Essence Nail Art Twins - Gabriella and Troy

Here we have the lovely Essence Nail Art Twins, in the set 'Gabriella & Troy'.  These are gorgeous sets of polish and I will be posting pics of the others I have when I try them too!  I was still in a purple mood so I thought these would fit the bill nicely.  Gabriella is a lovely pink toned purple creme with a blue flash that isn't as visible on the nail as it is in the bottle, but it is still a lovely colour in its own right.  I will be wearing this one in future without her respective twin, Gabriella is a pretty girl all on her own.  The formula was great and went on without any issues and dried super shiny.  Once Gabriella was on and dry, of course I had to add her other half Troy to complete the look.  Troy has blue and purple small glitter particles suspended in a clear base, and compliments Gabriella perfectly.  Again it went on without any issues, and the overall finished effect is a blue and purple glittery prettiness that makes my eyes glad to look at.

So, as always, enough of the waffle, its the pic you want to see right!  I hope you like it :)

Essence Color & Go - Sure Azure, and added NYC and Essence bling because I can!

I have this lovely little bottle here of Essence Color & Go in Sure Azure.  Now I always think of deep sparkling sapphire blue when I think of azure, but this is a grey toned baby blue with a very delicate shimmer.  The formula was easy to work with and went on without issue, and my pic is with just two coats.  The first coat was a little streaky, but nothing to moan about, and the second coat evened it out anyway.  It dried with a lovely shine too, the pic is without any top coat, just the polish, you can see how shiny it is!  I love the colour and the finish, these essence polishes are proving to be rather nice additions to my collection.

Now me being me, I was bored, and couldn't leave things alone, so...I put on a coat of NYC Starry Silver Glitter.  This glitter is lovely, it has tiny silver holo glitter, and larger bright blue and lilac hex glitter suspended in a clear base.  It took a little manipulation to get the larger hex glitter to spread out evenly but that's the norm for this type of glitter.  I wish there was a ray of sunlight to photograph the holo effect of the tiny glitter, its so sparkly in reality but since its raining buckets here and dark and dreary, you will have to take my word for it.

Things were looking pretty at this stage, then I added a coat of Essence Nail Art Special Effect! Topper in Its Purplicious.  This is tiny purple glitter with larger purple and dark pink square glitter, suspended in a clear base.  This went on really well, and there is lots of glitter crammed into this polish!  Again, it is very shiny and catches the light really well, and was a perfect accompaniment to the colours I was already sporting.  I finished off with a final layer of NYC Starry Silver, and that was it done.

I love this mani, but I do love to experiment with these glitters, I can't wait to try them out over different colour combinations.  When I do, you will be the first to know!  I hope you like it, I only wish the sun had come out to let me show you the full sparkly nature of this lovely combination.

Essence Color & Go - Blue Addicted, Deborah Lippman Across the Universe dupe?

Well first things first, sorry about the lack of posts for a while, I have had flu like symptoms, and massive headaches so obviously staring at a PC screen wasn't high on my priorities!  I will admit I did check my emails and facebook, but in general had no drive to do much of anything else, and then there was the disastrous job interview I just had today.  It was so awful it was funny!  Ah well, maybe the next one :)

When I got home I decided that I HAD to paint my nails.  I got the most EPIC nail mail from my lovely friend Kati P in Holland (waves at Kati!) and included in my mail was this little treasure which she had already bought me before I knew I wanted it, how awesome is she.

I layered this over a dark blue base, I used George Indigo Dazzle from Asda.  In its own right it wasn't a bad polish actually, but for this purpose I just wanted a base.  Then I layered Essence Color & Go Blue Addicted over the top.  Blue addicted is small blue glitter, and large blue and emerald hex glitter suspended in a navy blue base.  I used two coats over my dark base, and I think this is about right.  The glitter was really easy to apply, I didn't have to chase the hex glitter around or fiddle with it, and it dried quickly.  I did add OPI rapid dry top coat and it has dried to a wonderful shine and isn't rough or badly bumpy like some of these types of polish can be.

I am told that this polish is a pretty damned good dupe for Deborah Lippmans Across the Universe, so if someone will send me one of those I will happily do a comparison!  As I don't unfortunately have the Deborah Lippman one to compare this to, I have to rely on swatches posted on the net, and I have to say from the pics I have seen they do look pretty close, but you judge for yourselves, heres some pics and I think the polish fully justifies three of them :)  I hope you like, and thanks again Kati for this pretty bottle of polish.