Saturday Swatches

Every Saturday Occasionally, on Saturdays,, I'm posting manis, swatches and other assorted nail-related pictures taken during the week recently, that didn't make it into a post of their own. If there's some polish here you're particularly interested in, drop me a line and I'll write a more detailed review about it.

Color Club - Coral Cascade / 3 coats + TC

Note: I'm not 100% sure this is Coral Cascade, because it was from a mislabelled set and there is no number or name on the bottle itself. Other blogs seem to agree on it being Coral Cascade though.


China Glaze - Cowgirl Up / 2 coats + TC



China Glaze - Cowgirl Up / 2 coats
Essence Dance Topcoat - Waking up in Vegas

[NOTD] Frosted Champaign with no frost but lots of purple glitter. Also, a mission statement.

I have come to a truly shocking realization a few days ago. First - I own over 100 polishes. Okay, that isn't the shocker, I knew that. I use those silly little nail tip fan thingies, you know the ones you can buy in packs of 50 on ebay for a Euro or so, and I have a swatch of almost every one of my polishes, so I had a general idea of just how many there are. No, the slightly shocking realization was that I have never used over two thirds of them. Swatching doesn't count.

I had, as of this week, 88 polishes I have never worn in a full mani. Or at least not so I can actually remember it.

Whoops.

Therefore, my new mission: I shall not buy new polishes until I have made a sizeable dent in my untried pile. (No, it's not actually a pile.) Say, half of them. I'll not buy any polishes until I have worn at least 44 of those I own but haven't touched yet. I know myself. I might make exceptions for something truly amazing and limited, because if I don't, I'll just give the project up as too hard.

This is what I'm looking at right now. Not too daunting, is it? Doesn't even look like 80+ bottles.

I have started this week, with the pretty P2 polish I posted yesterday and continue with an Essence polish from January's Crystalliced LE. Since it's no longer available, I'm not writing a review....

Essence Crystalliced - 05 Frosted Champaign3 coats

That got really boring after a day - time for a party!

Above & Essence nail art special effect! - 01 it's purplicious

~~~

What is the untried-rate of your stash? Or are you generally good about actually using what you have?

Essence - Colour3

I hoped to finally get to finish the book reviews I’ve been trying to write, but I need some more energy for those, so instead, I present you more polish reviews.

I recently bought two of the double polish sets from the new Essence colour³ line and I want to show you the first today.

The new line includes 6 sets with two polishes each, one base and one topper, so in effect it’s 12 different polishes. At 4ml, they are really tiny, presumably because they'd be too heavy to handle otherwise. For testing purposes I got nos. 01 Midnight Date and 04 A Walk In The Park and this is the one I’m reviewing. I was waiting for some sunlight to make better pictures, but it looks like it won’t be forthcoming anytime soon – or at least not before I take the polish off again – so I’m just going to post what I have.

The naming is a bit confusing on these. Each of the two polishes of a set has a name. Additionally, each set also has a name - which is the same as that of the base colour. I think that was a bit of an unfortunate choice, because you can use them separately from each other and then it's difficult to tell if you're talking about the individual colour or the double set, but there you are.

The duos: 04 A Walk in the Park/ 01 Midnight Date

The two colours I'm showing today: A Walk in the Park / Stop for an Ice Cream

A Walk in the Park is a darker green with a hint of blue. I'd call it pine green, but it's not quite blue enough for that. It contains very fine green shimmer which is hardly visible on the nail however. Mostly it looks like a creme.
Stop for an Ice Cream is a transparent (might be very, very light blue) base packed with fine blue shimmer, some multi-colour shimmer and slightly larger transparent, silvery flecks.

1 coat of A Walk in the Park

1 coat of A Walk in the Park
1 coat of Stop for an Ice Cream

Price & availability: I got mine for 2,75€ in DM. That's for 8ml = 4ml per colour. Colour³ is part of the new permanent Essence display.

Formula & application:
A Walk in the Park is a bit thicker than ideal but still very usable. One generous coat is enough for full opacity and even coverage. If you do very thin coats like I tend to on my dominant hand, you'll need two coats. Unfortunately, it stains the cuticles somewhat, so plan in some extra time for clean-up - which I didn't do here.
Stop for an Ice Cream is a topper so you'll never achieve any sort of opacity with it. One coat is enough for a good, even effect over a base colour. The shimmer is pretty densely packed, but surprisingly, the formula isn't thick at all. Me likey. Drying time seems to be unremarkable on both. I was worried that the brush would be too heavy (what with another polish attached to the cap), but it's actually quite comfortable since you can hold it like a pen.
Together the two look almost like a dark teal from a distance. I'm not entirely sure about the strange flecks, I think they make the green base look kind of dusty, which didn't translate well to pictures. It seems to me that such a dark colour is not an ideal choice for this topper. I can imagine it working much better with something lighter, where the flecks will blend in more.  On the whole it's quite nice, but I think I'm going to use them both separately - Walk in the Park as a one-coat solo artist and Ice Cream as a pretty topper for lighter greens & blues.

Wear & tear: Two days and no sign of tipwear so far. No chipping either. I'm impressed.

On the whole, I think it's a clever concept. The 04 A Walk in the Park colour combination doesn't convince me entirely, but the individual polishes are great, both in colour and quality-wise. If you like green and can buy Essence, have a look at these!


Now, if I were to look for something to complain about it would be the height of these things. They're just... too tall. If laid down flat they take up too much space and if they stand, rumour has it they don't fit into a Helmer (which I have seen in many a stash post, so it seems worth mentioning). Luckily, there is a solution! Just pull the white cap off and you end up with two pretty little mini bottles of polishes. Since the remaining cap it rather too small to hold onto when polishing, I recommend keeping the white connector thingy and just pop it onto whichever you're using. This wasn't my idea, btw, I saw it on a forum. Credit where credit is due and so forth.

And coming soon:

Essence - Iced Strawberry Cream Ranty Review

As I mentioned yesterday, I removed Misslyn before it's expiration date - aka before I could pull an entire nail-worth of polish off, like I usually do. Yes, it's a bad habit, I know. But there's just something very satisfying about it.

I really needed to shorten my nails (2 mm shorter and suddenly my life quality improves. Yay!) and I also wanted to try one of the new Essence Nuge Glam polishes. I'm not really big on the typical beige nude colours, but I like the ones that have some pink in them and luckily the Nude Glam line includes two shades like that: 02 Iced Strawberry Cream and 04 Iced Latte. This morning I went for the strawberries:

Iced Strawberry Cream is a beige-pink filled with very fine silver shimmer that adds a touch of frost to the finish and also so-fine-it's-barely-there coral/salmon coloured particles. It's a very lovely, elegant colour with the fine shimmer keeping it from being a blunt, boring nude (I really kinda dislike nudes...). It's also very glossy on it's own and has a mirror-like finish with the appropriate topcoat. The pretty colour notwithstanding, this polish drove me to distraction today and I might just take it all off in a bit out of sheer spite.
But before we get to that, first the eye candy:

1 Coat P2 Basecoat
2 Coats Essence - 02 Iced Strawberry Cream
1 Coat Essie - Good to Go TC

Isn't it pretty? I think it's pretty.

Price & availability: I got mine for 1,25€ for 5ml in DM. I don't know if this part of the Essence line will be available in all stores selling Essence or not.

Formula & application: First the good news: this polish is mostly opaque in two coats, unless you make them really, really thin. Formula is fine, kinda runny but not unmanageable and the brush is the same as the Colour&Go brush. First coat is a bit streaky, but it mostly looks fine after two. There are some light brushstrokes however.
And now the bad: this stuff takes aaaages to dry. No, really. I usually wait until the first coat is mostly dry before applying the second, which normally doesn't take longer than 5-7 minutes and here it was still pretty sticky after 20 minutes. The whole mani with Essie's Good to Go (which so far has significantly shortened the drying time of absolutely every polish I tried it with) took over an hour to dry sufficiently for me to do stuff and I still managed to get some smudges in. In fact, I had to redo one of my thumbs entirely and after the first re-paint crinkled badly from the pressure of holding an apple (yes, really) I redid it a third time - almost two and a half hours ago by now - and with a bit of pressure I can still mark it. Also, there were bubbles on some nails. Lots and lots of them.

Wear & tear: No idea. I'm so frustrated, I might just take it all off again. I'll edit this if I decide to keep it on (and if it survives the big cleaning planned for the next hours).
EDIT: The mani survived my cleaning endeavours and lasted for almost two days without visible wear, so durability seems to be fine.

It's a pretty shade and maybe I just happened on a bad bottle, but bubbles and long drying time don't make me want to get more of these.

[NOTD] - Irreplaceable

I was eager to try this Essence polish because it's being discontinued and I wanted to know if I'll need a backup. As it turns out... I can't quite make up my mind. On the one hand I think it's perfectly gorgeous. On the other, I feel like the colour doesn't suit me at all. I did get a backup bottle in the end because I feel like it sometimes needs 3 (thin) coats to full opacity, which would empty these tiny colour&go bottles very quickly.

So here it is: Essence colour & go - 50 Irreplaceable. Currently selling at 0,95€. Greyish beige (more beige than grey though) filled with tons of very fine silver glitter that flashes gold & lime green. It was very overcast today, so no pretty sunlight reflection - a direct light source tends to bring the greenish gold out better. You can see the effect in the bottle very well however.

Unfortunately, yesterday's Black Ruby stained my nails somewhat after staying on over-night. I only wanted to swatch it and didn't use a base coat. I shall know better next time. As for Irreplaceable, I'm satisfied with the quality in terms of formula and application. My only quibble is the glitter - I thought it would be shimmer or glassflecks because of how fine it is, but no, it's most definitely glitter. This stuff gets everywhere and it sticks to skin like the devil and it being so fine makes it very, very hard to remove. I bet I'll have it all over the next polish still.

Shopping mania

I got my measly pay recently I went out to satisfy some very urgent cravings. I think I wanted to stop buying polishes and save up for an online order. Good intentions and all that.

I totally do not regret it at all however, because I got some real beauties that I've been ogling for a while.

From left ro right:
Misslyn - 595 Blue Planet. My first misslyn polish. I actually wanted to get the 646 (as seen here on Tine's blog) but couldn't find it anywhere. Blue Planet is absolutely gorgeous in it's own right however. It's a blue-purple duochrome which is not really visible in the picture. Misslyn has a bunch of very beautiful polishes that are supposed to be fairly good quality. In Germany they can be found in Karstadt, Kaufhof, Müller and some Douglas shops. The colour polishes are 4.95 for 10ml.
BeYu - 330 (I don't think it has a name). I don't really like BeYu - at 5.95 for 8ml it's way too expensive and I haven't been very happy with the only other polish I have of the brand. Unfortunately, I got really hooked by this colour. It's a grey-green with blue-purple glassflecks. A very interesting colour that I haven't seen on many blogs yet. This italian blog has excellent swatches.
BeYu - 209. I'm pretty sure that this is not best version of the lovely unicorn pee polish that can be found on a bunch of blogs. It does say INCI 31 on the label, but... I really have to twist and turn the bottle to get even a tiny glimpse of the multicolour effect of the shimmer :( But since it's apparently no longer available, I took it anyway. Maybe I'll find a better version in a larger Douglas.
Essence colour&go - 50 irreplaceable and 62 reach peach. These are being discontinued and I got them at the 0.95€ discount price. I could smack myself about irreplaceable - it's a lovely beige with gorgeous silver-gold-green glass flecks and for some reason I never paid it any attention before. I'll swatch it over the next days and if I like it I might have to get a second bottle.

I couldn't wait to see what 209 looks like and swatched it over a random black. This is in lamplight. The green does come out, but only if the light comes in at very flat angles. In the last two pictures I held the nail tip almost parallel to the lamp.

[NOTD] - the essence of snowwomen.

As has been mentioned in pretty much all reviews It's a Snow-woman's World from Essence's Crystalliced collection has a purple shimmer that is not really visible on the nail. Silly me, I thought there would be at least a hint of it. Well, I should have listened to the reviews, because there really is no shimmer at. all. on the nail. Pity. Still it's a nice shade of grey that suits me well enough. It's almost opaque in 1 coat if you're careful.

I was a bit bored with it so after wearing it for a few short hours I added the Love Topcoat from re-mix your style. It's pink, not purple, but that's okay. I like grey and pink. I think this provides a very vague impression of what the polish might have looked like with bigger shimmer particles that are actually visible. It's really quite pretty and much more shimmery than on the pictures.
Unfortunately something shrank. I'm not sure if it was Good to Go or if it was the Love topcoat. It's not as bad on the hand I photographed but on the other there's a clearly visible line all around the nail. Meh.

2 coats of Essence Crystalliced It's a Snow-Woman's World
1 coat of Essie Good To Go
2 Coats of Essence re-mix your style Love Topcoat Feels So Good

Coming up: Unicorn Pee shopping spree. I can't believe I just wrote that.

Essence - Ice Crystals on my Window Review

After taking off the red I was in the mood for something light coloured and elegant and picked Ice Crystals on my Window from Essence's Crystalliced collection. It has been available since late December and can still be found here and there, sometimes discounted. I have three polishes from this collection - the delicate, slightly shimmery colours really hit a soft spot, but so far I have been somewhat disappointed in the quality.

Ice crystals is a very light cream shade with a peachy-rosé shimmer and white glass flecks. I the bottle that is. On the nail, the shimmer is rather subtle and the glass flecks only visible if you look closely. The closeup pictures look horrible and my cuticles are a mess, in reality it looked much neater and certainly adequate for everyday wear, though not at all perfect, as you cah see on the last picture. I think this shade suits me much better than a straight forward white, which makes my skin look horrible, and I rather enjoyed having the colour on my nails. I'll be on the lookout for similar polishes with a better formula in future.
The bottle shot unfortunately doesn't show the shimmer, but the overall shade is pretty close.

2 coats of Ice Crystals on my Window
1 Coat of Essence Better than Gel Nail topcoat

I'm wearing the Waking up in Vegas Dance topcoat on the ring finger here.

Price & availability: 1,75€ for 8ml. Limited, but still available in drugstores, etc. I have seen them in the sales basket for as little as 0,80€.

Formula & application: The formula was okay, slightly on the runny side. The brush seemed somewhat wider than the one on the colour&go polishes. The application was a mess unfortunately. The first coat was very streaky and while the streaks vanished, bald patches remained. The second coat was less streaky but still left bald patches. A third coat would have been needed for opacity, personally I don't mind the white of the nail showing with such colours so I left it at two. Even though I tried to apply thin coats, they ended up in a really uneven layer, forming thicker ridges here and there. The topcoat evened it out a little, but I still had a visible thick ridge where the polish began. Ugh. Not pretty. Drying time was acceptable.
To be fair, most other reviewers didn't seem to have huge problems with this one, so it may be just be my lack of skill where light colours are concerned.

Wear & tear: After one day a few tiny corners had flaked off and at the end of the second day I could pull the polish off half the nail. I didn't do anything strenuous at all those days. Rather disappointing.

Essence - Take My Red Away review

Today I'd like to show you the only polish I got from the Legendes of the Sky collection (or trend edition as they call it) by Essence. It's limited and has been around since mid-January, but I still see plenty of them in the shops.

I thought all the colours were a bit boring to be honest, but I did grab the red because I didn't have a usable bright red and the cool shade of this one looked as if it might be just the right colour. There are swatches of the other 5 colours in this collection at Dani's blog and at Parokeets.

Here is the guilty party: 05 Take My Red Away, a bright red without any hint of orange. I'd say it's probably somewhere between ruby and cardinal red with a hint of magenta. It looks a bit muted in the bottle, but that must be the glass, it's fully saturated on the nail.

My camera was insisting on making it more orangey than it is and I had to tweak the pictures in photoshop, but the colour still slightly too warm on my screen (and my skin is too pink now...). What you can see is how beautifully reflective it is. Just a bit darker and I could use my nails as a mirror.

1 coat of P2 Perfect Nail Hardener
2 coats of Essence Legend of the Sky - 05 Take My Red Away
1 coat of Essence Studio Nails - better than gel nail top coat

And the gritty details:
Price & availability: 1,75€ for 10ml. Limited, but still available in drugstores etc.

Formula & application: Take My Red Away applies beautifully, without streaks and is opaque in one not too thin coat ( I used two, just because). I did have some problems with keeping it away from my cuticles, however, I think that was mostly because I had nasty cramps that day and was slightly high on pain killers and as a result my hands were shaky.

Wear & tear: It lasted almost 4 days until the first chips with hardly any noticeable tipwear until then. I was at the computer most of the time however and didn't really do anything taxing. Still, couldn't wish for better for the first time. If you can still find it and are looking for a nice solid red for cold skin types, this one is definitely worth a look.

Unfortunately I did come to the conclusion that I really, really, really dislike such a... RED on my nails. It's just a tad too much for my comfort ;)

[NOTD] - Rosé shimmer

I'm was the mood for something simple and elegant today after almost a week of grey (Cocktail Bling lasted most of Thursday too!) sand I decided to use a sheer pale pink. That was a bit too boring however, so I added pink shimmer to spice things up. I really like the way it looks, but it was absurdly hard to get a picture where the pink actually stood out proper. I think I took some 50 photos, below are the best of them.

I used KIKO 211 French Candy Pink and Essence Feels So Good aka the love topcoat.

1 coat P2 Perfect Nail! Hardener
1 coat KIKO 211 French Candy Pink
1 coat Essence Feels So Good
1 coat Essie Good To Go

[NOTD] - A variety of sequins

Today's nails are a bit messy because I actually only wanted to try out some different layerings but ended up liking them so much I did both hands. By the time I finished it was late night (or rather early morning) and I didn't feel like cleaning up.

The not-so-secret star is the KIKO Sparkle Touch - 270 Aqua Sequins, a topcoat with lots of opalescent hexagonal half-transparent flakies. I'm not sure flakies is the right term, they do actually look like sequins.
It's currently discounted - I got it for 1,50€. I believe it's supposed to leave the permanent range.

The flakies are in a transparent base and take on an amazing variety of colours, from pink to green to turquoise, silver and even a bit of gold - unfortunately only in the bottle. Depending on the colours you use them on, they can look absolutely stunning or lose all their vibrancy and make your nails just look spotted. The pink never actually makes an appearance and the colours that dominate on the nail are blue and turquoise, which is why I decided to try it over black and blues/greens.


The light wasn't very good and I still haven't figured out how to take proper close-ups which means the pictures are nowhere near what they should be, but I hope I managed to get the basic impression across. The colours are somewhat exaggerated - they are a bit more subtle in reality. I used Essie Good To Go over them all (another new acquisition and I can only say - I'm in love!)

Right hand:

From left to right:
1 coat of black Franken + 1 coat of Essence 76 hard to resist + 2 coats KIKO 270
2 coats of Essence 77 in style + 2 coats of KIKO 270
Black Franken + 2 coats of KIKO 270
Black Franken + Essence re-mix your style LE 01 Feels So Good*

Another view:


Left hand:

Black Franken + Essence special effect topper 01 it's purplicious
Black Franken + 2 coats of KIKO 270
Artdeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 121 + 2 coats of KIKO 270
2 coats of Essence 76 hard to resist + 2 coats of KIKO 270

Another:


And another:

Personally, I think it looks best with black or a very dark, deep blue. I didn't have a blue darker than Hard to resist (this has been remedied - I bought Lara from Douglas Absolute Nails earlier today) so I had to try and get it dark with a black base. In the pictures it looks looks brighter than it actually is.

I did have some problems with KIKO 270. Apart from the already mentioned incompatibility with many colours, there's also the pink-silver side of it. In the bottle it looks lovely. On the nails, the pink, as I said, is not visible. Except when, at a certain light angle all the flakies turn a pinkish silver - on any coloured base it looks like the natural nail colour is shining through, which makes the mani look... pitted, for lack of a better word.

Also, the flakies are not very densely packed and they are very clingy - they love to hug the the sides of the bottle or the bruch or each other, but when the times come to transfer to the nail, they seem inexplicably reluctant. This makes it very hard to get a satisfying amount of them and spread it evenly - I always needed at least two coats.

On the whole, I think it's a lovely topcoat that can produce gorgeous results but isn't as versatile as one might think (or wish) and that has its difficulties in application. Still, it's certainly worth the 1,50 Euros I paid for it.



*The Feels So Good topcoat is amazing. I haven't seen it mentioned much compared to the other popular polish from the LE, the Waking Up in Vegas flakies, and it's a pity. It's an absolutely gorgeous dense silver-pink shimmer that looks stunning over anything with a hint of pink, red, purple or, like here, over black. I've seen it floating around in the discout-boxes and I'd recommend picking it up if you haven't yet.If you're in Cologne - Ihr Platz in the main station still has bunches of them.