Essie Winter 2017 Collection review + swatches

I feel like an idiot, this post has been sat fully written in my drafts for more than two months, and I was under the impression that I'd posted it! It's a bit delayed, but it's such a beautiful collection I wanted to post it anyway. So here's my review of the Essie Winter 2017 Collection*. 

Porridge Nails

Yeah you read that title right, these nails are inspired by something you would probably consider very uninspiring: porridge. Inspiration really can be found in the strangest of places!

 I have porridge every day for breakfast at work, and I've stared at the Moma* packets sitting on my desk for weeks without realising that my next inspiriation lay right in front of me... turns out it can strike when you least expect! So when Moma asked me to team up with them, I knew that it would work because not only are their packets are so bright and colourful, but it's also a product I enjoy and wouldn't mind sharing with you all. 

Swirls and Foils

Do you ever see something and just get hit by a burst of inspiration? That's what happened to me with these nails. I saw a design by Kara Nailed It and I knew instantly that I wanted to create my own version of them. I slightly adapted the colours, the use of gold foil and put them on all my nails, but otherwise my inspiration was her. I used the same technique she did, which was to blob all the colours together on my nail and then mix them together with a dotting tool (is there a name for that?).

I really loved how these turned out. They were so quick to do (except my middle finger which I kept having to redo because it wasn't behaving.. does that ever happen to you when it's always the same nail messing up?), I've never tried this method before but it's definitely something I'll do again. 

Marvel: Thor Ragnarok Nails

Hey everyone! I've got something a bit different for you today. Marvel asked me to create some Thor: Ragnarok inspired nails for my Instagram but I couldn't resist posting them here too. My blog is after all supposed to be an archive of all the designs I've done, so it feels wrong to have posted them elsewhere and not on here! 

My middle three fingers were inspired by Pop Vinyl figures of Thor: Ragnarok, and then I added a hammer and lightening to my other nails to encapsulate the true Thor-ness of these nails. This is a different type of design to what I usually do, but I really enjoyed challenging myself and I am 98% happy with how they came out... I just wish my hammer looked more like a hammer! 

Giant Polka Dots

Hey everyone! Did you have a lovely Valentine's/Galentine's day? I went out for a curry and watched a rom com while eating chocolates, pretty damn great! I'm so glad you all loved my floral nails from my last post, I'll definitely have to recreate them with different colours because I love them as much as you all seemed to! 

Today's nails are super simple, especially compared to the florals, but as I so rarely do simple nails it was nice to do something that only took a few minutes. These were inspired by i_heart_nailart on Instagram, and I just loved the look so much I had to recreate them. 

Gold Lilac Roses

Happy Sunday everyone! Although there's only an hour of Sunday left. I've had a busy but chilled weekend, and I managed to find time to do a few nail designs today. One of them was this floral design inspired by Follow That Way.  I wasn't sure whether I'd ever be able to recreate one of her amazing florals, the detail she puts into them is astonishing, but I decided to give it a go, and I'm really really happy with how these came out. 

One thing I couldn't decide on was my accent nails, I originally did them with some of the nail negative space and with gold foil down the side but I wasn't 100% on them and the pictures didn't come out very well, so I did these, and then I did gold glitter accents. Of the three, these came out best in photos and I think the fact that they're quite muted means that the flowers stand out a bit more. 

Emoji Dogs

There's no point in denying it, I’m a huge over-user of emojis, but I’ve never really had the urge to translate that into nails. That is until I realised the cute potential the dog emoji holds... i.e. I was stuck for inspiration one day and was browsing my phone and decided to give them a go. These started out just as a test on falsies to see what they’d look like, and I ended up loving them so much I had to recreate them. Typically, the first attempt was much better than these (beginners luck I guess!) but I was still happy enough with them!