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

Nail Art: flakies + glitters

I know it’s been forever since I last painted my nails, did a nail art, shot my nails and what more, posted here about my nails. Which is pretty sad when I think about it, because there was a period of time or about a year that all my blog was is my NAILS. Haha, those were the days when I managed to grow my nails and have them painted every other week. But not, I just don’t have the time. I blog more about the food I EAT, which I have been going out pretty often lately. Anyway, I decided to play around with a couple of new polishes from The Face Shop; BK901 and Etude House; PWH902. And these were the results of the two mash up.

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When I got my new camera (it’s called Gideon, but I don’t address it so) I got myself an Olympus 60mm lens too. It is a macro lens, a super powerful lens, but I didn’t try to shoot my nails with it. In fact, I don’t shoot much with it. Before and after I got my lens and camera, Jason had often nags me that I should read my manual and learn how to use my kit lens, what it can do and what it can’t do before actually trying out new lens. But I have been pampered by Alex, who loaned me his Leica 20mm and that I have also got my own 60mm to play with. I do try to shoot with my kit, I have had photographers telling me how I should use the kit as my main ‘weapon’.

But, hello! The 60mm produced these amazing pictures, which a kit can’t do. Yes, I did try. So, I’m going to try to shoot more with the 60mm for nails, because the amount of details this lens can capture is just, “Wow!”

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All pictures were shot with Olympus EPL5 using Olympus 60mm at f2.8, 1/125 sec and 1/160 sec with ISO 500 and 640. This was shot in a DIY light box placed outdoor with manual focus.

Swatch: OPI’s Just Spotted A Lizard

I’m just going to start this post with a note first. I have actually bought this nail polish, a long long time ago. Approximately around the time The Amazing Spider-man movie came out in mid-year 2012. I know, that must have been months. No, it is months ago. =.= I have somehow never found the time to swatch this polish, until today I have decided, “Hey, I’m going to swatch this now.”

And I’m in love.

No, really. If you haven’t heard or seen the swatches for this amazing polish, you will fall in love with it now. This polish is actually part of OPI’s The Amazing Spider-man collection. Hence, Just Spotted A Lizard – you’ll probably get it if you watched the movie. Anyways, the polish is a gorgeous duochrome with a gold greenish hue. Just lovely.

Review: As always, OPI’s formulation has been pretty consistent with a smooth application and the usual thick brush. Two coats would be sufficient, but I like my nails to be painted with three coats, so my nails (as pictured) have three coats. It is a slightly metallic polish, so you can see the streaks but this is not obvious unless you start scrutinizing it. 

I think it’s worth noting that this polish is actually a dupe for Chanel’s Peridot. Chanel’s Peridot is just love love at first sight. I stumbled upon pictures of it, way back in 2011 and I just fell straight in love. (You can check it out here.)

Nail Art: ‘Ming’ Dynasty’s Vase Inspired

It’s been a while since I last did a nail art, but I was at work when this nail art idea came to mind. There was a contest on Instagram, and the theme was vintage. A simple Google search on vintage nail art would show you images of those gorgeously hand drawn flowers painted meticulously over each nail. Unfortunately, I’m not that good, not even close to drawing anything on my nails. So, I thought about the vintage theme. And then, *snap*. One day, I saw a print of blue and white and I thought the ‘Ming’ Dynasty’s vase. Although, that is more antique than vintage. But hey, worth a shot. This was how the nails turn out to be.

The polish I used for this were Sally Hansen's Blue It and a white stamping polish. The designs were stamped and this is my first time stamping so it didn’t stamped as neat as I hoped it’ll be. Well, practice makes perfect. :) I’ll be trying my hands on more stamping nail art.

And here is the entry I submitted on Instagram.This was for a contest organized by @followthatway (a talented Singapore Instagram user who does these really amazing nail arts). Let’s hope I’ll get lucky :)

Till next time, loves!

Keep Calm and Polish On.

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: Chinese New Year nails!

What is Chinese New Year without loads of Mandarin oranges? Once you see these oranges, it can only mean that the Chinese New Year was around the corner. :) So, I thought it would have been appropriate to pose my nail with a Mandarin orange. Haha.

Swatch: Elianto’s Turquoise

Like the neon pink polish I got from Elianto (read the swatch review here), it was natural for me to expect that this polish would have the same formulation. My expectation was a reasonably logical one but yet I was, somewhat disappointed by it. Read on to find out why. Before that, some pictures. The polish may have sucked but it is still a gorgeous colour. I am usually not a fan of blue or any shade of it, but with this Turquoise polish, I wondered why I hadn’t gave this colour a chance before. Haha.

Review: Before my first coat of polish, I saw that the formulation wasn't too thick and I had assumed that it meant that the polish would be easy to apply since it's not too thick. Only to be proven otherwise after applying the first coat. It was super mega streaky like i-want-to-cry-and-throw-the-polish-away type. Yes, I did get that frustrated.
Even so to the point that I removed the polish and then re-applied it again just to see if the polish was really that streaky or it was just my nails. Still streaky, so I ended up painting 4 coats of it and then hoping that my Seche Vite will be able to smooth out the imperfections, which thankfully it did.

Guess what, that isn't the end of this terrible polish experience. Later in the evening (I painted my nail in the afternoon), I realised that my nail colour have turned a bit more yellowish than its original colour. I'm guessing this happened because of the Seche Vite top coat. But then again, the Seche Vite top coat has never made any other of my polished go yellow, only this one. So I'm thinking it must be some kind of a reaction. Hopefully.

But it could also be the polish because before applying them, I saw a layer of yellow which I assumed was a layer of oil which is normal for polishes that have been kept for some time.

This picture taken under fluorescent lightning.

 

In the pictures, you won’t see any of the yellowing, because I took the pictures before the polish changes colour. I still find it hard to believe that the polish could actually changes colour, but I guess it happens. I think it is probably similar to how oxidation makes colour changes as well. It could be because of that but I cannot be too sure.

 

To be honest, lately I have been having naked nails because I am too lazy to paint my nails. I’m not happy about it because I know how painting nails keep me happy but sometimes, my manicures are quite tedious coupled with the shoots that follow to get nice pictures. So, I’d rather leave it naked. :s But I’m beginning to paint my nails again, because I do need that dose of happiness. :D

Till next time, lovelies! xoxo

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.

Swatch: Elianto’s S12 (Neon Pink)

Like I mentioned in the previous Swatch post; the black polish from The Face Shop, I rarely shop for new polishes at shops like Elianto, The Face Shop or even Etude House which used to be my favourite places to get new stash. For Elianto, the main reason why I didn’t like their polishes previously was because I really didn’t like formulation. Of course I am not comparing them with OPI, seeing that it is a different league all together. But even for the RM5 price tag, I would expect at least a decent polish, non-streaky and thinner formulation. I used to get tonnes of air bubbles whenever I apply the Elianto polishes.

I knew, Elianto released new polishes, about sometime ago and they also increased their price by 50 cents, if I’m not mistaken. I still didn’t have the confidence to buy their range, but luckily my sister’s friend have gifted her with this Neon Pink polish from Elianto recently. I couldn’t resist swatching it, since it was sitting nicely and tempting me to. Previously, Elianto named their polishes but they now go by codes only, and the packaging is still similar with the previous one.

Review: Compared to the previous formulation, it seemed to have improved a lot. It's now so much easier to apply and the product is less thicker, enabling thinner coats to be applied. But fear not, it's not too sheer and I have three coats on. As you can see, it still gives a pretty even coverage. The brush is also big in size so it's very easy to apply and maneuverer it around. It also doesn’t have an overwhelming smell, which was still acceptable to me. Overall, I love this polish and the colour is amazing too.