Monday, July 30, 2018

Essie Gel Couture Touch Up

Hey everyone! How was your weekend? We celebrated the husband's birthday with our families at a great pizza place called Blue Eye's in Hoboken. Everyone came back to our apartment after dinner for cake, which I made myself. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen my creation, but if not here it is!


I had a couple of bad nail breaks recently that are still not fully grown out, but I wanted to try some new polish so I painted them anyway. We're going to Italy in TWO WEEKS for our honeymoon! And I've been stumped on what I'm going to do with my nails because we'll be away for 12 days. I've heard great things about Essie's Gel Couture line in terms of formula and lasting power, so I picked up two shades and the top coat. If all goes well, both colors will come with me on the trip.

Today I tried the shade Touch Up, which is a pretty soft mauve creme. This color looked beautiful in the bottle but even more so on the nails. Let's talk first about the formula/brush. I absolutely LOVE the brush on this gel couture line! It's a wider brush than in their regular polish and almost covers my whole nail in one stroke. The formula for this color was perfect - not too thick or thin and I achieved opacity in two easy coats.

Since this is going to be a tip wear test, but I wanted to do some nail art, I used ILNP Pink Mimosa on the lower half of my nails. I think the two colors go together beautifully. Finally I topped off the look with the Gel Couture top coat. We'll see how it holds up this week and then I'll report back!





What polishes have you used while traveling? Hoping this will be the one!

xoxo,
   Brooke
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Friday, July 20, 2018

Mini Chevron Nails

Hey everyone! How was your week? I've been getting out to the pool more now that it's not disgustingly hot. I'm also getting some final details worked out for our big honeymoon trip to Italy in August. We're so excited! Wish me luck with packing, though.

I was looking back at some old photos for inspiration and came across this cute mini chevron look I did two years ago with Julep Lillian and Kris.


I decided to recreate with a different color combination. This time I used Butter London Molly Coddled, a bright orchid creme, and ILNP Paige for the chevrons. Isn't that pretty?! I can think of so many fun color combos I want to try this with.





Have a great weekend!

xoxo,
   Brooke

Monday, July 16, 2018

Butter London Trout Pout

Hey everyone! How was your weekend? We had a chill weekend without any plans, which was actually kind of nice. Of course we watched the World Cup on Sunday and even though I wanted Croatia to win, it was still fun to watch.

My nails are growing out little by little (mine grow so SLOWLY). Today I'm wearing Butter London Trout Pout, a bright coral creme. I've always loved this color, especially the name! For a little bit of glitter I used FUN Lacquer Paparazzi. Something about coral and gold is just so pretty.





Hope you have a great start to your week!

xoxo,
   Brooke
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Friday, July 13, 2018

Essie Island Hopping

Hey everyone! How was your week? I don't know about you but I shopped the Nordstrom anniversary sale early access yesterday. I ordered a few things online and also shopped in store. I would definitely say my in store experience was more pleasant than online. Why is everything sold out the second day? Crazy!

Somehow while shopping basically all of my nails on my swatch hand split. Dry hands maybe? Idk what happened but it was really annoying and I had to cut all of them down. Ugh. They were getting so nice and long too! I'm just going to have to up the cuticle oil application.

Today I used Essie Island hopping, a pretty plum/mauve shade that seems more like a fall color to me even though the name is summery. I love the formula on this one. For the flower detail I used Essie Go Ginza, a very soft pinky purple. The flowers are actually a lot easier to make than you would think. I started by using my dotting tool to create 5 dots spaced around each other. Then, I used a thin nail brush to drag the polish into the center. Quick and easy flowers! To get even fancier I used some pearls to stick in the center, but you could just put a dot of polish instead.






Have a great weekend!

xoxo,
   Brooke

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Tropical Leaves Nails

Hey everyone! How was your week? Hopefully not too hot. I was able to get to the beach with a friend on Thursday and it was perfect beach weather. Have you been to the beach yet this summer?

I felt inspired to do something tropical, so I grabbed my Born Pretty Store leaves stamping plate. I don't see mine listed on their website anymore, so here's a link to one that's similar.

For my base color I used one of my all time favorites for any season, Essie Urban Jungle. This creamy alabaster white is super flattering because it isn't a stark white and looks great all year. After two coats of that, I used Zoya Ness as my green stamping color for the leaves. I love how easy this look was to create but it looks beautiful!





Have a great weekend!

xoxo,
   Brooke

Monday, July 2, 2018

Nails Inc. Superfood Repair Oil

Hey everyone! How was your weekend? It was HOT here so we spent some time at the pool (and also plenty of time indoors in the AC haha). We've still got some heat this week but hopefully it will dip below the 90s soon.

Today I'm focusing on a new product I've been using the past few weeks for nail/cuticle care. It is the Nails Inc. Superfood Nail & Cuticle Repair Oil. I ordered mine from Sephora and it retails for $15.


Here's some info about this oil directly from the brand:

Nails Inc. Superfood Repair Oil contains the perfect moisturizing blend of sweet almond oil, organ oil, and rose hip oil. Each oil offers benefits to encourage healthy nails and cuticles. Rose hip oil helps support strong nails with antioxidant benefits and high levels of vitamin A.

How to use:

Use the dropper to apply the oil to the base of each nail bed. Gently massage into the nails and cuticle area. I like to do this nightly before bed and sometimes during the day.





The results? After packing up my classroom totally destroyed my nails, I've found that using this oil really helped restore strength to my nails and helped them grow faster. My cuticles aren't perfect but they're definitely better than before. I highly recommend checking this product out!

xoxo,
   Brooke