Essence nail polish remover - coconut + papaya, review

I've been thinking that I should add a new label here at the blog, which is nail polish remover reviews. :) When being  nail polish geek, it's not only nail polish we uses, as you all know we have our cotton balls/pads and our remover. Personally I prefer 100% acetone, it's cheap and works with any polish or glitter in no time and also I've had no problems with dry cuticles/nails like some people does (I guess my genes are on the good side since my nails are hard and grows). But being here in Germany I decided to try some regular removers. First one out is Essence nail polish remover - coconut + papaya.

Essence nail polish remover - coconut + papaya is a remover in a 250ML bottle with a blue color which also contain acetone. The price was like 0,5-0,8 euro at Kaufland. The description on the bottle says: "Highly effective nail polish remover, removes all kind of nail polishes without dying out the cuticle or nail surface."

However I don't recommend this remover to any one, like ever.. The simple reason is that it barely work or work poorly, even with 3 coats (1 base coat+2 coats creme) it's an endless rubbing leading to nothing.
I realized that the trick was to change cotton more times than usual (like 5-8 times more cotton than usual), always having an "unrubbed" surface on the cotton. After only one use 1/4 of the bottle was gone which makes each use quite expensive when you think about it. I haven't even tried removing glitters and I won't as it's hard to remove cremes.

If that wasn't enough, the smell is awful. I usually don't mind strong scents (I don't mind Kleancolor which some people has complained about and I don't mind scented candles) but this scent is so strong that I suspect it would give most people headache. The scent also doesn't disappear from the nails despite washing the hand like 5 times+ with soap.

Needless to say, I wont be buying this again..

This picture is taken after I have used it ONCE. It's like 3/4 left!

About moisturizing it's hard to say. I generally don't have a problem with dry cuticles. My cuticles doesn't feel dryer or less dried as with pure acetone than this.

Being a polish which contains acetone it's the worst I've tried actually, even though I'd tried removers without polishes which has been less good than this one. Have you tried this remover or any other remover from Essence?

China Glaze - Flock Together, swatch

I know I'm quite alone liking string glitter/bar glitter, but when it comes to matte glitter I don't mind. :)
Flock Together comes from the China Glaze - The Horizon collection from 2013 and I bought some of the polishes quite soon after but these pictures have been laying unpublished for awhile.

Flock Together took 3 coats to cover! Which is a surprisingly good coverage, way better than I expected. The strings are shorter than normal string glitter and the colors are matte; black, light blue and light green. After the glitter had dried I filed away some excess glitter sticking out (I guess that's a downside with string glitter, but an easy fixed problem though). Overall I really like this polish. :)

Bought at head2toebeauty.

United in Pink - Summary of my Pink Ribbon Manicures

Hi! As I said earlier I wanted to do a summary post of all the pink manicures I've done in United in Pink which Helena at Lackycorner was hosting to show awereness to breast cancer and the pink ribbon campaign.

I was able to join six days and below are my manicures (click the image to get to the original post). I have 2 swatches, 1 tutorial and 2 nail art's + the bonus in matte.. :)

Claire's - Junk

Argyle nails

Argyle nail art tutorial

Golden Rose - No.27

Claudia - 603

Pink and black nail art, shiny

Pink and black nail art, matte. Claire's matte top coat.

Claire's - Matte top coat + Black and Pink nail art

I also wanted to show you my Fuck Cancer nail art/Pink ribbon nail art/Black and pink nail art in matte too. However I can't figure out which one like the most though, I like them both because of different reasons. Do you prefer any of them?

As you can see I've used 1 coat of Claire's - Matte top coat, and the effect is semi matte, a pleasant surprise with it is that it doesn't loose its "matteness" after 2 days like some matte top coat does. It doesn't dry as fast as some matte tc does (like seconds) but normal, you can see it goes matte after 20-40 seconds and then allow it to dry for some minutes. I really like it and might get a backup if/when I leave Germany. I still want to find a super matte top coat though with good quality so the search continues.. :)

Think I'll make a round up-post with all the United In Pink Posts I've done during this week. Hold tight ;)

Fuck Cancer nail art/Pink ribbon nail art/Black and pink nail art

This week Nail Art Sunday is combined with United in Pink and the theme is breast/boobs..which is a hard theme if you want to do it literally, and also want to make it artistic and tastefull. At first I was thinking of doing something graphical/abstract like LittleMissNailPolish did last year but then decided for something with accent nails and got inspired by my simple black/green nail art I did 2 weeks ago.  The accent nails are free handed and I got black glitter on the rest. I think I accomplished the theme, there is some boob nail art going on and also some Pink Ribbon nail art with a clear statement: Fuck Cancer.

An InLinkz Link-up

Claudia - 603, swatch

Today I'm showing something super pink for United in Pink. The last Claudia from the bunch I bought awhile back, but I still have a few in the archive unshowed. 603 has been laying there untested but I thought UIP was a good oppurtunity to try it on. As with the previous Claudia the formula is perfect and I used 3 coats, even though I suspect that 2 is enough for shorter nails since it's very pigmented. The color is bright but it's definitely not a neon. I'm not that comfortable having this pink color (without nail art), especially when my nails are this long, makes me think of fakies.. ^^ And a  sad thing, to my surprice the polish stained my nails despite my base coat.. :(

Bought at ICA (food store) for 15SEK, about 1,5 euro.

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Rose - No. 27, swatch

We're already at the forth day of United in Pink and for today I have a glitter I got from Lakobotan which is mostly pink anyhow. :)

Golden Rose - No. 27 has a majority of pale pink hexagon glitter, then red and black hexagons, red super short strung glitter, tiny white glitter and shredded pristmatic glitter, all in a clear base. It's such a weird and lovely combination! Below is 2 coats on a dark red creme so the manicure looks a bit more red than the polish actually is. I'll probably thin this polish a bit in the future too, the formula feels a tiny bit too thick. In retrospective I could have used it on the bare nail but perhaps 3 coats? Must try that in the future. :) What do you think?

An InLinkz Link-up

Argyle nail art tutorial

As promised I got a tutorial of the argyle nails I showed you yesterday. I've done it by step-by-step-pictures and with an explanation of each step. You'll need three different colors of polishes. Two of them can be fine liner polishes or you can use a thin nail art brush and optionally a dotting tool.

And a reminder, this week is for awareness for breast cancer, so go and check out United In Pink if you haven't already and/or give your support for Pink Ribbon Charity. :)

Hope you like it and if you try you can (if you want to) leave me a comment so I can have a look. :) Sadly I think the picture looks a bit pixelated and when I uploaded it, hope you can make it out anyhow, otherwise let me know. :)

Polishes used:
Jordana Pop Art - Contemporary White
L.A. Colors Art Deco - Baby Pink
La Femme - Silverado(?) 32

An InLinkz Link-up

Argyle nails in pink, gray and white

United In Pink continues and for today I have an argyle nail art to show you. Last month I showed argyle nails in black, white and red and this is my pinked up version. Tomorrow I'm planning to show you a tutorial of how I did this according to a request I got on facebook. :) Enjoy!

EDIT: Tutorial HERE

Polishes used:
Jordana Pop Art - Contemporary White
L.A. Colors Art Deco - Baby Pink
La Femme - Silverado(?) 32

An InLinkz Link-up