essie–Real Simple

I wanted to love this polish, I truly did. I have been searching for the perfect sheer polish that I could use for french manis for months now, and I was sure this would be it.

But alas, it was not.

 

This is essie Real Simple:

Three coats of hell. This formula was awful, awful, awful. Streaky and unmanageable. It wasn’t an even finish no matter how hard I tried.

 

It wasn’t quite sheer enough, either. I needed three coats to even it out to be decent enough to wear in public, so I couldn’t go with two coats to make it more sheer.

 

Blah, just blah. There was nothing special about this polish.

Since then, thankfully, I’ve found the perfect sheer polishes. Can you guess what they are?

Em

essie–Nice is Nice Easter mani

I kind of did my Easter mani at the last minute (ie Easter Sunday morning). I wasn’t going to do one because generally I’m pretty damn lazy when it comes to doing holiday themed manis … but this was so easy I didn’t have much of an excuse not to do it!

 

Here it is:

This is two coats of essie Nice is Nice, a gorgeous pastel purple. Beautiful formula and such a lovely colour. The dots and zig zags are Ulta3 Lemon Tart from their Gelato collection. Horrid formula, as I’ve heard. The zig zags were way harder to do than they should have been!!!

 

Did you do an Easter themed mani?

Em

Ulta3–Kiwi Kaos with Konad

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you had a great day yesterday and aren't in too much of a sugar coma.

My partner had to work pretty much the whole Easter weekend so I took the opportunity to do extra massages and, of course, extra manis!

This is a mani from a few weeks ago that I'd forgotten I'd even done. You know you're a nail polish addict when you can't remember any of the manis you've done recently:

This is Ulta3 Kiwi Kaos from their Gelato collection:

Two coats... pretty decent formula! I like this! It's a nice, muted green. Some greens are way too bright but this is perfect!

I did some stamping over it in one of the classic Konad designs:

Aussies, doesn't this remind you of the Harris Scarfe logo!? Non-Aussies, Harris Scarfe is a department store here which sells clothes, bedding, kitchen and homewares and electronics. Their old logo and design used to have this design and they have always used green!

Have you done any manis which remind you of something like this!?
Em

Orly–Sapphire Luck

This Orly polish is a pretty little number! My lovely mother picked it up from me when Orly’s were out for $5 each at Priceline. Very good choice


Sapphire Luck, two coats over essence The Dawn is Broken.
This is a gorgeous purple shimmer with a blue colour shift. It’s very subtle but it’s there! It’s just really hard to photograph. It's such a beautiful colour. My mum always does well in picking out polishes for me!

This was awesome for a quick polish change when I didn’t have time to do a whole new mani. Go layering!

Did you pick up any Orly bargains?
Em

Mimco–Russian Red with OPI DS Bold accent nails

My friend Kate came over the other day to meet my new kitten Max, and she mentioned that she was looking for the perfect red polish.

I had just the thing for her! So we sat down and I gave her a mani:

Mimco Russian Red, two coats, and OPI DS Bold as accent nails on the thumb and ring fingers, also two coats.

Russian Red is THE perfect red. You will never find another red as nice as this one. I know that’s a huge, sweeping statement but it’s true!

Unfortunately Mimco only sell this in a duo pack with another colour, “Nude”, but you’re lucky because that is a gorgeous colour too!

Kate loved her nails and, two days later, reports no chips in Russian Red and just one in DS Bold

 

Em

essence–The Dawn is Broken

Meh. This polish is meh. So disappointing because the others in essence’s Vampire’s Love collection are stunning. This one was a bit like they suddenly thought “Oh crap, we need another colour! Oh, this one will do!”

 

This is essence The Dawn is Broken:

Two coats. Formula was okay, a little thick. Chips the next day. I just can’t get excited about this polish!

What do you think? Am I being too harsh?

 

Em

Zoya - Ivanka

Happy Birthday to me And what better way to celebrate than to show you all my new favourite polish.

 

Behold, Zoya Ivanka!

Gahhhh. It’s just so beautiful! Ivanka is a gorgeous, glowy, sparkly green foil. It is stunning, it is amazing, it is my new favourite.

This was two coats. I wish I could say it wore well but wow, this chipped and peeled most of one finger off in less than two hours from when I painted it. I touched it up twice in the space of two days. Really disappointing, but so worth it.

Ivanka is from the Sparkle collection and I got her in a blog sale a little while back. I also got Mimi, a gorgeous purple from the same collection. There are still a couple I want to get, including Charla. I would have to say this is possibly the only polish I’ve ever owned that I’ve considered getting a back up of.

 

What do you think?
Em