Squares in Cirque

Hi everyone!


I know, lousy title, but I'm totally lacking any kind of inspiration (or energy for that matter) so it'll have to do. The manicure it describes is better, I promise! Want to see? Just move your eyes a little further down the page...

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you probably know I'm not too fond of polishes that have larger thingies in them like flakies or big glitters. So when the Cirque Colors Facets collection came along I decided I didn't need them in my life. But for some reason I kept looking at pictures of swatches when I came across them and when I saw a gorgeous swatch by Maria of the blue one I seriously started doubting my decision but with all the beautiful holiday collections that started to show up I didn't want to spend money on polishes that I wasn't 100% sure I would like.

Enter my husband who keeps pushing me out of my comfort zone by asking me to put on colors I wouldn't choose, do designs that are totally not me and telling me to buy polishes I would never pick myself. This time he didn't say a word. Instead he simply ordered the entire collection and gave them to me as a present for putting up with him for eleven years, two months and seventeen days (HIS words). It doesn't happen very often but I was speechless (and he couldn't stop laughing while I was trying to come up with an answer...) Anyway, when I was putting away the new bottles, Morganite ended up next to Carpe Diem and Hudson (I store my polishes by brand) and I really liked the colors together. This is what happened next:

indoors, no flash

I painted my thumb, index and pinky with two thin coats of Cirque Colors Hudson, a lovely dusty jeans blue. My middle finger was covered with two thin coats of Cirque Colors Carpe Diem. Last but not least my ring finger was painted with three thin coats of Cirque Colors Morganite, the nude-peachy colored flake filled beauty I fell in love with the moment I took it out of the box... (yep, hubby did a great job getting me those thingie-polishes. The other ones will definitely make their appearance as well ;)

After that it was time for the decal. I painted a rectangle of normal top coat on my silicone mat, let it dry, stamped an image with squares from MoYou London Asia 03 using Hudson, let it dry, filled in parts with Morganite, let it dry, painted the entire rectangle with Carpe Diem and let it dry again. Making decals definitely means a lot of waiting ;)

When the decal had dried I cut it in half diagonally and applied one half to my middle finger (the other half ended up on the ring finger of my right hand), pressed it down firmly, removed the excess with a brush and acetone and covered the entire nail with a generous coat of Seche Vite (and all my other nails as well but you probably guessed that already). And that was all :)

Look at those colors... don't they look pretty all lined up:

Cirque Colors Hudson, Cirque Colors Morganite, Cirque Colors Carpe Diem

Unfortunately Hudson wasn't as opaque as I would have liked for a stamping polish but the color is so gorgeous I overlooked the less than perfect stamp. In hindsight I should have tried to stamp the image in the same place again to get it more opaque but I didn't think of it at the time... oh well, too bad ;) And Morganite... I can't even tell you guys how gorgeous this polish is. It's a top contender for my Christmas manicure! I don't think I would ever wear it as a full manicure because it would completely blind me but it's perfect for accents and I think it would look great when stamped over as well, so that's on my to do list.

What do you think? Would you wear a blingy, glittery polish like Morganite for a full manicure?


Cirque Colors Hudson, Carpe Diem and Morganite are bought from Pretty Polish.