Essie Spring 2011 Collection

Essie's spring collection is pretty nice this year. Take look:


Essie Coat Azure. This is closer to bottle color in real life; my camera makes it look more vibrant than it really is. It's a soft, dusty looking sky blue with some subtle silvery shimmer. It's in the same vein as Rescue Beauty Lounge Catherine H finish-wise, with the light blue dustiness and subtle shimmer, but the colors are quite different.


Essie French Affair. You've seen this one on me a few times now! A pink that I actually like. This one is different because it has a bit of lavender in it, it's not too warm like a lot of pinks, but it's also not so cool that it just looks purple. Pretty close to my idea of a perfect pastel pink creme.


Essie Kisses And Bisses. This one is hard to capture because it's so sheer, but I can describe it. It's a sheer ivory tinted base with a duochrome pearl shimmer. The shimmer flashes between red and pink at one angle to gold, orange and even a tiny bit of green at an extreme angle. It is sheer, I'm wearing four coats here, but it's amazing for layering:

Left to right (pinkie to index):
Essie Kisses and Bisses, two coats, over Essie French Affair
Essie Kisses and Bisses, two coats, over Essie Sand Tropez
Essie Kisses and Bisses, two coats, over Essie Nice is Nice
Essie Kisses and Bisses, two coats, over Essie Coat Azure

It looks awesome over all the colors in this collection. It turns the cremes into red-pearl duochromes! I think it looks especially incredible over Sand Tropez. This is my new favorite layering polish. Love this color.


Essie Nice is Nice. This one was a little hard to capture, it's not as blue as it looks here. It's closer to the sunlight picture. It's a pastel lavender creme. Very soft and flattering.


Essie Sand Tropez. This shade is a beige sandy nude creme. It has a little bit of grey, a little bit of taupe, very much a 'mushroom' type of shade. It's lighter than a lot of the taupey putty mushroom shades in my collection and I'm very fond of it. Especially layered with Kisses and Bisses!

Essie Topless and Barefoot. This one is similar in feel to Sand Tropez, but it's a pink, fleshy nude instead of beige. It's putty colored. Like someone said about Borghese Almondine, this totally reminds me of Silly Putty! Now I have the urge to play with Silly Putty. Especially since it looks so nice on my nails!

The formula on these was nice and even. I didn't have any issues with the formula itself, but the opacity isn't what I was expecting. They're not sheer, but lately when you see colors like this, they're one-coaters. These needed two at the very least, but I did three just because. They do look best with three. Drying time is quick and these wear pretty well, too.

Overall, strong spring collection. Are the colors totally unique? No, we've all seen these before. Despite not being completely unique, the colors are all perfect. They're just really great pastels. They all look good on and they're all even better layered with Kisses and Bisses. I would wear every single one of these (and I have worn them all but Topless and Barefoot!), they go perfectly with my skintone, none of the dreaded lobster hands. They all have a soft, creamy look instead of a chalky white-out look. I don't mind the chalky look at all, but the creamier finish of these is easier to pull off for most people.

I like 'em. Do you?

(These were sent to me for review.)

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Layering

A few of you suggested that I try layering the crackles over each other, and I was curious to see how it would turn out... So, I layered some more crackle glaze over my existing mani and I think it turned out pretty cool! Here's what I tried:

Broken Hearted over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. This one didn't seem to want to crackle as much over crackle, but it still looks pretty cool. The parts where the pink and blue layer over each other turned purple! I think I like it!

Cracked Concrete over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. I like this one better! It crackled more. I love the color combination. Know what it reminds me of? That weird 'abstract' 80's-90's corporate art with the weird geometric shapes and splatter paint patterns in teal and grey and peach... Know what I'm talking about? The type of generic art you find in offices and stuff? Sometimes there's a palm tree, but usually funky boomerang shapes and triangles...

Sorry about the blurry pictures. I can not hold my hands still today. They're shaking so bad I'm even having a hard time typing. Bleh!

My official Valentine's Day manicure

I had this idea in my head for a while, so I decided to finally try it as it was perfectly suited for Valentine's Day:


But it didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped! This is a base of Essie French Affair with the new Art Club Nail Glam full nail decal design Hearts of Gold on the ring finger. I originally wanted to put the designs on every finger, but I'm really glad I started with my ring finger. Now I know what you guys were saying about these. They're... not so great. They're extremely stiff and don't conform to the natural curve of the nail, so you end up with weird lumps and wrinkles like you see on mine. And they say to seal them with topcoat, but the decal covers the whole nail so it's really not sealing it to the nail, it's just coating it with topcoat, which means... it peels. Gah, what a disappointment. I loved the design so much, too. I wish I could have made it work.

The Essie polish was exactly the color I was thinking of for the base of the mani, so that worked out well!

But yeah, too bad about the Art Club Glam decals. I had really high hopes for them. *sigh*

So, how was your Valentine's day? So what if it's a Hallmark holiday! That does not negate the awesomeness of heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting! And sprinkles! Any holiday that advocates the liberal use of sprinkles is a winner in my book.

Essie Winter 2010 Collection

As with most Essie seasonal collections, I'm not sure if this has an official name or not! So I'm just calling it Winter 2010.

I only have four of the six colors so this will only be a partial review.


Going Incognito. The star of the collection. This is a very blue toned green creme. In some types of lighting it's teal but in others it's a true green. It's a little but muted looking, too. Green is such a rare thing for Essie, so seeing this color makes me really happy.



Hot Coco. This is a soft dusty taupe brown. The color on my nails reminds me of melted milk chocolate. In a way it's similar to OPI Over The Taupe- more brown than taupe but but a greyed-out look to it.


Silken Cord. Gorgeous bright fruity red. It may be hard to tell from the pictures, but this is a very candy-colored type of red. Instead of a true red, it's more of a pink red, like a cross between Red Nouveau and Watermelon. Very fresh and crisp and cheerful looking.


Luxedo. A blackened plum-brown. This is two coats and it looks like it's just plain black with a hint of brown, but it's actually a super deep purple shade. At one coat it's visibly purple, and if you can apply it evenly enough it looks really nice that way- semi-sheer, jellyish. Looks a bit like Fall's Velvet Voyeur.


I haven't seen the other two shades, but I'll keep my eye out for them. This collection is mysteriously absent from every store I've been too this season.

The formula is good. A little on the thin side, but easy to control and with nice opacity. Most shades only needed two coats but they all look even better with three. I had no problems with application, no bubbling, no streaking, good wear and dry time. Essie's brushes are very thin, which can be tricky to adjust to if you usually use the big thick fluffy brushes like I do. But, overall, no problems!

Very happy to see Going Incognito in this collection. Such a gorgeous shade. Very proud of Essie for branching out into true greens!

(These were sent to me for review.)

First attempts at the 'Ruffian Manicure'

Since I'm always swatching I feel like I never get to play around or experiment much. And then when I experiment or do things just for fun, I feel like I've wasted valuable swatching time! But, I decided I wanted to try this Ruffian thing cause I like the way it looks. Here's a couple combinations I ended up with:



My very first try. I was already wearing this gorgeous Chi Chi Moondust (thank you Kaz!) and decided to put a little China Glaze 2030 on. I like the blue and gold together! I'm going to have to do this combination again!

But I'm not really sure if you're supposed to let the polish on the sides show, or how far down you're supposed to go... Or how wide it's supposed to look?

Instead of taking the whole thing off, I wanted to see what it looked like with a third color, so I added some China Glaze GR8 (can you tell I had my Konad supplies nearby? lol)

Looks kinda cool with the holo!


Wanted to try it with some brighter colors so I picked out some Color Clubs. I can't get that green to photograph properly, it just turns this stupid pale color! Argh! But it's really darker than that, and neon, not pastel.

And before I took that off I wanted to see what it would look like with a third color again:

Can't capture these neons properly! So frustrating! But for once Pucci-licious looks like it's supposed to in a picture! Something about being next to a blue helped... Odd. And if the orange and pink look thick, it's cause they are. There's about four coats of those because the blue showed through too much, plus Seche Vite on top and to make it even worse it's still wet in these pictures. Would look a lot less thick and bubble nail like when it's dry. I like the multicolor look, but to me it looks like lines of gumdrops on my nails! Which reminds me, I had a box of Candy Corn flavored Dots around here somewhere...


Thought matte/glossy would be a good combination so I did ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly on top of Essie Limited Addiction. Looks cool, I like the contrast! But it also looks like my nails are being ripped off my fingers, doesn't it? Like the cuticle is all bloody and my nails have slid halfway off? Gory!! I might have to keep this in mind for Halloween!

And because I couldn't leave well enough alone, this abomination happened. It is really fuggen ugly.

Now I want to try every combination of colors and finishes I can think of. I like this look. It's like a moon manicure but different and easier! I'm going to go try another one right now, actually.

Essie The Summer Collection 2010

I think this collection is actually called "The Summer Collection." Seriously! It's printed on the little display box and everything.

Anyway, this collection was one heck of a surprise. You will see why shortly....


Demure Vixen. What a strange color. Not in a bad way, though! It's a mauvey, putty-ish light purple but it has a really interesting contrasting violet shimmer. They describe it as a duochrome, I don't think I'd quite call it a duochrome, but it does have competing base and shimmer- it's like they don't look like they're part of one polish, you see both the base color and the shimmer separately, fighting for attention. I rather like it.

Miss Matched. A milky pale lavender-toned pink. Not bad but not really that interesting. Doesn't particularly say 'summer' to me either. The soft lavender shade is even paler than all the pastel ones we've been seeing lately, and it has a lot more pink to it.

Knockout Pout. Okay, this is where things get weird. You see the color in the bottle? It is a pale milky pink. Looks like the standard Essie sheer pink. I was not really enthusiastic about swatching it, but I'm glad I did.. because.. when you open the bottle and put it on, it's really BRIGHT NEON PINK!! Yeah, seriously!! Isn't that crazy??? I was so confused. Anyway, this particular neon pink is of the light variety very much like China Glaze Shocking Pink.


Haute As Hello. This was the same way as Knockout Pout. I'm looking at the bottle this whole time thinking, "More pastels for summer? Didn't we just see this same color in Spring?" and then I open the bottle to apply it... And it turns out it's semi-neon orange coral. That was a really nice surprise. I was pretty relieved to see it wasn't another pastel. So... this color... coral. This says coral to me, but it's very orange toned. Call it coral, salmon, orange-pink... This shade has a strange brightness. It's bold and punchy but it doesn't seem like a 'true' neon to me. It does dry matte, interestingly enough, so maybe it does have some neon pigment in it. You know what this reminds me of? My new Make Up For Ever eyeshadow in #5.


Pretty Edgy. Hell. Yes. OMG. I can't believe I'm seeing this. Essie did a true green! Finally! I've been really hoping for this for a long time! This particular shade did not disappoint. It is a medium yellow-toned grass green/leaf green creme. Very obvious green. Noticeable. Fresh looking. The only downside is I don't think it suits my skintone particularly well- makes my hands take on a yellow cast. But, that doesn't really bother me... I like this color too much to care.


Vermillionaire. I always thought vermilion was redder. But this color is pure orange. Sweet, sweet orange. I have a thing for orange polish. Maybe it's my obsession with Halloween or fall or pumpkins... but I love orange. Very happy about this shade. It's very very bright. I don't think this one is a 'true' neon either because it lacks that bright burning glow that makes neons special, but it is bright. Very rich color.

The formula was good. On the thin side but it didn't give me any trouble. The brushes seemed bigger than the winter collection but still small- no Pro-Wide style brushes here! I did three coats of all, I think they needed the three coats. Vermillionaire and Knockout Pout would be fine with two, but I had a little visible nail line on the others. Dry time was very good. Some of these were mostly dry by the time I was done taking the picture.

This collection really was a surprise. I was looking at the polishes in the box thinking... Summer collection... four pale/sheers in a summer collection? Where's the color? At least there's a green. And then I swatched it. There was much confusion and rejoicing. No sheers. One or two pale colors, but also some neon! Haute as Hello is pretty unique. I have orangey corals, but none seem to have that neon glow to them. I'm sure there are matches for the rest of the colors here, maybe not Demure Vixen, that seems pretty unique too... but I can't think of any at the moment. Oh yeah, China Glaze Shocking Pink and Knockout Pout seemed a little similar to me. If I'm remembering my China Glaze neons correctly... Shocking Pink was the light pink creme one, right? I'm probably not even remembering the right one. But I do prefer the formula of the Essie for this particular shade anyway.

So... Essie finally did a green. A real green, not pastel and not sheer. That's pretty cool. When are they going to bring Dominica Green back? *pokes Essie*

(These were sent to me for review.)

Essie Resort Collection Summer 2010

This is Essie's first official offering for Summer 2010 and I must say.... I'm quite pleased! Take a look.


Lapis of Luxury. This one didn't quite photograph accurately- this is really a softer shade of blue. My camera wants to make blue cremes look super bright, but this is actually more what I'd consider periwinkle than sky blue. It is beautiful. Supremely beautiful. A soft, serene blue. Love at first sight for me. Very soothing to look at, isn't it?

Playa Del Platinum. I didn't expect this to be this color! Based on the promo pic and the name, I just kinda assumed it would be silver. I like it better this way! It's a mousy grey with maybe a little hint of warmth. Nice and soft and gentle looking.


Splash of Grenadine. I actually like this. A pink that I like. I like it because it's unique and interesting. My photo doesn't really capture it, but this is a really soft color, almost dusty looking. It's mostly pink but there's a touch of red-purple to it that keeps it from being baby pink. Despite how soft the color is (and it's not pastel either) it really stands out against my skintone, so it's like a soft-bright, fun! It's not really the color of grenadine but I'm thinking it's more a play on words- grenadine islands, grenadine is red and used in drinks....


Turquoise & Caicos. I'll admit, I had to look up 'Caicos'. Now that I know it's a group (or groups?) of islands in the West Indies, the name makes sense to me. Anyway, the color is great. It's not mint green... it's not jade green... it's not For Audrey. It's a perfect turquoise, a light blue mixed with bright green. Very lovely.


The formula on these is the only drawback to this gorgeous collection. I found it quite tricky to apply. The combination of runny polish and small brush gave me a little trouble with streaking and all four shades needed three coats to compensate. However, drying time was great and three coats dried in no time. They all dried to a highly glossy finish, which is a bonus if you're one of those people who never uses topcoat.

Small collection but good. Nice pretty blues that I will definitely be wearing regularly and a pink that actually looks good on me instead of giving me dirty-looking hands. I was half expecting neons again, and I like neons, Essie's especially, but I'm really happy they did blue and turquoise instead! I just got a vision of a Konad design... Playa Del Platinum with a scrollwork pattern of Turquoise & Caicos on top... now I have to try it.... Hmm...


(These were sent to me for review.)

Essie Art Of Spring Collection Spring 2010

I really like this collection... I was not wowed by the promo pictures initially (except for Lilacism, that one was great from the start!), but I'm so glad I gave them a chance and tried them on my nails.


Lilacism. This is slightly less blue in real life, but not by much. Maybe half a shade to one shade less blue. I'm wearing it right now and it's definitely on the blue side of lilac. This is sooooooooo pretty. It's creamy and stark and obvious, but not so stark that it's like white-out. It's refreshing. This is two coats.



Neo-Whimsical. This is slightly reminiscent of one of my favorite Essies- Guchi Muchi Puchi. It's a light milky pink with a splash of violet to it. Looks more purply in some lights, more pink in others. Three coats here.


Pop Art Pink. A really light milky jelly pastel pink. It's like a pink version of Marshmallow. This one is pretty versatile because at one coat it's a sheer-clear pink gloss, barely any color on the nail at all, at two coats it's a semi-sheer milky natural looking pink and at three coats (pictured here) it's a nice jelly milky pink. So, if french manicures are your thing, this would make a good base color. I like it at three coats, myself. It looks squishy and cute.

Red Nouveau. This is just... Perfection. The formula on this one was like butter. Serious pigment to this polish and it was like my nails painted themselves. It's a fairly opaque but still a bit translucent bright red on the first coat (and zero streaking so you could get away with just one if you don't mind visible nail line) and a slightly darker opaque glossy cherry red on the second coat. I love the brightness and the vibrancy of this shade. It's retro-glamorous and it just screams Valentine's day to me.

Tart Deco. Kind of an... orangey... salmon-y... coral kinda color? Creamy orange coral? Maybe a little peachy? Hard for me to describe. Soft peachy pastel cantaloupe. Very dense and milky looking. This is only two coats, I anticipated it needing more but it was surprisingly opaque and streakless.


Van D'Go. Kinda like MAC Seasonal Peach's baby sister. It's peachy and pinkish, milky and soft but still has that kind of stand-out bold creme finish that I like about Seasonal Peach. This is a lot softer, less vibrant of a shade and pinker. Two coats of this one, too.


The formula on these was all over the place. Very inconsistent. Van D'Go and Tart Deco were very opaque and thick, maybe even a little goopy but not unmanagable. Lilacism and Neo-Whimsical were on the watery side. Pop Art pink was about average, not too thick, not too thin, and Red Nouveau was absolutely flawlessly perfect. I'm surprised the formula varied so much within one collection! The drying time on these is excellent, even at three coats. Also, the wear seems pretty good, as I've been wearing Lilacism for two whole days now and there's not a chip or crack in sight even after heavy cleaning without gloves, excessive typing and obsessive hand-washing.

Overall... yeah... I can't deny it. I love this collection. It is so not 'me' at ALL... But just looking at these gives me a cheerful almost romantic feeling. They make me happy. This winter has seemed unusually dark for me and on top of that I am almost always wearing very dark vampy colors.... So looking at these brightens my day a little. Kinda like China Glaze Up & Away. Lighthearted.

What I think really draws me to these is that they remind me of my favorite Valentine's Day candy. You know, those little pastel colored hearts that everyone else seems to hate, but I love? They taste kinda like flavored chalk and have cutesy and often nonsensical sayings printed on them?

Last year for Valentine's Day Mr. Scrangie got me some really great ones... Instead of the usuall "call me" or "be mine" on them, they have more interesting phrases...


I think my favorite one is the "PWNED! MEH." one. Some of the other ones say things like, "6 wives okay?" "I been creepin", "parole is up!", "Up yer meds", Prenup okay?" and stuff like that... LOVE THEM.

Which also reminds me of being in high school and writing my own phrases on them with a Uni-Ball pen... "Your mom"... "5u1c1d3 15 y0ur 0n1y 0p710n".... "Pics now"...

Woo! Random candy tangent! Although... I think Red Nouveau is more Red Hots than chalk-hearts. And the mint green is missing! I bet Mint Candy Apple would fit the bill.... Oh, and the yellow! I don't know what color the yellow should be... Barbuda Banana?

(These were sent to me for review.)