Collage of the Month: January - February

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Essence Galactic Glam and Splash!

Hi guys! Are you in the mood for some more new Essence polishes? Then read on! :) I'll tell you straight away though, these both really neeeed basecoat! I always skip that for my swatches, but after I swatched these I couldn't continue because my skin was so stained! I used 2 coats of each, no top coat.

Essence Galactic Glam.

Oh this is one of my favorites of the ones I've picked up, it looks way better irl as well! It's simply a pretty :) It reminded me of Choose Me! straight away (one of the many Zoya Charla dupes), but that one has a lot more warm golden in it, and with that, looks a bit more green as well. And I'll repeat myself, because this one was the worst, basecoat!

Essence Splash!

Splash! is a polish I had high hopes for, but it disappointed a bit on the nails. Somehow it feels like nothing we haven't seen before! And I really hoped it would be pigmented enough to work for stamping, but it needed 2 coats to cover well. I might try it sometime anyway, but I'm just not so sure about it. If it does work, you know I'll instantly love it a lot more! :)
It's a bit streaky, and just one of those polishes that looked better in the bottle. On the pic above I tilted my nails up a bit, to capture the darker blue flash, but as my normal pics show, that isn't as visible most of the time. Both polishes look a bit more green irl though, my camera just loooves to pick up blue tones, haha!

I'd pick up Galactic Glam again, but leave Splash! behind. What about you, do you have access to Essence and if so, did you try any of their new polishes yet? I have some red ones to show as well, but those will come some other time :)

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New Essence: Over The Rainbow

Here's one of the new Essence polishes that I couldn't resist when I saw it in the stores! I already swatched a few more, but I think you can understand why I wanted to post this now already instead of swatching more and doing a big post, it deserves a post of its own :)

Essence Over The Rainbow.

I think Over The Rainbow is one of the best aditions to their renewed standard collection from what I've seen so far, isn't it amazing?! The application itself was fine and it covered in 2 easy coats (showing it without top coat here), but I did notice shrinkage at the tips so I wrapped the tips before the 2nd coat. And drying took a lot more time than I'd like, but that's nothing a little quick dry top coat can't fix! Not all of their new stuff impressed me as much on the nails, but this one is just wow ♥ I'm so gonna stamp on this sometime! What do you think, I'd love to hear it :) Take care!

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Catrice Call Me Princess + a little stamping

Call Me Princess is one of the new Catrice Crushed Crystals polishes, and oh my, it's a pretty for sure! It's one of those that you should see for yourself really, it's so rich and beautiful ♥ The texture in it isn't very rough, and the shimmer makes the textured effect less visible as well, but it's still very clearly a textured polish. It took 3 coats, and they didn't dry as fast as some textures do, but it didn't take too long either.

Catrice Call Me Princess.

This post has a few more pics than usual, so you can check the rest below the jump!

The pink color is warmer and a bit more coral-y in real life. Mixed with the gold it makes for a great combo! In daylight the soft golden part stood out a bit more as you can see below.

I've never stamped on textures before, but I figured to give that a go with this polish... Oh I'll be doing that again for sure! :D

Catrice Call Me Princess with Catrice Big Spender Wanted! and Konad plate m57.

The stamping isn't as visible on the above 2 pics, so here's one that I took in very bad lighting, but that does show much better that the stamping stood out fine irl and I think it combined great with the texture! If you have these polishes, I'd suggest you try them together as well. Loving the combo! ♥

Several of the pics in this post aren't as good as I'd like them to be and I'm sorry about that! I struggled quite a bit (give Spring and good daylight already! ^^) but I hope they gave a decent impression of this polish anyway :) Thanks for looking!

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101 Dalmations effect

Hey all! I checked the stores today and found the new Essence stuff, and somehow I managed to bring home surprisingly few polishes! I got a few from their normal line, 1 glitter and 1 Sparkling Sugar polish. Yeah, I'm giving the Essence textures one more chance, lol. I also bought another Catrice Crushed Crystals polish, but unfortunately I'm not as impressed by this one (Royal REDding) as I was by Call Me Princess, which I'll be showing soon as well. Anyway, I planned on swatching a lot this afternoon but I'm having one of those days where my swatches just don't turn out as well, can't capture the colors, the sparkles, bladibla. And these do deserve some decent pics, so better luck next time! :) After a few failed swatches I was in the mood for something light and fun, so I went with the glitter that I brought home, the 101 Dalmations Special Effect Topper. Although it's actually not called 101 Dalmations, that's just the sticker on the cap! Regardless of the name, I am so loving this, what a cute topper! ♥

China Glaze Kinetic Candy with Essence Black Dress And White Tie.

Swatches of Kinetic Candy.

BDAWT is a clear base with very fine silver shimmery glitter, large black glitters and small/large white glitters. I applied a thin coat on my nails, so I'd get the silver everywhere, then used a rosewood stick with some polish on my placemat to place some extra glitters. I often apply these kind of glitters like that, you can of course apply a thicker coat, but then the glitters end up piling a bit as well. I prefer them more separate, and this works nicely for that! I'm sure this polish will look great on all kinds of bases, but I really liked this combo too! Thanks for looking :)

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Essence Cookies & Cream - Preview

Image clickable for an enlargement.

Nail polish with added stickers: cakepop, that's top! - yummy, yummy! - last night a cookie saved my life - macaron, c'est bon!. €1,99
Hand balm: keep calm and have a cupcake. €1,99
Sweet mini file: keep calm and have a cupcake. €0,99
Shimmer pearls: one sweet day. €3,39
Lipgloss: macaron, c'est bon! - be my cookie monster. €1,99
Blush: cakepop, that's top!. € 2,99
Eyeshadow: so hot, donut! - macaron, c'est bon! - last night a cookie saved my life. € 2,89
Jumbo eye pencil: last night a cookie saved my life - yummy, yummy!. € 1,99

Essence Cookies & Cream will be available in April and May.

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Essence The Incredible

Beautiful color? Check. Gorgeous shimmer? Check. Weird sand-like stuff in it? Check! Ahh I had such high hopes for this polish when I saw it in the bottle, but yet again it's an Essence sand effect polish that disappointed me. I've shown the Essence Sparkle Sand polishes before, and those looked great but their drying time was absolutely terribad. This polish from their Superheroes LE had a better drying time (still not great, but definitely not as bad) and required 2 coats, so far, so good! But ugh, the "oh while we're at it, let's throw in some sandy stuff as well" sand effect just doesn't do it for me!

Essence The Incredible.

As you can see, under lamplight the great shimmer starts to pop out even more, and that made me curious to see how it would look with top coat!

Ohh, this polish had so much potential. Here it is with 1 layer of top coat, and that clearly wasn't enough, especially after drying in a little. You'd need 2 coats or more to get a really smooth gloss, which is too much for my liking. It's not a horrible polish though, don't get me wrong, I mean look at that color and shimmer!! But I had such high hopes and I wish they either bottled it without the texture, or with some good texture, it could've bean jaw-droppingly amazing!

When I say I love textured polish, I mean the real textured ones. The ones that look and feel like a fine grit in a colored base, I think the pic below shows better what I mean :)

Polish with added sand, polish with even more added sand, err-what's-this-weird-stuff-on-my-nails texture, and lalalooove texture!

Essence The Incredible, China Glaze Bump In The Night, China Glaze There's Snow One Like You, IsaDora Wine Crush.

For a solid color as shown here, I don't mind number 2 really, but I'd pass on textures 1 & 3. Number 4 is the one that makes me go "where's the rest of the collection, I need them allllll!"

Now to end today's Negative Nancy polish talk, I bought one of the new Catrice textures the other day. I was worried it would also end up disappointing (since they're owned by the same company), but... it didn't. Yay! :) You'll see it on my blog soon. Take care & thanks for looking! ♥

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Textured spikes

Last night I couldn't sleep, and as happens more often then, I was thinking about nail designs. Often my nightly ideas become a huge fail when I try them, and they end up on the ideas list for some other time. This time I came up with this bold, textured mani, and for a change, it turned out ok! Lining it all up turned out to be quite tricky with the soft and wobbly decals, so that didn't turn out as well as I'd like, but good enough I think :) I'm often too excited to continue working on a mani and I'm less good at being patient then, haha. But for this I needed to work one nail at a time, and even though the whole thing took some time, it was nice to keep on going without having to wait for lots of layers to dry!

OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips, China Glaze Millennium and China Glaze Bump In The Night.

Swatches of Kiss Me On My Tulips and Bump In The Night.

I started with the pink base, and while that was drying, I used this technique to create silver and black textured decals (I used oven paper this time, because metallics seem to work better on that!). After the base was dry, I placed the silver decals on my nails and then, working one nail at a time, I applied top coat. I let the TC dry just a little bit, then placed the textured decals on top of the silver, trying to match them up. The textured decals itself worked fine! But I'd suggest you don't take a highly pigmented, black texture, things can get messy real fast =)

I'd love to hear what you think of this look! Thanks for stopping by :)

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Pointy tips with BPS glequins

Howdy! Here's a mani I did with small BornPrettyStore glequins, more on them below, but let's see how that turned out first!

China Glaze Sweet Hook with Color Club Uptown Girl and BPS glequins.

As you can see, this set of glequins has plenty colors to choose from! I went with the magenta pink ones on the right for this mani.

Swatches of Sweet Hook.

There are 6 different sets that come in these cute little bottles, you can choose between bar glitters, hexagonal glitter (as I'm showing today), various shapes glitter, diamond shaped glitter, nail beads and loose glitterpowder. Each set comes in 12 different colors, these hexagonal glitters come in 6 solid colors and 6 see-through ones that shift color, as you can see below. I think those see-through blue ones will be excellent for a sea inspired mani!

I also compared them to a BornPrettyStore glequin set I've reviewed before (you can check out that review and how to apply them here), I think those little jars are easier to open and the glitters can be used straight from the cap, which does work a bit easier. With these I pulled the top of the little bottle and gently tapped the bottle so a bit of glitter fell out, onto my placemat, and then I took it from there. Wasting a bit of glitter isn't something to worry about with either of these sets, they both contain sooo much glitter!
The jars do have larger glitters, and almost all colors in that set are solid. I prefer solid colored, smaller glitters, haha, so a mix of both! So it depends what you prefer, but I think both sets are nice to have and can of course be combined as well :) One thing to note though, the colors of the set that I received aren't completely the same as the colors of the set shown on the website!

You can find this set (and the other 5 sets) here, the set with 12 bottles costs $4,59, and with coupon code ABJ61 you'll get 10% off.

I think glequins are great, they can be used in so many different ways (glittery French, framed nails, details on stamping, ...), but I especially love them as I showed above to complement a taped mani. Perfect, crisp clean lines aren't needed, and if you have a steady hand you won't even need tape, because these glequins will cover up the lines anyway! What do you think of glequins, and do you prefer smaller ones like shown here, or the bigger, the better? :)


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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BornPrettyStore plate QA61

Hi all! Here's another BPS plate, and just as the one that I showed the other day, this too came with blue protective foil on both sides of the plate, but without any other protective cover at the back. Here's what I did with it :)

Essence I Love Bad Boys with China Glaze Tongue & Chic and BornPrettyStore QA61.

Swatches of I Love Bad Boys and Tongue & Chic.

I used a gorgeous shimmery polish as base, the shimmer showed up better irl and it combined great with Tongue & Chic! Definitely my kinda combo and something I'd wear again! And here's a closer look at the plate, aren't these images cute? I can totally see myself wearing all of them! And as you can see, it worked great as well :)

Just like the previous plate I showed, this plate also has an image that's alike another one on the plate, but they're not nearly as close as the images on plate QA27. It wasn't needed for me personally, but it's nice for people who like a little more variation on their nails while using a similar image. For my mani above I just turned the plate around for every other nail, that's enough variation for me :)

You can find this BPS plate here, it costs $2,99 and with coupon code ABJ61 you'll get 10% off.

The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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Catrice Luxury Lacquers - Preview

Omg you guys!! I got this preview like a week ago in my inbox (seriously, where did the time go, thought it was like 2-3 days ago that I got it!) and figured to post it later, didn't even look at it >.< But as it turns out, this isn't your average preview of a collection with some makeup and a few polishes, these are some real droolworthy polishes based on these images! I feel pretty stupid now for not even checking them out straight away, haha! Oh well, in case you haven't seen these yet, feel free to drool along! :)

The collection is called Luxury Lacquers and has 24 polishes that'll go for €3,59 each, and they will be available half March (Netherlands) and May (Belgium). This limited edition is split up into 4 categories, Million Brilliance, Sand’sation, Holomania and Chameleon. Are those names already getting you excited? Wait 'til you see them! And as always, you can click the images for an enlargement.

Chameleon: Chromeo & Julia, Chromit & Miss Pinky, Salmon Salmon But Different, C(h)ome, Leon!

Million Brilliance: BRIGHTsmaid, Glitz Carlton, Glitterama, The Big Bling Theory.

Million Brilliance: Walk Of Glitters, Glitters Are A Girl’s Best Friend, Sweet Glitzteen, Glitter Me If You Can.

Sand'sation: 100 perSand Real, Maliblue, Sandhopper, PLUMbeach.

Sand'sation: Strawberry BAYquiri, It’s a PINKini World, TropiCoral, Waikiki Peach.

Holomania: Holo Manolo, ApHolo 7, Holo In One, Plum Me Up Scotty.

When I read the PR info and saw the Holomania polishes, I thought would it be for real this time, a drugstore brand that doesn't mix up holo and duochrome? But then I scrolled down and saw the Chameleons as well, yay! The Million Brilliance polishes look the least interesting to me, but I'm very curious about the sand polishes as well. Especially after trying one from a LE from Essence recently (Catrice and Essence are owned by the same company) and well, honestly that one was a disappointment. I'll show that one some other time, but I really do hope these are as good as they look here! :) What do you think of this preview?

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BornPrettyStore plate QA27

Today's mani is done with a stamping plate from BornPrettyStore, and this plate has some swirly flower images, just what I love! It came with blue protective foil on front ánd back, it removed easily from both sides. There's no other protective cover on the back though, but the plate isn't too sharp without the blue foil.

Catrice Karl Says Très Chic with China Glaze Elfin' Around and BPS plate QA27.

I'm not sure why there's another image on this plate that's almost a duplicate of the one that I used (top right), but then in a different size. But it transferred perfect and I'm totally loving both full nail images on the right side, so I can't say that I care too much! You can buy this plate here for $2,99, and with coupon code ABJ61 you'll get 10% off.

I used Elfin' Around for stamping, it's a great polish for that, the color varies a little between coral and pink, and the foil effect adds a little something extra. You can see my swatches of it here. Really like how it looks combined with that cute image!

Of course I've also updated my stamping comparison! You can always find the up-to-date version on this page, simply because I'm too lazy to keep going back to older posts and update the image :) These images vary a bit more in size than the images of most platebrands, but I'm sure it gives you an idea of the size anyway!

Thanks for looking and take care ♥


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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From the vault: subtle holo circles

Morning! Here's a mani I did a few months ago, it's one of those that's simple and subtle, nothing special but it does the trick :)

Essie Splash of Grenadine with H&M Sinful Señorita and Bundle Monster 322.

Even though I like swatches on longer nails like I had here, I think I prefer slightly shorter ones on me! Which is good, because that's all I have at the moment, haha! Thanks for stopping by :)

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IsaDora Candy Crush & Wine Crush

Hi guys! It's been a while since I showed you the first 2 Sugar Nails polishes from IsaDora (you can check out Emerald & Ocean here) and here are the other 2 that I got :)

IsaDora 108 Wine Crush

Purple, pink, brown, golden... together these colors make a unique mix that I absolutely love! On these lamplight pics Wine Crush looks darker than it is in daylight, there the purple/pink stand out more and it looks softer like that as well. I might end up showing this again when I can make daylight pics again, it's one of my fav textured polishes in my collection!

IsaDora 120 Candy Crush

Candy Crush is a bit different from the other 3, those are Sugar Nails polishes, this one's a Sugar Crush Nails polish. The difference is that the other 3 are all fine textured, this one has larger glitters in it as well. Pink with larger silvery/pink glitters, cute!

Wine Crush and the previously shown Ocean Crush are my favorites of the 4, they're so pretty! They had so much different colors of these Sugar (Crush) Nails, if you can buy them where you live, I'd definitely suggest you have a look at them because I think they're great! :)

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