Hey there! Today I have a couple of products from Cici & Sisi that I received right before I went on holiday and, since I didn't do any nail art while I was away, my review of it is a bit delayed. But I'm happy I'm getting to it now. I received one of a unicorn-themed acrylic stamping plate and 2 of their series of sheer polishes for nail art. As someone who really enjoys the looks that can be achieved with sheer polish (e.g. leadighting, watercolors) I have accumulated quite the collection but these were a joy. Keep reading to hear all my thoughts on these new products.
12.5 x 6.5 cm acrylic plate
$5.99 USD
I noticed that there's actually 2 listings for this plate - one with smaller and one with larger images. I believe the one I was sent is the smaller one. The size difference doesn't appear to be very extreme but I do appreciate the slight difference (since images are frequently too large for my nails). The plate is made of acrylic. In the past I've had some issues with polish getting stuck in the texture of the plate but that didn't occur this time around. I don't know if that was because of a change in the manufacturing or because I've learned not to use the really thick stamping polish with Cici & Sisi plates.
5 mL sheer polish + thinner
$8.49 USD/set of 4
These polishes are available in 3 sets of colors: a red series, blue series and yellow/green series. Each set comes with 3 x 5 mL bottles of color and one bottle of thinner which can be used if you'd like to dilute the color and make it lighter. I received the red and blue series and I really liked them. Their consistency is more watery than other sheers I've tried which makes them far easier to apply, for both the leadlighting and the watercolor look that I did. Here's two swipes of each color I received over white. Even though the have a thin consistency, they're still quite pigmented so the addition of the thinner is nice so you could make them more pastel if you wanted.
One thing I didn't quite understand is that the listing calls them "gel" and says to apply them over gel polish. But these aren't gel polish and work perfectly over regular polish so that language was a little confusing to me. Here's a look at the instructions that were provided, even if I didn't exactly follow them.
Now onto the nails!
For the first, I wanted a watercolor look using the blue series of paints so I just applied the polishes over a white base with a wide nail art brush. Since their consistency reminded me of alcohol inks, after applying them, I spritzed them with rubbing alcohol with blended them together quite nicely. I applied top coat before stamping with Hit The Bottle Snowed In and As Black As Night. The colors still bled through the colors a little but I think it gave it even more of a watercolor finish. Finally, I applied matte top coat to complete it.
For my second mani (using the red series of watercolors), I did some simple leadlighting over a white base. I stamped the images with Hit The Bottle As Black As Night and then filled them in with the watercolors. For some of them, I did add the thinner to create lighter pinks. I finished with Vibrant Vinyls top coat. It seemed to fade the colors a little (something I have seen previously doing sharpie manis) and I'm really not sure how to get around that. I suppose you might just need to start with brighter colors than you want to end up with.
Well those are my thoughts of these recent products from Cici & Sisi. I feel like this post has more words than any I've written in a while so I guess I do have quite a few thoughts on them, haha! Overall, I'm happily adding these colors to my sheer collection even though they're not really polish and therefore need to be treated a bit different. And who ever has enough unicorn plates, right?
$6.99 USD each (Fairtales)
Available at Cici & Sisi
'Til next time...
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