Essence Floral Grunge - Black To The Roots

Hey everyone! I already showed you Madly Purpled, the matte polish of Essence's Floral Grunge collection, and today I'll be showing you the other polish I got.

This is Black To The Roots. It is called 'The Rough' one of this collection which is why I was very curious about it. With all the hype around textured polishes nowadays I thought that this might be Essence's version of the trend.

And it is. Sort of! Black To The Roots is a dark gray base with gritty silver glitter in it. This is definitely not a textured polish like the Liquid Sand collection for example. But there is texture in it, as you can see in the pictures. The base dries up with a sort of matte, almost rubbery finish, while the glitter leaves a gritty texture. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it is definitely interesting.

The application was pretty bad. The formula is kind of weird and streaky, making it difficult to paint even coats. I used two coats for full opacity and no top coat to show off the grittiness. I definitely like Madly Purpled a lot more!

What do you think of this polish?

Blue fan brush mani

Hey guys!

So, I have had a set of nail art brushes for a while now and I realized I had never actually used the fan brush that was in it. I was unsure what to do with it until I saw some tutorials popping up. Turns out that you are able to create very cool looking manicures that are simple to do. Perfect for me!

After some fiddling around with colours this is what I came up with. Pretty cool, huh? Personally, I'm very fond of the effects that the fan brush gives. And like I said, it's extremely simple.

What I did was start out with two coats of a simple black creme, in this case Essence Black is Back. I left it alone until it was completely dry which is when I grabbed my fan brush. I made the hairs of the brush slightly wet and seperated them a bit. Then I dipped the tips in Catrice Blue's Brother. And swiped the brush across my nail.

You can kinda experiment with the brush. You can swipe over your nails just once, for example. But for most of my nails I did two strokes: one starting from the left side, to the middle of my nail, and the other from the right. It created this nice effect that looks different on each nail.

I only used one colour this time, but I can see this being very interesting with two colours! What do you think?

Art De Lautrec 04B

Guys, it has happened again. I fell in love with another nail polish.

Today's polish is one by a brand that seems to be fairly unknown! I had heard of the name Art De Lautrec before and I was pretty curious about their nail polishes. So when I found them for sale at a Christmas Fair I visited back in december I got myself this one.

This beauty is 04B (I wish they had nice names!). It has a blackened base that is absolutely packed with gorgeous and very sparkly holo glitter. How pretty is that? I keep looking at my nails! 

I have painted one coat of it over Essence Black Is Back. It's apparently possible to wear it on it's own, but I haven't done that for reasons listed below.

So, I have one problem with this polish. My bottle has a very weird formula. It feels really gloopy and thick even though it's not that hard to apply. It is, however, impossible to paint thin layers with this one which is why I decided to layer it over a black creme. I do think this is just my bottle, so if you ever want to try it out, no worries! I probably just got unlucky. :)

It dries up a bit dull, but one coat of topcoat was enough to make it super sparkly. And despite the thick coat I had to use, it dried up very fast and looks very smooth and shiny!

I have never seen Zoya Storm with my own eyes, but if I look at the swatches of it, 04B looks like it could be a dupe.

What do you think of this polish? And are you familar with Art De Lautrec?

Evanora inspired nails

Have you seen Oz: The Great and Powerful yet? I haven't, but I definitely have to see it sometime. It looks really awesome. Since the movie came out I have seen some manicures inspired by Evanora's 'claw' nails in the movie. I really liked the look and so I decided to recreate them!

The result is a pretty edgy, but awesome manicure. When I was wearing this I kept looking at my nails, because it really felt like I had claws!

As you can see in the screenshot I linked earlier, Evanora doesn't seem to have a base colour on her nails and her nail line is visible. I didn't like that all too much which is why I used a nude base. I used two coats of Essence Cookies & Cream for this with a fast drying top coat. After that was dry, I taped off the sides of my nails to create the claw shape, and went over it with a coat of Essence Black Is Back, a simple black creme.

And, instead of two gold lines on each side of the claws, I decided to go with one gold line in the middle. I used gold striping tape that I got off eBay, but as you can see in the pictures it started curling up just minutes after I applied it, which was quite a shame. I do like the end result, though, and I love seeing all the different variations people are coming up with.

What do you think of this 'claw' look?

Seven Nation Army

Hey everyone! ... it's been a few weeks, I know. I haven't forgotten about you guys or my blog, but I guess you could say I was taking a little break. I promise I will try to make my posts more consistent, haha. :P

So today I want to show you a manicure I did a while back. It was done for the Reddit nail challenge, which I decided I won't be taking part in every week anymore. I just have not been doing my nails as often, and when I do, I want to do my own thing, and not be limited to that week's theme, or by my horrible art skills. So I'll do a manicure for the themes whenever I feel like it and have an idea I can use.

This week the theme was a manicure inspired by a song. And for me, it wasn't very hard to pick a song to use as my inspiration. I went for 'Seven Nation Army' by The White Stripes. It's an awesome song, that I have liked since I was a lot younger, and it has one of my most favourite music videos ever, which was the main thing that inspired me. I tried to translate the red/white/black shapes to my nails.

Also, I am sorry for the shape my cuticles are in. I ran out of Lemony Flutter and can't afford a new pot yet, and nothing else works well enough for weather like this. 

All the polishes I used for this are by NYC, and I did the manicure as follows:

First, I painted my nails with two coats of I <3 NY, a red creme that I seem to use pretty often for nail art. After this was completely dry I taped off a chevron shape and painted one coat of Platinum Card. I chose silver instead of white because I felt it fit the manicure better. Then, when that was dry as well, I taped off a smaller chevron and used City Blackout for the tips.

I enjoyed making this manicure and I thought it looked really nice on my nails, so I must say this is probably one of my favourites that I have done so far. I hope you like it as well, let me know what you think! 

Reddit Challenge - Week 6: Games

Hey guys! No, I didn't actually miss a challenge. I did do week 5, but I wasn't happy with the manicure at all. I did post it on Reddit however, so if you can find me there, you can have a looksie at what I did last week.

So I was pretty excited about this week's theme, which is 'Inspired by a game'. I'm not a hardcore gamer but gaming is one of my hobbies and you can often find me playing World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Pokémon games, or random games on my iPhone. I wanted to dedicate a nail art to one of these games, but I went for the most obvious choice for me: Pokémon.

Pokémon has always been one of my favourite things. I got Pokémon Yellow over 10 years ago and never really stopped loving it! I've finished most of the handheld games save for some of the newer ones. I admit, I have been a bit out of the loop, but that doesn't mean I don't like it anymore.

To portray this theme I decided to paint little Pokéballs on my nails. This isn't the most original nail art, but hey, it works. The original plan was to do a different Pokéball on each nail but I don't have the right colours for it. It's something I will definitely do in the future, though.

So here's how I did this: I started out by painting all my nails with two coats of Essie Blanc, a simple white creme. I applied a quick drying topcoat and let it dry for a while before taping half of my nail and adding a coat of NYC I <3 NY, for the upper red half of the Pokéballs. I taped it because I am really, really horrible at freehanding with regular polish brushes, haha. Then I added black lines with my black striper, and after that I used my dotting tools to add the black and white buttons in the middle.

One of my Poochyena figurines wanted to make a little guest appearance. :) I don't usually use props for pictures but I figured it would be cute for this one. Poochyena is one of my favourite Pokémon, by the way.

These nails were pretty simple to do but I think they turned out really cute. I love having little Pokéballs on my nails. I hope you like them too!

Eyeko - Vampira

Hi guys! Today I have for you another very nice vampy colour. This one is by Eyeko.

If you're not familiar with Eyeko, it's a British company that focuses on eye makeup. However, they used to sell some very cute polishes as well. They were discontinued quite a while ago though, so I'm happy I managed to get my hands on this polish.

This is Vampira, and it has a black base full of amazing red glitter. The name is very fitting for it! I suppose this could be considered a dupe for China Glaze's LubuHeels, but Vampira seems a bit brighter. Also, the bottle is adorable.

The application of this polish is very smooth and on most nails I got away with two coats. In some places I still saw some bare spots an I used 3 coats. It also dries up rather bumpy because of the glitter in it, but a topcoat fixes that and gives it a real nice depth as well.

So all in all, I really like this polish and it's definitely a little jewel in my collection. Because it's discontinued I try to not use it too often because I don't want to use it all up! :P

What do you think? Do you own any Eyeko polishes?

Essence - Gold Old Buffy

It's been a while since Essence released the Vampire's Love LE, a collection inspired by, well, vampires! It reminds me of Twilight, which I am totally not a fan of, but I did pick up two of the polishes from this collection. Today I'm showing you my favourite: Gold Old Buffy.

This polish is gorgeous. It's full of golden shimmer and irregular shaped golden flecks. The base looks black, but to me it seems more like a very dark brown or olive colour. I'm not sure, but either way, I love it! I'm a sucker for dark shimmery colours like this one and I'm very happy I added it to my collection.

The formula is great too. It's fully opaque in two coats and the application is very nice. No complaints there.

I felt a little silly after swatching this. I wore it shortly after I bought it, but for some reason it just didn't appeal to me as much then. Good thing I gave it a second chance because it's an awesome polish and I'll probably be wearing it more often this autumn and winter. 

Sadly, this polish isn't available anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. I recently heard that Essence will be releasing another collection like this soon, though, so I hope that one will also come to The Netherlands!

Vampy Chevron Nails

Today I'm showing you another tape manicure. I really love to do these just because it's so fun and simple and it's easy to come up with awesome looking results.

So today I decided to do chevrons. I have done these as accent nails here and there but today I wanted to try my hands at a full chevron manicure. And I wanted it to be vampy, so I chose black and red as my colours.

I started by painting the red on my fingers, which is NYC I ♥ NY. Which is a gorgeous red, by the way! I've worn this one pretty often, and so far it's my favourite red I have owned. I also used only one coat for this picture, which is pretty awesome.

After that tried I went ahead and applied the tape to all of my fingers and then add the black. I personally prefer to do it in this order, but you can also start with the black and then add the red later. The black is also by NYC, it's called City Blackout. Again, lovely polish. My favourite black so far.

I really, really like the outcome of these nails! But, sadly, they got ruined about 5 minutes after I was done... I spilled nail polish in my carpet. D'oh! I was so glad I managed to shoot a few pictures before that happened. I'm definitely going to be remaking this manicure, though!

NYC - Rock Muse

On friday I finally had a chance to go to town and get some things I needed. And while I was there, I decided to pick up some new polishes as well, because every brand seemed to have some new ones in their collection. I picked up 7 of them and today I am going to show you one.

This is NYC - Rock Muse. It's limited edition, and I think it's pretty similar OPI - Metallic 4 Life so I'm glad I managed to get this one!

This polish has silver hex glitter and micro glitter in a sheer dark grey base. It's actually a topcoat, meant for layering over other polishes. In these pictures I have layered one coat over black. Application wasn't that great. The formula seemed a little thick, and I had difficulty spreading the glitter on my nails evenly, which you can see by comparing the glitter on my pointer finger to that on my ring finger. That was a shame.

Even with a top coat it looked a bit bumpy and odd, but it did feel smooth on my nails. I do love the silver glitter on black, it really gives me a punk rocky feeling, which I always like!

Overall not a bad nail polish, and if you like OPI - Metallic 4 Life and want to own something similar, I'd definitely get this one. Considering how cheap it is, it's worth it.