Essie Haul

I would like to introduce you all to my wonderful camera, Ryan Gosling (of course)! He's a Nikon J1, which I like to call as a half digital and half professional camera. This is what I use for my blog photos and YouTube videos; I use my iPhone 4 (named BeefnCheese Burrito for hunger reasons - nicknamed Beefy) for my Instagram.

HAUL-A! During my shopping, I picked up four Essie polishes and included swatches of those polishes below. The first is Where's My Chauffeur, a rich and lavish turquoise from the Winter 2013 collection. This colour is very close to the iconic Tiffany blue, which is why it's so popular and difficult to get a hold of.

Fortunately, my cousin works at London Drugs and was able to put this on hold for me cause it sold out fast! It's a really beautiful colour and I love the name! This is a description from the Essie website that I found amusing, "the nail colour that never fails to pick you up." Here's a bottle shot and my right hand.

The next two polishes, Sand Tropez and Bikini So Teeny, are painted together, cause I love browns and blues together! Just from hearing both their names, they sounded like a match-made-in-a-beach haha, I kid. I do get a sense of a Summer breeze in a beach with these two colours. 

The last polish is Lady Like, a sophisticated and elegant mauve. Lady Like and Bikini So Teeny were included in a sort of renewed collection, since these polishes and many more (like Butler Please and Mint Candy Apple) were so popular from their first launch, Essie decided to bring them back! Which was great cause my mini Bikini So Teeny was running low. But back to Lady Like, this photo was taken with a flash to show the flowers clearly.


The flowers were done the same way as I did the Polkadots and Florals design (previous post); swirling the colours with a small dotting tool lightly.

This polish is one of those colours that are soo pretty that I couldn't do an excessive design on top. A simple accent on both hands, and I like to make each hand a little different, so I often do an accent on my left ring finger and right index finger.

Flower Ring

This design was inspired by my flower ring. I always get compliments when I wear the ring, so I thought it'd be neat if I replicated the flowers onto my nails!

The polishes I used were Essie Beyond Cozy, L'Oréal Golden Lucks, L'Oréal Tangerine Crush and a jelly cream Barielle polish. 

Golden Lucks is very similar to the gold outline on the ring, however the polish is quite sheer. Instead of outlining the flowers with Golden Lucks, I used it as a base colour then painted the flowers. I didn't want to use rhinestones like the ring for this design, so I simply painted Beyond Cozy between the flowers with a dotting tool.

I like the idea of accent nails, so I only painted the flowers on two fingers for both my hands. This way it won't look overwhelming and busy. Here's another view of my hand!

Polkadots and Florals

I couldn't have picked an easier combination to do than polkadots and roses! These were the first designs I practiced when I received my nail art brushes from eBay last year. Took me a few trials to finally master the technique.

The colours I used were China Glaze Tree Hugger, Essie Play Date, To Buy or Not to Buy, and Turquoise and Caicos.

I also used L'Oréal I Will (behind the four bottles) to highlight the roses. It's really simple, I applied little blobs of Play Date, then less blobs of I Will, swirled the colours together with a dotting tool (can be replaced with a toothpick), added Tree Hugger for the leaves, et voilà!

And finally, both hands! I used Essie Good to Go as my top coat cause it dries almost as fast as Seche Vite without the extra thickness. There's something great about the formula of Good to Go that somehow hides any flaws, like air bubbles or visible brush strokes, and I can go to bed a few minutes after and find zero bed sheet marks in the morning!