section rather than the seasonal area. It's called Bewitched and has fake nails, core and limited edition polishes, and false lashes as well as Fright Night colored hairspray.

 

The ten polish slots were nicely labelled. Four core at the left side: Crystal Clear Top Coat, Oil Slick (black creme, missing here), Heart Strings, and Traffic Cone. Six limited edition next to those: Alien Apple Bobbin', Head in the Stars, On My Milky Way, I Need Space, Universe-al Glow, and Celestial Chic (empty). The next day, I had to go down to the city and saw this display there (in the seasonal section). It was more picked over but did have Celestial Chic, which turned out to be a red polish. I was hoping for purple but oh well.

 

Walmart once again had the big four-sided Halloween display with SinfulColors and LA Color polishes, Kiss and imPress fake nails, and false eyelashes.

 

The interesting thing on the SinfulColors side was buried in among the core colors and Sheer Mattes and Essenchills that we've seen a lot of, there were the Bee Envious shades, only two of which were ever in any of my stores before.

 

I never saw all of the Bee Envious in one store; the most I found in one place was five: Busy Being Queen, Amazzzing, Buzz Off, She Stings, and Save the Bees. The one I had to dig out at another store was Honey Child, a pale peach.

 

The LA Colors side looked to have mostly the same things as last year.

 

The fake nails side had most (maybe all?) of the designs that were in the displays at Fred Meyer from earlier in this post plus some plainer colored ones.

 

Remember when Wet 'n' Wild would have a special collection nearly every month? That's been a while. Now we're lucky if we get one set of fake nails, as with this Care Bears collaboration I saw at Fred Meyer.

 

 

There was also one set of fakes in the Wet 'n' Wild Halloween display at Meijer. See if you can spot them.

 

Well, that was a lot. I've bought a fair few polishes from these displays so hope to get some swatching done soon.