Statement Nails with NYC & essence

I have always always had a love affair with black nails. Black looks good on long or short nails, straight, pointed or round tips. Black looks great with gold, gorgeous with silver and makes a striking nail art base.

I bought an Essence Vintage District nail art decoration kit pouch a long time ago with the intention of using it to do amazing nail art. er... it stayed in my nail art box for a few months, because I just couldn't decide what do do with it. You can still get the little pouches if you have a big essence stand near you and they cost around €3.

Yesterday I took a sickie. The house was tidy and I had a few free hours where I knew I would be able to just sit and do nothing. I put on the TV, settled down with the remote on a hard surface pointed at the box, made sure I could easily grab my coffee mug without smudging my nails and got busy.

I used:
Ciate undercoat
NYC City Blackout
Sally Hansen Insta-dry top coat
Essence Vintage District nail art decoration kit
tin foil
dotting tool



Before I started painting I folded up a bit of tinfoil, took out a dotting tool and emptied out a few of my gems of choice onto the foil and separated them out a bit as they were a bit stuck together. This is not something you would want to do with wet nails. Trust me.

2 skinny coats of Ciate Undercoat to start, I didn't let them dry completely because i wanted them to be a bit tacky and spongy. 1 minute of drying time between the coats was enough to keep the softness. 2 coats of NYC Expert Last Nail Polish in 119 City Blackout, went next. medium thickish coats, with just enough time between coats to keep it tacky. Now the NYC dries quickly. Quicker than you would expect.

Then a dot of Undercoat on the tin foil to enable the dotting tool to pick up the gems/sequins. You want to JUST get enough undercoat on the dotting tool to be able to snag the gem and transfer it to the nail without getting it properly stuck to the dotting tool. Less is deffo more here.

Pick up your chosen gems (in my case these beautiful gold sequin type thingies) and place onto the nail and press it into the sticky nail polish to almost embed it. Don't wiggle, just press lightly to get all the edges stuck into the polish. I decided on a strip of gems down my ring finger with just a single gem on the rest of my nails.

Now because I put 4 coats of fairly thick polish on I know its going to take Aaaagggess to dry. Solution: lash on a bit of auld Sally Hansen Insta-Dry top coat to help the polish dry and also to help secure the gold gems. I thought this would take me much much longer than it did, but it took me about 20 minutes, which includes between coat drying times. Then I sat for an hour and did nothing to make sure everything was properly dry.

It has been on my nails for 24hrs and I have had loads of comments on its simple elegance and everyone asked me where I got it done. Salon Cindy is what I have been telling them with a wink.