Essie Matte About You. Or How I Thought I Was Living In a Lie

If you were to look at the matte tag in this blog, you may notice about a third of all my posts have been matted. I love the matte finish and the soft light it reflects. So far I've been using Rimmel Pro Matte Finish and I was in love. After reading a few blogs, I discovered that the this matte top coat was actually giving my manis a satin finish and not the full on matte effect. I decided to do some research and look for the best matte top coat to ensure I was actually in love with the matte finish and not the satin one. 

This is how I came across essie's Matte About You. I'd read in various places that essie MAY and OPI's Matte Top Coat gave the best results so off I went to this trustworthy eBay seller and only found MAY for sale. I got the bottle of polish today and I had to try it out straight away. 

I knew exactly what mani I wanted to try it with to have a truly matte finish. I started with two coats of Topshop in Celestial, a beautiful periwinkle blue creme that is no longer on sale. There are plenty of dupes out there but the quality of Topshop polishes is impressive so I stuck with this one. Please excuse the crappy clean up I knew, I would have to clean up the rest of the polishes later. They get cleaner, I promise. 

Once Celestial was almost dry, I dabbed one coat of essence in The Huntsman from the Snow White Collection. I even got a long bar glitter that I didn't know the polish included.  Dabbing FTW! This took a while to dry so I applied a coat of Seche Vite to speed up the process. 

This is where I decided to put one coat of Rimmel PMF on first to see it would compare to MAY. Pretty  and soft, right? 

I let the mani dry completely before applying one coat of MAY. 

I didn't really see any difference but the I thought it may have had to do with the layering of matte polishes. So I started again to make sure there was clear difference.

More after the break.

Polish Binge Pt. 1

A couple of weeks back, I went on a massive nail polish shopping binge, mostly on Beauty Bay as they had 20% off everything and free international shipping as a part of their Black Friday sales.

I got the first out of two packages on Friday. I got a heap of mini polish sets and the first one I'm going to show you is one by Orly. It's called Mani Minis Hot Shots and it has four brightly coloured polishes.

From left to right: Hottie, Hook Up, Holla, Blue Collar. All two coats except for my middle finger, in which I needed 3 coats to make Hook up opaque.
I added an accent with Bundle Monster's BM-225 plate motif of what I believe is a Christmas bauble with essence's Silver twister.

These are my first Orly polishes and I was amazed. This spread like butter and dried fairly quickly. Even Hook Up, the yellow one, was a dream to apply. I find any yellow polish takes a bit of work to make it look good but not this one.

I'm so happy with these purchase and I'm really looking forward to showing you the rest of my (new) stash.

Till next time, 

Laura

Nude Gradient Mani

I've finally got around to posting! Here's a gradient mani that I gave myself today. This blog has taught me that there's an art to photographing nail art and swatches, so please forgive the pictures.

Nude to lilac gradient. 

The gradient isn't obvious in this picture, but it's a great shot of the nude colour.

I went for a subtle nude effect, and I think that's what I got! I used Essence Nude Glam in Hazelnut Cream Pie as the base and sponged China Glaze Sweet Hook, a pretty pastel lilac, on the tips.

I've been buying lots of nail polish lately. I've been stocking up on Essence from my local Target, they're really cheap and the colours are awesome. They can be a little hard to work with, but for $2 a bottle, it's not really a big deal.

This week's haul. I bought a few more bottles of Essence after this picture was taken.

I also got some new make up brushes this week. I really love Nic and Sam Chapman from Pixiwoo, and I've been lusting after Sam's Real Techniques brushes for a while. I was super happy to learn that they are now stocked at Priceline, so I went and bought some. Australia is a great place to live, but the range of cosmetics here is nowhere near as good as in the US or Europe, and everything is twice the price (including the brushes, boohoo). Are you interested in a review of the brushes I bought? Let me know!