Big review! Essie – Seche Vite – Nicole Diary

It was time for a new mani! Why? Because I can! (You know what I’m talking about)
I just got a great deal on some Essie polishes and one of them was a lovely bright blue that went well with this season. Also, I just got myself a new top coat by Seche Vite, you know, the one that can be applied to wet polish, and I was very excited to try it out! Finally, I got a few lovely Nicole Diary stamping plates in the mail and that brand was new to me, so I couldn’t wait to find out if it was any good. I set down and decided to try out all these new products at ones.

Essie – Garden Variety
In the spring of 2015 Essie came out with the Flowerista collection. In this collection was a lovely blue/turquoise polish named Garden Variety and only this week I actually purchased it, together with a few other Essie polishes. Looking at the polish it is a bit of a crelly type polish that applies real smooth. In only two coats this polish was opaque. The color isn’t very special in my opinion, but it’s bright, cheerful and spring-like. It’s a great color to combine with other blues or even different colors. I thought the polish is great, but boring on its own. I’m looking forward to using this in a gradient, because it will stand out that way. One big downside to this polish: it stains like hell! When I removed this polish, my fingers where blue all over.

O.P.I. - Kiss Me On My Tulips

I promised you the review of my second bottle of O.P.I. nail polish. As a Dutch woman, a bottle of the Holland Collection is basically a must-have and I just LOVED O.P.I. Kiss Me On My Tulips!

As you might have noticed, I really like pink colors, although I don’t tend to go for the really bright pinks. Well, I can tell you, this is one bright pink color! Kiss Me On My Tulips is a crème hot pink that will brighten anyone’s day. 

Let’s put it on my nails!

Sally ‘Handsome’ Hansen

Have you seen Sally Hansen’s Color Therapy collection yet? Well, I did and I HAD to have two colors in particular. I heard a lot of good things about the formula and when I saw the colors, I fell in love with ‘Soothing Sapphire’ and ‘Slicks and Stones’. I decided to get them both and give them a try!

Soothing Sapphire
This rich blue color just spoke to me! I was looking for a cobalt/navy blue color and this was close enough. It is a crème polish but with the tiniest purple shimmer that gives it a bit of an indigo undertone. 

 

Slicks and Stones
This rich purple just jumps out to you, from the shelves. Slicks and Stones is a shimmery polish with both gold and pink shimmers. I’m obsessed with this color and I can’t stop staring at the bottle!

Confession – I’m an O.P.I. virgin

I know, it’s embarrassing; I have never owned an O.P.I. nail polish! As a nail polish fanatic, this is an absolute disgrace… So, I picked up two O.P.I. polishes and now it’s time to review them! Because I don’t want to combine them, as the colors don’t go great together, I will start off with one, and in a later post, I will review the other one!

Down To The Core-al

Decisions, decisions… I decided to lose my O.P.I. virginity to O.P.I. Down To The Core-al from the Neon collection. This is a beautiful (you guessed it) coral color. If you take a closer look, it has a subtle shimmer to it that gives it a pinkish/red glow. I LOVE this color! It’s summery, bright, cheerful and yet classy. You can only get a rough idea of how beautiful this color is from the pictures, but I promise you, it is slightly like a summer fairy peed in a nail polish bottle!

Spring! But not really...

Holland is going through a rough period, it’s called ‘April’. The weather gods don’t seem to agree on what weather should be given to us, so they give it all: sun, rain, high temperatures, below freezing, wind and stuffy days. The effect: I don’t know what color to put on my nails! I want to be optimistic and wear my summery colors with joyful spring-like designs, but on some days that just makes me depressed because I realize I’m holding on to hope I shouldn’t even have in the first place... 

This weekend I’m visiting my in-laws for my mother-in-law’s birthday and I want a pretty design on my nails that says ‘springtime party’, without seeming overconfident about the ‘spring’-part. So, I got out my stamping plates and went to look for a lovely suitable design. Born Pretty’s BP-58 caught my eye and the beginning of the design was there! Because I was still a bit hesitant about the colors, I decided on a combination of colors. For the base, I used Essence the Gel nail polish 33 Wild White Ways. Then I decided to go for a dry brush effect, using Maybelline New York’s Color Show 265 Wine Shimmer, 323 Rose Chic and 465 Brick Shimmer. For the stamping, I went with Loréal Paris Color Riche 674 Noir Noir. It’s not my favorite design, but it has a bit of cheerfulness in the colors, the birds make for a bit of playfulness and the dry brush effect keeps it light and not too overly summery.

Essence - The Gel nail polish

The first time we met on this blog I was very positive about Essence – The Gel nail polish. And today, I still am! But for all you haters out there….

Just kidding! I thought it might be useful if I show you all why it is that I’m so enthusiastic about Essence. First of all, the price is right! I don’t know about you, but I haven’t got a huge budget to buy myself a shitload of Cirque and F.U.N. Lacquer polishes. I wish I did, but really, I don’t. Of course, I save up money to get myself those sought-after brands, but if I’m honest, I also just really love shopping and love buying nail polish! Second, Essence has a pretty broad collection of colors and has something for everyone’s taste. Third and last, the quality! Many cheap brands tend to be watery and sheer, but not Essence- The Gel. This polish is opaque in as little as two coats!

In this post, I would like to share my little collection of Essence – The Gel nail polish. I’ll show you a swatch on paper so you can see the beautiful colors and judge if it is opaque enough for you!

YouTube Addictions

Any idea how many bloggers and YouTubers there are that focus on nails? I haven’t got a clue, but I do have my favorites! Sticking to YouTubers, I think the trick to being a good nail-YouTuber is not to just be creative, good at explaining and good at filming your tutorials. Just as important is to be yourself. There are some good channels who don’t put a lot of personality in it, but I personally prefer the ones that do. The more “mainstream” channels that just show you the ‘how-to’s’ are useful if you’re just looking for a certain design and want to know how to get it on your nails, but the channels that show the girls (or boys, don't want to exclude anyone) that put their personality, their sense of humor and their opinion in their video’s, are the ones that stick with me and get me back to their channel every time! Even though I do prefer the more “quirky” channels, I do have a few mainstream channels that I really like. In this post I want to share with you my top 3 channels on YouTube, everyone should watch!

Low Spending Stamping

How much do you love nail stamping? If you’re not great at free hand nail art, like me, and you still love that finished look of a well-designed nail, stamping is the way to go in my opinion. So, you decide you want to have a go at it. YouTube offers a huge number of tutorials on what to do and what not to do. They tell you what nail polish to use, how to prep your stamp, why liquid latex is a good choice while stamping and what techniques to use to both pick up your image and get it on your nail the right way. But what image plates can you use? Do they have to be Konad, Bundle Monster or Pueen? Do you have to spend loads of money on your plates? The answer is no, not per se…

Cheap Nail Polish

Do you remember your very first nail polish? Well, I sure as hell don’t. My grandmother always wore nail polish, either red or pink. I remember my grandmother polishing my nails when I was about 7 or 8 years old and I couldn’t get my eyes of the shiny, glorious colors and the smooth texture. I must have been about 11 years old when I owned my first nail polish. I don’t even remember the color. Probably red or pink, like my grandmother’s..

When you’re young and dying for colorful nails, you don’t care which brand it is. It must be cheap and pretty, and that’s how my collection got started. Even today I can’t resist searching for bargains. I definitely grew to love and prefer certain brands, but I also still appreciate the cheaper drugstore brands as long as they are pretty and do the trick. I would like to share my experiences with you on cheap polishes!