TE Crystalliced

Essence's first trend edition of the year 2012 features five beautiful winter colours. The name is therefore well chosen: Crystalliced. The design of the bottles is very beautiful; it has snowflakes on the etiquette and the bottle holder. I only got these four:

from left to right
01 It's A Snow-Woman's World
05 Frosted Champaign
03 Iced Age Reloaded
04 Ice Eyes Baby

The first one is 01 It’s A Snow-Woman’s World. IASWW is a grayish lavender with pink and purple shimmer. Unfortunately, these shimmers don’t translate onto the nails, so you’ll just get a creme finish as final look. Here is IASWW with 3 coats:

There is something that makes this polish stand out from the other four I got: it contains carmine. With one eyebrow lifted, I searched what carmine is. When I found out, my other eyebrow lifted too and my eyes were like O.O Carmine is described as a bright red pigment and as a deep red colour, so I’m thinking it’s the pink shimmer.

What is more fascinating is the way it is obtained. I’m not sure you want to hear the details but in short, it comes from scale insects, meaning that IASWW is not considered as a vegan cosmetic product. I still need some time to progress this information, it won’t be the same anymore the next time I swatch It's A Snow-Woman's World...

Have a great weekend!

Brand New Start...

Happy 2012 Everyone!!!

Hope you all had a wonderful time during the holidays!

A great way to kick off the first blog post of 2012: a brand I've not yet tried before =] American Apparel.

 

Here follows some pictures taken in sunlight and ones in the shade, which are actually more colour accurate. American Apparel nail polishes are 4Free, which means that its formula does NOT contain formaldehyde, DBP and toluene and it is never tested on animals. I did not pay much attention to this matter before, but if these formulations do exist, why not choose them. While I was searching for the 4Free definition, I found that there are also nail polish brands with 5Free formulation! So, if you want a more environmental healthy and responsible nail polish, do check it out this list.

Back to the swatches, American Apparel Rouge is a dark raspberry crème. You can get away with just one coat, but I layered two in the pictures. This is the first American Apparel nail polish I’ve tried and I must say that it made a good impression. The formula was great, it applied so easy and the brush worked fine.

The black lace design was from a water decal sheet that I bought from Born Pretty Store a while back. The accent nail has a French tip of OPI Warm & Fozzie. The water decals are quite handy compared to the lace designs of Konad, if you haven’t mastered the art of stamping yet. I find it hard to place the Konad design on the spot where I want it to be. With these water decals, I can easily place and move it to the right place without having to redo the mani. But I’ll practice with the Konad ones more often, the water decals are for the lazy moments.

Have a wonderful one!!!