New Essence Colour & Shades & My Galaxy Mani

Essence's Colour and Go collection has released 6 new shades - see them all here.

I picked up three of these: 149 Hello Marshmallow, 148 Prom-Berry, and 147 Miss Universe, along with one I haven't seen in stock previously, 125 Absolutely Blue.

Hello Marshmallow

Prom-Berry

Miss Universe

Absolutely Blue

The Colour & Go collection is another that I am absolutely in love with.  Why?:

1. They're cheap.  They retail at Priceline for $2.75 and quite often they're on sale when they bring in the new range at the start of each season.  See what they have in stock here, but some Sydney CBD stores also have the new colours which aren't listed yet.
2. They dry quickly.  Most do require two coats, but you can pretty much paint your first coat and then go and paint the second fairly soon after.
3. Great shades.  They don't take themselves as seriously as OPI or China Glaze or all of the brands you can get in pharmacies, but the shades are pretty much on trend.

There are two things that do annoy me about the brand, though.  The first is that the shades never seem to be stocked with the full range.  Only now have I spotted Absolutely Blue, and I keep an eye out very regularly to see what's coming in (I'm talking several times a week), so while that's not technically a "new" shade, I've never seen it in store before.  And it is my favourite one!

The second is that, for some reason, certain shades never make it to Australia (yes, I'm talking about you 122 Chic Reloaded) even though there was a space for them in the rack (122 again).  I had read about that one from overseas blogs and got all excited that it would be sold here when I saw the space marked for "122" in the rack, only to go to almost every Priceline and be told they didn't receive them.  What's up with that?  I take exception to the fact that Australia seems to be the dumping ground for everything that doesn't get sold in the Northern Hemisphere.  Oi! Essence!  We want the good shades too, and we want them sooner than half a year after the northern countries/continents.

Being the glitter lover that I am, I recently also got OPI's Polka.Com, and thought it would look great over Absolutely Blue (see below).

And the photo below is my take on Galaxy Nails.  Using Absolutely Blue (again, LOL), I painted Miss Universe over top and then used Glad Wrap to sponge it.  I finished it off with Out the Door's Northern Lights (holographic top coat), and there you go.  Loves it!

That is all.

NN

Sally Hansen: Lustre Shine

Sally Hansen's new range of Lustre Shine polishes hit Australian shores recently.

I have read around the interwebs that this collection is seen to be very similar to the Bohemian collection that China Glaze released.  Now, I don't know about that, but I do know that my local China Glaze stockist didn't order in the Bohemian collection, so I couldn't purchase any to be able to make a comparison!

I did a little researching before I decided on which colours from the Lustre Shine range to purchase.  In the end, I settled on Copperhead, Scarab and Lava:

Copperhead:

Scarab:

Lava:

At around $10 a polish, they're on the exxy side, but they're the only duo chromes I have actually been able to buy in a store in Australia.  I was also tempted to buy Plume, but it just looked too close to Chanel's Peridot ('though, I have read there are differences between the two). Azure was also a polish I looked at a couple of times, but then realised that I have several polishes like it and that there really wasn't any duo chrome effect to it.  The other three in the current range, Moonstone, Firefly and Gilt didn't excite me at all, so I left those alone.

In the bottle, Copperhead shows a rusty orange with swirls of green, and, at certain angles, purple.  On the nail, however, it's all rust, and at a certain angle, only a slight tinge of purple.  No green.  A nice colour for autumn.

Scarab may seem to some that it's plainly teal, but it does change to blue slightly, honestly!  It's such a rich colour and I have a such soft spot for teals that I had to have this one. A very pretty polish.

Lava seems to be a favourite amongst those reviewing these polishes.  I think it has the most colour shift out of all of the collection, and tiny glitter particles to set it apart from the others. The above photo doesn't really capture it's full splendour, and it's much more pink in normal light.

While I do like these polishes, I forgot that their being so metallic and shiny means that they show up every little ridge in your nails.  It also chips and wears a lot faster than a normal cream polish.

NN