Essie Aim to Misbehave

Essie Aim to Misbehave has been making the rounds for awhile now, but it finally showed up in Seattle area drug stores in last couple of months so I snagged my bottle back in August (even though I believe this came out in the spring). Aim to Misbehave is kind of a big deal because it's Essie's 1000th shade! That seems like a pretty big deal, and so they made a special polish to celebrate! (OPI's 1000th shade had to be a red, amiright?! At least, I'm assuming OPI has hit 1000, right?) And not only that, but they made it a yellow! That seems so unusual for Essie but I freaking love it! Not everyone is a yellow fan, but I love yellow so I think it's awesome. Aim to Misbehave is a bright egg yolk yellow with a glass fleck type shimmer.

Aim to Misbehave had a pretty decent formula, I'm pleased to report! It went on smoothly and the first was a little sheer, but it builds up nicely. I probably could have gotten away with two coats if I had wanted to; I ended up using a thicker third coat to eliminate any potential streaks (and I would recommend using a light touch to avoid streaks). I did get some bubbles but I think it might be due to my crappy top coat and not the polish, though possible my last coat was too thick and I should have waited longer... hard to say.

Sadly while I love this color in the bottle, I'm not really sure it does anything for me...? Ugh, I don't know! I love how bright and cheerful this is, and I love the shimmer but something just isn't clicking with this. I don't think it works with my skin tone very well; I might need to try this in January when my fingers are pasty pale again. I'm not ready to give up on this, but I don't know how often I'll be reaching for it. Frustrating, but not unheard of, sadly!

Two-fer Tuesday: Essie Find Me an Oasis and Resort Fling

My posting will be a little sporadic this week... there's a lot of upheaval currently going on in my house and I haven't been able to find the time (or have been too tired) to get any posts ready for this week. I will try, though! Today I have the last two polishes from the 2014 Essie Resort collection, Find Me an Oasis and Resort Fling!

Find Me An Oasis is a light sky blue pastel creme. Sadly, the color is probably the best part of this polish-- the formula is pretty terrible. It was thin and wanted to streak something fierce. I used three careful coats here (I had read other reviews of this not having the greatest formula-- they were right) and that definitely helped, but there is still some unevenness on my nails and I didn't feel like doing four coats to see if I could make it better.

Resort Fling is a summery cantaloupe coral crelly. Again, I love this color family for summer, but I feel like the formula could have been better, though honestly, as I reflect on it, was not as bad as Find Me an Oasis. The first coat was pretty darn sheer, though after three coats the visible nail line is pretty minimal. It is still a little bit streaky and didn't self-level very well.

Sadly, I find it hard to really love either one of these polishes-- I like the colors a great deal but  the formulas leave a lot to be desired. Certainly not the worst I've ever used, but definitely not great and will probably prevent me from reaching for these polishes again in the future, which is a shame! But you can't win them all, and there are similar colors out there with better formulas.

Throwback Thursday: Essie Under the Twilight

Another Throwback Thursday post and another Essie polish, also from the Resort 2014 collection. Today I have Under the Twilight, which was definitely one of the highlights from this set. This polish is described as an "intensely provocative smokey plum." In the bottle it looks blue (to my eye anyway) but on the nail you can definitely tell where the smokey plum descriptor comes from.

Under the Twilight had an excellent, moreso than the other half of this collection-- I'll get to those polishes later. This was nicely pigmented and went on super smoothly. It was very nearly a one coat wonder, though I did have a few thin patches so I used a second coat. Excellent!

I wish this had a bit more color to keep it from looking so close to a near black, but the formula was excellent and it's still definitely not black, despite being so dark. Even though this is/was a resort color, I think it will be very wearable in the fall and winter. Under the Twilight is a very chic twist on a black manicure, especially if you don't want a true black.

Throwback Thursday: Essie Cocktails and Coconuts

Hey look, a Throwback Thursday post! Mostly unintentional but when the stars align...! Essie Cocktails and Coconuts had been kicking around unloved since the summer of 2014 so it's time it got a little love! This was one of the polishes from the Resort 2014 collection and I bought a mini quad of the four polishes that made up this collection. This quad has been sitting in a place where I pass by it every day and I kept thinking "man, I should really use these polishes" and yet there they sat for two (!!) years. I finally pulled put these polishes for an HPB challenge; mostly because I needed a neutral and I knew exactly where this one was! 

Cocktails and Coconuts is a yellow leaning beige neutral that also has a subtle silver shimmer. I was actually impressed with the formula and how easy it was to apply. I did have to use a light touch to avoid dragging the polish but while the formula was a little thin, it went on easily. I have used two coats here and it looks pretty good! Probably if I had not been using this as a base for nail art, I would use three coats, but it looks pretty good with just the two! I'm also not wearing top coat here, so you can see it's fairly shiny even without it! 

You can even see the subtle shimmer here! Woo! While yellow-leaning neutrals aren't my favorite, I think this looks pretty good! I was really happy that the formula was good and I can see myself coming back to this again in the future! 

HPB Present Neons and Neutrals: Polka Dots and Gradient

Hey all, taking a quick break from my Star Wars polishes to do the monthly HPB link-up! This month's theme is Neons and Neutrals-- a perennial favorite (for me at least)! I'm not sure what it is, but I love neons popping against a neutral background. It's just one of my favorite nail art themes and I wanted to try and squeeze a manicure in before it was over, even if it's not related to Star Wars!

I used a new to me brand for my neons: Pipedream Polish! The A Night In Vegas collection was a huge hit in the nail world (the words 'break the internet' come to mind) and was highly sought after.... And then it was disconntinued! I did manage to get my hands on a set, which have been sitting around for some months now. I figured now would be the perfect time to break them out! For my neutral I used Essie Cocktails and Coconuts, which is from the 2014 Resort Collection. Then I picked out Light of Day (a neon yellow), High Roller (neon green), and Happy Hour (neon turquoise) for my neons!

First I did a gradient on my ring finger-- this was a little bit difficult because both High Roller and Happy Hour acted fairly sheer when I was trying to sponge them on, but I got it eventually! Maybe not my greatest result, but I still think it looks pretty good! At that point, I was going to try and sponge a gradient over some vinyls on my other nails, but that ended up being a huge fail, so I moved to Plan B: polka dots! While it wasn't my go to, I think it works well and I wanted to have a couple different things going on!

And of course I needed to matte my manicure, because I'm obsessed right now:

My clean up skills are still not the best, even with liquid latex; sorry! Hope you enjoyed this manicure! And take a minute to peruse some of the other bloggers' work!

An InLinkz Link-up

Essie Tangerine

I'm ashamed to admit to this post has been sitting in my drafts list for over a month now. Yikes. But at least I'm posting it now!!

Today I have Essie Tangerine to show you! Given the name, you probably don't really need to guess what the color of this polish is. Essie describes this as a "juicy orange-red creme" and I can't really add anything to that. Because it's an orange-red, it's incredibly hard to capture and the color shifts depending on the light. Sometimes it's more red-orange and in other lights it takes on a pinky coral-like color. Sneaky sneaky! It looks like Tangerine was realized as part of Essie's Summer 2010 collection (at least, that's about the earliest I can find reviews for it).

The formula on Tangerine was pretty good-- it goes on very smoothly and three coats gave great coverage. There is a tiny bit of visible nail line, but it's not bad at all. That's probably why I used three coats in the end.

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Unfortunately, Tangerine isn't currently available from Essie, though I'm sure there are similar polishes out there. And it looks like if you really like, you can find Tangerine through other internet sources. However, Tangerine is one of those colors that is just perfect for summer and even though there are probably about a thousand similar polishes out there and I can't get enough of these colors. There's something about the bright, summery color that just instantly appeals to me, not matter how many I already have.

Essie Very Cranberry

Tonight I have an oldie but a goodie! Well, I actually don't know how old it is, really, but it's been out for several years and I picked it up in 2011 on super sale (for $1!!) at a Trade Secret. And only wore for the first time last year! I have too much polish. Essie Very Cranberry is a "dashing creamy cranberry," though I might call it a deep pink-red muted cranberry with subtle shimmer. I wore this as part of my Thanksgiving manicure.

Very Cranberry had an ok formula. Not great, but not that bad either. The color definitely deepens the more coats you use. I used three here. Two probably would have been ok, but I like the depth three coats has on the nail. I think the shimmer, which actually seems more apparent on the nail than in the bottle, really helps make this polish more unique.

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My only disappointment was that Very Cranberry doesn't actually seem all that "cranberry" too me-- it's too pink. But it's still very pretty, even if the name isn't quite correct. It is a gorgeous pink-red that

Thanksgiving Nails!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because of all the awesome food! My husband and I have made it a tradition to take the whole week off so we can spend time with both our families (and do some shopping and watch some (a lot) of football)-- all of which are pretty integral components to Thanksgiving for us. Most times I would wear something seasonally appropriate for Thanksgiving, like a brown, bronze, dark red, or something equally fallish and autumnal. But when I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my Thanksgiving manicure this year, I decided to branch out a little bit. Two polishes that immediately came to my mind from my stash were Nostalgic Lacquer Gluttony and Essie Very Cranberry.

Anyway... on to my Thanksgiving manicure! The first thing that comes to mind when you think of Thanksgiving is food-- at least for me. So while there are tons of polishes out there that are perfectly suited to capturing the color of the season, I decided to get down to the meat of matter. (See what I did there? Hah!) I pulled out Nostalgic Lacquer Gluttony, which I have had sitting in my stash since forever. I decided to try it over Julep Alyson, which is a nice tan neutral. I love the way the multi-colored glitters looks against the neutral backdrop. Why haven't I tried this before?! I also didn't want to do just glitter, so I decided to go for two accent nails using Essie Very Cranberry. I bought this a very long time ago and had an idea of what this looked like in my head-- which unfortunately didn't quite match up with the actual color. Very Cranberry is much lighter and more pink than I thought it was-- I think of cranberries (one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving-- I love canned/jellied cranberry sauce!) as being much darker red. In any case, even though I wasn't in love with the color I decided to go ahead and use it as my accent color. Very Cranberry get deeper in color the more coats you apply, so I used three here, along with two coats of Alyson and two coats of Gluttony.

Despite my initial hesitation over using Very Cranberry, I'm really happy with the way this looks. The deep creamy dark red-pink keep this manicure from being too flashy with all the glitter. At least, that's how I feel when I look at these pictures.

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This manicure in no way matches what I'm wearing for Thanksgiving (I'm usually very matchy-matchy with my outfits and nails), but I don't care because I love it! And at some point in the future I will do individual reviews of both these polishes, so you'll get to see them in their full glory.

Hope everyone out there who is celebrating Thanksgiving is having a great time! Enjoy all the good food and time with your families!

Football Friday: Trojans SUC Edition

Hello polish fans! After skipping last the Football Friday because I was attending my sister-in-law's wedding we are back with our regularly schedule posts! This week the Huskies face the USC Trojans, and the recent history between these two teams has been a little chippy. The current UW coach was an assistant coach at USC before he came to UW and when he came to UW he hired away several USC staff members. We also narrowly beat USC back to back years (2009 and 2010) before getting hammered last year. This year we meet in Seattle, which gives UW the slight advantage. If our defense shows up like they did against Stanford and the offensive line can protect our quarterback... we may just have a chance!

I'll admit I was feeling a bit lazy this week, so it's just a straight up purple polish this week! This is Essie Sexy Divide, and I haven't being featuring a lot of Essie polishes in the past few months. Sexy Divide is a real stunner, though! I found this on sale at a Trade Secret in the Portland area but actually haven't gotten around to wearing it yet. Sexy Divide is described as a "bold deep purple with hints of shimmer" and it's insanely gorgeous. Sexy is right! I see mostly a red/pink shimmer in there, but also some blue. The formula on this is great-- goes on smoothly and easily. It's the perfect purple for wearing to a football game. It photographs a little more blue than it actually is, but it's still gorgeous and intensely purple.

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PS - I don't mean any offense to any Trojan fans out there with my title. Just a little friendly teasing!

Go Dawgs! Beat the Trojans!

Essie Milky Way

Tonight's polish is Essie Milky Way, which was a J.Crew exclusive that was available last summer. I would describe this as a creamy cafe au lait color, while the J.Crew website describes it was a "dusty buff that conjures a just-after-sunset sky."

Here I have used two coats of Milky Way and it was a dream to use. Great formula-- very smooth and easy to apply. It's creamy and delicious looking! I just had a chocolate popsical that was a very similar color (it was equally delicious). Two coats was perfect. I think this is a great neutral and I love how rich it looks on the nail-- I know how sometimes creme polishes can come across as boring (though I personally love them) and I think the smoothness, the shine and just how gorgeous it looks on make this a winner in my book.

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I'm not generally a huge fan of brown polishes, but I love how creamy this looks. Plus, I think this walks a nice line of not being overly brown if that's a color you're not a fan of-- it has a nice rich creamy look to it and is lighter, while not leaning too yellow, which might take it over into gross territory. Unfortunately, I don't think Milky Way is available for sale anymore, at least on the J.Crew website, though it's possible you may be able to find it on eBay.  However, if you like this, there are similar polishes out there so hopefully you can be inspired to go out and find one!