Indecision in Red and Blue

Can you tell I'm just trying to get all my school-related manicures out of the way? I'm trying to sever the ties, I promise I am.

Remember last year's school spirit manicure? Well, for this year's game (back in April), I decided that I was going to top it no matter what. The only problem was, I didn't know how I was supposed to go about doing that. And as was the case for most of my during-the-school-year manis, laziness was a major factor.

My friends always make fun of me for my indecisive tendencies. It's why I can't eat at the Pickle Barrel without getting an anxiety attack. And it's probably also why I now own 200+ bottles of nail polish. In the end, my indecision led me to do this:

Fun fact: apparently U of T Pharmacy is pretty indecisive about what their colour is as well. This was going to be an all blue number, but I remembered that somewhere in between 2nd and 3rd year the colour had switched from red to blue, and I was unsure if it had switched back since I'd left school in December. So I threw a red nail in there for good measure. 

Thumb: 2 coats of Joe Fresh Indigo, "U of T" drawn on using a fine-tipped dotting tool with Sally Hansen White On

Index: 2 coats of China Glaze Frostbite -- love this colour. I honestly just wanted an excuse to wear this electric blue beauty again.

Middle: 2 coats of Sally Hansen White On as a base, with dots in Joe Fresh Indigo (darkest), Joe Fresh Cobalt (medium blue), Sally Hansen Blue Me Away! (lightest), and Essence Let's Get Lost (aqua).

Ring: 2 coats of Joe Fresh Apple, a deliciously bright red. Dots in a combination of Joe Fresh Indigo, Sally Hansen White On, China Glaze Frostbite, and more Apple. Can you tell I went a little bit dotty with this manicure?

Pinky: we have Nina Ultra Pro in Cobalt, with a coat of Wet 'n' Wild Stars & Stripes. Cobalt is a jelly, so you can still make out my nail line despite the 3 coats that I used. The formula on the glitter polish was a bit thick, and I used an orange stick to place the stars onto the nail because it just wouldn't come off the brush on its own.

In the end, I kind of wished I'd just stuck to alternating red and blue or something, because this mani was hella confusing. And we didn't even win! :(

Long time, no post

Happy...2013!

 

I almost can't believe how ridiculously long it's been since I've logged on. School was so incredibly busy, and I couldn't spare a second for myself. Not to mention that blogger wouldn't let me upload any more pictures. LAME.

 

Anyhow, I'm trying to play a little catch up on the weekends with the blog as well as some personal stuff, so here we are. This is how I wore my nails for a New Year's Eve party with some friends:

 



The base colour is Date in the Moonlight from Essence. It's a charcoal gray that leans a little blue, topped off with some bright blue micro-shimmer. It's really a beautiful colour on it's own. I would tell you something about the formula now, but to be honest I can't remember. I know that it didn't require an obscene amount of coats (probably was a 2-coater) and that it wasn't too thick or too thin.

I applied Diamond Drops (pictured) from Color Club starting at my cuticles. I was going to say "sponged", since that's what you usually do when you want a glitter gradient, but the glitter in this polish is more shard-like and not very user-friendly, so I ended up dabbing the polish brush against my nail to place the shards generally where I wanted them. I finished it off by using a dotting tool to put "2013" on my ring finger...in case you were unsure of what year was coming in.

I'll include this slightly blurry picture so you can see the blue shimmer a bit. It's not really in-your-face, but it is a nice addition:

 That's really it for now. I've got a folder full of pictures still left to share, and that's not even counting the ones that I didn't have a chance to photograph before I took them off!

See you (hopefully) soon!

Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice

It's no secret to anybody that I am an absolute coffee FIEND. (I am a fiend for many things - it should really be on my resume.) This fact has very little to do with anything, but at the same time it has to do with EVERYTHING about this post. 

When I started at U of T, I hated coffee. Couldn't stand the stuff. I once went to Starbucks, ordered a Vanilla Latte thinking it would be like a Tim Horton's French Vanilla, took three sips, and then threw it out because it "tasted too much like coffee". Then, one day, everything changed:

My BFF (omg, can't believe I'm using that term again. kill me now), who despised coffee as I did, suggested that I try a gateway drug...I mean, Pumpkin Spice Latte. 

This happened:

And now, I can't get enough of the stuff. It was a steep and slippery slope leading from PSLs to my apparent coffee addiction today. Why am I telling you this?

1. I am most likely enjoying a Venti PSL as you read this to help me take away the pain of the exam I just wrote
2. This next colour I'm about to show you reminds me of my most beloved Starbucks favourite

Essence Colour & Go in Gorgeous Bling Bling is a burnt orange shade filled with gold flecks. It's a gorgeous colour that just screams, FALL!

The formula was flawless as always: could have gotten away with a single coat if applied more carefully. Also, is anyone else totally digging how even the cap has gold flecks in it? I think it's a great special touch to the packaging to have the lid match the colour on the inside, down to the gold flecks.

Personally, though, I think this shade leans a little bit too red/brown for it to be flattering to my warm skin tone. I think this would look amazing on somebody much paler or less...yellow. (Just keeping it real.) Nevertheless, it is a wonderful fall colour and even though it's not my cup of tea, it certainly is like a cup of PSL. :D

I'm really impressed by these little Essence polishes. They're affordable, they're cute, and the colour selection has been exquisite. I'm excited to see what shades they'll come up with next!

OMG: Oh My Glitter!

Good morning! I hope everyone's week started well. Mine was just barely tolerable, to be honest, but I'm sitting here writing up this blog post to cheer me up.

Hopefully.

I have a swatch here from this epic haul of shame that I got within days of school starting this year. It included, but was not limited to several new Essence Colour & Go polishes, plus a crapload of different funky pairs of earrings. I was looking for Essence I'm the Boss, but unfortunately that particular colour was either sold out or not currently on sale at Shoppers.

This, the first of 6 (or 7, I lost count) polishes, is Oh My Glitter:

Oh My Glitter is a medium purple with pink and blue micro glitter. A bunch of the new Essence shades have this wicked micro glitter running through them, and they're all stunning. This is no exception!

The formula was, as with all Essence polishes, was awesome. I used 2 coats, and although I got full coverage, these pictures make me think that a 3rd coat wouldn't have hurt. Maybe. I can't tell if those are bald spots or just reflections of light.

This colour was absolutely gorgeous. I almost didn't want to take this one off! I don't have any other purples in my collection that have this exact shade of purple, nor do I have any with this pretty shimmery glitter.  These new Essence polishes retail for $1.99 at Shoppers Drug Mart.

(Sidenote, has anybody seen the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother? Holy awesome.)

You Belong To Me

This is another tale of my trademark indecision. You have been warned.

When the Essence Colour & Go polishes came to Canada, I made a huge fuss over them here on the blog, as well as in every Shoppers Drug Mart that I came across. One night, early this summer, I trekked to a SDM that was only slightly out of my way coming home after work. At this point in my search, I had been disappointed with how sparsely stocked most of the Essence racks were. However, that night I was faced with a full rack. DECISIONS!

I picked up a couple of unique shades and plunked them into my shopping basket, but there was one shade that was peeking out at me. This shade did not strike me as too unique: a Tiffany blue colour, a la Tiffany Imposter (Finger Paints) and For Audrey (China Glaze). I owned neither of the 2 previously mentioned polishes, nor did I have any strong desires to be purchasing either. Mint greens and light blues were in vogue when I started mad collecting last summer, so I had a truckload and a half of these shades.

But still. It was $1.49!

I walked back and forth between the checkouts at the front and the Essence rack near the dispensary and post office at the back about a half a dozen times before I finally decided to bite the bullet and just buy it already. I had wasted far larger amounts of cash before...

The colour was You Belong To Me by Essence, and now it does, indeed, belong to me!

I did, however, notice a difference between this and the other shades that I own, which is a bonus. There is a subtle, barely there shimmer in this colour, which I found to be very pretty, but not as in-your-face (if that makes any sense, since I already described it as barely there) on the nail. The formula, as always with Essence, was awesome: one coat was pretty opaque on its own, but the second was to even it out/force of habit.

Another wonderful thing I noticed was that in these pictures, it leans green whereas in the Avonspiration manicure, it was blue. Both are colour accurate. Chameleon, or optical illusion? You be the judge!

Avonspiration

 For as long as I've been into nail polish and cosmetics of any sort, my mom has been bringing home Avon catalogues from work. In fact, there was a brief period where she was trying to become an Avon lady for some extra cash (for shopping, of course!). It didn't happen, and I continued with my limited purchases of mail order cosmetics.

However, the latest catalogue made its way into my hands at the beginning of last week and I saw this picture:

I only own one Avon nail polish (Avon Jade, which is...perfection), since the colour selection in past campaigns left a little more to be desired. BUT, this display of nail art really caught my eye and I knew that I had to try and replicate at least one of these. The pinky nail on the topmost hand struck me as both the simplest and the coolest looking combination.

I would have never come up with this colour combination on my own! I started with 2 coats of Essence You Belong To Me, a light, Tiffany blue nail polish. I tried to make the diagonal line precise by using scotch tape, but I was too impatient to wait for the Essence to dry completely, so I ended up lifting the polish right off with the tape! 

I ended up free-handing the diagonal with the brush on Sally Hansen Chartreuse Chase, a light green/yellow quick drying polish with blue shimmer. It's a nice colour, but I didn't like it when I wore it on its own, so I had my reservations about using it in this manicure. Luckily, it went well with the blue and this mani turned out amazing.

I got so many compliments on this look, which was especially pleasing considering how simple the design was.

 Loved it, loved it, loved it!

Joe Fresh Peacock

Now I'm going to warn you all beforehand. There is an accent nail in this swatch, and you're going to be seeing it more than once. Let's call it the evolution of a manicure.

This is the earliest incarnation, using Joe Fresh Peacock.

 Peacock was the first polish from Joe Fresh that caught my eye. Navy blue base filled with light blue shimmer that turns pink at the most extreme of angles. Unfortunately, the duochrome doesn't translate onto the nail, but if you try really hard you might be able to coax it out. This was 2 coats of Peacock with no topcoat.

As for the peacock feather nail...it was something I'd been wanting to do for ages now. Peacock feathers absolutely FASCINATE me. The colours are so very pretty and the feathers are just so...ethereal. I have a peacock feather hairclip that I've been staring at for days now. I always wondered: do they breed peacocks specifically for making jewelry and home decor? Or is everything synthetic...?

Anyway, the ring finger has 2 coats of Essie Navigate Her. The peacock feather is drawn on mainly using a Sephora by OPI nail art pen that I got for $3.00 on clearance earlier this summer. The green one is called Read Between The Lines. The olive streaks are brushed on using a striping brush in Zoya Yara. As for the "eye", it consists of dots made using a dotting tool in OPI Just Spotted The Lizard, China Glaze Custom Kicks, and Essence Walk on Air.

I was very pleased with the results of my free-handing of the peacock feather, especially with all the comments I've been receiving. Accent nails have been a huge thing for me this summer, and these are some of the best I've done so far. Yay!

The Party's On My Nails!

I think I may have already recounted my mission to spot Essence when I heard that it had come to Canada in the spring. I scouted every Shoppers Drug Mart like it was nobody's business. (I stopped short of asking all my friends to help me, since a lot of them work there, because I decided that would be crossing the line.) 

In any case, I found my very first bottle while shopping for shoes with my mom after a week or so. This is Essence Where's The Party?

This colour is hands down, the most amazingness I have ever encountered for such a low price. $1.49 and it's like I get THREE different colours and more! Green:

Brown:

Purple:

The only other polish I have that compares in terms of the level of duochrome is Nubar's Indigo Illusion, and that cost me at least four times more than this one did. The colour shift reminds me a bit of Wet 'n' Wild Gray's Anatomy, but this one is definitely stronger.

The second best part? (After the low price, of course.) The formula was THE BOMB. I probably could have gotten away with one coat, but I did two out of habit. It wasn't streaky, if applied properly, and it dried rather quickly. 

Again, these go for $1.49 at Shoppers, for a mini-bottle. So far I've been mighty impressed by Essence, delivering on the quality and skipping out on the high prices. Keep it coming, Essence!

Countdown to The Olympics #2

What are the Olympics really about?

Just kidding. (Or am I?)

Clearly, I am. This is the Summer Olympics. My people are only good at sports in cold climates. And my actual people (and by this I mean athletes from the Philippines) don't really win so much at global competitions, see Miss Philippines 2010 and her mistake-free life.

The answer would be something along the lines of global unity and camaraderie. Good sportsmanship. Recognizing that we are all one. World peace. Nothing major major. (Goddamnit, Miss Philippines, was it so hard to think of a single thing you'd done wrong?)

Anyway. Since I don't have hundreds of fingers, I only did 3 flags. Where I'm from, where my parents are from, and the host country. The pinky was supposed to be the American flag, but in the end I decided that it would have been too much effort for such a small fingernail. Instead, I went with the "WINNING!" theme and painted it gold, OPI's Bling Dynasty.

The maple leaf was a temporary tattoo, the stripes on the British flag were done using a striper brush, and the sun on the Philippine flag was made with a dotting tool.

The colours I used were: Wet 'n' Wild Red Red, Sally Hansen White On, Color Club Almost Famous (yellow), and Essence Walk on Air (navy blue).

Here's the whole hand, with the Olympic flag showing as well. Amazingly, I did this without the aid of any striping or scotch tape. In the second picture you can see that my lines and edges are not 100% perfect, but they were definitely good enough to show you guys, haha.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I'll be posting my final Olympics manicure! :D

Essence-tially

FINALLY, a full Essence mani! I was so excited about these coming to Canada, and then...I sort of just accumulated a bunch of them and never really tried any of them on.

This is Gleam in Blue from Essence:

Gleam in blue is a sky blue-coloured metallic/frost. I'm not a big fan of frost finishes, since they're pretty brush stroke prone, and this really wasn't an exception. It's a great colour, just not my cup of tea. HOWEVER, I will say that the formula was amazing. This was 2 coats, but you really could get away with just one if you're careful.

I know that there is a dent in my index finger, but that can be chalked up to my sheer laziness and the fact that I will probably be changing this colour very soon and see no benefit from me re-doing that finger. My hands also look extremely oily in that picture, but it's only because I had just finished putting on some body butter from The Body Shop. The pot I'm using right now is pretty ancient, so I feel like a bit of a hypocrite when I tell people at the store not to use their old creams because there might be bacteria growing in them (aside from the fact that the active drug is probably...inactive). I keep telling myself it's okay just as long as I don't put it on before eating. There's about 15% of the pot remaining...I promise the denial ends once it's empty. :P

You can get these cute Essence polishes from Shoppers Drug Mart for $1.49 (and really, I should have just called some of my peeps at Shoppers to hook me up with a discounted price, but I wasn't thinking very clearly). It was in a little display that said "Limited Edition Colours", but I have seen it at other Shoppers locations mixed in with the permanent collection display. For the price, it's hard to go wrong.

Blocked!

Now I'm really excited about this mani, despite the fact that it took nearly 2 hours and now I have a headache...

This was another scotch tape mani. I painted my nails with 1 coat of Sally Hansen White Out, and then I laid out thin pieces of scotch tape (cut up, of course) in a grid pattern. The colour pattern that I used was mostly random, but I did try to pick colours that would flow with each other:

Blues: Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, China Glaze Secret Periwinkle, American Apparel Mount Royal
Purples: Joe Fresh Iris, Essence A Lovely Secret
Green: Essie Turquoise and Caicos


It was a huge pain in the butt to do, but I am quite pleased with the result. The last few days have been lived out in a sort of high school reminiscent theme, so it is only fitting that tonight I will be heading down to my old high school to watch my brother's concert. I was going to do music themed nails as a result, but I decided I wanted to do something more all-purpose. I'm currently laid out on the couch, enjoying today as much as I can, since I'll be going back to work tomorrow, boo. :P

The Hunt for Essence

Essence came to Canada a few months ago, but only within the last week have I been able to get my hands on some. Essence is a little European brand that sells these cute little mini nail polishes for $1.49CAD and I've heard nothing but good things! Even then, what I have to show for my quest thus far is really not that impressive.

About 3 weeks ago, I used the Shoppers Drug Mart store locator to find the store with Essence that was least out of my way. It gave me the location of a SDM about 2 blocks from Union Station. I could hardly contain my excitement as I took time out of my busy exam-time schedule to go and check it out, but...alas, no Essence display. :(

You can imagine my disappointment.

The weekend before I left for my vacation, I was running some last minute errands when I came upon...AN ESSENCE DISPLAY! It was mostly empty, but still. I snatched up the last 2 bottles, Luxury Secret and Where Is The Party? (2 bottles on the right). This morning, while killing time before work, I picked up 2 more, Choose Me! and Gleam in Blue. I am a little disappointed that I've only been able to pick up 4 of these awesome little bottles, but rest assured that I will have more before the summer is out.

I haven't yet had a chance to swatch any of these, but when I do I can feel that there will be some comparisons to be had, namely between Choose Me! and Wet 'n' Wild Teal of Fortune, AND Where is the Party? and Wet 'n' Wild Gray's Anatomy. Stay tuned!