Review and swatches: Essence – Be a Nail Artist

Essence prepared a special March and April collection just for us nail junkies. The collection is called Be a Nail Artist. You know what that means, right? A whole collection dedicated to nail art. There is something for everyone in this collection. And at a very reasonable price too. There are a lot of products in the collection so I’d better move on and show you some photos and ideas on how to use the products.

I’ll start with the glitters I bought …

Glam it up! is a wheel box with six compartments with glitter in them. The glitters are in various shapes and colors.

Style it up! is a round box full of purple hearts that reflect different colors depending on the lighting.

Glitter it! is a round box full of sheer hexagons, that change color from pink to green.

Cutie Fruity is a round box full of fimo fruit. The fruit looks delicious. :D In the right lower corner you can see how it looks on a nail.

There are also some Nail Art Pens in the collection. I bought a black pen for myself. The shade’s name is Cool Black.

In the picture above:

1. The tip of a new pencil is white.
2. Press/Pump the tip until the color flows into the tip.
3. That’s how the tip looks, when it’s full of color.
4. The picture shows an example of usage.

I bought both Stampy image plates. They are credit card shaped and have nine images on each plate. I forgot to take pictures of them, but you can check them out HERE.

Let’s move on to nail polishes.

Romeo is a grey shade with silver shimmer. It’s not your usual silver or grey polish. It’s a bit darker grey with a silver sheen. It’s very pigmented. There is only one coat of polish shown in the picture below. It works well with stamping. It has very slight frost finish, but really really slight.

Although Romeo is great alone and with no nail art, I added some just because of the name of the collection. I admit that I’m not proud of any of the ideas below. None of the glitters I bought went well with the grey polish …

There is a Sealing Top Coat in my hand in the picture above. It’s a top coat for sealing the nail art. I think it’s pretty good. I didn’t have the chance to test it properly yet, but from what I’ve tested, I think it’s worth a try.

Joe is a gorgeous purple shade. No application issues. There are two coats shown in the picture. IRL the color is less blue based, it’s more reddish.

Here’s some ideas how to pimp out the Joe-manicure.

In the picture below I stamped an image from one of the new Stampy image plates. The stamp is made with the grey polish Romeo. To each flower I added one glitter from the Glitter it! box. Just for presentation purposes I added some dots and curves with the black Nail Art Pen to the manicure. I know, it doesn’t look pretty, but you can see how the pen works.

In the sun – the color is quite accurate.

Artificial lighting.

For the comparison purposes, the butterfly is stamped with China Glaze – Sci-Fi, everything else is stamped with Romeo.

As you can see, Joe is from the Nail Art Twins line. Which means, that it has a twin that complements it. Its twin is a glitter top coat, called Victory. On the picture below there is one coat of Joe and one thicker coat of Victory. I also added some glitters to the manicure …

That is all from me.

Gejba

I disliked the glittery twins, so I got creme bases, one of the plates (other one was sold out ) and Nail Art Pen in Silver White.

Maestra already showed you the brighter shades, so that leaves me with the darkest one … Thelma.

This is really and I mean really dark purple shade. I spiced it up with image from Be Creative plate and white Essence polish from LE Stampy set and Silver White nail pen. I can’t say I like the manicure, but I had to do it anyway.

Pen is little bit to watery for my taste. I had to to go twice over the image or press hard to get the white I was looking for.

I compared Thelma with Essence Devil’s Flavour from Sweet Temptation TE.

Nope – I didn’t make mistake and applied only one polish. The polishes are really identical – same polish in different bottle.

I spiced up this on too. I used same products as above with Konad white polish instead of Essence white from Stampy set.

Which product do you like best from this TE?