Swatch: Essence's Colour 3 | Midnight Date & City That Never Sleeps

Yay! I'm doing yet another swatch for my favourite nail polish brand, Essence. I actually got this polish and a couple more together with my last Essence's polish, Chic Reloaded. So, you'll be seeing about a couple more swatches from Essence over the next few weeks. This time around, the nail polish is from a different collection and also range actually. This range is called the Essence's Colour 3 because there is two different nail polish in one bottle but you'll get three colour from the bottle.

Meet the two polishes | Midnight Date & City That Never Sleeps | Painted with two coats

Swatch: Essence’s Chic Reloaded

I started blogging seriously about a year back, and it all started with my passion for painting nails. I will always remember which was my first polish and who got that polish for me. Since then, I started getting more polishes, started applying them, photographing them and then uploading it to my blog. My blog then was filled with nails and nails and more nails. My favourite will always be Spongebob nail art that I did, which was a popular read. I can totally see why, it was too adorable! In fact, the online shop which I got the stickers used my picture too, but unfortunately she didn’t bother crediting me. Ouch.

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Anyway, I’m back to reviewing another polish which have been sitting in my polishes box far too long. It’s one from my favourite nail polish brand, Essence. I have always loved Essence because it’s so affordable. You can get a great polish with excellent formulation for less than RM 10. Such a steal, when compared to OPI, Colour Club and China Glaze which goes for more than RM20 per bottle.

This time around the Essence’s polish I swatched is Chic Reloaded, a gorgeous micro glitters holographic almost metallic nail polish. Can you visualize how beautiful it is already? Micro glitter + holographic + metallic?

 Chic Reloaded | RM6.90

Swatch: Essence’s King of Mints

About a few months back, I was going nuts trying to find the right shade of mint green polish. I have fallen in love with the colour, especially after seeing the colours on lookbook.nu. But somehow back then, the mint green colour trend hasn’t hit off here in Malaysia yet, and so, none of the usual nail polish brand carried this colour. :( Then, one day while I was at Watsons, I went over to the Essence shelves (This is the only way to get Essence products after the Coci Coci shops in Mid Valley and Lot 10 closed down). The products left for sale was almost miserable, Watsons rarely stock up on Essence’s products. :( But here I saw a polish which was named as King of Mints.

And in that moment, I thought I found treasure, literally. Haha, even though the colour wasn’t too promising from the bottle I still got it because it was named King of Mints and I, Carmen Hong has been looking for a mint polish since forever. There was only two bottles left and I knew I didn’t get it now, I wouldn’t ever be able to. So, I thought why not give it a try, it was only RM8.90 after all.

The colour was, frankly disappointing and isn’t anywhere close to being a minty green polish. It is a very dull colour, but it was actually a rather unique polish actually because it had a glazed effect after applying it. This effect is not obvious under normal lightning conditions, but once in the sunlight, you could see that little glazed sparkle.

I have always been amazed by polishes from Essence but for Kings of Mints, I am afraid I can’t say the same. Putting the colour aside, the brush itself is different from the usual polishes. This is probably because King of Mints is from a limited edition collection called Rock You, released way back in 2011. (See how slow Malaysia is? =.=’)

As you can see the design of the bottle is square-ish which is strikingly similar to Butter London’s design of bottles. I quite like a square bottle which is a nice change from the usual designs. But what I really hated was that Essence made the brush for this polish so ridiculously microscopically small. It was so difficult to apply the polish with such small and short brush. The second time I applied this, I learnt that to apply this polish smoother, you’ll have to take up more product to apply it evenly.

Overall, I don’t really like this polish as much as I liked the name, which was disappointing really. But nevertheless, I’ll still get more Essence polish when I can, because I know the brand has been usually consistent with its other polishes.

Nail Art: Heart Shaped Matte Pink

With the Internet these days, it has been so easy to find and share pictures of pretty nail art designs. There are so many nail arts that I have seen from the net that I wanted to try. In fact, I was so inspired by some of the gorgeous ones that I actually sketched them out (with guides and notes) in my sketching notebook. Anyway, before I get side tracked any further, I stumbled upon a picture on Pinterest (Yes, I’m on there. :] Follow my boards HERE.) of a super simple nail art; matte heart. It was such an easy nail art to do since you only need stickers + matte top coat, not forgetting the base colour too. So here is my version. :D

How do you like my version? :) I used the Neon Pink polish from Elianto, which I swatched and reviewed before. Click here to read it.

So, how do to do this nail art? What you’ll need is a sticker. Draw a heart shape, cut that out and then paste it over your nail. The nails should be painted with a base colour before that. After pasting the sticker, top it off with a matte top coat. Whenever I use stickers for my nail art designs, I prefer to let my base polish to cool or dry for at least 24 hours because sometimes the sticker may be too strong and ruins the base colour, Just like that, and you’re done.

You may notice that there is a white outline over the heart shape. That is actually because of the matte top coat. I used Essence’s Matt(e) Top Coat for this nail design and somehow, after I peeled off the sticker, it left a white outline. But fret not, it’ll be go off after sometime. Of course, if you’re irked by it like myself, you can slowly scrapped it off with your nails, like I did. Haha.

It was a really simple nail art to do, something that I finished in less than 15 mins. To be honest, these days I find myself preferring to swatch instead of doing nail arts. Maybe I got lazier, :(. Which is why I am so going to make it point to do more nail arts. I know I’ll never be short of inspiration with the Internet these days, anyway.

Swatch: Essence’s Choose Me

I love Essence nail polishes, I just wish it’ll be so much easier to get them here. About a few weeks ago, I found out that the COCI COCI shop in Mid Valley which carries the Essence range have just been closed down. So, the only way to get these polishes are from selected Watson’s outlet. But then, Watson is always running out of stock for Essence polishes. Sighs, I wish I have gotten more of the polishes and kept them.

So, today’s swatch will be from Essence, called Choose Me!, which was aptly named because I was looking at all the nail polishes and I ended up picking this because the colour caught my attention. :)

Review: As you can see the polish appears to be more of a glitter polish, and it is one, but it has very fine micro glitters instead of the huge ones. The formula is amazing and consistent with the other Essence nail polish I swatched earlier on (read it here), which is smooth and easy to apply. It also helps that the brush is flat and large making it even easier to apply the polish. And what is even more surprising was that it pretty easy to remove considering it's a glitter polish. I usually stay away from them but this one was too gorgeous not to try on when I saw it on the shelves.

A close up on the polish, you can see the micro glitters here.

Under the direct sunlight.

Taken indoor, under indirect sunlight.

For more pictures, please check my Facebook album; Nail Art, Swatches + Mani.

Review: Essence Matt(e) Top Coat

Review: Ever since matte nail polishes came out last year, I have always wanted those polishes. And then, matte top coat came out which means you can get matte polishes over any colours you wanted! Dream come true. Heh. So, I have been shopping around for matte top coat, I was pretty close to getting one from Inglot but thanked God I didn’t. Because Essence’s top coat despite costing only RM 8.90, is a pretty awesome matte top coat. The thing about matte top coats is that it would magnify any imperfections of your nail polish like unevenness and streaks. Also, they take a longer time to dry. But those are not true for Essence’s Matt Top Coat. It was easy to apply with similar brush in Essence’s Where is The Party and also, quick drying. It took about the same time the Seche Vite top coat to dry which is pretty impressive, I would say.

So, I tried the top coat on Majolica Majorca GR319 and this is how it looked liked! (I did a swatch on this polish before, so just click here to read it and compare with the matte coat version)

I actually fallen in love with it after I painted the matte top coat. I had earlier mentioned that I wasn’t too fond of the colour in my blog post on it but I’m loving it with the matte top coat! Now I cannot wait to play with this top coat with my other polishes! Till next time. :)

Swatch: Essence’s Where Is The Party

Hello, babes! I know it’s been a while since I posted some swatches. Well, I really don’t have the time anymore to even shop for nail polishes. But one day, I was at Guardian and I realised that they started carrying Essence’s products. Previously, it was only available in Mid Valley or rather the Mad Valley which is a place I would avoid at all cost. Always packed and jam around the mall. And oh, just a note, my nails did grow quite a bit before I actually shot my nails.

So, anyway, I was actually looking for Essence’s Where is The Party because I fell in love after reading one of the nail blogs around. It is a gorgeous duo-chrome colour with shades of mainly purple, green and sometime grey. This post is quite photo heavy because I love the shots I took and decided to put them all in.

Review: Surprisingly, for the price of RM 6.90, the formula of the polish is pretty good. It applies easy because it comes with a big brush and sticks true to the fact that it is a quick dry nail polish. I don’t have much to complain about this except that the polish is slightly metallic and hence you have to careful with the streak lines. It is actually not that obvious, but yes, you can still see it. Other than that, it can get a bit tricky to remove the polish. But I still fell in love with this polish despite all that. :)

Close up one the nail. Gorgeous colours, right?

My favourite shot! It’s a bit blur, but it somehow gives the matte, out of focus effect.

And the infamous, lip shot. Heh. Here, the nails look metallic.