Thursday, November 28, 2013

Black Friday Gel Polish Deals

Hello again!  The weather's been awful this week, leading to an awful manicure and awful chances for photo taking in natural lighting.  I'll be back with some pictures in a day or two, but in the mean time, you know what day is coming up!
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EDIT TO ADD:

Redcarpetmanicure.com also has 50% off their entire site.   I just saw some new colors make an appearance at Ulta--and all of those and more are already on the RCM site for only $5.00!  The code MYREDCARPET will get you a further 10% off, but shipping is not free, unfortunately.

 SensatioNail.com has SOME of their gel polishes on sale for $5 each this weekend as well, but colors are selling out fast!  You also need to spend $50 in order to qualify for free shipping.

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Drugstore.com has 15% off everything with free shipping this whole weekend.  They sell SensatioNail, Red Carpet Manicure, Sally Hansen Gels (which are also buy 3, save $3), and NaiLuv gel polishes.

Speaking of Red Carpet Manicure.... they are still on sale for $8.00 at Ulta.com for the rest of the month, as mentioned in an earlier post.  The code JINGLE13 will get you free shipping, and of course, any Ulta member gets coupons in their inbox (like $3.50 off $10--106757 is the current code for that deal) every week or so. 

And speaking of Nailuv--I'm hoping they have sales on their original site, but their manufacturers site currently has some not too shabby deals, too.  Their 12 piece kit WITH an LED light, full size base/top coat and 5 mini color shades (plus extras) is only $29.99 at the moment.  That's about the same price you could pick them up for at Costco months ago!  And their gel polish shades are currently $8.00 each, although they don't seem to have the full range with the newest colors available.   Unfortunately, they don't seem to have a low threshold for free shipping--but Black Friday/Cyber Monday is still not quite here yet, so things may change, hopefully.

Even better than all that, though: Red Carpet Manicure is $7.49 at Walgreens.com; they have Sally Hansen Gels on sale for $7.79; certain NaiLuv Polishes are $9.99; and they also have certain SensatioNail gels on sale for $8.49 or $9.49.  The best bonus on top of all that?  The code TURKEY25 will save you 25% through Saturday!  Oh, and did I mention shipping is FREE once you spend $25?  That makes these gels crazily cheap!  Unfortunately, selection is limited--but at prices like that you may want to try out some new brands.


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Peace & Love & OPI Gelcolor

After my last post, we had the first snow of the season...and the day after  that was the sunniest day in a while, so I finally got to take a lot of pictures of my "Peace & Love & OPI" Gelcolor!

There are quite a lot of pictures to just show you ONE polish.  But this polish is that amazing; it can look like 10 different polishes in the right lights.  Sometimes, metallics in Gelcolor version are not as amazing as their regular nail polish versions, because they create more depth rather than looking like a foil on your nails, as RNP does.  Luckily this polish is amazing any way you apply it!

You see, in some lights, the dark steely-grey metallic base predominates:

And then in some the polish my reflects mostly forest green metallic:

Or mostly hazy purple metallic:

In some lights, you may get the teeeeensiest hint of  interplay of purple and green reflects above that steel grey base:


In other lights, it looks like a neat transitional fade (like an ombre look, almost) between green and purple:


And then in some lights....well.  It kind of looks like Harley Quinn and the Joker had a baby on my nails and IT IS AWESOME:

If I had to sum up the color, I'd say it was a highly-metallic dark grey base with purple and green reflects.  The size of the reflect glitter/shimmer is varied slightly, so that you can get little intermixed sparkles of silver, green or purple in most lights, for example on the sidewalls of my nail, outside of the main "stripe" of direct sunlight here:  


The beauty of this gel polish is that it looks different depending on your lighting and your angle in relation to it, and I find that multi-source lighting is the best to bring out both shifts at once--lighting like you would have in the grocery store, in an office building or anything like that. 

The formula of this gel polish is pretty good, too, as usual for OPI Gelcolors.  I used three coats, but you may be able to get away with two depending on your nails--I needed some extra strength, because as you can see my nails are not quite uniform at the moment, and I need to grow them out!  Since it is a metallic, you can see brush strokes in nearly all of my pictures.  Of course you can also see those in real life, too, but the color shift of the gel and the shininess inherent in all gels is so distracting that I don't even care!

Monday, November 11, 2013

Red Carpet Manicure and Sally Hansen Deals

Hi again!  Long-time-no-see once again, huh?  Unfortunately, the end of October/beginning of November has been really busy, and now the weather has been yucky for days--the moon might shine, but the sun sure isn't.  I've got OPI Gelcolor "Peace & Love & OPI on my nails at the moment, and I can't even get a picture with good natural lighting to show the world its awesomeness!

Anyway, this post is about deals, and 11/10 through 11/30, Ulta and Ulta.com has their Red Carpet Manicure polishes on sale for $7.99.  That's not as good as the BOGO half off sale during the summer, but still pretty good considering sales on gel polishes don't happen often.  They have a few unique grey-tinted jewel tones and red shades available for the fall right now, and they may still have a few colors from the summer collections on clearance at your local store, too!

Sally Hansen also has some of their gel products on clearance for half off at multiple stores, too.  Ulta.com has two polishes listed for half price, but I was able to find some gel polish strips with neat patterns as well as a few more colors on sale at a local grocery store, of all places!  The colors on Ulta's site are "Black Tie Optional" and "Troublemaker", but you may want to browse around locally for some more options.  If you've been wanting to try the gel polish strips or this brand in general, now is probably the best time.