Swatch and Review: Essence Wake Up and and Walk on Air

Today I have two awesome nail polishes by Essence Cosmetics for review called Wake Up and Walk on Air. They are from the Colour & Go Collection.

According to Essence, the Colour & Go Collection features a flat brush and requires only one application, as well as possesses an extra fast-drying formula.There are ten new colors for the spring, bringing the total offerings of the collection up to 22!

Wake Up is on the left and Walk on Air is on the right.

First up is Walk on Air, a Dodger blue creme. This applied like butter and was opaque in two thin coats. I'm super manic about thin coats, so with one decent coat this probably would have been opaque. At first, I thought this was going to take more than two in order to be opaque, but it layers VERY well. I love this shade because it's a muted blue that I feel like I could wear all year long and not feel like I'm wearing too loud of a color.

And you see how shiny that is? Yeah, that's WITHOUT a top coat. Gorgeous!

This is Wake Up, a bright rust colored nail polish. You may remember this from my New York Sports marble earlier in the week. Again, the application was perfect and even with a thin coat was opaque with one coat. I liked this shade a LOT. First off, it's a richer orange than any other orange I have and feels completely wearable. I didn't feel like I had a neon shade on my nails when I went outside. And you know it's a stunner when Queen Polish and the Queen Mum (aka, my Nana) are fawning over it. 

 

Again, look at how shiny that is! Both polishes dried fairly quickly, which was a plus for someone running after two dogs. Granted, it's usually the nearly four-month old Pebbles who gets into trouble, but it's Dakota who always manages to find some piece of paper to run around the house with. 

There are two things I LOVE about this polish, aside from how beautiful it was. Number one, you can can get the entire collection of 22 nail polish shades for JUST UNDER $22 DOLLARS! Number two, I love the fact that Essence offers all of its products (including polishes, as well as eye, lip, and face products) within the $0.99 to $3.49 range. You can barely buy a gallon of milk for $3.49 these days, so that's super refreshing!

The Essence Colour & Go line of quick drying nail polish retails for just $0.99 and is sold in the United States at ULTA, HEB, and Fred Meyer. It also recently launched in Canada, where it will be available in Shoppers Drug Mart locations nationwide. Please visit Essence-Cosmetics.com for more information on their full line of products.

So what do you think, everyone? Are you going to be on the lookout for these polishes? Or have you already fallen in love? I, for one, have still yet to find Blue Addicted and it is officially a LEMMING!

Princess Polish

Disclaimer: The product(s) in this post were provided to me by the manufacturer or their PR company for consideration. For more information please visit my Disclaimer page.

Swatch and Review: OPI Grape Set Match and Serving Up Sparkle

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late post... it has been a stressful day at home!

Today I have a duo that I searched for, to no avail, last year, but managed to find at TJ Maxx on sale, along with another duo I swatched a nail polish from earlier in the week, OPI Love is a Racket. So here is the Serena Williams Glam Slam Duo: Grape Set... Match and Servin' Up Sparkle!

OPI Grape Set... Match is a gorgeous royal purple nail polish with blue shimmer that gives it the appearance of a blurple! When pictures of these duos were first released, I knew this was the one I wanted more than anything. And I'm SO happy I got it!

The application was a dream and with two coats, I could not have asked for better opacity.

 

OPI Servin' Up Sparkle is definitely a nail polish meant for layering. If you want to build it up to see if you can ever get it opaque, you are a far braver soul than I am. It was a little tough to take off, but was not the worst I've ever seen. (I'm looking at YOU, Nubar Night Sparkle). Zoya Remove + got the job done. That being said, I imagine it would be very difficult to take off after 8 coats for opacity's sake. *Shudder*

The glitter was a little too sparse for my personal taste (above was one coat), but I loved the inclusion of hexagonal glitter. Hex glitter seems to be very on-trend this year, so OPI was ahead of the curve in 2011.

Overall, I'm glad that I finally managed to get the duo and would definitely recommend Grape Set... Match.

Hump Day Holo: Color Club Wild at Heart

Hump Day Holo is back with my first Color Club swatch on the blog. It's a gorgeous purple holo called Wild at Heart.

This was borrowed from a friend of mine, so I do not have the bottle. But it looks much nicer on my nails than in the bottle!

Depending on how you look at your nails, the nail polish looks either like a super scattered holo or a linear holo. Sometimes, it even looks like both. But do I care which one?

New York Sports Water Marble

It was a weekend full of water marbles for Princess Polish, having rocked the Relay for Life Water Marble Friday and Saturday and a new water marble Sunday and Monday.

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of sports. I love it all. But my two biggest loves in life are the NY Knicks and the NY Mets, the latter of which I am fortunate enough to call my employer. So with the Knicks clinging tightly to a spot in the playoffs and the Mets off to the best April start since I was in high school, I thought it was time to break out the blue and orange.

Selecting the actual polishes to work with was much harder than you would think it'd be. The shades used by both teams are very similar and vivid. So I couldn't choose something too pastel in the orange family and it was difficult to find a blue that wasn't too light or too dark on the spectrum.

The orange was easier to select, since I only have a handful in my orange polish drawer. But the blue... well, it's the heaviest of the drawers. That should pretty much spell it out for you.

In the end, I went with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue It and Essence Wake Up (more on that shade a little later in the week).

I found out that blue and orange are hard colors to marble together because if you're not careful, they'll blend together to look brown. But I figured that out only one nail in and was super careful after that.

This is my right hand all marbled up. Unfortunately, I thought my left hand came out nicer, but managed to crack a nail shortly before I was ready to take a picture. The whole hand looks like my middle finger. So you're stuck with my right for now. Sorry, everyone. This was (Daniel?) Murphy's law at its best. (Mets fans will get that joke)

Now here is the ultimate problem: REMOVAL.

Essence Wake Up applied like butter and came off as easily as it should have. Sally Hansen Blue it made me want to cry. It stained my cuticles to the point I had to take a shower, use cuticle remover, and then soak my hands in warm water. And that was before I even tried to take the polish off. (Confession: I got a manicure so the nail tech had to do that for me. Bless her heart.)

While I love my Mets (Oh hey, David Wright!) and my Knicks (Oh, welcome to the party, old Carmelo Anthony. So nice of you to join us with 15 games left in the entire season.), I don't think I would ever do this again. It was too much of a headache to remove and clean up. I'll just stick to my good, old-fashioned Metsicure.

Although, if the Mets make it to the World Series, I'll double barrier with tape and Vaseline. May this be my problem come October.

Until tomorrow!
Princess Polish