Showing posts with label Cirque. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cirque. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Cirque Ophelia & her flowers


Hello readers!

This manicure was done weeks ago and I only get to post it now.
Be warned, it's a photo-spam post!


I bought OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls from a sweet lady who posted about the sale in Facebook. Usually I won't get an expensive white polish since most of the time, I will use it as base. But this MBSW is not the typical white, it's a shy white with grayish blue undertones. Which I find it to be interesting. Not too bright and sparkly yet still look clean and polished :-)




I used two coats here, first thin layer and medium coat on the second. This white is not streaky and covers nicely without giving any issues - this is a white gem! Most of the whites are patchy on the nails, either runny or too thick. Not this one. MBSW is the new white!







To jazz up the chalky nails I added blue flowers on ring and thumb, with Cirque Ophelia on the rest of the fingers!




I used two coats of Ophelia:




And realized Ophelia's cornflower blue is not a close match to the flower's :-(
In retrospect, I should put one coat of Ophelia to complement the whole manicure (albeit the mismatched color)

Anyway...

Cirque Ophelia is another pwetty.. it's like your nails are spammed by blue fairies' dust! I'm not a big fan of glitters but this has a place in my heart. It has that soft, delicate and naive look.

I'm not sure if Cirque named it for Hamlet's Ophelia; it just occurred to me that my manicure plays right into the character!

When Ophelia went mad after her father's death, she was observed to be in white gown, walking in the streets mumbling to herself and sprinkling wild flowers. Later on, she fell into the river and drowned, her body flowed with the stream, flowers weeping from the trees and rested on her body, echoing a delicate and tragic end of her short life.




Ok, back to reality.

If you're wondering about the flowers, I bought them from BornPrettyStore. It comes in a set of 12 assorted flowers at a very affordable price:




To help you understand their sizes, here's a reference:
(the rest, except green, are bigger - they cover three-quarter of my thumb nail)




Are you tired of reading already?
I will make this quick.

After few days of feeling 'uneasy' about the blue combination, I removed Ophelia and did a simple french mani in MBSW. Ok they weren't perfect... well that's because I did it in the office toilet! How many of you did that too? Own up! Haha!!





Last to add; I bought Cirque Ophelia from Mei Mei Signatures. She has wide range of nail care and polish brands - from salon to indie ones! Go on, click and take a look.


Right, you can rest your fingers from scrolling the page now. Thanks for reading!

Thursday, September 6, 2012

China Glaze Reggae To Riches & Cirque Fascination Street


Howdy!

I had this manicure two weeks ago and only managed to post it up now. I have another one pending.. oh my, even blogs have backlogs!

What you see here is China Glaze Reggae To Riches; I knew of this polish last year and was secretly lemming for it. Well, I did it discreetly because I had a long list of to-buys and was distracted by the new collections popping out in seasons. I just didn't have time to look back. Now, when this RTR caught my attention in Star Trinkets, I bought it without hesitation.

I mentioned before, Color Makeup 5 could be a dupe but no, it's not. CM 5 is a fuchsia-near-neon-more-pink-tone with blue flash. CG Reggae To Riches is violet pink with bluish-purple shimmer.




Shown on my nails, 2 coats with topcoat.




Yup, bubbles on them. Bummer! (pun intended!) My instinct told me to blame the polish. Then I sat down dejectedly, because I knew some of the bumps were the result of my rough nail beds. I was one of those kids who bite nails, and continued doing so into my adulthood. I only managed to quit the ugly habit two years ago. By then, no surprises there, my nails are dented with teeth marks. Looks like I gonna rely heavily on ridge-filler from now on! :(

[side-note] When I put RTR on, it reminded me of Nicki Minaj. She's always in violet, pink or fuchsia.. I can't shake off her image from RTR. The hair color and body suit may not be perfect match to RTR, but still... 



I lived with the bumpy manicure for a week. On that Saturday, I made an impulse move by putting Cirque Fascination Street on the tips. It was supposed to be a "gradient" effect. Yea, supposed to. Didn't look like it that way:




A medium shade is missing to create the gradient flow. I didn't have time; I was already running late for appointment. My impulse action sequence began by putting weight from the brush on the tips and light strokes from top to mid-section - all these were done in less than 3 minutes for 10 nails. That's faster than waiting for instant noodles to be ready at the table. Yep, that's instant for you and end results, for a noob like me, produced such bad color-coordinated manicure. HEE, sorry if they are eyesores :)

I owe Cirque Fascination Street a proper introduction. I will do a better NOTW for FS, I promise. In the meantime, check out FS' holographic effect, taken indoors:




Till next time, let's hope for a better manicure!