Essie Parade

Went to collect my new polishes from my friend and I just had to take a picture of them! I didn't purchase all of these Essies at one shot! These are just some of my Essies which I though fit the colour theme! Left column: Body Language, Chinchilly and Smokin' Hot. Right column: Playa del Platinum, Jazz and Hot Coco.
And I'm proud to say that all these 6 Essie colours all needed only 2 coats to be opaque! Kudos to Essie for its recent awesome formula! God knows how I cringed when I had to paint FOUR coats of Turquoise and Caicos on!

Took another picture with flash because I couldn't resist!



The new Essies I got were Jazz, Playa del Platinum and Chinchilly, so you probably can tell I'm still in my greige / neutral mood!



Here we have Playa del Platinum on my ring finger and Chinchilly on my pinky. (And in case you're curious, I have China Glaze Pelican Grey with some glitter polish on top on my index finger and China Glaze Seaspray on my middle finger. Note that Seaspray isn't as blue as it appears in the pictures! It's much paler.)  I guess I'd describe Playa del Platinum as a greige because it clearly has some yellow / beige undertones! Chinchilly looked a little more brown than in the picture but really, it's predominantly grey! It's quite the opposite of OPI You Don't Know Jacques, which is more brown with hints of grey.

After thinking for a while, I realised that Essie Jazz looked really familiar and then I remembered, I have an Elianto polish (Eggshell) that looks almost like it! Case in point:







All taken under different lighting, with the last one taken with flash.







Again, last picture was with flash, the first 2 were taken under a lamp.

On the nail: Essie Jazz on the left and Elianto Eggshell on the right! Jazz is a little more yellow whilst Eggshell is a bit more beige but really, who's gonna notice? I think I've started to lower my dupes requirement so I'm gonna let this one pass and say they're pretty much dupes! Essie costed $11 while Elianto was $2.90 (or was it $2.50?) so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Elianto is more worth it! Both were 2 coats but again, Elianto applied more opaquely so it wins formula wise too! I'm sure Essie will win in terms of staying power (as it normally does) but if I'm gonna change my nail colour after 2 or 3 days of wear, what difference will that make?

Pretty mad at myself for not realising how close the 2 colours would be because I thought Jazz would be closer to OPI Tickle My France-y but it's not!



L-R: Elianto Eggshell, Essie Jazz and OPI Tickle My France-y, taken without flash.

 

Same order as above, taken with flash.

Okay, I think when you start buying polishes without realising how many close dupes you already have, it's time to take a step back and stop for a while. I bought almost the entire Misa 9 to 5 collection via Gwen's spree (sans Wokring Hard or Hardly Working and Blush Hour, although I'm now considering whether to buy the first one), which are mainly greiges and taupes so I hope I don't have any dupes!

Hope this post was helpful!

Essie Merino Cool vs Rimmel Beige Babe

Essie Merino Cool is on my middle finger and Rimmel Beige Babe is on my index finger.

Under a lamp.

 

 With flash. (Please ignore the "low quality" words on the left! I was doing my Marketing notes while painting my nails. Or was it the other way round? Haha!)

As you can see, Merino Cool is lighter and also more purple than Beige Babe. To be honest, when I bought OPI Parlez-Vous OPI?, I was kind of expecting it to look like Merino Cool.

I painted 3 coats for both polish but I guess you could get away with 2 coats. I think it was because I was painting my right hand which was why I went thinner on the coats. I tend to do 3 thin coats for my right hand and 2 thicker coats for my left hand!

Really like Merino Cool A LOT in terms of both its colour and formula! It's a great purple taupe polish!

 

Rimmel Beige Babe Bringing on the Bling

Once again, I got bored of my mani and decided to do an accent nail! Decided to paint my ring finger with OPI Bring on the Bling!

Used 2 coats of Bring on the Bling and it was a really fun look to rock!

 

Rimmel Beige Babe

I totally love how Rimmel Beige Babe can "change" colour under different lightings!

Case in point:

Purple under a lamp.

Grey under strong sunlight.

Brown in indirect sunlight.

That being said, I just wasn't feeling the colour. It's not the polish per say, it's just me. Perhaps it's just a case of wrong polish colour, wrong time. I'm feeling more meh these days, with school work, presentations and projects starting to pile up and maybe it has caused me to gravitate more towards the really neutral colours, like greiges and nudes. I didn't even feel edgy enough to wear a taupe for crying out loud. Funny thing is, my mum couldn't stop raving about this colour and asked me to give it to her if I don't want it anymore! Guess school has got me feeling down. Maybe it's also due to the fact that I don't have much time to practice the guitar as much as I want to and I can't master the techniques in time for the next lesson every week. Sigh. Guitar's looking more like a distress than a de-stress thing right now.

But back to the polish, it needed either 2 thick coats, or 3 thinner coats to get opaque. Both works just fine. I did get some sort of streaking (maybe due to the brush) which was why I chose to do thicker coats to kinda level it out. After that, I slapped on a layer of Poshe to get it to dry fast because I had a mountain of things to do.

Right now, I'm onto my third day of wear and I only have really tiny chips but they're mostly due to strumming my guitar with my nails so it's no fault on Rimmel's part. I'm actually loving how Poshe is at least taking me to day 3 of wear before chipping because normally I'd get a chip on day two previously and by day three, an entire chunk of the polish would come off! I just ordered a bottle of Seche Vite from Gwen's spree so I'm looking forward to testing that out and comparing it's wear with Poshe!

Really feel so tempted to remove this colour and paint China Glaze Pelican Grey (I had that colour on my toes for the past week! I'll show it to you soon!) or OPI Tickle My France-y on instead.

Pale Icy Blues

I normally meet my friends at Boon Lay to take the bus to school together and I was early one day so I decided to take a walk around JP. Bad idea knowing that JP has Nature Republic and they sell a bottle of polish at only $2.10! Couldn't resist such an attractive price so I ended up buying 2 bottles of blue! The first one was a paled out, almost-white blue (BL503) and the other was a pearly blue (BL501).



L-R: BL503 (2 coats), BL503 with BL501 layered on top (2 coats of 503 with one coat of 501) and BL501 (2 coats)

I was trying to recreate Chanel Riva by layering the two because that was what I was thinking of when I bought them!



I also painted a layer of BL501 over 2 layers of OPI Black Onyx (a simple, straight up black creme polish) on my pinkie and I love how the black base made the end result a much darker pearly blue!



Close up for you to see better!



Close up of all the nails, and hopefully you can see the creme finish on the index finger vs the pearly finish on all the other 3 fingers! The thin layer of BL501 also made the overall look just a tinge bit darker on the middle finger(2 coats of BL503 and one thin coat of BL501 on top, to refresh your memory)!



Here's how they look if we back it up a little. I'm starting to dig the two blues layered together after seeing these pictures!

 Overall, I'm really impressed with how pigmented the pale blue creme was. I was expecting to have to do 3 to 4 coats but it only needed 2 coats to be opaque so kudos! Plus it's so cheap and the brush is really decent so the polish is a good polish to play around with! I don't know how long they'll last though because I took the colours off after swatching them but the last time I tried Nature Republic polishes, they chipped really fast. Oh well, how much can you expect out of a $2.10 polish?

Hope the monday blues aren't getting to you!

OPI Hey! Get in Lime

Soooo, I managed to get my hands on another bottle of OPI Hey! Get in Lime after my first bottle broke in the mail. Bought it from a different seller which might explain what I'm going to tell you.

The two bottles are different in colour! I know it's common for some OPI polishes to differ in colour (a la My Private Jet, which God knows how many versions are out there) but I believe Hey! Get in Lime (HGIL) wasn't sold for a long time right? It is discontinued afterall.

The new HGIL is painted on my index and ring fingers, while the old one is painted on my middle and pinkie fingers. Can you see the (very) slight difference between them two? The new one is much more yellow-based and duller while the other one is definitely bluer and brighter! Excuse the knicks on my nails, I thought my nails were dry enough to play the guitar. Apparently they weren't.

This is with flash!

I was kinda bummed out when I first got the new HGIL because I loved the first one so much but but but, I wore the two colours for an entire day and I'm kinda liking the new one now! My mum says the new one is nicer while my brother said the old one is nicer, so still, I'm kinda split between the two. I guess I like them both!

What say you?

First (Failed) Konad Attempt

Dropped by JP after school today and visited this shop called Beadtle Sweet because I heard they sell konad plates and I'm so glad I found the shop! It's at such a convenient location because I normally take the train from Boon Lay after school everyday!

So, I did my research and found out which plate numbers I wanted and ended up buying 4 plates! I bought 3 of them in a package ($39.90), which also included 4 konad polishes as well as the rubber stamp and a plastic scrapper. I purchased the other konad plate at it's regular price of $7.90. Ended up with m51, m60, m63 and m64. The shop didn't have m60 and m63 so they had to order those two plates for me.

So here is my (very humble) first attempt at konad:

 

 

 

I really like the last one and the 3rd last one! I only kept the last konad on my nails because it looked the most decent! Most probably going to paint my nails with the base color (China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le) then do the same konad on my right thumb. I have no idea how I'm going to do that though, maybe I'll ask my mum to help! Oh, do note that the colours of the polishes in the pictures are not really accurate, I just wanted to show you guys the konad patterns!

Hope you don't laught too much at my feeble first attempt!

Collective Haul!

I've been buying so many polishes lately and this is a collective haul from 3 or 4 different occasions within the last few weeks!

Overall picture (I forgot to add some polishes in here but I'll show you all the polishes in more detail later on)!

 

Top row (L-R): Essie Merino Cool, Silky Girl Mauve Dreams, OPI Kreme de la Kremlin, Silky Girl Naturally Nude

Second row (L-R): China Glaze Pelican Grey, Color Club Worth the Risque, Color Club Revvvolution, Essie Body Language, China Glaze Fairy Dust

Bottom row (L-R): China Glaze Secrect Peri-wink-le (no, I did not spell it wrongly!), Color Club Take Me to Your Chateau

Now, I've group them into groups of similar colours. I've also added a brief colour description and the number of coats you need to achieve opaqueness in brackets.

The Nudes / Mauves:



L-R: Rimmel Barely There (flesh tone nude, 2-3 coats), Silky Girl Naturall Nude (nude pink with pearly shimmer, 2 coats), Silky Girl Mauve Dreams (mauve, 2 coats and it's a good dupe for Kreme de la Kremlin! Costs a fraction of its price and is so much easier to find!), OPI Kreme de la Kremlin (mauve, 1 coat but 2 coats will make it more creamy and rich), and Sally Hansen Mocha Mix (darker mauve, dries darker than in the bottle, 1 coat)

The Taupes:



L-R: Essie Merino Cool (taupe with purple undertones, 2 coats), Rimmel Beige Babe (taupe with brown undertones, 3 coats)

Also, I did this comparison of Merino Cool with other similar colours that I have so you can see how it differs from the other taupes / purples!



L-R (without flash): Essie Hot Coco, Essie Merino Cool, OPI Parlez Vous OPI?, Essie Smokin' Hot
I decided to store Merino Cool with my purples instead of my taupes (the two "categories" are kept in separate baskets) because most of my taupes are more brown and Merino Cool has significantly more purple than the rest of the taupes!

The Blues: 



L-R: China Glaze Secrect Peri-wink-le (cornflower blue, more purple than Orly Snowcone, 3 coats), Color Club Take Me to Your Chateau (very light pastel blue, almost a one coater which is very rare when it comes to such light colour! Did 2 coats for good measure! It's also making me think of getting OPI What's with the Cattitude!)



Couleur Inc Beid. I forgot to include it in the first blue picture so here's an old picture I took of it! It's more of a turquoise and it needed 2 coats.

The Greys / Holos:



L-R: China Glaze Pelican Grey (grey with super subtle shimmer, 2 coats), Color Club Worth the Risque (silver holo, 2-3 coats), Color Club Revvvolution (charcoal holo, 2 coats), China Glaze Fairy Dust (holo top coat, I usually use 1-2 coats over a base colour) and Essie Body Language (light grey with pink undertones, 3 coats)

Also, recall that I bought a similar glitter from Couleur Inc?





China Glaze Fairy Dust has smaller holo particles and you can see this from the second picture! Couleur Inc Lupi also has silver particles amidst the holo particles so its effect is not as rad as Fairy Dust! Fairy Dust will win hands down if you ask me to pick one but Lupi is alright I guess.

The Red:



The lone red, Sally Hansen Cherry Red (red with slight pink undertones, 2 thin coats / 1 thick coat). I don't usually lust after reds because its hard to me to find a red I like and with so many different hues of red polishes out there, I really would wanna see it IRL before buying! I am lusting over OPI Ali's Big Break though! Saw it in Sephora and I like its jelly finish with the glitters in it!

This next one, is OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous. It's my friend's so really, I have to pass it to her as much as I'd like to keep it! It is a gorgeous granite foil-like polish with multicoloured shimmer specks! It's so nice I want to get it during my next polish spree!



This picture just doesn't do it justice! I'm waiting for Misa It's You to arrive (from a transdesign spree that I ordered from weeks ago but the idiot organiser hasn't ordered yet because she's waiting for the Katy Perry line to be in stock again. Ironically, I didn't order any Katy Perry polishes so I'm waiting in vain.) so I can compare them and see if they're similar enough for me to skip this beauty!

Okay, I guess these polishes will be able to last me for my one month ban! Oh, have you seen the Misa 9-5 collection and Essie French Affair 2011? Some of the polishes have my name on it already! :D

Polish Activities

Just ordered a whole lot of polishes from Gwen's transdesign spree! So much for polish abstinence! I also managed to find a bottle of OPI Hey! Get In Lime on ebay at a rather reasonable price yesterday and the seller said she'll mail it to me on Monday! YAYY! I finally can replace my broken bottle! Oh, but have you seen OPI's new Mermaid's Tears from the Pirates of the Carribean collection to be released later this year? It's such a gorgeous shade of green that's quite similar to Hey! Get in Lime, I'm hoping they'll be different though! 

My polishes from wowprettynails are also on their way to Singapore as we speak so I can't wait to go collect them from Estella! (: She managed to work her magic and get all my polishes (with the exception of Black Shatter) so expect to see swatches of China Glaze Sea Spray and Below Deck, Essie Chinchilly, Playa del Platinum and Jazz soon!

Haven't done up a post from my previous haul yet so that's coming soon! School's getting really busy for me (I have two presentations this coming week and it's only week 3) so I'll do up the various posts when I can!

Till next time!  

Worth the Risque for a Revvvolution Updated

I got kinda bored with my previous mani and decided to change it up a little by adding some pattern to my ring finger! It was originally painted with Color Club's Worth the Risque only but I decided to do a checks pattern on it to spice things up!



Left Hand



Right Hand



eft hand close-up



Right hand close-up

I know I have horrible cuticles! I don't really have the habit of slapping on hand lotion every hour, or even every night for that matter. I do try to apply lotion before I sleep if I remember, but the slimy feeling I get when I go wash my hands or if my hands get wet, is really too gross for me to be religiously moisturising.
I used scotch tape to get the lines as straight as possible although they aren't as perfect as they ought to be! One thing to note is to let the polish dry before sticking the tape down, if not when you pull the tape of your nail, the polish will be removed along with it! Aligning the tape perfectly (into even quarter sections) were also difficult so I did the best I could. I guess practice makes perfect though I don't know if I'll be doing this pattern again! I think this pattern works better with contrasting colours rather than complimentary colours so try it with a black/white, black/yellow, silver/black, gold/black, or any fun colour combinations! Of course, layer a good top coat over it when you're done to smooth things out. I used Poshe and it helped the polish dry really fast too!

It lasted 4 days and the chips were probably due to my clumsy always-knocking-into-things nature, so I removed it on Wednesday night, just before my Career module on Thursday! Had to trim my nails because I had guitar lessons and I'm also having an internship interview tomorrow so I'll only paint my nails tomorrow night if time permits!

Hope you like this look! Till next time!

Worth the Risque for a Revvvolution?

Brought out my holographic goodness before I can't rock crazy colours anymore! My career foundations module will be starting this Thursday and I don't think I'll be able to wear colours other than nudes! It'll last for 5 weeks so I guess I can go back to my wonderful colours after that!

My Essie Body Language with Color Club High Society CNY mani chipped on day 3 so I took it off and painted this mani! Oh, before I start talking about this mani, let me say that Body Language was such a delightful colour to have on my nails! It was so nice and creamy and because it was so close to the colour of my natural nail tip, when it did chip, it wasn't noticeable unless you took my hand to your face to look!
So now, on to Color Club Revvvolution, with Worth the Risque on my ring finger!

 

Under a lamp with flash

 

Under a lamp with flash

 

In direct sunlight



In direct sunlight

It was pretty hard to capture the rainbow effect of the holographic polish, especially for Worth the Rsique (the silver one)! And the same holo effect is only evident under strong sunlight so really, indoors, it just looks like glittery nails that aren't really glittery at all. You can just see the particles. Oh, but the crazy trippy holo effect in the sun is so pretty it makes it worth it!

Both were 2 coats and if you compare OPI My Private Jet with CC Revvvolution, Revvvolution is more charcoal based with MPJ is more brown based!

Hope you like the pictures!