2015 - Page 12 of 12 - Of Life and Lacquer

Year: 2015

Of Life and Lacquer > 2015

Cirque Colors Metropolis Collection January 2015

Posted on 5 January, 20154 January, 2015 by Cynthia

Today you are seeing my much ignored non swatching hand. I don’t really have a hard time painting my nails with my non-dominant hand, but polishing them in blog quality, meaning not getting polish on my cuticles and doing good clean up if necessary, can get difficult. I usually don’t have to do any clean up on my manicures because after 3 years of almost daily polish changes, I have gotten pretty good at being neat–but it’s still more difficult when I’m using my left hand to apply polish. Well, for the next few weeks/months you’ll be seeing my right hand in my reviews because I chopped off my nails on my left hand. I ruined my nails due to over-buffing and they were so paper thin and painful that I decided to just cut them down to nubbins and wait for the damage to grow out. I don’t know how long that will take, but I can guarantee that I will never buff my nails again. Today I’m pretty excited to be showing you 2 amazeballs creme polishes because you all know how I feel about cremes. I love glitter, I love holos, I love shimmers, I like duochromes, but there is nothing more gorgeous to me than a rich, buttery and shiny creme polish and these do not disappoint. Cirque has been putting out two monthly creme polishes that have NYC as their inspiration. For January, the Cirque Colors Metropolis collection brings you Midnight Cowboy and Empire State of Mind.

Cirque Midnight Cowboy is one of those rich navy blue cremes that blue lovers go gaga over–myself included. The formula on this baby is so creamy and delicious that it basically applied itself. It’s very opaque, but you will need two coats to achieve full opacity.

Who doesn’t love vampy nails? Well, for all of you vamps out there, I offer you Cirque Empire State of Mind. This rich red oxblood color is beautiful and has the same perfect formula as Midnight Cowboy. The redness you see around my cuticles is not actual staining from the polish, it’s slight irritation from a new cuticle remover I used that I left on too long. That’s what I get for watching The Walking Dead while doing my nails.

This is the first time I try out cremes from Cirque and goddam they are amazing. Considering how pigmented these shades are, I did not get any staining even though I didn’t use a base coat–now that’s saying something. I also love how shiny the finish is, almost like patent leather. I always use Seche Vite as my top coat, and the shine was the same even before I top coated them. These 2 new additions to the Metropolis collection became available on January 1st and you can buy them here where they retail for $13. Will you be getting any of these? Don’t even mention Mirror Mirror to me because I am still kicking myself for not getting it when it was last restocked. Well, I hope you’re having a good Monday (oxymoron?) and that you’re staying warm if you live somewhere that has actual Winters. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!

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Delush Polish Green With Ivy

Posted on 4 January, 2015 by Cynthia

Every Friday I tell myself that I’m going to get all my errands done on Friday so I can lounge around and be lazy on Sunday, but I always end up scrambling trying to get everything done in one day. Today I have about a bagillion loads of laundry and have to do a bunch of other stuff around the house. BLAH! Fortunately, I made some time yesterday to do enough swatching to have posts lined up for the next week. I love to have things planned out, but I also have to write up the actual posts which is usually the hardest part for me, and I end up procrastinating anyway. I’m going to try to write up a few posts today so wish me luck! For today’s post, I have a polish that I enjoyed wearing very much during the holidays: Delush Polish Green With Ivy.

Delush Polish Green With Ivy is an absolutely delicious green jelly based polish full of green and blue glitters in varying sizes. It’s such a ridiculously gorgeous polish, and I was so excited to receive it as a gift from Amanda. This polish is part of the Holidaze Collection which is still available on delushpolish.com.

So what have you been up to this weekend? This weekend is almost over and I’m already looking forward to my next weekend. I hope you got some rest and that you’re all geared up for another new week! Thanks for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon.

Stamping Saturdays #50

Posted on 3 January, 2015 by Cynthia

It’s the first Stamping Saturdays of 2015! Where has the time gone? Where is my happy ending? Where have all the cowboys gone….? I just had a Paula Cole moment–it just happened organically. What happened to Paula Cole anyway? I remember really being into her music back in 1997–goddam I feel old right now. It’s kind of freezing right now, but next week our temperatures are going to go back to Cali-Winter norms so we’ll be in the upper 70’s. We really are spoiled, aren’t we? For today’s Stamping Saturdays mani, I used yet another gorgeous blue: Cirque Midnight Cowboy. I’ve been using blue a lot lately which isn’t surprising since it is one of my favorite colors. Let me show you how gorgeous it is.

Cirque Midnight Cowboy (press sample) is part of the January duo release for the Metropolis Collection. Each month, two luscious NYC inspired cremes are released by Cirque and this month we get a gorgeous navy and a deep oxblood red. Midnight Cowboy is creamy perfection. It applied like a dream and needed two coats for full opacity. Love this!

I can’t get enough of white and blue nails so I took this strange pattern from plate Born Pretty 05 (press sample). I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be, but since it was in an aquatic type plate, I figure it must be coral? It kind of also looks like brains to me. Am I weird? If you’re interested in checking out these plates, you can see them on Born Pretty Store here.

So what do you think about this mani? I think it looks so strange that it somehow appeals to me. I hope you’re enjoying your weekend so far, and thank you for stopping by today. I will talk to you soon.

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SpaRitual Oasis & Happy New Year!

Posted on 1 January, 2015 by Cynthia

Today is the first day of the rest of your life…NOT! I know we all tend to make a big deal about the new year, but it really is just another day. I don’t necessarily make official resolutions, but I do tend to think about things that I would like to change or improve. When I actually to promise myself to stick to resolutions, inevitably I break them right away and then I end up feeling super guilty. The biggest thing for me this year is to just be happier. I finally have a job that I like so that makes a huge difference in the quality of my life overall because we spend so much time at work. I know that the #1 resolution is to lose weight, which I desperately need to do, but I’m not going to say that this year. I just need to develop better eating and exercise habits and the rest will fall into place. As far as my blog goes, I want to get back on track with my posting. I haven’t been very consistent these last few months and I have felt that my heart just hasn’t been in it lately. I am feeling recharged and hope to do more nail art to get my creative juices flowing. Being more active on IG has been a lot of fun because I have been able to interact with a lot more people. I also feel that my blog needs a major facelift, but I don’t even know where to start so that will be a project that I will tackle a little later in the year. I wasn’t sure what to wear as my first polish of 2015, so I just grabbed one of the bottles that I recently acquired: SpaRitual Oasis. Let me show you how pretty this polish is.

I recently found most of the SpaRitual Wander Collection at my Ulta for $3 each. What a deal, right? The polishes in this collection are supposed to dry to a satin finish, but this one did not dry down to that finish and looked uneven I ended up top coating it to get an even glossy finish, and I was not disappointed.

And just because it’s been so freaking cold here in SoCal, I decided to use KBShimmer Flake Dance (press sample) to make this whole mani kind of icy and sparkling. I love this glitter and I love how easy it is to use to take your manicure to another level.

So how has the first day of the new year been treating you? What are you hoping to work on for the coming year, if anything? Well, I hope that you had a safe and fun NYE. Thank you very much for continuing to visit my little corner of the internet and I hope to get to meet more of you this year. Have a great rest of your day!