Essie 'Bordeaux'

Today's manicure is a classic polish - Essie's 'Bordeaux'.  Fun fact: this polish was part of the original release of 12 polishes when the Essie brand was launched in 1981! It is a deep red wine jelly polish, that gives a vampy, sophisticated look on the nails. I think this polish is absolutely gorgeous. Next to metallic reds, I would say that jelly reds are probably my next favourite way to wear red nails. 

I really like my deep reds to read as red, as opposed to brown, so I like using as few coats as possible to keep the polish as light as possible. On the swatch above, I used only one coat of bordeaux, and one coat of glossy top coat to amplify the shine. However, the nails appear somewhat lighter in the photo than they do in real life, due to the strong lights I use for my pictures. 

China Glaze 'Drastic'

Today I have a quick post to share another nail polish swatch. This polish is China Glaze's 'Drastic', a deep red jelly polish that is absolutely stunning! I love the candy-like translucence and shine, and the deep cool-toned shade of red is so gorgeous! 

'Panning for Gold' Stamped Glitter and Pond Manicure

Today's manicure is a water-themed look centred around the idea of panning for gold. I wanted to do a pond manicure using the Essie jelly polish collections that I've been playing around with for the last few posts, the 'Silk Watercolor' collection from 2015, and the new 'Glazed Days' collection released earlier this year.  

Polishes Used	Stamping Plates Used
Essie Silk Watercolor ‘Pen & Inky’	ÜberChic Beauty – Moroccan Delight
Essie Glazed Days ‘Ooh La Lolly’	Über Mini: Texture-licious – Plate 2
China Glaze ‘Water You Waiting For’
Sally Hansen Color Foil – 'Liquid Gold'

However, I wanted to do something a little different for the pond manicure, so I came up with the idea of irregular gold flakes visible through the layers of blue and teal jelly polish, as if they were small pieces of gold at the bottom of a river bed, being brought to the surface while panning for gold.  I used this concept for my index and middle fingers, using Essie jelly polishes 'Pen & Inky', and 'Ooh La Lolly', and then painted my other nails using 'Water You Waiting For', a gorgeous teal glitter from the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil 'Worlds Away' collection from Winter 2012. This polish was included in my 'Project Polish' list of polishes that I'm trying to use up soon(ish 😉). 

I finished the manicure by stamping a gold arabesque pattern over my ring finger as an accent, and then topping everything off with a quick dry, glossy top coat. The arabesque pattern was from the ÜberChic Beauty - 'Moroccan Delight' plate, while the gold flakes in the 'Pond' portion of the manicure were stamped from ÜberChic Beauty's Über Mini 'Texture-licious' plate 2. Below I have a collage featuring a few additional shots of the manicure.

I really like how this manicure turned out! It actually kind of reminds me of the 'Teal and Gold Crackle Sandwich' manicure I did years ago on this blog as part of my '2015 Crackle Polish Challenge'. 

I really love how the featured 'pond' portion of the mani turned out, but interestingly, this manicure has really revived my appreciation for the China Glaze glitter 'Water You Waiting For'. I've always loved the stunning, deep teal shade, but wearing it now, I see how well it works with my skin tone, and just how genuinely sparkly and beautiful it is!

Essie 'Silk Watercolors' and 'Glazed Days' Collections Comparison

For today's post, I wanted to do a quick comparison between the two iterations of Essie's Jelly Polish collections: Essie's 'Silk Watercolors' collection from 2015, and Essie's 'Glazed Days' collection from 2019. To see reviews on the collections separately, you can click the links on the collection names in the previous sentence.

Overall, I really like both collections, and think that they actually complement eachother really well. Because of the different formulas, and hues, I'm happy to have both sets in my collection.  

I noticed that the silk watercolor collection has a slightly thinner, and slightly less vibrant formula, which lends itself a bit better to blending and layering applications. For example, blending a watercolour-type abstract pattern on the nails, or layering designs between coats of the jelly polish, as is done with 'pond' manicures.

By contrast, the 'Glazed Days' Collection seems to be more vibrant and the formula is a bit thicker, which lends itself a bit better to nail art applications where more full coverage is important, like 'leadlighting'.  None of the shades are exact dupes of eachother, so combined, the 2 collections provide a total of 14 rainbow shades!

Below I have samples of nail art that use all of the polishes in both collections. On the 'Glazed Days' portion of the collage, the polishes are layered over a silver background (Sally Hansen's 'Silver Sweep').

Leadlighting Manicure featuring Essie's Silk Watercolor Collection

Polishes Used	Polishes Used
Essie ‘Highest Bidder’	Essie ‘Point of Blue’
Essie ‘Love Sheen’	Essie ‘No Shrinking Violet’
Essie ‘Blush Stroke’	Essie ‘White Page’
Essie ‘Art New-Beau’	Maniology ‘Straight Up Black’
Essie ‘Muse, Myself’	Stamping Plate Used
Essie ‘Pen & Inky’	Moyou London Trend Hunter - 01

After reviewing my purchase of Essie's 'Glazed Days' collection which was released earlier this year, I decided to go back and do a manicure using Essie's 'Silk Watercolor' collection that I purchased back when it was released in 2015. 

Essie 'Silk Watercolor' Collection

I never did a complete review of the 'Silk Watercolor' collection when I purchased it. However, I did feature one of the shades in a blog post. It was the pink shade, 'Blush Stroke', which I used for a 'Pond' manicure. Here's a link to that post. 

For today's manicure, I decided to use all of the shades from the collection to create a cute, colourful look. I started with 'White Page' as my white base colour, and then stamped two different floral images on my thumbs, and ring fingers. The images were from Moyou London stamping plate 'Trend Hunter - 01', and the black stamping polish I used was Maniology's 'Straight Up Black'. I also stamped the cross pattern on my middle fingers from a portion of one of the images on the same plate using the same polish. 

Next, I coloured in the flower portions of the images with each of the colours from the 'Silk Watercolor' collection using the 'leadlight technique', which involves using a dotting tool (or any other tool or brush that can transfer polish) to place the transparent jelly polishes over different parts of the image. After this, I embellished the image on my middle finger with some black dots, and then added multi coloured dots on the bottom portion of my index, and pinky fingers. The multi-coloured dots were also made with the 'Silk Watercolor' collection. I completed the look by using a quick dry, glossy top coat in order to smoothe everything out, and add shine.

Below, is a collage with a few additional shots of the manicure:

Here are some of my thoughts about the 'Silk Watercolor' collection. I'm quite pleased with the colour saturation from the jelly polishes in the collection. The jellies look great over the white polish even with only one coat, which is really important for leadlighting. The white polish is pretty much your standard white polish. It performs well, but if you already have a white polish that you like, I don't see a specific need to get this one.

I also really like the colour range. There are more warm shades in the collection than cool shades, and I find that a lot of the colours are sort of 'in-between' shades, as opposed to 'true' shades ie 'pinky-red' as opposed to 'true' red. This works well for me, as I already have jelly polishes that are more classic shades, so these polishes are a great addition to my collection.

The 'Silk Watercolor' formula is really good as well. The jelly polishes are on the slightly thinner side, and have enough pigment to perform well for leadlighting, as well as on their own, as seen in my 'pond' manicure. Of course, I haven't used all of the jellies on their own yet, so I'm estimating the performance based on 'Blush Stroke', the one I've used (sort of) on it's own, as well as my experience with using all of the polishes in this manicure. 

All in all, really like these polishes. I really enjoyed creating this look, and I love how it turned out. I even got a couple compliments on this manicure! 

Water-Marble Style Leadlighting Mani 2 featuring Essie's 'Glazed Days' Collection

Today I have another leadlighting manicure created using Essie's Glazed Days Collection, and my water-marble stamping plate B002 from What's Up Nails.

Polishes Used	Polishes Used
Essie ‘Glazed Days’	Essie ‘Sweet Not Sour’
Essie ‘Confection Affection’	Sally Hansen Insta-Dri ‘Silver Sweep’*
Essie ‘Sweet Supply’	Maniology ‘Straight Up Black’
Essie ‘But First, Candy’	Stamping Plates Used
Essie ‘Ooh La Lolly’	What’s Up Nails plate B002

                                                                                                                      *new formula

Basically, the steps I took to create this manicure were the same as for the manicure I described in my last post. The main difference is that I used different stamping images from the stamping plate. The middle finger accent nail was also featured in an earlier post in which I did a quick review on the Essie 'Glazed Days' collection. You can click here to see that post.

Overall, I was really pleased with how this manicure turned out as well (even with the small smudge on my thumb!). I really like how these jelly polishes look over a silver base. Below, I've included a few additional close-up shots of my fingernails.

Water-Marble Style Leadlighting Mani featuring Essie's 'Glazed Days' Collection

Polishes Used	Polishes Used
Essie ‘Glazed Days’	Essie ‘Sweet Not Sour’
Essie ‘Confection Affection’	Sally Hansen Insta-Dri ‘Silver Sweep’*
Essie ‘Sweet Supply’	Maniology ‘Straight Up Black’
Essie ‘But First, Candy’	Stamping Plates Used
Essie ‘Ooh La Lolly’	What’s Up Nails plate B002

* New Formula                

Today, I have a manicure to share using the Essie 'Glazed Days' collection realeased for Summer 2019. This collection of very saturated jelly polishes lends itself quite well to a variety of nail art applications. It's been a while since I posted some nail art on my blog, so when I purchased the set, I was so excited to be able to get back to playing with polishes to create some beautiful manicures! 

For this mani, I used the Leadlighting technique, to create a look similar to a stained glass window. I started out with a silver base. I then stamped over the base with a black stamping polish, using one of the water-marble images from What's Up Nails plate B002.  Afterwards, I coloured over the silver portions between the black lines using different colours of polish from the 'Glazed Days' collection.

Below, is a picture of the materials I used to create the look:

It was so much fun creating this manicure. I really love how it turned out - I even got a really nice compliment on my nails! Below, I've included a collage of some additional shots of the manicure:

Jelly Polishes for Leadlight Manicures

I started writing this post on January 29 2015, and it has been in my Draft folder ever since! I wanted to go through my entire collection and compile a large list of my jelly polishes and take pictures so that I could catalogue them for easy retrieval when needed. I realize now that I'm probably never going to get around to doing that! With my previous post on the Essie 'Glazed Days' Collection, I thought I would finally just publish this post, even though it is not a comprehensive list, as the information may still be useful, since some of these polishes are still available.

Today's post is all about polishes that can be used for Leadlight manicures. 'Leadlighting' is a nail stamping technique where coloured, translucent polishes (jellies, and tints) are painted over stamped outlines, usually in a dark colour, over a white or light coloured base. It allows for the creation of multi-coloured images on the nail. The pros of leadlighting are that compared to the decal method, the other popular method of creating multicoloured stamped images, it is much quicker, because the colours are applied directly to the nail, as opposed to a stamper.

I first learned this technique from a you-tube video posted by Messy Mansion in spring 2014. Back then, I only had a few jelly polishes in my collection.  I immediately started researching and store-hunting for a variety of jellies that I could use for this technique. Today, I want to share some of what I have found.

1) Create your own
A lot of people have shared that you can create jelly polishes by adding clear nail polish to other polishes already in your collection. They can be mixed as required by combining a few drops of each on a piece of saran wrap, plastic, or whatever un-needed flat surface you have handy. This way you do not have to mix up an entire bottle of jelly polish, if you only need a little bit for some nail art. I have never personally tried this technique, but I have seen it successfully done in manicure tutorials on-line.

2) OPI Sheer tints
This collection came out in spring or summer 2014, just as the leadlight technique was really catching on in the nail art community.  They are lightly pigmented, so although they work beautifully for the technique, the colours you get tend to be pastel shades.  You might be able to build the colour intensity with multiple coats, but, you may end up with a lumpy surface. The colours are 'I'm Never Aberrassed', 'Be Magentale with Me', 'Don't Violet Me Down', and 'I Can Teal You Like Me'.

3) NFU OH Jelly Syrup Series
I'm not sure exactly when, but a quick internet search leads me to believe that it was sometime in either late 2010 or early 2011, that Nfu Oh came out with an entire collection of jelly polishes, containing a whopping 45 shades of jelly awesomeness! From my experience with the polishes from this series that I have in my collection, these polishes are very pigmented, and are fantastic for use in the leadlight technique.

4) China Glaze Summer 2013 Sunsational Collection
This collection included 6 jelly polishes: 'You Drive Me Coconuts', 'Heat Index', 'Shell-O', 'Keepin' it Teal', 'Isle See You Later', and 'Are You Jelly?'. These are gorgeous, bright, fun shades. They are not perfectly translucent, as they have a translucent white base, but I've found that they still work well for leadlight manicures.

5) OPI Color Paints collection (Summer 2015)
I did a comprehensive review of these polishes in an earlier post. Click here to view it.

6) Essie Silk Watercolor collection (Summer 2015)
This was a collection of 8 jelly polishes and a white base. The colours were:
'Highest Bidder' - Crimson
'Blush Stroke' - Scarlet
'Love Sheen' - Rose
'Art New-Beau' - Orange
'Muse, Myself' - Citrus
'Pen & Inky' - Teal
'Point of Blue' - Blue
'No Shrinking Violet' - Violet
'White Page' - White base polish

7) Some examples of random Jelly Polishes sorted by colour:
Red:  Essie Jelly Apple Burgundy: China Glaze 'Ravishing, Dahling'
Orange: OPI Big Hair...Big Nails, OPI 'Y'all Come Back Ya Hear?'
Yellow: Deborah Lippmann 'Yellow Brick Road'
Turquoise: Zoya 'Frida'
Blue: China Glaze 'Ride the Waves', and 'Splish Splash'
Purple: Zoya 'Katherine', and China Glaze 'Creative Fantasy'
Pink: Misa 'Bed of Roses'
White: OPI 'Don't Touch My Tutu', and 'Funny Bunny'

8) Essie Glazed Days Collection, Summer 2019
I did a comprehensive review of these polishes in an earlier post. Click here to view it.

Essie's 'Glazed Days' Collection

The Essie 'Glazed Days' Collection

I recently purchased the Essie 'Glazed Days' translucent jelly polish collection that was released earlier this year. It was a little difficult to get a hold of this collection here in Canada, as I couldn't find it in any stores, and only found it in one place on line. However now, after getting a chance to use the polishes in some nail art, I feel that it was definitely worth the trouble finding these polishes!

Jelly polishes give a "squishy" effect (ie looks kind of like flavoured gelatin or jam) when worn alone on the nail. However, I think they truly shine when it comes to nail art. There are so many wonderful  jelly polish nail art applications , like the lead light technique, pond manicures, jelly sandwiches (layering over glitter), various layering techniques (for example, layering over interesting bases like a crackle top coat, or a holographic polish), watercolour blend techniques, and more.

There are 6 polishes in the Essie 'Glazed Days' collection: 'Glazed Days' (red), 'Confection Affection' (orange), 'Sweet Supply' (yellow), 'But First, Candy' (green), 'Ooh La Lolly' (blue), and 'Sweet not Sour' (purple). These jelly polishes are very pigmented, producing very saturated swatches of colour when applied to the nail - even after only one coat! That is fantastic for nail art, as a lot of jelly polish nail art applications are layered, and not needing multiple coats for adequate color saturation helps cut down on overall application and drying time.

Below, I have a picture of some nail art done on one of my fingers which features all 6 colours from the collection.

Nail Art using the Essie 'Glazed Days' Collection

I used the lead-lighting technique in this example. I started with a silver base coat, stamped the black design on the upper portion of the nail, and then coloured in the silver sections using the jelly polishes and a dotting tool.  

One thing I noticed in this application, is that the red and purple polishes 'Glazed Days', and 'Sweet not Sour' (respectively), are tonally quite similar to eachother. In the example above, I used 'Glazed Days' on the upper portion of the nail, in the section to the left of the orange section. 'Sweet not Sour' is on the very bottom of the nail, just below the blue section.  You can see how there definitely is a difference on how they look over the silver polish, but nevertheless, they do appear quite similar.  From the swatches that I've seen on line, the differences between the two polishes seem to stand out more when applied over white, or when they are worn alone.

Overall, I'm thrilled with this collection. I love jelly polishes, and these ones perform well, look beautiful, and are very pigmented. I can't wait to play around with them some more!

Pink Floral Pond Mani

For today's manicure, I decided to try out a 'Pond' manicure for the first time. This style of manicure involves sandwiching designs between layers of tinted jelly polish, to create a submerged item effect.

I decided to do a monochromatic look, so I used a medium pink jelly polish for the base, and then used a repeating four-petalled flower design, made using a dotting tool and two shades of pink polish.

I really like how this look turned out - it is super-girly, fun, and vibrant! I also really like the polishes I chose. I used 3 Essie polishes that were newly released for summer 2015. The two crème polishes, 'Coacha'Bella' and 'Groove is in the Heart', were from Essie's Summer Neons collection, while the jelly polish, 'Blush Stroke', is from Essie's Silk Watercolor collection. The other polish I used was one of my silver standby's: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Celeb City'. I really love how sparkly, and reflective this polish is. I use it quite frequently as a silver base polish underneath my nail art.

Polishes Used

Essie ‘Blush Stroke’

Essie ‘Coacha’Bella’

Essie ‘Groove is in the Heart’

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Celeb City’

This look has really inspired me to try out more pond manicures. There were a couple really notable jelly polish collections released this summer: OPI's 'Color Paints' collection, and Essie's 'Silk Watercolor' collection. Since I purchased both collections, I have a lot of options for creating some lovely pond manicures, and I can't wait to try them out!

Here are some more shots of the completed manicure.