Essence Make Life a Festival

I'll be honest-- I generally ignore Essence releases. They seem to be released fairly sporadically here and are hard to find. However, I stumbled on to an untouched Love & Sound display (inspired by summer music festivals) and because the polishes were all billed as matte textures, I decided to pick them all up. They are also cheap, which helped motivate me. Today I have the first shade from the collection (there are four) that I have worn: Make Life a Festival.

Side note: it drives me batshit that Essence calls them 'desert matt.' Are you kidding me?! I guess that technically, a mat is flat, but matte (with the 'e') is the word the describes a flat color and finish! Argh.

Seriously?! I can't, Essence, I can't.

Anyway, annoyance about their description aside, Make Life a Festival is a peachy shade that is supposed to dry down to a matte, textured finish. I had issues applying this. The formula was a little on the streaky side and I had to apply three coats to even it out-- and I still wasn't completely happy with it. I don't think you can really tell from my pictures, though!

Artificial light (flash):

This polish was a disappointment, honestly. It was slow drying, applied unevenly, and didn't dry to a very textured finish. So frustrating! Now, it was pretty warm when I applied this, which might have contributed to some of my issues. I found it be very slow drying, which was surprising for a textured finish (for example, I applied this in the evening, after my kids went to bed and then went to bed probably 1-2 hours later-- and I woke up with sheet marks. Sadly, I actually liked the way it looked witih the sheet marks more than I liked the actual finish). It also didn't dry nearly as textured as I would have liked-- kind of a weird half texture/half matte that I didn't love. I think the next time I wear one of these polishes I will try to apply thin coats and see if that helps both the dry time and the actual texture finish. So overall I'm not in love this polish but I will try to improve my application with the next one I try in hopes that I get a better result!