Essence Peel Off Base Coat – Review

I was using my own DIY peel-off base coat for a while.  But when I saw this Essence product in a store while on vacation I just had to grab it since I have a hard time finding essence stuff where I live.  I think this Essence Peel Off Base Coat was only maybe $1.99 if I remember correctly.  Sorry to say, not a fan of this product though.  I don’t think it works well. I’ve tried it twice and didn’t have good luck either time.

First off, before application, your nails must be squeaky clean with no oils on them.  This formula has a tendency to retract and bead up on your nail.  Even with freshly washed hands this happens.  So you may need to wipe your nails with acetone before using Essence Peel Off Base Coat.

One thing I liked is that you can see when it’s dry.  The bottle says to wait ten minutes, but I don’t think it even took that long.  FYI- Essence dried much faster than my diy stuff.

When I first tried it out it took a lot of work to get off.  I used an orange stick and had to pick a lot!  It was not fun.  Second time I had many more layers of glitter so I thought it would work much better- I was guessing the glitter would peel off in one stiff piece.  But it totally didn’t.  I picked so much (and I used my nails this time, not an orange stick) and it was a hassle.  My nails looked crappy and damaged since it was peeling off the surface of my nails.  Also, it didn’t protect them well as you can see in the last pic above- I got wicked stains!  And I didn’t even think that Zoya Zuza was a stainer.

In essence, I would skip this essence product.  White craft glue (elmers) works better!  Plus, there’s a whole bunch of other products on the market you could try.  Lindsay over at NAIL THAT ACCENT just did a great comparison of a few of the top brands of peel-offs.

What kinda peel-off stuff works best for you??

visions boards and red nail polish

Let’s talk about VISION BOARDS, or Dream Boards as they are often called.  These boards are supposed to help you harness the power of the ‘law of attraction’ and basically if you think positive thoughts, then they will come true.   Have you ever tried this?  Well, I did.  I even read the book The Secret about five years ago so I could learn more about the law of attraction before I started my very own vision board.  Eventually I put together a board and I’ve had it for more than 5 years now.  I’ve updated and revised it a few times already since then.  Well, this past weekend I realized that a couple of years have gone by without me tweaking my board.  So I decided to re-vamp it and I wound up removing 6 things from it.  I was thinking of adding more things to it now, but is it even worth it??  Out of the 6 things I removed from my board, only one thing came true!  The others things are outdated, never happened, won’t ever happen, etc.  I look at the board everyday too… it’s right next to my bed.  WTH?

I like to stay positive and open-minded, but I really don’t think these boards work.  If you are planning to use one to attract a hot man, win the lottery, or build your dreamhouse…think again.  But if you want to use it to motivate yourself to achieve a few little things, then it could be helpful, especially if those things are within your control.  I accomplished a few things that I put on there over the years, but they really weren’t biggies.  I’m still not fitting into my old jeans, growing an herb garden, wearing sexy cowboy boots, going to bed by midnight, or waking up by 7am…. so whatevs!

While we’re talking about wishes and dreams… I want to mention red nail polish.  I never wear it.  I realized that in my year of blogging I have never posted a red manicure.  Ever!  (I should put red polish on my vision board!)  I gravitate towards blues, greens, and generally funky and bright colors.  But why no red?  For starters, I dress very casual, and I think maybe I perceive that polished red nails would clash with my outfits?  Yoga pants and fancy red nails don’t really jive well together, ya know?  I also think red makes my skin look pale.  BUT… I vow to get over it!  I solemnly swear to hereby wear more red nail polish.  Which means I need to buy more, right?  So I recently added some reds to my stash and the first one I tested out was a creme Essence Colour & Go polish called Fame Fatal.  Shown here is one coat of SH Maximum Growth, two coats of Fame Fatal and one coat of seche vite.

I didn’t really like it too much while I was wearing it….but now that I look at the pics- I like this red on me!  You may notice that my hand looks different too.  Yup, that’s my right hand.  Cute, huh?  My poor left hand that I usually photograph experienced a break so I’m showing you my other hand instead.  These pointy nails are a little tricky.  I’ve actually broken two tips in the last few days so I had to shorten my pointies.  Now they look like little shark teeth.  haha!  I’m wondering how long I can keep these pointies going?  If the tips keep cracking off I might have to go back to a more squoval shape.  Boooo.  😦 Cuz I really am having fun with them.

Do you wear a lot of red?

spooky eyes nail art for #naillinkup

One of our NAIL themes for October is THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT.  I was really drawing a blank on this one.  Which is kind of ironic considering I suggested this theme when Brijit and Eeeek and I were corroborating about the October NAIL prompts!   I just had too many ideas swimming in my head- bats, vampires, creepy crawlies….so I turned to google for some inspiration.  I found an artist named Vicky Scott who created this illustration called..

wait for it..

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT!  How appropriate.  You can see her cute print here on Hire an Illustrator.   I really liked the image she created- especially her spooky eyes floating in the darkness.  Eyeballs seemed liked they’d be easy to paint on a small nail canvas so here’s what I came up with…

I applied Sally Hansen Maximum Growth as my basecoat, two coats of Essence Grey-t To Be Here, and then I hand painted the black accents and eyes using red white and black polishes.   I waited a good 20 minutes before I applied my seche topcoat because I would’ve hated to smear the eyes if they weren’t dry.  I didn’t do too much nail art on this mani so I didn’t want to ruin the little bit that I did do!

The next mani I want to work on is the next October NAIL theme: TREATS AND SWEETS!  Nom nom nom!  Hopefully we’ll see some peanut butter or chocolate.  Or both! 

Breast Cancer Awareness :

Autumn Trees :

Things That Go Bump in the Night :

Treats and Sweets :

Hallow E’en :

Fall French Manicure and Pinterest Changes?

I really wanted to do a galaxy mani for Chalkboard’s nail challenge since that was the theme for today.  Galaxies are so much fun.  But I had a horrid headache tonite after my aerobics class…. so I watched some corny horror movies with my boyfriend and laid on the couch all night.  Ever seen The People Under The Stairs (from 1991) or Child’s Play 2 (it’s one of those Chucky movies)?  Ahhh I just love netflix 🙂  You get to watch super-cheese movies without the embarrassment of having to rent them out in public.  Anywho, I kinda gave up on the idea of doing my nails tonite… but once my ibuprofen kicked in I got my second wind!  Rather than going nuts with a galaxy mani late at nite I figured I’d try a nice simple french mani.  And since fall is coming I reached for my rich evergreen-toned essence polish called Deap Sea, Baby!

For this french mani I tried out my new Essence French Manicure Brush that Viviana sent me.  You may know Viviana as Nail-art Addict!   What a doll she is!  I was ooohing and aaahing over how cool this little brush looked in one of her posts so she kindly sent one my way (all the way from the Netherlands!)  If you haven’t seen the Nail-Art Addict’s blog, you’ll want to check it out.  Her nail art is the bomb but so is her blog design as she’s a webmaster in real life!!  Oh, and to top it off- she blogs in two languages.  Whereas I’m just lucky to manage one! 😀

So, my manicure looks fine but I did have some troubles with this little brush.  Some of my nails seemed too wide for it.  It was the perfect size for my pinkie though LOL!   Despite this, it’s an innovative little thing, isn’t it?

I used the brush along with Deep Sea, Baby to paint my tips.  If the brush didn’t reach the edges of my nail I did some touch-ups to get the green where I needed it.  Then I topped it off with one coat of a gold Sephora by OPI glitter called Only Gold For Me.  This glitter is smooth and didn’t require a topcoat (maybe because it’s already labeled as a topcoat right on the bottle) and I think it pairs nicely with the deep green for a nice fall look.  I really enjoy a french mani with a twist from time to time.  I used to be intimidated by french manis, but now I find them relatively simple.  Practice makes perfect I suppose.

I also wanted to mention the new changes to Pinterest.  Pinterest will soon start pinning ads for businesses.  Have you heard of this?  I don’t really know what to think just yet.  I guess I’ll have to see it in action before I can pass any judgements.  (Oh, and if you’d like to follow me on pinterest here’s my link.)  Below is the email notification I received tonite …what do you think??????

Just over a year ago, my wife and I welcomed our son into the world. Since his first day, I’ve been pinning fun things we can do together, right now while he’s still little and later when he gets older. I know many of you do the same. Pinterest is where you keep your wishlists, vacation plans, dream home ideas, and other things you want to do soon and in the future.

That’s why for us, it’s so important that Pinterest is a service that will be here to stay. To help make sure it does, we’re going to start experimenting with promoting certain pins from a select group of businesses.

I know some of you may be thinking, “Oh great…here come the banner ads.” But we’re determined to not let that happen. While we haven’t figured out all the details, I can say that promoted pins will be:

• Tasteful—No flashy banners or pop-up ads.
• Transparent—We’ll always let you know if someone paid for what you see, or where you see it.
• Relevant—These pins should be about stuff you’re actually interested in, like a delicious recipe, or a jacket that’s your style.
• Improved based on your feedback—Keep letting us know what you think, and we’ll keep working to make things better.

For our first test, we’ll promote a few pins in search results and category feeds. For example, a pin for a Darth Vader outfit from a costume shop might be promoted in a search for “halloween.” Nobody’s paying for anything yet—we want to see how things go and, more than anything, hear what you think.

Thanks so much for all your support these first few years, and we hope you’ll keep pinning with us for many years to come!

All the best,
Ben

IDK!  What do you think of all this??

Nail Art Ideas Linkup – Sports Theme!

Hi everyone!! The sports theme for NAIL opened up yesterday and although I don’t watch much sports on tv… I do like to play them sometimes.  Bowling has been a part of my life since I was a kid- so how about some bowling nails?  I had the idea in my head that painting bowling pins would look super cute.. so here’s my attempt!

You can see in the pic that I’m holding a skinny little bottle of Essence Tip Painter.  It has a super thin brush that’s supposed to be used for painting on french manicure tips.  Well lemme tell you, this thing came in so handy for painting the bowling pins!  I love how teeny tiny the brush is, so I actually cleaned it with acetone and used it again with black nail polish to make outlines around the pins.  I also used it to outline the bowling ball and then l painted inside of the ball with Orly Sweet Peacock.  I couldn’t decide what to do with my accent nail so I did a glitter sandwich!  I just piled on layer after layer of different glitter topcoats til it looked super glitzy.  Afterall, bowling is a glitzy and glamorous sport, no?  LOL, not quite.

FYI- my base color is Butter London Tea With the Queen which dried so slow!!  Is it just my bottle, or is this stuff really slow to dry?  I did one coat of Tea With the Queen on both hands last night, and then another coat today.  But the Butter London never seemed to dry on either hand.  And I’ll be honest, I didn’t paint bowling pins on my right hand, that hand only had the two coats of Butter London.  Even 2 hours after applying my second coat, it was tacky and I could scrape the polish right off with the tip of my fingernail.  I just sat here and scraped it all off.  Even my bowling nails on my left hand (which had seche vite on top) all scraped right off too.  I’m not sure what the deal is.  Do any of you experience this with Tea With the Queen or is my bottle defective or something?

If you’d like to do a sports-themed manicure for Nail Art Ideas Linkup you have til Sept 15th- here’s the link:

Also- voting for last week’s NAIL Genius is opened up!  The theme was BACK TO SCHOOL and everyone can cast up to three votes if you’d like.  Here’s the gallery of manis to vote on your fave NAIL Genius: BACK TO SCHOOL THEME- VOTE NOW!

#31DC2013- Violet Nails

Day 6 of Chalkboard’s 31 day nail challenge is VIOLET and I came up with a bold purple petunia design using my new Essence colour & go polishes! The lighter base color (3 coats) is called Essence Oh My Glitter! and it’s such a pretty, pretty purple, I just love it!  It’s one of those purple shades that’s dusty, but also bright at the same time.  (does that make sense ?)

Moving on to the petunia motif…  I started by free-handing the petals with a detail brush and cheap black nail polish.   I almost always use this NYC brand of polish called Black Lace Creme for my black nail art.  This stuff was $0.98!  Also, it’s nice and smooth and it doesn’t get too goopy on my brush.  It’s just a great cheapo polish to have on hand!  Then I filled in the black outlines with Essence Break Through, a deep magenta-tinted purple.  The flowers came out big and bold but luckily they don’t outshine my gorgeous base color!  I like that my eye keeps catching the pink and purple micro-glitter that’s in there.  Here’s a close-up of Oh My Glitter! so you can see ….

Want to see more purple manicures?  Here’s the inlinkz for 31DC2013 violet theme…