Essence Choose Me! + Max Factor Fantasy Fire

Fantasy Fire!

Every nail blogger has been coveting this polish since Max Factor released it last year. Allegedly it's a dupe for the mythical and pretty much impossible to obtain Clarins 230. When FF was originally released it was only available in the UK and many Aussies ponied up ridiculous amounts of money on eBay to grab a bottle (if they didn't have a Brit buddy to send them a bottle). I salivated over hundreds - nay, thousands - of photos of FF but refused to pay a lot of money to get it. Well a few weeks ago I went into a chemist (the same one where I got Ulta3 Magnetic in Hypnotic) and there it was! Turns out Max Factor have now released the line which includes FF in Australia so it's quite widely available here now. I bought two bottles because they're pretty tiny (8ml each) and at $5.95 a bottle they're not the cheapest, but still not as expensive as buying OPI in David Jones here.

For this mani I layered three coats of FF over Essence Choose Me!, a dark blue shimmer. I think next time I might try putting it over a creme, I think the shimmer kind of interfered with FF a bit.

Check out that colour shift! My nails were uber distracting while I wore this.

FF should be available wherever Max Factor is sold - Target, Priceline and many pharmacies.

Robyn x

OPI A Grape Fit + Gold Shatter + Essence Make It Golden

Sorry sorry sorry for the lack of posts this week. I've just worked six days in a row so haven't had a lot of free time. Luckily I have still painted my nails a few times so I have some new manicures to show :)

I was looking for a pale lilac/lavender creme which I could wear at work, and saw OPI a Grape Fit on sale online for about $10 so got that - it's one of very few OPIs in my collection as I refuse to pay $24.95 for a bottle of nailpolish which sells for a third of that in the States.

Unfortunately A Grape Fit was a lot darker than I thought it would be so I can't wear this at work but I will still wear it happily out of work. It is a very pretty colour, and goes on nicely in two easy coats.

I need to learn to leave cremes alone once I've done a manicure...I always seem to end up putting glitter or something else on top of them...I really do like how cremes look but I think I get bored too quickly! The day after putting on A Grape Fit I added some OPI Gold Shatter and Essence Make It Golden on the thumb and ring finger.

I might try this with China Glaze White Cap on top next to see if it makes it light enough to wear for work...

Also I bought another bottle of my go-to topcoat, Sally Hansen Insta Dri Non-Chip Topcoat (to be henceforth referred to as SHIDNCT!). I've had my current bottle since February and am reaching the very last dregs, which are cloudy, no doubt from all the nail polish it seems to pick up, and also from being thinned three or four times - this TC gets SERIOUSLY thick and gloopy about two thirds in! I still love it though, even after being thinned a billion times it still dries really fast, and I'm happy with the amount of shine. I'm not sure about the wear time of SHIDNCT as I tend to change my nails every couple of days. Aaaanyway, I was holding out on buying another bottle as it costs something like $16 here in oz, but found a great website, feel unique, which ships FREE to Australia (my favourite thing when I'm internet shopping!) and sells SHIDNCT for less than $10. So I now have a lovely, fresh, runny bottle of SHIDNCT to play with, and my nails are very happy!

Thick, cloudy, old-but-useable SHIDNCT on the left. New, runny, glorious SHIDNCT on the right. I still use the old one but it bubbles pretty badly so I save it for glitters where the bubbles are less noticeable.

 - Robyn x

Essence Brightsmates

Hello!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been getting over a rather nasty cold, then last week managed to catch a brand new fresh cold so have been dealing with that this week and being a bit miserable and mucus-y. My nails have been a bit neglected as a result - it's a bit hard to paint them when I am coughing so hard I have tears coming down my face :s

This is a manicure I did last week and never got round to posting. It's one of the Essence Colour^3 polishes, this one is Brightsmates (you can see a photo of it in my previous post). The base colour is a bright pink jelly, and the top coat is sheer orange with pinkish glass flecks. The jelly is quite a nice formula and I used two coats in the photo below, with (I think) one coat of the topper.

I had to colour correct the shiz out of this as my camera kinda freaked about capturing this colour (I really need to find a decent photography setup, probably time to make my own lightbox!). It's a very bright summery colour, and maybe I would wear it as a pedicure but I really don't like this colour on my nails. At all. So this one will probably go up for swap at some point.

Also, I have been nominated for a Liebster blog award by the lovely mel my issta - thank you so much! I will do that post tomorrow, I promise - but right now I need to go pass out for about twelve hours. Stupid cold.

Robyn x

Essence Season of Extremes Colour^3 Nail Polish

Woot woot!

I was in Priceline on Bourke Street Mall today (not the one opposite Target, the one above the Pancake Parlour) seeing if they had any specials on...and I spotted an Essence stand!!! I'd only seen Essence in Target before, and usually poorly stocked too, so was pretty darn excited to see a nice new looking stand...then I saw THESE:

OMG. The idea between these polishes is that you can wear either end on their own, or layered on top of each other to create a "third" colour. $5.50 each too - it was a no brainer to grab these!

I can't wait to try the bright ones, but I have work tomorrow, and work only allows nail polish "in neutral colours", so tonight I'm rocking My Nude Best Friends and Me.

The "base" colour in MNBFaM is a taupe creme with subtle silver shimmer. It was a bit of a meh texture and required two thick coats to get opaque. Also because the brushes are in the centre section of each tube, when you're painting you not only have the lid of the brush but also the polish at the other end, which is a bit weird to use. The topper in this duo is an iridescent shimmer in a sheer white base. It looks mostly silvery but on the brush bristles (which are black) I could see tiny flashes of pink/red. I'd be keen to try this over a black base to see the colour flash.

When I first put this on I was pretty underwhelmed...I'm not a huge fan of nude shades to begin with so it was already at a disadvantage! However after seeing it in a few different light conditions I'm actually really beginning to like it. The sheer sparkles over the creme create a depth of colour and shine which is really pretty.

This is two coats of the base colour, one coat of the topper, and one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri.

I'm constantly on the lookout for nice polishes to wear at work - anything which is a bit interesting or out of the ordinary whilst sticking to the neutral colour scheme makes me not so sad to be wearing "boring" nails!

Robyn xox