Essie Cashmere Mattes-- Spun In Luxe

  I've not been overly excited about nail polish lately, and have found myself settling happily and comfortably into a rotation of neutrals, reds, berries, and greys.  One of the reasons Essie's Cashmere Matte collection caught my eye is because they are classic, sophisticated colors in a fun and edgy finish.  I'll admit that I initially had four of the set of six pegged as must-haves but when it came down to it, I chose the colors I knew I'd actually wear.  This one is Spun In Luxe.

Essie Cashmere Mattes-- Spun In Luxe

Pantone 2015 Color of the Year: Marsala Polish Picks

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Pantone Color of the Year 2015: Marsala

  I admit to initially being both underwhelmed and reminded of savory food when Pantone announced their 2015 Color of the Year.  Marsala, an elegant, complex shade with an air of lightness, has really grown on me, though, especially when I realized that a number of my favorite nail polishes easily fit the mold of that color.  I decided to do a little shopping and see if I could spot a few other polishes that work with the scheme, and I was mildly successful.  It turns out this rather "basic" color is anything but!

Essie Winter 2014-- Jiggle Hi, Jiggle Low

  Morning, all!!  Remember that blogger from a couple years back who had a compilation of the worst polish names?  Anyway, Jiggle Hi, Jiggle Low is my second top choice from Essie's Winter 2014 collection, and the anchor/namesake of the collection.  One of the articles I read on the subject (and I can't for the life of me remember who wrote it) stated that wearing metallics is a thing again and I was quite clueless... I get exhausted just thinking about following trends.  Anyway (again), if Jiggle Hi, Jiggle Low means metallics are in again, then it's a perfect and gorgeous way to start wearing the trend (if you're into that kind of thing... and even if you're not).  Ironically, it's also one of the more festive and holiday traditional polishes of the collection.

  I've been a fan of gold nails as soon as I discovered that gold polish exists.  Jiggle Hi, Jiggle Low is a champagne gold, more of a foil than a metallic, possessing all of the gleam and none of the streakiness that tend to plague true metallics.  It's basically a white gold base supersaturated with microshimmer and very finely milled buttery yellow gold flecks for added dimension.  It's one of those colors that look like precious, molten metal going on and dries to a bright, dazzling, liquid like finish.

Essie Winter 2014-- Jiggle Hi, Jiggle Low

Essie Winter 2014-- Back In the Limo

  Good morning, guys and gals!!  Does Essie always put their winter collection out this early, or am I just noticing it this year?  At any rate, it's here, six shades of classic Essie, but with an atypical twist-- it's a lot of pink, a lot of coral, and, with the exception of a blue-red that may or may not be identical to Fall 2014's Dress To Kilt {HERE}, and a lovely champagne foil (imminent), a lot of sheer.

  Something about Essie's winter collections call to my mind elegant, expensive holiday parties and this year's is warm, festive, and pristine, thrown in some big, white, chandeliered room.  Like many Essies, the names in this set are cheeky and pretentious and I usually hold that against a polish, but these colors spoke to me and despite the flak that this collection has gotten/will likely continue to get, I think it's pretty brilliant.

  My first choice is Back In the Limo, a blushed peach/soft shell pink jelly.

Essie Winter 2014-- Back In the Limo

Essie Dress To Kilt

  Hi everyone!!  I got REALLY EXCITED about all the fall collections the other day and indulged and bought myself a polish from Essie, a brand I don't pay a lot of attention to (I'm pretty sure I say that every time I post one of theirs).  Essie collections are always fun to look at in their entirety, but hard to choose one individual color, somehow.  This time, my choice was an easy one-- I went with the namesake polish of this fall's lineup, called Dress To Kilt.

Essie Dress To Kilt

"Hey Peter. Whaaaaat's happening?"

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  Hi all!  Life is fairly consumed with

pears

and 

My Favorite Summer Pedicure Colors

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  Happy Caturday, all!!  I hope you're having a maximally enjoyable summer so far.  Just a quick post today on my favorite summer pedicure colors before C and I go play in our back yard for the better part of the day :)

My Favorite Summer Pedicure Colors-- Butter London Come To Bed Red, Essie Licorice, L'Oreal Penthouse Pink, Zoya Dillon, Zoya Zuza

LLPT's Best Of 2013!! Mainstream Polishes

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HI everybody!!  It's that time of year again, New Year's is imminent and Best Of compilations abound.  My list loving self has been eating all this up with a spoon, both checking out my fellow bloggers' choices and compiling my own selections.

It's been a pretty freaking fantastic year for a lot of reasons but narrowing my choices down to a top 15 ended up being a fairly easy task once I thought about the ones Ive reached for the most and the ones that have truly wowed me.  So, let's jump right in (and please enjoy the continuing evolution of my nails; it seems inconsistency is my signature), in order of release.

12 Days of Christmas Nails!! Day 4-- Butter London Pillar Box Red + Essie Pure Pearlfection

Hi everyone!!  I've actually been really, really excited about sporting this duo so I'm going to jump right in.

Butter London Pillar Box Red was gifted to me by the same dear friend who bestowed my first Shimmer polishes on me.  She knows I love my reds and my Butters and truth be told, Pillar Box Red might have just replaced Come To Bed Red as my favorite BL red... The former is a creme, the latter a jelly, and I prefer the finish of the creme.

Pillar Box Red is very much a true red.  It's bright, with a lot of yellow in it, and calls to mind a ripe, juicy tomato, making it a very summer appropriate red while maintaining its classicism.  I used two easy coats-- the formula is typical Butter London creme perfection.  I topped it with one coat of Essie Luxe Effects Pure Pearlfection and one layer of topcoat.

Essie Belugaria-- Holiday 2013 Encrusted Treasures Collection

Hi everyone!  I have what might be the most interesting polish of the year to show you today.

Essie's jumped on the texture bandwagon with a collection of six for the holidays, and these are unlike anything we've seen.  Ommorphia Beauty Bar loves them.  The Polishaholic hates them.  I was drawn to, and picked up, the most polarizing of the six, and also the anchor of the collection, Belugaria.

Belugaria is a black jelly polish packed with clear textured bits and medium sized holographic hexagon glitters.  The black base, combined with the drying action, take away all vestiges of clear and in two coats, this dries matte and thick, with the hexes giving off the appearance of being embedded within.  Its so odd, and completely fascinating.

Essie Sable Collar

Hello and Happy Sunday!!  With the new Picture Polish and Rescue Beauty Lounge blogger collections imminent, I started to think about what kind of polish I'd create if given the opportunity.  I'm fairly easy to please and fairly uncomplicated in my taste, polish wise, so in my little experiment I tried to think outside the box of my favorite red cremes, vampy wine colored jellies, and slick blacks.  It's hard to come up with a unique idea in this supersaturated industry, but I had this notion that my dream polish would be a dark grey with a red shimmer woven throughout.  Red would have to play a role, somehow.  So I'm trying to picture how this whole thing would work, so the shimmer is apparent but subtle, how it wouldn't be drowned out on the nail by such a dark base, when I come across Essie's just released winter 2013 collection.  I took one look at Sable Collar and thought, Holy Smokes, that's IT!!

As it turns out, it's not; the store lights were a bit deceiving (but not necessarily disappointing).  It's not what I was imagining, but it would make a nice prototype, lol.  Sable Collar is a dark grey with warm brownish red undertones, saturated with a reddish-mauve shimmer.  All this reads as a dark, dusty plum both in photos and on the nail and looks warm, luxurious, and plush but also carries a bit of a chill, as if you are wearing such a collar during a clear, icy night.  The name is perfect and this polish feels inspired to me. 

The color is fascinatingly unique and I love it.  Essie's been stepping up their game this year and while their collections are still playing it rather safe, they're also throwing in some interesting and intriguing polishes and this one is their best this year, in my opinion.

Essie's formula is widely known to be a little tricky and while that's also improved, you can see I still had a few application issues with Sable Collar.  This is opaque in the standard two coats.  It's on the thin and runny side (GAHHH I so dislike that word but there it is, it's the best way to describe this); a thin first coat and a slightly thicker second coat, plus a steady hand, will minimize issues.

I like Sable Collar a LOT, maybe even more so since it's not what I had first envisioned (it's fun being surprised and I think my mind played a trick on me, lol) and I'm surprised at how drawn to dusky plums I've been this fall.  The only place I've seen this new Essie collection is at Fred Meyer for $8 a piece but the release date is early October, so if you haven't seen this yet, keep your eyes peeled :)

One more thing... I mentioned in my previous post how I has hot on the trail of a pair of faux suede booties to wear for C's and my late Oktoberfest party this past Friday (which was a blast, so much so that I somehow managed to not take any pictures which might be a first for me)... well, mission accomplished but I ended up wearing something else, lol.  Here they are... Aren't they smokin'?  I love being way up there but it's been a while since I've sported something this high.

Did I mention they were on clearance?  This fact made C happy, even (or perhaps less unhappy would be more accurate, lol).  Thank you all for reading and have a relaxing day ♥♥

Essie Naughty Nautical

So I have a funny story about this one.  (Okay, it's not that funny.  Or interesting.  Feel free to skip ahead to the photos.)   

Yun at The Polish Hideout has been posting about the Essie Resort 2013 collection all week and I've been commenting on how pretty it is and how I need to quit tarrying and just get In The Cab-ana already.  I picked up the one I've been lemming most on my way home from work yesterday, and as I was drafting this post in my head last night, I had my intro all planned out.  It did not occur to me that I didn't have what I thought I had until I went to link back to Yun and found I was in the wrong collection entirely.

SO FUNNY!!! RIGHT?!?!

Anyhoo.  Essie Naughty Nautical is what I wanted, and what I got.  It's from the summer 2013 collection of the same name.

Naughty Nautical is a gorgeous medium-bright green leaning teal with a subtle shimmer.  I feel like it's the standout of this collection and I've got nothing like it in my growing stash of turquoise/teals.  I'm totally digging it on my fingers right now but I think it'll be the most awesome summer pedi color, too.

Everything I read about Essie says they have a notorious formula, and this one was... okay.  I used two coats.  The first was streaky and patchy, but the second evened out nicely.  The formula's on the thin side but applies thick.  The brush is very thin and is nice for my little nails.  I must say also that it looks like it might be a big time stainer, so I used a precautionary two layers of basecoat.

Doesn't it look so perfectly coastal town vacation home summery? :)  So pretty.  As I was applying this last night, I thought to myself, Self, you should create a scale measuring application difficulty depending on how adroit you are at painting your nails.  So, on the newly conceived LLPT Polish Application scale, lol, Naughty Nautical gets an intermediate.  This stuff does not apply itself and will likely require some cleanup.

Essie Naughty Nautical retails for $8 at Ulta and Fred Meyer (Kroger).

Thanks for reading and have a terrific day! ♥

Essie Dive Bar

The first polish to truly excite me after I was introduced to this little world last fall was Essie Dive Bar.  I was lost in the world of OPI, and this strangely seductive color was unique and intriguing to my eyes.  I ordered it online, oohed and ahhed once it arrived, and then wore it as a pedi exactly once, until today.

 Dive Bar is a deep and glowy midnight teal shimmer that conjures up images of crescent moons and wispy clouds; mysterious figures in trenchcoats and fedoras; and certain Van Gogh paintings.  It's dark and stormy out this October morning, and this pensive and melancholy color feels highly appropriate.
The formula is lovely.  Two coats gives it a rich and saturated finish.  The brush is tiny.

We did a little bit of Halloween decorating yesterday afternoon....

The old lady looks perfectly normal at this angle, muahaha.  Yes, it's supposed to go at the end of the hall inside, but then no one would see it but us two, lol.  Baby Beau's position may or may not have been staged....

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light + Essie Licorice

The nail polish group I belong to on Facebook does manicure challenges every Monday, and I've participated, like, once.  This week's challenge is Glitterbomb, which apparently is a bunch of glitters layered over each other.  I have exactly two glitters, and they don't play well together, so this is it, lol.  Besides, I kind of love this.  It's Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light over Essie Licorice, and it totally reminds me of a big ol' '70s disco party.  My nails and I are ready to boogie. lol.

Strobe Light is so gorgeously, sparkly holographic that I had to restrain myself from posting pictures of every facet of the glitter as the sun hit it.  Look, there's a green!  And a blue!  Oh, and orange!  In regular lighting it's still a very cool light pink and silver sparkle.  I used two coats Licorice, one coat Strobe Light, and two layers of topcoat.   

Let's groove tonight, friends. :)  Yeah.

Black vs. Black vs. Black

Sometime last summer I decided black polish and black sandals must look pretty fabulous together, so I went and bought Essie Licorice and loved it.  Now, I've sort of sought out blacks within my favorite brands, and I know there are variations, even amongst the pure blacks, so I thought I'd swatch the three I own side by side.

I've got Butter London Union Jack Black on my ring, Essie Licorice on my middle, and Zoya Raven on my index.  I've said it before; black polish is harder to apply than red lipstick, even with Zoya's amazing formula.  Um, maybe it's just me.

Union Jack Black, Licorice, Raven

Raven is clearly the standout, appearance-wise.  It's not as rich and has a satiny finish due to some micronized silver bits, making it the most elegant of the three.  I almost can't tell a difference between the Essie and the Butter, but Union Jack Black's got a slight shine and richness edge, making it the most risque. 

Zoya's formula can't be beat; Raven had the best dry time of the three, as well as being the most unique.  Union Jack Black was slightly easier to apply than Licorice, and dried faster as well, with no pulling when I applied my topcoat.  Licorice pulled just a smidge.  Maybe you don't need both the latter (I do, though) depending on what exactly you're after in a black polish.  If I did nail art I would designate Licorice for that; the other two are the better stand alone colors.

I'll stick with Licorice for my pedicures, the patent-leathery Union Jack Black when I want some edge without the forwardness of a red, and satiny Raven will be my LBD polish.  No one else may be able to tell the difference, but I will. ;)