Essie, Ballet Slippers

It must be an Essie week.

I just received two polishes and four minis in a swap with niclyf from MUA Nail Board, and this was one of the minis that I'd received. I'm in the middle of studying for finals and creating my final projects and turning them in plus extra work hours since I'm a night barista and people are still frantically studying in libraries late at night and will need caffeine--trust me, this gets somewhere--so I decided to put on a polish that would be low-maintenance. And nothing is more low-maintenance than a business appropriate color.

Right?

Okay. Ballet Slippers is Essie's award-winning classic pink or summat, and it really is pretty: I actually thought it was a very soft and squishy off-white when I first saw it, although now that I look at it it's definitely a pale pink. I like it a lot, although the first two coats apply really streaky--you need the third to even it out, and then it takes a ridiculously long time to dry. Nevertheless it wears and applies a lot like my RBL Bikini Bottom: long-wearing, long-drying, a bit of a layering bish, but then wears like iron.

The picture up there is after a day and a half; I kept it on for four days when I started to get tipwear. (Essentially, I got bored.) I also put rhinestones on it--it was kind of messy, but a little bit like throwing a sequinned jacket over a really pretty and romantic pink dress. Cool stuff. I don't have a picture of it, however. Sorry, guys. :<

Oh! And it applied really, really ridiculously well. Great control--just streaky. :)

Essie, Jelly Apple

So, um, remember when I said I like Essie? This is, primarily, why: it's not Lucia Lilac, and it's not even MCA. It's Jelly Apple--a pretty jelly true red with an application that's on par with the RBLs that I own: the gold-standard of application.

Don't believe me? Take a look below. Note: I did not do ANY CLEANUP.

I'm a pretty good nail polish applier, but I'm not that good. Jelly Apple makes me that good. This is indoors, direct sunlight and an unaltered photo. It's a tad more true red than the tomato red that the photo suggests--I'm not that warm-toned, either.

It's a pretty, classy, true red jelly that makes me feel classy, sassy, and just a little mischievous. It's a great color, and a great pedi color also. I seem to pick this one out every time I decide to see my parents, but they love the color and it seems to make them happy. :) Definitely a holiday polish to consider--I like to think I'm ushering in the christmas season with red, red, red!

(I have two reds. D:)

Essie, Mint Candy Apple

MCA, indoors. The only good indoors pic I've ever taken! (color isn't true, though; MCA is greener than that.) MCA, sunlight.
MCA, shade.
MCA far off.

I think the only picture where the color is true to what I see on my hands is that last one: the color pretty much looks just like that. It's the exact color of mint ice cream! Nom nom nom. This is two or three coats, depending. My left hand is entirely three coats. Right, not so much.

Anyway. MCA was the biggest lemming of the holiday season, other than Merry Midnight (which I also have), so receiving it in the mail was kind of exciting. The color is absolutely gorgeous in the bottle. I kind of want to put it on display everywhere. So pretty. Anyway, I'd wanted Mint Candy Apple since I'd seen the Chanel fall collection, with all the black and tweed and sudden green pops that I wanted to emulate (which I did, today, to an effect I love). So I got it, and now I have it, and it is lovely and I hope to wear it all the time come winter and spring.

I've heard people complain about the difficulty of putting on MCA, but for me MCA applies exactly like St. Lucia Lilac: it's a tad watery, a tad runny but dries on thick. A little bit of cuticle pull, but that can be fixed. Again, I like Essie (*hide*) so none of this bothers me much.

So um, yes. I love this color. I can't wait to wear it with sparkles or with black polka dots or with black funky french or with a hot pink or or or yeah. A lot of things. Teehee. :3

Essie, St. Lucia Lilac

I have a confession to make: I really like Essie.

I know, I know: Essie is a gigantic sheer pink + red junkie and never brings out anything interesting, or original. But I like Essie just the same. The formula is great and never does anything funky, and the brush is ideal for me to work with, for some reason: I always get cleanest application with Essie (not counting RBLs, of course, cause that just ain't fair).

Anyway, Lucia Lilac was a surprising buy for me. Yeah, I like colors, but I'm not really a pastel person. Too girly? Virginal? I'm not sure. I like my moodies--they go better with my clothes. But anyway, I liked the way Lilac looked on the shelf and a friend pursuaded me to take it along with another polish. So I did, and I really like the way it looks on me.

Indoors: these never come out well, for some reason, but it is truest to the color. At least, this is what it looks like on me most of the time.
Sunlight.
Shade.

Lucia is a two-coater. I have, again, no application issues with Essie, but I found the formula surprisingly thin and watery. Again, this doesn't bother me too much since it seems to translate into fast drying time, and it's still opaque enough by the second coat for the wateriness to be fine.

I have to be honest: the first two times I wore this color, I was sort of unsure about it. I thought the same things I usually think about pastels: too girly, too old lady, too--something, anyway, for me to wear.

Right now, I'm loving it. I think it's a sweet and lovely color, unexpected but still highly traditional--by that, what I mean is that it's close enough to pink for most people not to give it a second glance, but it's still eye-catching in its way. It's the color I'd wear to meet a boyfriend's parents, maybe. Or as a surprising choice on Valentine's Day, or Easter. It'd be a sweet pop of color against a floral spring dress, or an even more surprising pop in a sea of ladylike black and dove grey. I can imagine wearing this color day in, day out during spring and winter.
Far off.
Close-up.

And of course, I was bored (which was why I changed my Nfu-Oh in the first place. That and that constantly changing my nail polish seems to keep some of my lemmings at bay. I'm at a no-buy, which is horrid because the holiday collections are BEAUTIFUL this year and I WANT THEM ALL--anyway) so I decided to dabble a bit in nail art.

That's just a decal and then some prodding with the pointy end of the orangewood stick. Pretty dang painless. The black is Zoya Raven, which I haven't even -tried- yet: it's a Zoya that I picked up during the twitter fiasco. I also picked up an Indigo, Lael, Juicy, and Envy--and promptly gave them to my friends. I don't know why. I thought I'd get too much nail polish, and that's bad for some reason? On the plus side, my friends LOVE them. (Sigh.)

My lemmings still haven't gone away, but at least I can admire my nails until they come back full-force-- and then I can paint my nails again. If I hold out till November, I'll get my nail polish exchange present!

... And I'd bought Mint Candy Apple, so there's that to look forward to, too!