Max Factor Fantasy Fire

Max factor fantasy fire, what to say? Firstly it's amazeballs! Secondly it's dupeish to the most beloved discontinued polish ever Clairins 230 (aka Unicorn Pee ). The third thing to add is, that this is most definitely a top coat, I've seen some people bemoaning that 6 coats later it's still not opaque. Stop, put it atop of what you are already wearing particularly if it's a blue, green or purple and prepare to be amazed! 


The sun didn't play nice the first couple of times I wore this, so I decided to show you some bottle and nail wheel pictures today and since I took these eleventy-billion pictures (this post has been a long time in the making), I managed to get some natural light photos of it on my nails so these will follow, shortly.




Some bottle pictures to start. Here and elsewhere, you can click the pictures to make them bigger, so do it!

So I said it was dupeish to Clairins 230, I don't own the Clairins polish so can't do a full comparision but in the bottle they look similar, layered over another polish they look similar, but on their lonesome on the nail they look different. The Clairins is a red base and the Max Factor is a purple base but because there are both so sheer it's seems to not matter one jot. Fantasy fire definitely has the green flash, just like Clarins 230.  The green flash was hard to pick up but I think you can see hints of it in the second bottle picture and the last nail wheel picture. 


In retrospect, I should have rotated this photos  The four polishes use are Green : OPI Jade is the New Black, Blue: OPI Dating a Royal, Navy :  Essence Midnight Rocker , Purple Revlon Rock.

The last thing to say is the bottle is tiny (6 ml) and costs €5.49 ( around £3.99, I think) and only seems to be available in the UK and Ireland. In Ireland, I've only found this in Boots, other chemists which do Max Factor don't seem to have this, so if you want this you'll have to get to your nearest Boots. 

Have you tried Fantasy Fire? What do you think of it?

Essence Nail Art Kit - Marble Mania

The current essence collection on stand is the marble mania collection, I picked up the nail art kit yesterday and none of the polishes, they weren't really floating my boat. The full details of the collection are available here.  I thought I'd do a quick post as the collections can move quite fast. 

The kit contains 2 orange sticks, 2 pieces of sponge and a stripper brush.  The pink card also contains instructions for use of the stripper brush, the sponges and a how to marble.

The stripper brush. 

And a close up. 

The bristles are extremely long and fine, and I'm not sure they are stiff enough to accurately control the brush. I've only had a very quick play with the brush but found it hard to control and a little bit floppy. Perhaps, with a bit of practice I'll get better.  However, I caveat the last statement with the fact that I'm extremely challenged when it comes to nail art, so it is probably me that is rubbish and not the brush!

I've added a picture to show the brush in comparison to a regular nail varnish brush (Cult Nails top coat), so you can see the difference in size.

 The nail art kit retails for €2.79, so it's as cheap pick me up. I need a bit more time to play with it to decide if it's worth it, but for €2.79, I won't be crying if I don't get too much use out of it!  

Essence Applause Applause - The glitter

We saw the creme side of Applause Applause yesterday, so now for the  second side of Applause Applause which is a red glitter in a clear base.  Now I imagine you are all yawning in the background, because there's loads of red glitters out there but this one is pretty unique, it's got your regular red glitter and also red square glitter. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another polish like it, there probably is one, though!

Picture with flash.

Natural light

Nail wheel shows from L-R, two coats of the creme, two coats of creme with one of glittter, one coat of glitter, two coats of glitter and 3 coats of glitter. (Click on the picture to make it bigger and see the two different types of glitter )

Again no issues with application or wear, other than the fact I couldn't open the other side of the polish with wet nails.  I'm dying to try the glitter side over black I think it will be gorgeous.   I paid €3.99 for this which is a pretty good bargain for 2 polishes! This came in two other colour combos,  pink glitter/ pink creme and gold glitter/ black creme, but I didn't feel the need to buy either of those.




Have you tried any of the Circus Circus polishes, should I have picked up one of the other 2? Are we liking the whole 2-1 design?

Essence Applause Applause - The creme

Today's NOTD is Essence Applause Applause, this is from the Circus Circus collection. It's two-sided polish with a red creme on one side and a red glitter in the other. I bought this polish before Christmas, but Circus Circus is still the collection on both my local Essence stands, one in Penneys and one in a local Chemist (which usually updates first).

 I'm going to talk about the glitter tomorrow because I couldn't open that side, when my nails were wet!  Essence call this a colour ³ polish ( 3 colour I can understand but I could rant about this but I won't)  and suggest that you can either wear each polish alone or combine them to create a unique polish. 

The polish is beautifully pigmented and was fully opaque in one coat but the pictures show two coats. I thought the application might be a bit difficult with the double ended bottle but once you got a good hold on the bottle it was fine. I wore this for two days before adding the glitter side and the wear was fine (I realise that it looks like there is tipwear in the photo but I think I had some shrinkage from my topcoat).  All in all, a very nice, highly pigmented, red creme with no application issues.  

Essence Choose Me

Today's NOTD is Essence Choose Me. This is a beautiful Blue-y green duochrome glitter polish that reminds me of the sea. It flashes from blue as shown in the below photo, to a sea green (which I couldn't capture at all!) . It's very much in the same vein as Zoya Charla, OPI Catch Me in Your Net and Orly Hayley's Comet, while I don't have those other polishes I believe this a dupe for them.  

And really close up

Application of this was perfect, although I always this the brush is a little stubby on the these colour and go polishes, but it's perfectly fine to work with and it's just me nitpicking, for less than €2  I can live with it!  The pictures show 2 coats topped with a coat of seche vite. Wear was good I got  about 5 days out of this before minor chippage started appearing. 


I have to say this was a grower on me, I loved it in the bottle and was slightly dissapointed when I first put this on first but the more I wore it, the more I loved it particularly the duochromeness of it! 


Have you tried this or one of it's many dupes? What did you think? 

What I picked up in Spain

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I was recently in Spain for work. While I didn't have much time for the shops unfortunately, I picked up a few Essence bits in a cosmetic shop (kind of like a pharmacy without the drugs!). The selection there was much bigger than that which we have any where I've seen in Ireland - the stand was about 3 times bigger and a lot of the extra was nail stuff.  They had lots of nail stickers and much more polish as well as stamping kits. I only picked up a few things hoping to get back but never made it. 
So here's what I got.


From L-R , the stampy set, two extra plates 01 have fun and 02 style it up!, Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti.

And in more detail.


The stampy kit, this cost €3.49. This contains  a stamper (on top), a scraper (left) and one plate (right)

The two plates, have fun on the left and style it up! on the right.

The two polishes Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia, on the left,  and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti, on the right. Circus Confetti looks very Happy Birthday-esque to me on first look and Julia is a chunky holo glitter. Both of these  are very sparse so a base coat will be needed with them. 

I also popped into H&M and as well as buying a few dresses I picked up these Moody Model,  from the last post and one more polish I can't find anywhere (which has made me mad!!!- I'm pretty sure it made it home with me, unlike my phone charger but that's a whole other story!)  




I did find a Sephora but didn't pick up any polish there, it was quite small and any that I liked the look of were out of stock :( 


Expect some stampy manicures soon, just as soon as I manage to get to grips with it!  

Essence Black Out

A couple of weeks ago, I realised I that in my collection of around 170 polishes, I didn't own a black polish, a shocking omission really (like, how was I ever going to let my inner rock chic out?!). I was in boots and bought what the nice lady assured me was a black no 7 polish (it was sitting on the counter beside the till and I had a voucher for no 7)  but, alas,  when I got it home realised it was just a really dark purple polish but more on that another time. So the search continued, I wandered in to a local pharmacy and found an Essence limited collection called Black and White, and perhaps unsurprisingly there was a black polish in the collection, so I promptly purchased. Black Out is a black polish with what essence call a "soft touch finish", the finish looks kind of  like plastic as seen in the photos below,

The application is ok, you have to be a bit careful to make it even, as it doesn't have great self-levelling properties and the polish is a bit thick. The soft-effect finish means it isn't as harsh as just black polish. The more you wear the polish, the shinier it becomes from hand washing and hand cream applying. While the finish changes over time, the polish does have good wear, I've no worn it twice and got 4 days before it chipped and in fact the polish chipped before I got tipwear.


I think that this a good dupe for Illamasqua Scorn, which matches their nail quills. (more info from Scrangie here), but I haven't seen Scorn in real life, so I'm just going by photos.


What do you think of this finish, it's not quite matt and not quite cream?

Essence Back to Paradise

Today's NOTD is Essence Back to Paradise, from their autumn collection return to paradise. I've had this one since August and can't believe I didn't get around to trying it before now. It's an amazing dark green jelly. 

The application on this could of been better, the first coat was extremely sheer but by the time I got to the third coat, the colour was fine, if you weren't taking pictures of it, you might get away with two coats. The sheerness is mostly down to the jelly-esque nature of this polish, but my main issue was that the polish was thin so slightly hard to manage, after the first coat it was a little easier to manage. That said, I love this polish and slight application issue aside, it's a thumbs up from me! (Although, it bugs me a bit that the barcode is on the front of the cap! - that may be my slightly OCD tendencies coming to the fore!) 

NOTD Essence Underwater

Today's NOTD is Essence Underwater, I picked this own up a little while ago but hadn't got around to wearing it.  It's a blue frost with shimmer, I've included a super-duper zoomed picture to show the shimmer. You may have a different version to this, in between taking the pictures and writing the post, I saw this post on Nihrida's fab blog, showing two versions of this. This is version 1, in Nihrida's post but I really like version 2 as well, so I'll keep an eye out for the other version.

And here we go on the nail.

 

After a couple of days wearing the polish, I was desperate for a bit of a change but didn't have time to change my whole manicure, so I applied a coat of No7 matte topcoat.

I really like this matte, aswell. You mght notice my pinky looks different, well that's because I applied a different matte topcoat to it, but more on this in another post. 

A bit boring? Mais Oui!

A few days a go I was changing my polish and realised that I had meetings the next day, that I needed to look “respectable” for, so I looked round my stash in vain for something to put on and wasn’t really feeling anything. Then I spied a French base and thought I must have a white somewhere I’ll do a French manicure. To be honest, I was a little surprised that I had the makings! I wasn’t go to do a post about this given it’s only a boring French manicure, but while I was wearing it I got to thinking that in a round about way French maincures were why I started the blog!

(If you are not in the mood for a ramble, skip the next three paragraphs, and down to the pictures with you!)

Before I started back at college, I worked a 9-5 (more like 8-7!) in a conservative setting, most weeks I’d get a manicure as a treat to myself, nearly always French. I gave a lot of courses and chaired a lot of meetings in my job so I was always loathe to go for any thing too flashy on my nails. But the girls in my usual place were really good and were always trying to get me to do something a little less safe, so we used to play around with bases, like using pink bases that subtly flashed another colour in the light, add a line of glitter in between the white and the base. Of course, if I was going out or on holidays I’d have something even better! It turns out, I was spoiled with that salon, the girls were really knowledgable, they used seche on top of every mani, so it dried quickly, etc,

I moved back to Ireland and now I was a student, so my rare manicures were an even bigger treat, because money was tight. I found myself paying double the prices I was paying before for really bad manicures, where there was no quick dry topcoat and they’d paint on the polish so thick it wouldn’t dry. After trying 5/6 places, I was getting really upset, my one treat, the thing I knew that if I was having a bad week, would cheer me up and make me feel better and ready to face the world again, wasn’t working.

This is when I decided that instead of wasting money on bad manicures, I could buy around 6 polishes for the price of one manicure, and at the same time improve my own application skills.

The base is an essence pink base for French manicures and the white is from ELF. While, I know it’s not the best French in the world, I don’t think I would have been able to do this months ago, so I thought I’d show it. It's still not perfect but I'm improving!

It may be a boring French but it definitely grew on me!

Topshop Gypsy Night

So I celebrated a birthday recently and among all the other lovely presents I received, little sis bought me some nail varnish. One Topshop polish and two Essence from the Return to Paradise collection.

From L-R Topshop Gypsy Night, Essence Back to Paradise and Essence Jungle Drum. 

They are all beautiful, little sis  has great taste! But the minute, I saw the Topshop polish I knew that was my next mani. It didn’t disappoint.  This is my first Topshop polish in since I was about 14, I remember going to London and coming back with the most amazing aubergine colour Topshop polish and wearing it all the time.  

While I was wearing this I couldn’t keep my eyes off it, every time I glanced at it the colours it threw up were slightly different. I couldn't decide if the base was black or a had a brownish tint to it. There are flakies and glitter in the polish. In the bottle there are orange and green flashes from the flakies. I’m pretty sure these are what give the brownish tint to the base colour in the polish. The glitter then flashes every colour of the rainbow. I’ve included some out of focus pictures to give and idea of the colour of the glitters in the polish.

This picture shows the orange flakes on the ring finger and in the bottle, 

The out of focus pictures show more of the colours.

The one downside on this polish was the wear was quite rubbish, but the polish was so amazing I can live with that.  (There’s tipwear evident in the photos taken a few hours after I applied it.)  Since the polish was a present, I can’t be totally sure of the price but I think it was about €8, and the bottles hold 8ml. (The essence polishes pictured above are 10ml)

I’ll do a post soon on the other two polishes.  Comments as always are welcome! 

Essence - All Access

Today is Essence All Access, a beautiful deep green, glass flecked polish. The polish is a lovely dark green, not so green that is appears black (OPI here today Aragon tomorrow, I’m looking at you!) and the glass fleck makes it appear ‘lit from within’. I’m gonna let the pictures speak for themselves with this one.

This two coats of polish with a coat of seche vite. I'm sorry about the rubbish pics of this, I never got one in natural light but I love this polish and even better this one was half price so cost me the grand total of ONE euro, in a random pharmacy. (If only I could get the pink sticker off). The wear was good on this I think I wore it for 5 days before I got a chip.

NOTD Essence Rock n Roll

Another NOTD post, today is Essence Rock n Roll. I guess this is a silver foil but I'm open to correction on this. This was two coats I was really surprised at the lack of brush strokes on this one as I have a couple of polishes like this and they are very brush-strokey. (I'm not sure that's a word! )

Again the weather here is really bad so an indoor picture with a flash. Just looking at the picture it looks like I have a visible nail line on the middle finger but I didn't I think the picture must have been reflecting something.

This was two coats with a coat of Seche vite on top.

The second picture is a close up to show the sparkle in this.   I really really liked this polish and it was two euros so very good value.

My Stash

Today, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my small stash, so to start off here's a picture of most of my polish stash. I found a few more lying around the place after I took the pictures and I know my Mum and sister have a few too. I must make a spreadsheet because I have no idea how many polishes I have, I guess around 60.

Next up, The OPIs

The China Glazes.

The Orlys and Ruby&Millie.

Elf and No7

Essence

17

Collection 2000, Rimmel, Maybelline and H&M

Essie, Claires and mini OPIs from the Spanish collection

That's it for now. Have a great weekend!