essence Vintage District TE

A bit later than usual, the essence Vintage District TE. To my defense, I got a very distracting parcel full of nail polish from my uber-swap-amie, M. I swatched all of the polishes on nail wheels yesterday – just so you know, I needed 6 almost full nail wheels.  Also, I got my first Urban Decay eye pencil, and it is awesome. I’ll most probably show it to you soon.

Before I start, let me say that I was not very interested in this trend edition, so first I thought I’d let it be, but then J. called and asked me if I want any of these polishes, because she found a full display, and I couldn’t pass up on that occasion. So here it comes!

essence Vintage Peach is most probably one of the ugliest polishes that passed my hands. It covers fully in two coats and applies just fine, but what kind of color is that supposed to be? Sweet potatoe peel puke? The only question I had circling in my mind when I swatched this, was, WHY?

I made a little comparison on the sticks for you (Please let me know if you find this helpful!):
Del Sol Trick or Treat – essence A piece of forever – Catrice Paris – essence Vintage Peach – essence peaches – essence happy – Revlon Fig Jam

Well, it doesn’t get much better with essence Antique Pink. I have long sworn off colors like this, because, well, it’s obvious. I don’t think this color will become a retro-kind-of-cool, this will never be cool. 3 coats, formula was a bit of a pain for me.

  Now, finally I can breathe again! essence Get arty made it all good again. Color wise it is somewhere between a very murky camouflage green and grey, but the shimmer it is infused with makes it outstanding. It made me think of some Rescue Beauty Lounge polish, but I can’t pinpoint it. Formula was super, 2 coats, and the shimmer is just so beautiful!

And for those of you who love colors such as nails inc Baker Street, you will love this:essence shopping @portobello road. Vibrant blue with a squishy jelly look, even though it covers entirely after two coats. It is easy to apply and didn’t stain my nails, which I feared it would. Also it is amazingly shiny without topcoat! A winner in my books.

Again, a stick-comparison, from left to right:  
H&M No Mambo Jumbo - Cult Nails Let me Fly -p2 funky - SOPI Who let the dorks out? – Catrice San Francisco – Maybelline Shocking Seas – essence life is a free ride – SOPI Skinny Jeans -  OPI Teal the Cows come home - essence shopping @ Portobello Road – Catrice Birds Flying High – YSL La Lacque 137 – Illamasqua Muse – essence bonnie – Catrice No Snow Petrol

What do you think about this TE? Half hot, half not, right?

essence TE fantasia

Today I am showing you yet another essence Trend Edition (which is the same as a limited edition). Because of the promotional pictures I thought that this one was going to be boring as hell – but luckily it wasn’t.

Elves like lilac (is this an assumption? I sounds like a fact, in which case I must point out the danger of generalisation…!) is a vivid purple interspersed with teensy tiny silver glitters and just enough blue undertones to hate my camera. The color depends also on the angle from which you look at it. Nevertheless, a purple my friend M. will love, I’m sure. 2 coats.

Queen of my cloud castle is one of those more intensive coral shimmer polishes – I told you, corals scorn my love, so we’re didn’t become friends. Even though it had some hint of shimmer in there. 2 coats. 

Take a ride on Pegasus was my personal favorite. I haven’t seen a color like this before – it’s a mauve polish with intense blue shimmer. I love blue shimmer, so I could forgive the mauve base color. 2 coats (it applied the best of all the polishes!).

Have you seen my unicorn was a bit of a bummer. First, we’ve seen alike colors from essence in every other TE, and second, it’s just so streaky – I used topcoat extensively to make it looks less streaky. Also, it’s a goldish-pinkish metallic combination that is just too painful to wear. 2 coats. 

Worst polishes of 2012

While everybody else is out there praising their 2012  favourites, I decided to give you a random list of “worsts”! The main reason for this is that there are too many polishes I liked in 2012, and the other reason is that I enjoy being mean sometimes – and this will give me the perfect opportunity. You can disagree with me and let me know which polishes you didn’t like this year!

As a general info: Worst of 2012 refers to polishes I wore in 2012, not necessarily ones that were brought out in 2012. Let’s get started!

Pretty much everything from the Catrice Hidden World LE. brown, salmon and frosty white – no thank you!

 OPI Play the Peonies. Okay, so I liked Chanel Attraction, but this is also more pink. Frosty, white-ish pink. Brrr.

Revlon Mint Gelato. Sheer dusty turquoise, unbearable smell (and I love mint!): overall performance could not convince (that was very diplomatic).

I like the idea of  NYX Precious Gems, but the execution lacks… skills? experience? love? ideas? Well, you pick.

Models Own Dusty Mauve - they name already gives this one away. Not much I can say or do that will make it cry harder.

It pains me to say it, but Orly Artificial Sweetener only looks good in the bottle. I gave it chance after chance, but it just looks yuck on me. Even though it is pink!

essence Rebel Topcoat in Punk Royal  (and Catrice No smoke without fire): jelly black doesn’t work. AT ALL. Even if it has glitter in it. Ooooh I think these two might win the ugliest of ugly award.  Looks like black snot or slime over my nails! *shudders*

OPI Gouda Gouda Two Shoes. This is not a decent or elegant version of brown, this is ugly. Same goes for Nubar Charmeuse -  just because Nubar makes it a bit more difficult to call this plain brown, it is freakishly boring (and ugly). And, a bit more mauve but still too brown for me: OPI Mauving to Manitoba.

Glitter Gal Flawless Pink is everything but flawless. At least it’s holographic, but it’s definitely not flawless (and, to be honest, it’s not much pink either).

MAC Style Clan - poop brown with orange glitter – it can’t get much worse. Oh, wait! Short nails make it look extra bad. I don’t even want to start telling you what I think this looks like.

Jessica Glitterati - great idea, but such a failure. I pretty much hated how it looked like on the nail. The only thing left to say is, WHY?!

GOSH Ocean. Eeeeuh. It’s too much of everything. Too many brush strokes, too much color, too much, just too much.

Barielle Out-grey-geous. Can’t even deal with this after I stamped over it. It’s completely boring and unfitting, and then, why the many “-” in the name?

I thought I’d never have complaints about yellow polish, but Nicole by OPI Yellow it’s me changed my mind. I tried it alone, over white, over yellow – the orange/red glow in it just ruins it for me, apart from it being so sheer. In the same area is essence peach beauty (fruity TE) – I mean come on, patchy, sheer orange? Hell no! There’s no excuse for sheer yellow nail polish. Polish makers of the world, unite, and fight against this nuisance!

The extra awards for horrible application go to Face of Australia Verdigris (bubbles in metallic, streaky military green) and Sinful Colors Cinderella (patchy shimmery light blue, impossible to make opaque without it looking as if it ran down your tips).

I wish you all a great New Year’s Eve and a good start into the new year. Hope your hangovers won’t be too bad, and that you all have someone to kiss at midnight.

How I wore it: OPI Mauving to Manitoba

Before I forget: Have you entered one of my Giveaways yet? My Giveaway extravaganza is still open for another 2 days, and you can win absurdly much, thanks to some awesome nail polish makers who gifted some of the prizes. Oh and you can click any of the underlined words, as there are 7 Giveaways, and each link will take you to one of them.

Mauve. Well, this colour is a parting of the ways. Even more so, if the finish of a mauve polish is frosty. And streaky. My grandma loves it – I don’t. I have no idea what came over me when I ordered this polish.

Funnily enough, I can think of about 4 friends of mine who would look great wearing this shade. Isn’t it just perfect that we’re all different?

2 coats of OPI Mauving to Manitoba.

Above: daylight. Below: flash.

I wore this with my favourite comfy sweater which I scored years ago from H&M – I don’t know why and how, but it is 100% Cashmere

I wanted to show you other mauves for comparison. I don’t have a dupe for it, but many that look similar. 

Tell me, do you think the swatch-stick comparisons are helpful?

Pink Wednesday: Zoya Shivon

Oh, look at that! Super old swatches I never posted!
Well. This is Zoya Shivon – a colour I find difficult to describe. It’s somewhat mauve-y, but also it has this super strong golden shimmer in it, which makes it look like a dusty rose colour in certain angles; and sometimes I detect a hint of brown in Shivon. I like it, but I’m pretty sure, so does my grandmother. Maybe Shivon isn’t the most modern colour….

Application was good, I used two coats for full coverage. Zoyas generally dry slow on me, so I use either the Zoya topcoat or Seche Vite, depending on my timeframe.

above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flash

What do you think, is this a colour you’d wear?

A second look on….

Don’t forget to enter my giveaway! It’ll end at New Years!

This is a polish I posted about earlier, but I felt it needed a second look. Here’s what I wrote when I reviewed OPI Meet me on the Star Ferry first:
“One of the great purple polishes of our time is, if you ask me, Meet me on the Star Ferry from the OPI Hong Kong Collection. It looks so-so in the bottle, but it holds its secret back: on the nails in the sun you’ll find the mystery revealed (The mystery: why it is called Meet me on the Star Ferry and not only Meet me on the Ferry). Let’s take a closer look! (btw: this is 2 coats, basecoat is OPI Envy Me, topcoat as always my friend SV).”

“in daylight, but no direct sun: so-so. Typical office polish: not nothing, but not thrilling either.
in sunlight: self explanatory, isn’t it?!” Well, this isn’t a sunlight pic, but one in artificial light. Does the trick though, doesn’t it?

Now, what do I think of Meet me on the Star Ferry 7 month later? I have taken a deep dive into the world of nail polish, and first of all my perception of purple has changed; and Meet me on the Star Ferry is surely no purple. It’s mauve. Secondly, I still love the amazing shimmer it has, but I have degraded it to an office-only colour. Thirdly, I have developed a hate towards brushstrokes in non-metallic polishes, and Meet me on the Star Ferry still has visible brushstrokes. So, to sum it up, it’s a good, save polish, but not in the upper half of my favourite polishes!

Have you changed your opinion on polishes in time as well?

30 days of untrieds: Day 29 – OPI Shanghai Shimmer

If you don’t follow me on facebook yet, make sure you click here soon  and always be the first to receive news on new posts, pictures and Giveaways

Oh, I’m a little late today! I want to show you a polish today that falls in the category “mediocre lemming”. It doesn’t mean that I’m lemming this polish a little bit, but it means that I wanted this polish really badly, but when I put it on it looks mediocre. Does this happen to you too? It looked so awesome in swatches, that I needed to get my hands on it, but now that I have it, I only take if out to look at the bottle and admire the colour. Hence, I had to wear it as a full mani once, so there is my day 29 of untrieds: OPI Shanghai Shimmer.

I used 4 thin coats for coverage – this polish is rather old, from the Far East Collection in 2000, and OPI’s fancy formula hadn’t been developed yet – but I didn’t mind. Shanghai Shimmer is a dusty mauve with an amazing green/yellow flash, unduped at least in my collection. I know I always say that more than 3 coats is torture, but this beauty convinced me otherwise.

What a pity it doesn’t look its best on me – nevertheless, a real & total & sure & absolute keeper for me!

above: daylight (sorry for the upside down pic! but I had to make sure you all see the great shimmer in there!). below: artificial light, no flash.

These other ladies also only have 1 more day to go!
Alexandria at Je T’aime Lacquer
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Taylor at Nailed to the T

30 days of untrieds: day 5: OPI Yucatán if you want

Today I have OPI Yucatan if you want for you. It’s a polish I was really lusting after, because it seemed like a really unique polish to me. The application was easy, I used 2 coats for full coverage.

This polish is a real chameleon. It looks orange-brownish if worn in artificial light, and that’s also when you see a gorgeous golden shimmer.

Yucatan if you want looks extremely different in regular daylight – here it shifts from a mauve to a brownish-mauve. I don’t like browns or mauves that tend towards red, but this one suits my skintone and somehow has a cool undertone. I think it is a very work-appropriate fall colour!

What’s your verdict, do you like it or not?

 

 

more untrieds? Click here:

Alexandria at Je T’aime Lacquer
Alyssa at Always Polished
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow’s Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer
Thalie at Glazed Talons

Taylor at Nailed to the T

essence – new colours, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my essence spam party! I hope you enjoy seeing those swatches and I hope they help you in making up your mind what to get and what not to get.

I made one picture in artificial light and one picture in daylight, so you can see how different the polishes can look. Feel free to click the pics to enlarge them and see all the details!

First up is make it golden. It’s a polish packed with differently sized round golden glitter. The base is clear, but there is so much glitter in there, it doesn’t look as if it was clear. On the picture, you can see me wearing it on it’s own, 3 coats. It is very, very sparkly. I like it better on it’s own than layered, but I have to admit it looks a little bumpy and uneven. Let’s not talk about removal, and enjoy the glitter a little longer?

Viva la green – a vibrant turquoise creme.  Good coverage, opaque in 2 coats, very classy. If you don’t own a shade like this yet, I’d recommend this one!

think pink. I’m not quite sure what to tell you about this polish, because it isn’t pink, rather a very orange toned coral, or a tomato red. 3 coats for opacity, and in dire need of a better name!

time for romance, is, like make it golden, one of the keepers of the new polishes. It is firweorks of various sizes of round pink glitters in a somewhat mauve/brownish jelly base.

Next up is rich & pretty. it’s a warm silver polish with a golden flash – that explains why it tends to look more golden in artificial light. 2 coats, and a very safe colopur for the holiday season!

dark, blackened blue with shimmer to add a little depth. That’s midnight charm. Your safe choice of dark blue for this fall and winter. 3 coats.

princess prunella is a taupe polish mixed with a bit of plum. It leaves visible brush strokes on your nail,  but not as bad as metallic polishes sometimes do. When I saw it in the bottle, the base colour reminded me of Chanel Paradoxal, so I made a tiny comparison (ringfinder and pinkie: Paradoxal, Index and Middlefinger: princess prunella); they aren’t even close to being dupes though.

Which essence are you adding to your wishlist? Or do you already have some of those?

Catrice Swatch Spam Part II

Before I show you the new colours, 3 of the “old” colours I didn’t manage to squeeze in my first Swatch Spam. If you missed Part I, check it out here. As always, click the pictures for a better look! They’re huge, and you can see the details much better.

Be my Millionaire is sort of a dusty greyish-silver, very streaky, but also not as “out-there” as many silvers. I’d consider it elegant, if it wasn’t for the streaks.

Let’s Mauve On is a foily mauve color, but the colour transferres only subtly on the nail. It is very shiny, and highly pigmented. I imagine this to be great for stamping!

Wrapped around my finger is a glossy berry pink. Awesome. Period.

 

On to the new colours! You’ll be surprised at some, but they’re all in all great fall colours. And, like I assumed, all the “Modern Muse” Colours are not in the standard assortment of Catrice Colours. I used 2 coats of each polish, no top or base coat!

Brown. Warm-toned brown. Absolutely not my colour. The name cracked me up though!Sing: Hey, Dirty-Lilah is by far the funniest name of the collection. I like it when companies come up with funny names AND names that coordinate with the colour of the nail polish. This one is a masterpiece! The colour is a dirty lilac, very glossy, and very little subtle shimmer particles in it. In general, shimmer particles in Catrice polishes don’t transfer to the nail, that’s at least my experience. In this case, it doesn’t matter though, the polish is one of my favourites of the new colours!I don’t know where the name of this polish comes from. If you know, will you please tell me? It’s an orange with a gold shimmer to it, very shiny, but again, totally not me. It reminds me a little bit of leaves in autumn, but I wouldn’t generally consider this a winter colour. But I assume that if you like orange, you’ll love this one!

 

So, have you started scribbling names down your wishlist? Which ones are you planning to get? Keep your wishlists at hand, tomorrow I’ll show you even more new Catrice Colours!