Essie's Miss Fancy Pants and piCture pOlish's Festival

I am obsessed with piCture pOlish's Festival top coat.  It's a top coat filled with iridescent flakes.  It's amazing!!  And if I apply it to the right polish, then it's low key enough that I can wear it to work without it being too flashy.  Here it is applied over Essie's Miss Fancy Pants.  

I bought this Essie polish when it first came out but then I went through a polish low where I just stopped painting my nails for no particular reason and didn't apply any for several months.  So I decided to give it a try even though the color didn't seem that exciting.  But I really love it.  It's a perfect greige for me.  It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite polishes, Essie's Chinchilly, but it's a warmer tone than Chinchilly.  So while it's not a flashy, new color, I think this will be one of my reliable standbys that I can wear during the work week.  And topped with Festival, I loved it so much I kept it on all week!

Here's a closer look at Festival's flakies. 

My cuticles are still a mess.  My hands took a brutal whipping from this past winter, and it's taking some time to get them back to normal.

And here's a shot with my pug model, Sunny.

Essie's Cascade Cool

Here are a couple photos I took ages ago of Essie's Cascade Cool, from its summer 2012 collection.  It's a beautiful and fun cool pink.  Pretty good application.  This is two coats, with base and top coats.  This was one of my favorites from the collection because I have a hard time finding pink polishes with my skin color.  It's a bit Barbie-ish but I think that's part of why I love it!

Essie's All Tied Up

Oh man I've had some polish photos sitting around for a while, waiting for me to post them!  Oops!  Here's Essie's All Tied Up from its summer 2012 collection.  I was a bit confused by this polish because it didn't seem exactly summery.  It's a beautiful dusty rose with some gold shimmer, but definitely not my taste.  It looked a bit grandmotherly on me.  It's also a bit of a pain to remove because of the shimmer, but application was pretty smooth.  Two coats, with base and upper coats.  

Anyways, here are some photos of the polish with my helpful model, Sunny.

Essie's Fear or Desire

This past week I wore Essie's Fear or Desire on my fingernails and while I was reluctant to give this one a try, I loved it!!  

I was off from work for some of last week and so I initially wanted to do a blue or green polish since I can never wear those during the weekdays.  But I needed to try this out and the bright color did seem summery.  Well I am so glad I tried this out because this is my favorite orange polish!

This required at least two polishes for complete coverage.  For some reason I'm having cuticle drag issues with the Essie Summer 2012 polishes.  Maybe I just got a goopy batch.  This is also with base and top coats. I like red orange polishes but sometimes they can seem a bit harsh against my skin tone.  Fear or Desire is a muted neon orange (if that even makes any sense).  Looks great with a tan and is a perfect pop of color for the summer (makes me think of popsicles)!

Oh and thank you to my lovely pug assistant, Sunny, for helping me to model this polish!

Essie's Bikini So Teeny

I almost forgot to take a photo of Essie's Bikini So Teeny before I took it off so I took just a quick single photo (sorry no pug model this time).  This is the color Essie's summer 2012 collection is named after and it's a fantastic cool bright blue.  Essie describes it as a cornflower blue, but it's much cooler, lighter, and neon-y than another cornflower blue polish, Lapis of Luxury.  This is with 2 coats, with a base coat and top coat.  I had this on for a long weekend and it held up well.  I always love Essie polishes because they never chip on me even though I am brutal with my nails.  I also got a lot of compliments on this color.  I'll definitely be revisiting this polish soon!

Essie's Off The Shoulder

Here's Essie's Off The Shoulder, a bright hot pink from their summer 2012 collection.  I am not normally a pink person but I loved this one and wore it for over a week (which is a long time for me!).  This is 2 coats with a base and top.  Application was pretty good but I needed the second coat to smooth out streaks and bald spots.  This is an amazing color for the summer and even though it's a hot pink I think it's fine for most offices.

Essie's Mojito Madness

One of my favorite polishes from Essie's summer 2012 collection is Mojito Madness.  It's a fantastically vibrant and bright Kelly green (I read somewhere that this color is almost exactly the same color as Starbucks' straws).  This polish is amazing and such a unique color!  I am always a sucker for green polishes and this is one I will come back to often.  I used two coats, with a base and top.  Sunny helped me model this polish.

One thing I wanted to note is that while a lot of people have noted that this doesn't stain their nails, I had some issues with removing this as it stained the skin around my nails a bit.  It cleared up by the next day so maybe I just needed to be more diligent with the nail polish remover but compared to my other polishes this was definitely more pigmented and harder to take off.  And despite what others said, I wouldn't want to risk using this without a base coat just in case it would stain my nails.  

Ack just looking at these old photos makes me want to put this polish on again even though I just painted my nails a different color!  I wish it was acceptable to wear greens and blues in the office because then I'd be wearing this one all the time!

Essie Summer 2012 Collection

It's been a while since I've posted any new polishes.  I took a bit of a break from polish as my nails needed it, but I jumped back in once I saw Essie's summer 2012 collection!  

These didn't come out as clearly as I thought they had so sorry for the blurriness.  Below we have All

Tied Up (a dusty rosy bronze with a bit of golden shimmer) on my index finger, Bikini So Teeny (a light almost neon-like blue) on my middle finger, Mojito Madness (a bright Kelly green) on my ring finger.

And here we have Cascade Cool (a cool and light pink), Off The Shoulder (a hot pink) on my middle finger, and Fear or Desire (a bright hot orange) on my index finger.

These polishes look much brighter in real life!  The polishes above are only one coats and most of them could benefit from at least another coat to smooth out streaks and bring out the color more.  I am loving these bright and neony colors!  One of my friends suggested using a white base to make bright colors pop more and so now I'm on the hunt for a good one.  Any suggestions?

Pug (of course), Cookies, More Running Shoes, Essie's No More Film, and Awesome Kites

First thing's first.  My pug:

She is a super licky pug.  I don't like her licking my feet, but I prefer it to her licking my face.  So I allow it.  How perfect is it that I captured this moment right when her lil tongue is at its biggest?

So regal.

A few weeks ago I was craving my peanut butter/oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies and I had no butter.  So lesson learned - next week I stocked up on butter for any future cravings.  And tada, I was craving the cookies again the following weekend and I had all the ingredients!  I ate like 6 of these straight out of the oven.

I could've gotten a better picture of the inside but after I took this I promptly started stuffing my face with cookies and so it's hard to take pictures with chocolate covered fingers.

I tried yet another pair of running shoes, Saucony's Mirage.

Yes these are horrifically white but because the color isn't so cute I got them for suuuuuuper cheap.  These are the lightest shoes I've ever tried.  Light as a feather!  Buuuut, these have horribly large, bulky tongues that slide and bunch up.  By mid-run the tongues had slid completely to the side, bunched towards my toes and was pressing on that nerve that causes my right foot to go numb.  So disappointed.  If I could fix the tongue I'd be happy.  This has to be the worst tongue I've ever had in a running shoe though.  I'm pretty surprised at the poor construction for this shoe considering it's normal selling price.  It almost felt a little cheap on my foot.  Part of it is the light minimal material, but that tongue felt poorly built and sewed in.  Ugh.  So the search continues.  Until then, I bought another pair of backup Brooks Green Silence.

Below is a slightly blurry pic of my nails for the week - Essie's No More Film.  This is one of those extremely rare one coaters.  Yup, complete opacity with one coat!  This is a base coat, one coat of polish, and a top coat.  It started to chip 4 days later though so if you want it to be more durable maybe add on another coat just to be safe.

One windy spring day I saw a bunch of kites around the mall near Washington Monument.  I saw the most awesome kite EVER.  It's a giant kite shaped like a squid and as the wind moves the tentacles it looks like it's floating in the sea!  I wish everyone could've seen this because it was super awesome party.

Essie's She's Picture Perfect

During a recent Target trip I stumbled across Essie's Resort 2012 collection.  I picked up No More Film and She's Picture Perfect because they were the only two that I wanted to try.  I wasn't that into the other colors.  I was excited about No More Film but decided to try She's Picture Perfect first since I wanted something more office appropriate.  

And I LOVE it!  Oh man.  This is the lavender polish that I've been searching for so long!  A bunch of Essie's past lavender polishes just didn't suit my skin coloring (e.g., Nice is Nice and Bangle Jangle).  This is different.  It's like a lavender equivalent of Chinchilly, one of my Essie faves.  She's Picture Perfect is a lavender/periwinkle shade with the teensiest bit of shimmer (more evident in the bottle, than on the nails).

I normally don't really like pastels but I've been loving Essie's pastels this year.  They're like neon pastels, if that's even a thing.  Much brighter and pigmented.  None of that old school dusty pale pastel here!  This almost pushes it into a little too much for work because it's so purple and bright, but I love it.  This is a pastel I can get behind!

Dang my cuticles are still ragged.  I have been neglecting my hands recently while I was on my mini polish break.

Seriously, this is the best lavender polish I've ever tried!  Now the consistency is pretty watery and can be tricky to deal with sometimes.  I had to redo two nails, but the others I was careful enough to do two thin layers to achieve opaqueness.  This is with two layers, a base coat, and a top coat.

Now I must attend to my oh so needy pug.  Whatchya looking at there lil pug?  Oh my nails?  Yes this polish is fabulous, don't you agree?!

Spring Multicolored Nails

 

The coming spring got me in the mood to do fun and multicolored nails recently.  I used the Essie spring 2012 collection for this, with left to right Ole Caliente, Orange It's Obvious, Navigate Her, Tour de Finance, and A Crewed Interest.

My cuticles are so ragged.  After this I took a bit of a hiatus from polish to let my skin and nails recover.  I've put them through a lot ever since my polish obsession began last year.

I love the look of multicolored nails, but I'd probably do a different color selection next time.  I had a hard time deciding on a palette and so I decided to just do the Essie spring 2012 polishes to make it easier.  I think next time I'll do a darker palette and of course need some blue in there.  I love me some blue polishes.

Essie's Go Overboard

Another couple photos I found on my camera recently that I forgot.  Here's Essie's Go Overboard, a beautiful  deep teal.  This applied wonderfully and I got a lot of compliments on it.  I have on a base coat, 2 coats of polish, and a top coat.

I'm a sucker for blue polishes but this is definitely one of my favorites.  Such a unique and beautiful color, with smooth application.  A great polish by Essie - bravo!

Essie's Navigate Her

So these are a bit old photos of Essie's Navigate Her, from their Spring 2012 collection.  I took a few NOTDs on my camera and then kept forgetting to upload them.  Oops.  So anyways, I was excited to try this color out on a weekend.  Such an interesting pistachio green.  It looks much brighter in the photos than in person.  I wasn't expecting to like this but I really love it!  It's very on trend and such a great color for the spring!  I love green polishes, but they can be hit or miss for me (hit - Essie's Sew Psyched; miss - Essie's Da Bush).  But Navigate Her is definitely the brightest and most fun!

Sorry I'm not classy like a lot of the great polish blogs out there.  Behold my roomba in the background.

I love this color!  I only wish I could wear it during the work week too.  I'm glad I finally remembered those photos on my camera.  Reminds me of this great polish and I'm going to put this on for this coming weekend!

Oh, and because I can't do a post without a photo of my pug, here's one of her snoozing on my leg.  I am her favorite bed.

Swatchcicles!

So I decided to get a bunch of nail swatch sticks since my polish collection has slowly been growing and I figured this would be a good way to keep them organized and easy to see.  My lil pug sleepily approves.

Fanning my pug.

Um yeah she was very sleepy.

Ok, pug aside, here are the swatchcicles fanned out.  The sticks are kinda crappy and the handle thing keeps coming off but meh I don't care enough to get anything fancier or nicier.  Besides I already put all the effort in doing these.  I'm not redoing them on new ones!  These are going to be super useful going forward, although the sticks with the sheer neutrals don't accurately show how they'll appear when painted on your nails.  Meh, I'm kinda not into sheers lately anyways.  These are all 2 coats.  I considered doing each one until opaque, but I kinda like having a consistent 2 coats for all of them so I can see which ones are streaky or have application issues and which ones are super awesome.

From left to right we have the following (all of them are Essie polishes unless I say otherwise): Happily Ever After, Hi Maintenance, Mademoiselle, Pillow Talk, Limo Scene, Kisses & Bises, Main Squeeze, Topless & Barefoot, Island Hopping, Chubby Cheeks, Watermelon, Meet me After Sunset, Demure Vixen, Lady Like, Luxedo, Masquerade Ball, Wrapped in Rubies, Butter London's Scoundrel, Butter London's Marrow, and Butter London's Yummy Mummy.

And below from left to right we have: Over the Edge, Fair Game, Da Bush, Your Hut or Mine, Lion Around, Smooth Sailing, Lapis of Luxury, Sew Psyched, Turquoise & Caicos, Tea & Crumpets, Buy Me A Cameo, My Private Cabana, Not Just A Pretty Face, Innocent, Splash of Grenadine, Antique Rose, Shop Till I Drop, Mambo, BBF Best Boyfriend, and Nude Beach.

And lastly, below we have from left to right: Ole Caliente, A Crewed Interest, Orange It's Obvious, Navigate Her, Tour de Finance, Armed & Ready, Go Overboard, School of Hard Rocks, Bobbing For Baubles, Size Matters, Broach The Subject, Bangle Jangle, Cocktail Bling, Case Study, Glamour Purse, Lady Like, Chinchilly, Smokin Hot.

I only realized afterwards that I swatched Lady Like twice.  Oops!  I am quite pleased with these swatchcicles and hopefully they'll prompt me to try some of my older polishes that I've forgotten because now it's so easy to see what the color is like against my skin, like this:

Well it'll work at least with dark opaque polishes.  But I love being able to see how these colors look against my skin because a lot of polishes look completely different on me than I expect from the bottle.  In case you're wondering the one I'm "trying on" above is the new Go Overboard and the polish I have on my nails is the new Navigate Her (which I am loving!).