Essence - peel off base coat review

Ever since I found out essence had included a peel off base coat in their 'Ready for Boarding' limited edition series I wanted it. I have been popping into every Target I came across in my travels and finally found the Ready for Boarding series. I actually got two bottles of this because at $3.50 it's cheap and I have not heard of any other brand selling a product like this!

This is going to be a pretty quick review and sadly text-heavy, fingers crossed I don't make you fall asleep!

The peel of base coat by essence goes onto your nails as a semi-sheer white colour. Once dried I applied 2 coats of an essence polish and a glitter by ulta3 After wearing the polish for around 2 hours I decided to peel the polish off. I know I didn't wear it for long but I really wanted to get this post done before the end of the weekend :)

I was sceptical about this product but found it very easy to use. With a nail you simply scrape at the polish a tiny bit which causes it to lift and then you can peel off the polish in one big movement {slowly}.

Overall I am very happy with this product, it works great and is an amazing price! I kind of want another bottle :)

31 day challenge day 10 - Gradient Nails

I have never ever done gradient nails before but for a long long time I have been admiring other bloggers' gradients. It's so pretty and artistic and yet (supposedly) easy to achieve. So I got myself some sponges and attempted my first ever gradient today. One word can describe my attempt:

FAIL

I don't know what I did wrong. Or maybe it was everything. I started with a base coat of Essence's 'Nude or What' and then using a sponge designed for liquid foundation my ModelsPrefer applied Revlon's 'Blue Slate' and 'Bold Sangria'. In  my head it was going to look fabolous but um...er....lets just change the subject shall we?

Photos are not the best because they were either taken inside with a flash or outside when it was nearly dark and spitting with rain. FUN!

One nail kind of worked (emphasis on the "kind of") but all the others were horrible....something wrong with my sponging technique I think! Oh well, it was my first ever gradient.

I think my thumb looks okay-ish.It is smooth and there is a gradient there.....just not as awesome and distinct as the one I imagined.

And well this I am ashamed to post but I though I should try and show what happened. And the tutorials make it look so easy!!! Probably should have just done a two-tone gradient rather than a 3-tone. 

Please check out all the other bloggers participating in this challenge. 

Sally Morgan

http://nailpron.blogspot.co.uk/

Nikki Muldrew

http://www.cutie-cles.blogspot.ca

Kimberly Rybak

http://www.bleedglitter.com/

Felicia Renee Banuelos

http://fesnails.blogspot.com/

Belén

http://nailpolishlane.blogspot.com.es/

Cristina Santos

http://theclockwisenailpolish.blogspot.pt/

Courtney Mendoza

http://cute-iclechronicles.com

Natalie Elise

www.walkinmyeyeshadow.com

Rebecca Russell

 http://rebeccasramblings-tenderheartr.blogspot.com/

Jessica Beswick

http://rubysnails.blogspot.com/

Raquel Soares

http://9mluniverse.blogspot.pt/

Briana

http://nailacollegedropout.blogspot.com/

Kimberly L

http://to-polish-or-not.blogspot.ca/

Kelly Cooke

http://crazynaillady.blogspot.com

Carina Martins

http://polishitall.blogspot.pt/

 

Laura Carls

http://justagirlandherpolish.blogspot.com/

31 Day Challenge Day 9 - Rainbow Nails

Hi guys :) I hope you all  have a wonderful weekend.
The theme for day 9 is 'rainbow nails'. For some inspiration I had a look on the internet and found heaps of wonderful people who had drew beautifully curved rainbows onto their nails, complete with cute little fluffy clouds. I didn't think I could pull that off so I went a bit metaphorical with this challenge.

 For middle finger I used sticky tape to create a bold rainbow using:

• Ulta3's blue marlin & mermaid green
• Essence's Meet Me Now 
• Kit's Start Up. 

Finally I used an awesome nail art pen that I just got to do the white stripes (will post more about this pen soon so stay tuned). Sadly by the time I could take photos the lines had smudged a bit so they are not as crisp as I wanted them to be for the photos but oh well, maybe it is even better that they are wonky....could represents clouds or something.

Before I put the white stripes on my nails this is how it looked. Maybe I shouldn't have done the stripes???

Sorry about the lack of clean-up on this nail. My cuticles are really sore at the moment so I decided not to pick and rub them with nail polish remover like a crazy lady to get rid of all the mess. Thank goodness my other fingers look slightly better! Sorry! I know they look terrible :/

For my ring finger I used Essence's 'Meet Me Now' and Revlon's 'Fall Mood' for the tip. I really like how this turned out. Huh? How is this related to rainbows? Well you know how people always say if you go to the end of a rainbow you will find a pot of gold? Well..... the golden bronze tip is suppose to represent that pot of gold and the pink? Well all rainbows have pink in them right? Hahaha yeah I know.... bit out there :)

Finally for my index finger I used a limited edition polish by Face of Australia called 'Lets Go Scuba Diving'. I love this polish and there will be a post about it very soon. BTW - if you are in Oz and still want any of the Barbados polishes I would suggest getting to the shops ASAP. The shelves are quite empty and not a lot of these polishes are around anymore :(I also used the white nail art pen to do some polka dots. Not sure how this relates to rainbows but I really wanted to try out my new pen!

So those are my rainbow nails. What do you think of them?

And as always please check out the other lovely bloggers participating in this challenge!

Sally Morgan

http://nailpron.blogspot.co.uk/

Nikki Muldrew

http://www.cutie-cles.blogspot.ca

Kimberly Rybak

http://www.bleedglitter.com/

Felicia Renee Banuelos

http://fesnails.blogspot.com/

Belén

http://nailpolishlane.blogspot.com.es/

Cristina Santos

http://theclockwisenailpolish.blogspot.pt/

Courtney Mendoza

http://cute-iclechronicles.com

Natalie Elise

www.walkinmyeyeshadow.com

Rebecca Russell

 http://rebeccasramblings-tenderheartr.blogspot.com/

Jessica Beswick

http://rubysnails.blogspot.com/

Raquel Soares

http://9mluniverse.blogspot.pt/

Briana

http://nailacollegedropout.blogspot.com/

Kimberly L

http://to-polish-or-not.blogspot.ca/

Kelly Cooke

http://crazynaillady.blogspot.com

Carina Martins

http://polishitall.blogspot.pt/

 

Laura Carls

http://justagirlandherpolish.blogspot.com/

The 31 day winter challenge - metallic nails

Oh my!!! It is day eight already of the 31 day challenge and I am already behind :/
I will catch-up.....hopefully on the weekend I can post the photos that I haven't had time to post this week. I decided to just move on and play catch- up later. Sorry guys.

Anyway the theme for today was 'metallic' and this kind of stumped me! No laughing please but I am still new to nail-polish blogging and I wasn't 100% sure what polishes in my drawer classified as 'metallic' and which did not. I decided to go with Essence's 'Where is the party' which is a duochrome with a chromey, metallic finish (I hope).

Anyway, awhile back I was looking for a dupe for an old favourite (Rimmel's Zeitgeist) and one of my lovely fellowers suggested I try this polish. I was thrilled to know that for $2.50 I might be able to replace my favourite polish and therefore when trying out this polish for the first time, I had very high expectations. I'm not sure if I can say that this is a 100% accurate dupe but it is still a nice polish. I think I was slightly disappointed with the polish because of my high expectations and in any other circumstance I would have fallen head over heels in love with it.

This polish is quite an amazing duochrome although "duo" implies two....but I think this polish had many many many more tones to it. I kept staring at the polish in different surroundings and finding different colours :) Obviously, every time I spotted an awesome effect on my nails I was somewhere where photos were not appropriate ( I can think of many times when this happened, for example, in class) and obviously when I could take photos I couldn't capture the awesomeness of this polish!

Overall I was pretty happy with this polish.

One final thing, if anyone would like to let me know what can be called a metallic polish and what cannot...etc that would be greatly appreciated :) And the difference between metallic and chrome polish? Because I would call Where is the Party a chrome / duochrome.....

Safe nail polishes

I have been wearing nail polishes for years however it has only been in the past two or three months that I discovered that nail polish contains many toxic chemicals that have been proven to cause defects in children and cancer. However do not fear, by becoming a savy consumer, and by reading the ingredients list before buying you can have polishes nails AND help you avoid health issues. 

I do not claim to have a great deal of knowledge on this topic but I have done some research on the internet as this blog is growing and so is my stash. The idea that wearing nail polish could give me cancer or increase my chances or affect the health of any children I may have in the future FREAKS me out heaps and heaps heaps. Hence I have been looking everywhere for nail polish that does not contain the bad chemicals. 

There are different types of 'safe' polishes: 3-free, 4-free 5-free and water based. 3-free do not contain formaldehyde, dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and Toulene. 4-free do not contain: formaldehyde, dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and Toulene and Formaldehyde Resin. 5-free do not contain: formaldehyde, dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and Toulene and formaldehyde resin and camphor. Furthermore there is also water-based polishes that are safe for children and pregnant women. 

If you want more information there are a lot of website that talk about this topic. One of my favourites is http://www.inspirationail.com/5-free-varnish/. 

I am yet to find any water-based polish. I have sourced some and there is a little shop literally around the corner from me. I was planning on going there today but never got there. Ended up spending my day in the city instead and spent way too much money on polish :( 

Brands have taken notice and some do state on their bottles that they do not contain blah blah and blah blah. It is always wise to read the ingredients list before buying polish since there are heaps of polishes out there that don't contain nasty things. 

After discovering the fact that nail polish can contain nasty things I noticed at my local Priceline that some brands, on their displays, actually advertise the fact that they don't contain certain chemicals. 

I have found that Revlon does not contain Formaldehyde and Toulene. There are also other brands that do not contain nasty chemicals or do not contain all of them, such as Face of Australia, Models Prefer, but again please do not take my word for it and read the ingredients before buying something. It is entirely possible that I missed something or that different ranges of polish contain different ingredients (geez they write the ingredients in tiny fronts!!!) I have also found a brand called OmShe at Priceline that does not contain DBP, toluene and formaldehyde. Oh and also OPI do not contain all of the nasty chemicals too. I believe essence is 5-free however I have not confirmed this yet! If this is true it is amazing considering they are the cheapest nail polishes on the market. 

A side note, whilst shopping today there was a stand of make-up for $2 (can't remember the name of the brand) and all 5 of the bad nasty chemicals were listed in the ingredients!!! WOW!!! It was a shame too because there were some gorgeous colours. 

Hope this weekend has been great for you!