[Sponsored] Lens review: GEO Crazy SF-01

Hello in the house!

The snow has finally started melting up here in the north but it's still a pretty long way to spring, lmao. Half the year is winter, where's the lie? Good thing is that we're done with polar night and that in turn gives me plenty of sunlight hours to do circle lens reviews on (when I have the free time, that is). And yes, of course today's post is nothing less than a lens review! 
I'll show you guys the super rad GEO Crazy SF-01 lenses, sent to me by the lovely Sweden-based circle lens shop CirclelensesEurope, also known as Cirkellinser. ^.- These lenses go under a lot of different names like Flame Eyes, Burning Flame, Bloody Wolf Eyes and several variations of those and possibly more – so if you're unsure if you're looking at the same lens, just check that it says SF-01 and you know it's the right one.

The lenses I'm reviewing in this post were kindly sponsored by CirclelensesEurope, aka Cirkellinser. Rest assured knowing that all my reviews are purely 100% my honest opinion. I never compromise the truth nor my real opinions.

The discount code "SAMURAI" gives you 10% off on any order placed on both CircleLensesEurope and Cirkellinser – feel free to use it! ♥

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.2 mm

Water content: 40±2% 

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

Note: To all my Swedish readers, please scroll to the end of this post for a summary in Swedish. // Till alla mina svenska läsare, bläddra gärna till slutet av detta inlägg för en sammanfattning på svenska. :)

Before I get to talk about the lenses themselves I want to tell you guys a little about CirclelensesEurope, also known as Cirkellinser. You might wonder why I'm mentioning two stores but the thing is that it's actually the same store, just for two different markets – CirclelensesEurope is catering for the whole Europe while Cirkellinser is especially for the Swedes. Both sites have the same people behind it, the same products for sale, ship from the same place etc so yeah, the only difference is basically that the other one is for people living in Sweden. Neither of them is a copycat or a scam site so no worries there – you can buy from either of them with confidence!

Both of their sites are stylish, fresh, inviting and easy to use. There is not a whole sea of circle lenses to choose from since they seem to focus on just a couple lens brands – GEO and EOS, respectively. But what CirclelensesEurope lack in options they make up for with incredibly high-speed and cheap shipping – it's a flat price of 3€ for anywhere in Europe. The fast shipping puts CirclelensesEurope at an advantage over Asia-based lens stores because yeah, if you're a cosplayer and need lenses urgently (let's say, a week before the con) then they might very well save your ass before the con gets it. xD

Regarding the shipping and handling time I want to say that I've always received my orders extremely fast – most commonly already on the next working day. Shipping to Sweden is usually 1-2 days and to the rest of Europe it's 3-7 days and it also says on their site that they ship out within 24 hours.

If you wonder to what European countries (note: they do NOT ship outside of Europe!!) they ship to then this is what it says on their site:

We deliver to following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom and Austria.

Their customer service is top-notch and reliable; they seem to often answer within 24 hours, even during weekends! Customer service is also really kind and easy to approach while still having that professional touch to it. All in all CirclelensesEurope is a very easy and smooth shop to deal with, safe to buy from and I would eagerly recommend them to all fellow European (and Swedish) cosplayers and circle lens fans! They are a really good store, I promise. ♥

 ~***~ Lens review continues ~***~

The lenses arrived in a small regular white bubblewrap envelope that comfortably fits into your average mailbox. They seem to always add some kind of cute stickers on the envelope, which is a really nice bonus – it makes it feel all the more personal and also shows that they care about each customer!

Inside the white envelope the lenses are packed in a small cute drawstring bag in varying colors. With the order also comes a free lens case, a business card with a hand-written 'thank you' note on the back, a GEO Medical information sheet (because I received GEO lenses) and, of course, the shop's own leaflet with information about their guarantees, wear & care etc – it's a good piece of advice for all the first-time contact lens users, so don't throw it away if this is your first contact lens purchase.

~***~

Before wearing the lenses for the first time, be sure to take them out of their little glass bottles and put them to soak in lens solution over the night. I do not recommend using the lenses straight out of their vials as the solution they are stored in is stronger than ordinary lens solution and thus might damage your eyes. Better be safe than sorry.

 I had no trouble inserting these lenses, except for that the lenses didn't want to center themselves onto my eyes without some additional help from my side, which quite literally means moving them with my finger (you can use your eyelid as a cover too, if you don't want to touch with your finger directly) until I see that my pupil is in the middle of the lens. It's a bit hard to explain what I mean but I just basically ease the lens into its right position as it seemed to get "stuck" off-center. ^^" This was not troublesome in any way as, once the lenses were positioned right, they did not seem to slide away from the center anymore.

One lens in.

As you can see I have naturally light blue-gray eyes and these lenses turn into these freaking cool monster eyes! You can guess already from seeing how bright the lenses are in their vials that there's gonna be some badass coverage going on. Also, if you look very closely at the vial photos you can see that one of the lenses has its print slightly off-center, I've never seen that on a lens before! It's not really noticeable when worn and doesn't affect wearing but yeah, thought I'd mention it anyway.

It's a really nifty design with a flame print in two colors, red and yellow, but when viewed from a distance the colors blend into each other and makes your eyes look an intense orange – the cosplay game is strong with these.

There is some enlargement to be found but it's not gonna make or break anything. This is not the kind of design (also applies to crazy lenses in general) that greatly benefits from huge sizes so I think it's a good thing that it's a neutral average in terms of size increase. I don't think most people want to be a moe moe kyun kyun flesh-eating being from the depths of hell... or something else that would rock flaming eyes. Unless you have a really twisted imagination and in that case, I love you.

Lens photos below!
All photos taken by me during an April afternoon with a clear sky. All close-up photos are free from color filters and such and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Natural room light in my apartment.

Yellow room light in my apartment.

Standing in an unlit corridor, indoors. (natural light only)

Facing a window.

Flash photo.

Outdoors, with my back against the sun.

Outdoors, facing the sun.

The comfort is decent. These give me notable orange/yellow corners in my vision field whenever I move my gaze but yeah, that's to be expected with crazy lenses and especially those that have a smaller pupil hole. You get used to having your vision slightly blocked by the orange quickly (especially in poorer lights) and it's not really bothersome. Comfort is otherwise fine, except for that I did experience a lot of sudden dry bouts/stinginess that would last 10 minutes or less on approximate and then disappear. It was uncomfortable whenever it happened but if I persisted past that part then the lenses would return to feeling perfectly fine again – it was weird. My guess is that it could just as well be caused by my eyes being exceptionally dry and sensitive but I can't know for sure.

Despite the comfort not being the best possible I must honestly say that I still dig these lenses. It's a really vibrant and eye-catching lens and works great for cosplay, LARP and anything else you can think of that would require unnaturally bold orange eyes. I can see a lot of use for these fancy peepers too – vampire, wolf or werewolf, monster, Sith lord (from Star Wars), dragon, evil being, orc, witch, possessed human, mutant and a lot more. Your limits are your imagination – go wild!

Distance photo time ~

 I went for an anime look, drawing inspiration from the whole "youngsters with multi-colored hair who save the world with superpowers" trope – this guy looks like the street fighter anti-hero type who transforms into a dragon when shit gets real on the battlefield. :DD

Regarding CircleLensesEurope I need to mention that they and their Swedish counterpart sadly don't carry prescription lenses for the time being. I can't tell if they plan to start selling those anytime soon but I keep my hopes up since a lot of people have vision defects, me included, and need prescription lenses to see. My own vision defects are minor enough (-0,50 on my weaker eye) that I can get around just fine with plano lenses but yeah, if you can't wear lenses without power I'm really sorry to say that, sadly, CircleLensesEurope doesn't have what you need. :'(

Remember, if you make a purchase at CircleLensesEurope or Cirkellinser you can get 10% off any order if you use the discount code "SAMURAI" during checkout – enjoy! ♡

Short summary:

Color: 9/10 

Intense yellow and red crazy lens that's really out there. Stellar choice for cosplay and fantasy creatures.

Design: 8/10 

Flame design that makes you look otherwordly and superpowered. A badass lens.

Opacity: 10/10

Covers my real eye color completely, just like a good crazy lens should.

Enlargement: 4/10 

Modest enlargement. It's there but it's not gonna do a big difference either way.

Comfort: 5/10 

Lenses settle off-center on my eyes (I need to move them in place) and I experience multiple dry bouts every now and then, otherwise pretty good. Orange-ish corners in my vision field in poorer light. Estimated wearing time anywhere between 2-5 hours, depending on if you have dry eyes or not.

Naturalness: 0/10 

Pfffffft, fuck no. :D

• Sammanfattning på svenska •

Vad är cirkellinser? 

Cirkellinser är kosmetiska linser som till en början mest användes i Asien av idoler, modeller och liknande men som har, på sistone, blivit alltmer populära även i västvärlden – särskilt bland ungdomar som har ett intresse för asiatisk populärkultur. Det som skiljer cirkellinser från vanliga färgade linser är att dom kommer i otroligt många olika designs och färger (även onaturliga färger så som röd, rosa och lila är vanliga) samt att dom får dina ögon att se större och vackrare ut! Cirkellinser finns att köpa både med och utan styrka. Det är flest unga kvinnor som använder cirkellinser men även män, transpersoner, ickebinära och andra har insett hur roligt det kan vara att byta ögonfärg lite nu och då för att uppleva en ny look och leka med sitt yttre.

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Cirkellinser är en svensk online-affär –förmodligen den första och enda i Svealand– som säljer äkta "circle lenses", numera även kända på svenska som cirkellinser. Tyvärr så säljer inte Cirkellinser linser med styrka i dagens läge.

Denna gång valde jag att recensera ett linspar som heter GEO Crazy SF-01 (bilder ovanför!) då dem verkade rejält grymma och tilltalande med sin flammiga design. Linserna anlände inom nån enstaka arbetsdag i ett vadderat kuvert – snabbare än jag förväntade mig! I kuvertet fanns även ett visitkort med en handskriven hälsning på baksidan, ett gratis linsetui samt linserna själv som var förpackade i en fin liten snörpåse. Linsvätska får man köpa till själv, det finns på apoteket.

Linserna är helballa, heltäckande och urläckra! Passar utmärkt till det mesta inom fantasy-väg, däribland varulver, vampyrer, mutanter, orcer och allt vad det heter. Dessa gör sig även bra till cosplay och varför inte Sithlords från Star Wars? :) I vilket fall är det ju en extremt täckande lins med en färg som är så kraftig att den syns på riktigt långt avstånd – faktum är ju att dessa ser orangea ut när åskådaren står en bit bort, vilket är riktigt häftigt då orangea linser överlag är ganska sällsynta.

Dessa linser har en helt okej bekvämlighet. Jag har naturligt löligt torra ögon (hej på dig, Saharaöknen) och dessa gav mig upprepade känslor av torrhet som kom och gick slumpmässigt; oftast var det kortvarigt men i några fall så tog det uppemot 10 minuter innan linserna återvände till det normalbekväma. Jag märkte även att dessa linser inte justerade sig automatiskt till att sitta centrerat på mina ögon, vilket betydde att jag fick hjälpa dom lite på traven och putta dit dom själv – det tar inte många sekunder och såvida du inte är känslig för att peta dig själv i ögat så är det inga problem (man kan även flytta linserna genom att använda sitt ögonlock emellan fingret och ögat, så slipper man röra med fingret direkt). Min gissning är att jag kan nog bära dessa från allt mellan 2-5 timmar, vilket är rätt bra i min bok trots allt; om du har normala ögon så kan du säkert lägga på några timmar för mina ögon är som sagt ökentorra. :D Jag använder ögondroppar nästan dagligen.
Dessa linser gör även så att hörnen i mitt synfält blir orangea, främst inomhus. Detta sker då linsernas pupillöppning är mindre än på din typiska icke-crazy cirkellins, vilket gör så att när du vistas i ett utrymme med sämre ljusförhållanden så blir din pupill naturligt större och "krockar" därmed med linsen. Man vänjer sig rätt fort vid det dock.

Linserna fick jag från Cirkellinser, en av mina sponsorer, i recensionssyfte. ^_^ Men fast jag inte själv betalat för just detta par så påverkar det inte min ärlighet ett dugg. Jag kan helhjärtat säga att Cirkellinser är en professionell och pålitlig hemsida som jag lätt hade köpt från även om jag inte var sponsrad. De säljer endast äkta cirkellinser som är tillverkade i Korea. De innehar även en äkthetsgaranti samt öppet köp i 30 dagar – allt för att du ska känna att du är i trygga händer. Beställningar som gjorts före klockan 14:00 skickas samma vardag och frakttiden inom Sverige ligger på 1-2 dagar och kostar endast 19 kr per beställning. Jag kan varmt rekommendera deras onlinebutik till alla som har ett intresse i färgade kosmetiska linser!

Min kod "SAMURAI" ger dig dessutom 10% rabatt på din beställning hos dem, glöm inte det! ♥

Thank you so much for reading!

Major kudos to CircleLensesEurope and Cirkellinser for making this review possible!

~ Shiro Samurai out.