Essence 106 Free Hugs Swatch and Review (Bonus: Psuedo Ladurée Inspired Nail Art)

I am back from a long weekend and I am supposed to feel refreshed! And I do sort of but now I have a gazillion things to do, ahhhh! I'm pretty excited about a lot of the things on my plate though so that's always a good thing. I just wish I had more time for my own things because I am thinking that I would love to make a hardcover printed photo book of my trip to Europe! Maybe soon. In the meantime, I am back for Cheap Polish Tuesday - today I have a polish that I bought from my trip to Europe. As some of you know, I am a huge Essence fan but not a lot of colours are available here in Canada. In fact we only have a quarter of the selection. You can get Essence polish in Ireland from budget fashion store Penneys (Primark in England) as well as a pharmacy store called Cora's. At Penneys, they're priced at €1.79 (which is under the $5 CAD mark to qualify for Cheap Polish Tuesday!)

Essence 'Free Hugs' (because yes, sometimes I do buy polish for the name sake!) is a baby pink creme with enough vibrance to get out of the pastel category. It applies very smooth and opaque and can possibly be swatched in one coat but I used two for good measure. My swatch below is of two coats with no top coat:











For funsies, I wanted to do some sort of fun nail art because like I mentioned, I have a bit of a mad week with photos! My boyfriend surprised me with Ladurée macarons upon my arrival and I brought the box back to store all the polaroid photos we took together. I've been staring longingly at it since I've been back, gahhh! It's not the right shade of pink, but I got my dotting tool and quickly made this polka dot outline nail art. I used a Kiss striper brush for the black outlines. Even though they don't match the Ladurée perfectly, I think it's still cute (even though it's typically pretty loud for me!):









I've got a wicked ton of Essence polish but I am pretty stoked about it because I plan on making this blog less of a swatch blog and more of a nail art blog. I love doing up swatches but sometimes I feel like no one cares about an OPI polish that was released two years ago and that's pretty much my whole polish collection - one giant backlog. Anyway, hope you liked FREE HUGS! Right now, I'd give free hugs to everyone because I'm freaking out here, haha!

What do you think of FREE HUGS? Do you ever buy polish for its name, or is that just my weirdness?