NOTW - Essie - A Crewed Interest & Essie - Shine Of The Times

[natural light]

[with flash]

This weeks Nail Of The Week is Essie - A Crewed Interest, with an accent nail of Essie - Shine Of The Times. 

Essie's 'A Crewed Interest' is from the Spring 2012 Navigate Her collection, which was full of nice lights and brights as can be seen in the full collection swatches here. A Crewed Interest is a beautiful peachy creme which applied quite well considering it is such a light colour. I was able to get an even opaque coverage in 2 coats, but then decided to put 'Shine Of The Times' over all my nails, then regretted it so did a top coat of  'A Crewed Interest' again on all the nails except the thumb and accent finger. Haha. I'm ridiculous I know! So that's why in the pictures the nail polish looks so thick! Sorry about that. 

The colour really is wonderful though. This is one of my favourites in a long time. It worked well against my pale skin, and was a nice colour in the sun, or in artificial light. Not too orange, but not too washed out either. If you're pale, I would definitely recommend this one! 

The Essie - Shine Of The Times flakie nail polish is a really soft highlight on this colour. Not too noticeable, but a gentle glimmer in the right light. It reflects a silver and gold mostly, and because it's over a light colour, the colour it reflects is a lot lighter too. 

This is definitely a nail polish I will be turning to again, and would work well with almost any outfit as it's so light and neutral. Essie nail polishes are yet to disappoint me and I can't wait to get more!

This is another nail polish I bought in my last haul (as seen in my post here) from mbeautylounge and was $7.10 ($US). You can probably also find this on ebay for around the same price, or BeautyBay.com are now stocking Essie and have A Crewed Interest available online for $11.90 ($AU) AND have free postage to Australia. Myer also stock Essie, but I'm unsure of their availability on every collection so just head in to your local store and see what they have. :)

What do you think of Essie's 'A Crewed Interest' and 'Shine Of The Times'? Have you got a favourite Essie nail polish? x

Tried & Loved - Clinique - Chubby Stick - Chunky Cherry

 

I was recently lucky enough to receive a Clinique Chubby Stick in the mail and boy was I excited to try this one out! Chubby sticks have been around for a little while now, but I missed out on purchasing with the initial hype about them and almost forgot I needed one until the recent competition on the Clinique Australia facebook that I posted about earlier in my blog!

Clinique describe the Chubby Stick as "Super-nourishing balm loaded with mango and shea butters. Just what dry, delicate lips need to feel comfortably soft and smooth. Eight mouth watering lip tints in all, each with a subtle sheen." The 8 shades are currently: Chunky Cherry, Graped-up, Mega Melon, Super Strawberry, Fuller Fig, Woppin’ Watermelon and Richer Raisin.

The shade I received was Chunky Cherry which is a nice sheer red which turned a little more pinky red once applied to my lips as can be seen in the swatch and then in the picture above. I would say that this looks to be the brightest of all the shades in the current collection, and probably not something I would wear everyday at work, but definitely something I would put on any time other than that (I work in an office of mostly men that look at me funny when I wear much makeup, haha). 

The packaging makes them super easy to apply, as with any other crayon or pencil type lipsticks/lip balms I've tried before, but the balm side of things makes these super smooth to swipe on in a hurry or on the go. I applied mine in the car after a hair cut in the picture above without the aid of a mirror and found it sat perfectly on my lips. Great to have in your bag for a quick pick me up with your makeup, or to go easily from day to night without fuss! You can easily layer the colour to be really sheer, or build up to show even more

The Chubby Stick is a wind up tube in the cute shape of a pencil, made from plastic and with a shiny metal feel and look cap and tip. The product just feels nice in your hand like you know it's quality materials, and you know it's going to last, but without being too heavy to keep in your handbag every day. The packaging is really one of the things that draws me in with these because it's so different to most other lipsticks or lip balms on the market. If you've got a Clinique Chubby Stick, you know it's a Clinique Chubby Stick!


Overall I think the product lasted fairly well on my lips and was quite comfortable. It was hydrating enough to keep wearing through out the day with touch ups only needed from the Chubby Stick, rather than a lot of products where I still need a lot more moisture so my lips don't crack or dry out - I think the mango and shea butters work nicely here for that. I also like the consistency. It's smooth enough to glide onto your lips with ease, but also tacky enough to stick around for a while and you can feel it lightly on your lips without being too sticky. It's almost like a matte lipstick once it's been on your lips for a while, it doesn't dry your lips out but it's not overly slick, so if you need a little more moisture than that through the day I would probably top up with something like the Clinique Superbalm moisturising gloss I reviewed earlier in my blog.  


As with most Clinique products I've tried these are not scented. Sometimes I love a little gimmick of smell, and with such cute names it'd be nice to have the scent to match, but I also don't feel like I'm missing out without a scent in these products as the product speaks for itself and is present where it needs to be without being overpowering in any dimension.


I know there is a lot of hype about hybrid lip balm/lipsticks at the moment, but from the others that I've tried so far this seems to be the classic, and the best for a reason. I honestly can't wait to get more of these and wear them everyday! 


I was given this chubby stick to review, but you can purchase these from Clinique stores Australia wide for $35. I think this will honestly last me ages as a little product goes a long way! You can find your nearest Clinque stockist on their website here or you can also buy directly from the Clinique Australia website as they usually have awesome bonuses and free samples going on with their web-store. 


As an added bonus, there are 8 (yes EIGHT!) new shades being released at the end of this month, and I was lucky enough to be sent a preview to share. These can be seen in the image below: 

[image courtesy of Clinique Australia]

Have you tried Clinique's Chubby Stick yet? What do you love / loathe about them? What's your favourite colour? x

NOTW - Deborah Lippmann - Candy Shop over Kit - Winner Takes

This weeks Nail Of The Week is what I can only describe as a party on the nails! This is quite fitting too as the main nail polish in focus here is from the Deborah Lippmann - Get This Party Started nail polish trio box set from 2011 which featured Candy Shop (Happy Birthday glitter in a pink jelly base) alongside Happy Birthday and Forget You (Happy Birthday glitter in a black jelly). 

I started with a lighter base than I have previously used with the Candy Shop jelly top coat. I used one of my very favourite pale pinks - Kit - Winner Takes. This is a really light pink that is pretty much the exact colour that it looks in the bottle. It goes on really opaque like all Kit nail polishes that I've used, which makes it easy to have a nice base with pale colours. I used 2 coats just to get a nice even finish before I put on the glitter top coat. 

The glitter in Deborah Lippmann's Candy Shop is definitely not lacking at all. One quick swipe was all I needed for the thick coverage of glitter that you can see on my nails above. It comes out nice and even and applies really easily. The pink jelly base with the glitter actually made my nails a more fluro pink than I was expecting over the pale pink base colour. I didn't know if I liked it at first, but it really grew on me and it's a nice effect in the end. I've only ever used this over a barbie kind of pink previously so the colour of the jelly base wasn't noticeable at all, but over this you can really tell that the jelly base has a colour of it's own. 

I'm still yet to use Candy Shop on it's own on my nails, but from watches that I've seen the jelly base builds up to quite a nice colour making it not too sheer. It might be something I need to think about trying in the future. There are some good swatches of the whole 'Get This Party Started' set here. 

I received the Deborah Lippmann 'Get This Party Started' set which included Candy Shop for my birthday, and it's from 2011 so I'm not sure that it's available online anymore, but it may still be on ebay! I know you can order Candy Shop on it's own from the Deborah Lippmann website (not 100% sure that it posts to Australia sorry!) or from 

The Kit nail polish 'Winner Takes' is still available in store at Kit and Mecca or online at Kit and Mecca too.

What do you think of this combination? What's your favourite glitter nail polish? x

NOTW - OPI - Black Cherry Chutney

This weeks nail of the week is OPI - Black Cherry Chutney from OPI's India collection from 2008. 

This was another nail polish that I had recently received in my haul from mbeautylounge.com and as soon as I saw it in the bottle I couldn't believe how pretty it looked. I couldn't wait to get it on my nails! Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed once I did. 

In the bottle it looks a deep purple with flecks of red undertones, however on the nail I lost that almost completely. It looked like a flat colour of deep purple, and the only way to see the undertones is in direct sunlight, and even then it's not so noticeable. In the second picture I've used flash, so you can almost see the other flecks of colour coming through there.

I thought this would be comparable to my previous post OPI - Midnight In Moscow and I guess in a way it is, but this is a lot more purple, and the undertones aren't as noticeable. It almost looks black without direct light on top. I definitely can't complain though, it's another awesome vampy colour to add to my collection, and OPI do these sort of colours oh so well. 

This was a little harder to apply than Midnight In Moscow, one coat was quite streaky, but it evened out with the second and I left it at that. Maybe a third coat would really intensify it, but I think 2 is plenty!

Overall I really do like the colour that this turned out, I was just a little disappointed with the initial lack of shimmer once it was on the nail. If you love a deep vampy purple this is a lovely colour. 

I purchased this from mbeautylounge.com for $6.15 (US) but it may still be available in stores too. In Australia David Jones stock OPI instore for around $19.95 (AU), or check out the OPI website for a stockist near you! 

What do you think of OPI - Black Cherry Chutney? What's your favourite OPI colour? Do you like vampy shades? 

NOTW - Essie - No More Film + China Glaze - Meteor Shower

This weeks nails of the week is a little disappointing from my point of view, so I apologise as a first priority to my readers. As you may be able to tell by some of the scratches and chips in my nails, I didn't get to take photos as soon as I finished my manicure, it was actually a few days before I found time to take photos, and of course by then they had already started to chip! I forgot how absolutely horrible long square nails are for that. HORRIBLE. Lesson learnt on that front - shorter than my fingers, or not at all.

But moving on to the colours, which I actually loved... I have Essie - No More Film on most of my nails which is from the Essie Resort 2012 collection that came out around March this year. This is a new nail polish that I recently got from mBeautyLounge and I'll be posting a haul picture of the rest of the nail polishes I got in my order very soon. 

The formula on this nail polish, like most Essie nail polish was really rich and easy to apply, although as you can tell from my messy cuticles, it was a little harder to get neat than some others I've used before. You could probably get away with one nice coat of this colour as it is thick, but I believe I used 2 coats in the pictures above just to even it out. The true colour of this nail polish is so hard to capture with photos, as it feels as though it almost has a creamy purple tinge to the base which makes for a beautiful blue in real life that sets it apart from any other dark blue or navy nail polishes that I've used before. The formula finished in a lovely shiny polish, but I topped mine with Seche Vite top coat just to give it an extra bit of shine.

On my ring fingers I have China Glaze - Meteor Shower which is a coarse glitter nail polish. I didn't need to use any coloured base undercoat with this nail polish, it's pure glitter and dark base gives a deep shimmer of blues which are hard to capture the depth of within the photos above. It's extremely sparkly, trust me, and it's beautiful! As you can see in comparison to Essie - No More Film, China Glaze - Meteor Shower is a true navy blue so that may help you visual what I was attempting to say about the purple undertones earlier. I feel this nail polish definitely works best with a top coat, as without it it is textured and not as sparkly in the light. The formula on this is really thick, and a tad hard to apply as it is so chunky with glitter, but the top coat evens that out anyway. You only really need one coat of this because it's so thick.

I haven't worn this nail polish much since I purchased it around a year ago, not because I don't love the colour, but more because when I did wear it previously it chipped so easily and it is quite painful to remove. This time around with using a base coat and top coat it actually lasted a lot longer than the Essie colour did really, I was quite impressed. 

Essie - No More Film should be available in Myer and other major retailers that sell Essie for around $15-$20, or you can purchase it online. As I said, I purchased mine from mBeautyLounge for $7.20 US.

China Glaze - Meteor Shower is an older nail polish now, and I purchased mine from Crush Cosmetics at least 12 months ago, and from what I can see it's no longer available on there. They are great for China Glaze though and an Australian based website. If anyone knows where you can still buy this nail polish online, let me know and I will update this post. You might need to try ebay even, sometime's you get lucky there! 

What do you think of this colour combination? Have you tried Essie Nail Polish before? What's your favourite colour? x