Tag Archives: Essence
Tropical gradient
Hi hi! I can’t get my hands off the turquoise colors lately it seems. It’s just such a bright, happy and classy shade, I simply love it. So obviously I couldn’t resist doing a gradient. I used several colors..
As a base there was Etos Effect Nails nr 22 with Essence Glisten Up on top. I gave that some time to dry and then started sponging with Sephora Teeny Bikini (lol). About halfway the nail I sponged with Essie Turquoise & Caicos and the upper part of the nail was sponged with Rimmel Sky High. I finished it all with another coat of Essence Glisten Up and voila, c’est ça! Flakey goodness! Combined with clear rhinestones this tropical cocktail is ready to drink! (does it show I need a holiday to some sunny place far far away? ugh)
The ring was a cheapy from a dutch jewellery store called Six and was only 4 EUR. I bought it last week and I so love it 
Enjoy the weekend!
Halloween nails pt 3: Frankensteins
GREEN GOODNESS!
That’s one way of describing these Frankensteins..! This is the third design I’m making for Halloween 2010. I was inspired by a YouTube movie which I just couldn’t resist. The green/lime base I used is the new Essence Colour & Go Lime Up! I only needed one coat for this polish to be opaque and the drying time was quite fast. I used a black striper for the hair, lips and stitches. The eyes were made with a dottingtool dipped in Konad Special White. Check it out!
Excuse the un-polished thumb! This was before I finished both hands. My ritual is to always show my ‘to-be-posted’ mani’s to a good friend first & he tells me his honest opinion. Luckily for me, he liked it haha. I’m wondering if you show your creations to someone close to you as well before posting it on the interwebs! Let me know, I’m curious 
Nighty!
Fabulous Flakies: Nfu-Oh dupe?
Hey you guys!
I hope you will be running to your local drugstore after reading my post cause this combination of polishes is really awesome. I picked up the new Essence polishes Glisten Up and Absolutely Stylish today. I already saw an amazing effect of Glisten Up on Nihrida’s blog and was thinking about what color I would use as base. I figured, why not just put it on top of Absolutely Stylish and see what comes out. So I did…and was in awe. WOW! What an amazing green?! effect it gives. Weird, since Glisten Up is totally blue! The blue is hard to capture with my camera but it has this duochrome effect, you will see blue flakies in a certain angle. Just play with the lighting.
Behold zeh beauty:
Haven’t got an Nfu-Oh yet? Too expensive? Or just blown away by the beautiful flakies you see all over the web? Here is your cheap solution to a beautiful green/blue flakie manicure of which I even dare to say it’s a sliiiigggght dupe for Nfu-Oh 52. Big difference is this combination doesn’t have the purple’ish dark-blue’ish glow like Nfu-Oh 52 but hey, for the price you paid for these two polishes I think there is no reason to complain right?!
Take care and make the most of your weekend!
Celebration Nails! + giveaway winners
I’m feeling festive today! This has several reasons. First of all: my packages from Hong Kong arrived today with my new fimo canes (*cough* like I didn’t already have 50 but still). These new canes are sooooo cute! They even have little Hello Kitty’s
That brings me to the next happy announcement. Random.org has decided the winners for the Hello Kitty and Manglaze Franken Jugg’s giveaway for me this afternoon. That’s about damn time I hear you think.. ye.. I know.. and I’m sorry. Life has been so busy lately and and and *insert more excuses*
The last thing I want to say is: Happy Birthday Chris! The lovely Chris from Lacquer Ware for Tips and Toes is having her birthday today. Congratulate her here if you haven’t already! I hope you have a great day 
So, with celebration comes PIE! And since Hello Kitty was the theme of one of my giveaways I felt like combining the two to a silly mani. Will I look bad when I say I’m kinda proud of this? It’s childish but cute! I used Joe in Tomato for red but underneath I applied a small layer of OPI Alpine Snow so there would be no VNL. Then I cut some small fimo parts off the cake- and HK cane. I loved the little cake with cherry so much that I tried to freehand it with my nail pens from Ebay. The red cherry is made with a dotting tool dipped in Essence Show Your Feet in 07 Hot Red.
*Omnomnomnom* I will need to take this one off very soon or I’ll get hungry the rest of the day 
Saving the best for last: the giveaway winners areeeeeeee
Hello Kitty: …Rebecca from Nails Etc
Franken Jugg’s: …maRyaa from Konad Addict
Congratulations to both! Please e-mail me with your addresses and the goodies will be shipped asap.
Enjoy your day!
Essence Matt(e) Top coat
And there we have another cheap innovation from the German budget brand Essence. I think we all have one ; a matte topcoat. Whether it’s from Essie, OPI, Orly of Manglaze, a matte is a must-have!
Their new polish is called Matt Top Coat and is EUR 1,79 in your local drugstore. The only matte top coat I own is the Essie Matte About You, which I love. Time for a comparison don’t you think?
I wanted to do this comparison together with a swatch of 2 of the new Essence polishes from the Denim Wanted collection: 04 Forever Mine (light blue) and 03 My Boyfriend’s Jeans (darker blue).
The polishes I used:
And this is the result:
Ofcourse a picture never shows the 100% real view but I think this Essence Matt Top Coat has the same result as Essie Matte About You. I honestly don’t see a difference! This means that for about 2 dollars you can have a nice dupe of a more expensive polish like Essie or OPI etc. Nice ain’t it?
Last a Konad-fail:
Hope this comparison was helpful. Have you seen this new Essence product already?
Take care!
Essence Studio Nails
Guess what I found in our local drugstore today. The Essence Studio Nails fashion stickers. I had read about these before but wasn’t really aware of the fact they would be in stores so quickly. Ofcourse I was curious to these stickers because if this really works it can be a quick, non-messy and stylish way of decorating your nails
I bought three different designs of EUR 1,99 each.
Since I figured it was probably going to be a pain to apply (just like all other fullnail stickers I have tried so far) I took the one I liked least: the stripes. Inside the wrapping are 2 small sheets with each containing 7 stickers in different sizes. I personally would have liked if they had focussed more on doing 2 extra stickers in small sizes than the big ones. You got to have real REAL big nails for the last 2 stickers to fit any nail. This is what it looks like:
What I thought would happen happened. It’s really hard to get the right size for your nails. Understandable ofcourse because everyone has different nails. Once you have placed the sticker on your nail it is possible to get it off again to correct yourself if nessecary, that’s nice! I had to cut some edges off on the sides to make the stickers fit better but still got some wrinkles, seems that cannot be avoided (tips are welcome here!!). After some scissorfun this is how it turned out:
To be very honest.. OK it is quick (well…if you have perfect Essence-sized nails that is) and it’s not messy (forget about all the small sticker parts that you had to cut off which are now all over your scissor and hands), and it looks nice, but for me it kinda took away the fun of being creative myself and polishing my nails! Essence claims these stickers stay put for up to 5 days without chipping. I would love to try that out but..I’m not going to keep these on for 5 days haha.
Have you tried these Essence Studio Nails yet? What do you think about them?
Enjoy your day!
Shooting stars
Helleeeuuuu!
I was sooooo not in the mood to do something extraordinary with my nails but hey, I’m not going out the door without SOMETHING on my nails I decided to use my Essence Silver Surfer striper which I had never used before. Being in an Essence mood I used little stars from the nailart jars they sell. They are small (sharp! ouch) and reflective and I figured they could be great shooting stars. I added some glittertopcoat to ‘seal the deal’ and we were off to work!
This was pretty easy to do. Ofcourse a littttttle hard to make perfect stripes on the right hand but hey, same shit different story 
Now you may make a wish Goodnight!
