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!

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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!

Essence Stuck on You

Today I have another Essence polish to share with you-- Stuck on You. This is a gorgeous shade of creamy greyed out indigo blue with silver shimmer. I saw this shade reviewed on a few other blogs and fell in love with it. Given Essence's easy on the wallet price tag ($1.99, woo), it an easy decision to grab this. I feel like this color is perfect for fall-- a slightly darker color, but with a nice shimmer to elevate it.

Stuck on You really wanted to be sheer in the first coat, so I recommend using a light touch so you don't thin the polish out too much. Two coats made my swatches totally opaque, no issues. I'm not wearing a top coat in these pictures, so you can see it dries to a relatively high shine. This can be dark under certain lighting conditions, but doesn't look black. The shimmer does become a little more difficult to see in these same lighting conditions, but you never lose it entirely.

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Natural light - shade:

Wow, my fingers look terrible in these pictures. Sorry about that. They need some love! In any case, I hope despite my awful lack of hand care, you can see how lovely Stuck on Your is. Unfortunately, I think this polish may be getting phased out and don't see it available on Ulta, but you may still be able to find it in stores or on other websites (depending on where you are).

Essence Grey-t To Be Here

Tonight I have a "new to the blog" brand to share with you, even though this isn't a new brand at all. Essence is a European cosmetics brand and from what I can tell, seem kind of like the European version of Wet n Wild-- aimed towards a slightly younger crowd, extremely affordable and is commonly found in drug stores/pharmacies. I was recently at my local Fred Meyer at they were having a buy 1, get one half off sale on Essence products, so I picked up two nail polishes to play with. The first one I have for you is Grey-t To Be Here, which is a medium grey polish with a pink shimmer.

I found the formula of Grey-t To Be Here to be a little on the sheer side-- there was still some visible nail line after two coats. Two coats did give pretty good coverage, but I used three to be thorough. The grey color gets a little deeper the more coats you use. The pink, while definitely apparent in the bottle and on the nail, does want to disappear in certain lighting conditions-- though for the most part you can see the shimmer. 

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I think the pink shimmer in the grey is a nice contrast and I don't think I have another polish like this in my stash. I like that Essence polishes are very affordable (retailing for $1.99) and while they don't have a ton of colors, tend to have ones that are on trend. The formula was good and I like that the brush is bigger (despite the small bottles), which is great for my large nail beds.

Wedding Manicure

This weekend my husband and I attended the wedding of a dear friend-- my husband was one of the groomsmen and we've been looking forward to this wedding for awhile. In addition, we got to see our whole group friends and party, which is always fun! Shopping for a dress for a "formal" occasion when you're pregnant is a bit of a challenge, though-- it's pretty much just like spinning a roulette wheel and hoping whatever you get still fits by the time you need to wear it. Luckily, even though I bought my dress in June, I didn't have a problem fitting into it yesterday.

Since the dress had a print I decided I wanted to keep my nails simple so they wouldn't fight with it (though I'm sure anyone else would have cared or noticed). But given that it's summer and we've been having some beautiful weather, I couldn't resist a little bit of sparkle either! I decided to use Essence Cafe Ole as my nude polish (a review is coming!). To give it some sparkle I decided to use Cult Nails Mayhem, which is a sheer holographic topper that I conveniently just got. The result was a nice subtle manicure with the right amount of sparkle to keep it interesting! I love this look!

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I decided that I needed to get a pedicure for the wedding as well, mainly because I can't actually reach my toes anymore. And getting a pedicure feels great! With the colors of my dress, I decided that doing a mint or turquoise pedicure was calling my name. When I got to the salon, I pulled China Glaze For Audrey off the shelf. Why do I not own this? It's such a pretty shade and I love it on my toes. Such a soothing color! Here's a pic with the dress I wore to the wedding so you can see the print/colors (sorry, feet/toes!):

So we had a great time at the wedding yesterday and have spent today recovering (my husband from drinking, me from just being up so late). I can't believe it's Monday again tomorrow! Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend!