essence - Gold Rush

Gold Rush is a super shimmery champagne color.  It came out lighter and more sparkly than I expected.  Even though the color isn't too crazy, a lot of shimmer is packed in that little bottle.  I used two coats and then stamped the leopard print pattern from Konad plate m57 using Konad black.

essence - Fairy Dust

Above is Fairy Dust, a light pink frosted shimmer.  The color isn't particularly unique but the formula was great!  Usually I have a hard time applying really light colors since they require multiple coats; I typically end up with translucent spots or streaks which drives me crazy until I can get it just right.  With Fairy Dust, the polish went on very smoothly and it only took two coats.

essence - Where is the Party?

Out of the five essence polishes I picked up over the weekend, Where is the Party? is probably the one I was most excited about.  In the bottle, it has all the colors of a peacock feather--blue, green, purple, gold....but when I put it on all those colors didn't show up.  

In direct sun it looks like a purple foil:

In low light it was usually a charcoal foil / shimmer:

And at certain angles it was somewhere in between purple and dark grey:

But never any green!  Overall it's not bad, I think I'm just disappointed because I expected something else.

essence - Just in Case

Above is two coats of Just in Case from my mini-haul of essence nail polishes.  I really liked the color (especially since it was fifty cents on sale).  The consistency was great though it dried with visible brush strokes--I know brush stroke lines bother some people but I don't mind as long as the actual texture isn't lumpy or streaky.  One thing that surprised me about this color is that the finish was really glossy and smooth, even without top coat.  This reminds me of some of the light brown metallics from China Glaze.

essence colour & go

I've heard great things about essence nail polish and finally picked up a few at Ulta over the weekend:

From left to right, they are: Enchanted Fairy (light pink shimmer), Where Is the Party? (purple/green duochrome), Just in Case (brown shimmer), Gold Rush (champagne shimmer), and What Do U Think? (orange / peach shimmer).  The bottles are pretty small (0.16 fl oz), about one third the size of a typical OPI bottle, but they sell for $0.99 and several of them were on sale for $0.49.  Can't wait to try these out this week!

China Glaze - Grape Pop

I've been wearing the mani above for almost two weeks now, which is why I haven't posted anything new.  I started with two coats of China Glaze Grape Pop and then stamped the flower pattern from GCOCL K04, which I used last month.  I thought it still looked a little unfinished so after that dried, I used tape to cover the flowers and painted a stripe of light purple using OPI Do You Lilac It? along the left side of each nail.  Loved the way it turned out!

Louvre Me, Louvre Me Not

Louvre Me, Louvre Me Not is an oldie but goodie.  It was part of OPI's France Collection in 2008 and I loved it so much I bought two bottles.  Today I was wearing this dress that I thought it would go perfect with Louvre Me, so after three coats I stamped a pattern in black from Konad plate m64:

Louvre Me has some fuschia shimmer in it, so depending on the lighting and number of coats, it can take on reddish / warm tones (think OPI Pamplona Purple).  I added one more coat than usual to make it a little darker since I was trying to match the color of my dress.  Wearing matching dress + manicure was so much fun!  I wouldn't do it all the time but I definitely got a kick out of it today.

Del Sol - Heartbreaker

Heartbreaker is a bright red glitter that is supposed to turn purple in the sun.  Red glitter polishes always remind me of the winter holidays, and since it's spring I wanted to see if I could use Heartbreaker on top of something else (like I did with Ruby Slippers) to mix up the effect.  The pic below is Heartbreaker (without sun) on top of silver, black, and white:

There wasn't much of a difference between Heartbreaker on its own (first nail) and Heartbreaker over white (last nail).  I had hoped it would look more pink over white, but the red jelly base turned out to be fairly pigmented so this was a bit of a failed experiment.

Now, the same combinations in the sun:

As with Girls Night Out which I posted about in January, the color doesn't transform into a true purple as the label would indicate.  It becomes more of a fuchsia color, slightly darker than the outdoor version of Girls Night Out.  I like the fuchsia but I'm not as thrilled about the red indoor color, so I probably won't use this again for a manicure.  Maybe it would be perfect for a pedi?