Essie's annual bridal color collection was a shock this year. Why? Because it contains no sheers. I'm serious, every color in this collection is a full-coverage opaque finish. How unexpected is that?!
Essie Instant Hot. A peach-tinged white creme base with metallic silver shimmer. On my nails this looks mostly white with just a hint of peach to it, but in the bottle it looks a lot more peach. The shimmer in this is flat and silver, like silver foil, and the particles seem fairly large, but it doesn't show up on the nail. This color is also extremely streaky; it required four coats to become even. Looks very harsh.
Essie Like To Be Bad. This is a peach-pink creme base with pink-purple-orange duochrome shimmer. Sadly, the shimmer in this one doesn't show up on the nail, either. You can see a little bit of it in very bright light, but not enough to really notice unless you're staring at it.
Essie Love and Acceptance. A very light grey-purple creme. Mellow and muted, slightly more purple than grey.
Essie Who Is The Boss? Light blue-toned green creme. Has a bit of grey in it. It's quite faded/weathered/desaturated looking, but not quite pastel. Also very streaky.
The formula on these was not good. All the shades were streaky, some worse than others. I did four coats of all just to even out the streakiness. The texture was a little less smooth than usual, which only exacerbated the streakiness of the polish. The dry time was good, though, very quick.
Lately Essie has been so good about making their colors smooth and streak-free, so I was surprised and disappointed that these were so streaky. In addition to the streaky formula, all of the shades look rather harsh and chalky and I didn't find any of them to be flattering on my hands. I can't say that any of these are really worth having... Essie already has much nicer soft shades from previous collections that apply smoother and that don't look so harsh. Who Is The Boss? does seem like a unique color at least.
The Essie 2012 Bridal Collection is available at salons now.
(This was sent for review.)
Edit: Anyone having problems viewing the images in full size, or is it just on my end?
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Essie Bridal Collection Spring 2012 Swatches and Review
Monday, April 30, 2012
Jessica Bliss is This Bridal Collection for Spring/Summer 2012 Swatches and Review
Check out this little three-shade bridal collection from Jessica. Very different from the usual pale, washed-out pinks and sheer whites that usually make up bridal nail polish collections. The shades in Jessica's 2012 bridal collection, Bliss is This, are:
Jessica Desire. An odd light wine shade with a creme finish. 
Jessica Flirtation. A medium dusty tea rose color with a creme finish. 
Jessica Love Story. A light cantaloupe orange with a creamy jelly finish.Formula on all was good. Slightly thick in texture, but easy application. Just be careful about applying thin coats and the formula shouldn't give you any trouble. Perfect brushes. I did three coats of each and all were completely opaque in three. Somewhat long dry time.
It's cool that they chose three very non-traditional colors for their 2012 bridal collection, but I can't say I really like any of them. Not much else to say about it!
The Jessica Bliss is This collection is available in both regular polish and in GELeration Soak-Off Gel polish and can be purchased directly from Jessica Cosmetics.
(This was sent for review.)
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Essie 2011 Bridal Collection Swatches
Normally Bridal collections are a mess of sheer, watery pinks and lifeless off-whites... Essie managed to actually throw some fun color into their Bridal collection this year! And nothing too sheer. This is the best Bridal collection I've seen. That said, it's still a little on the traditional side...
Better Together. The obligatory pale pink. It's sheer, but it's not too sheer, which is a pleasant surprise. You can wear it at one or two coats for a sheer wash of color, or at four coats for an opaque milky pink look like I'm wearing here. This is actually a pretty flattering color. Normally I feel like super pale whites and pinks suck the life out of your hands, but this looks surprisingly fresh and cute.
Borrowed And Blue. I'm seeing more and more of this blue bridal nail polish trend and I think I'm liking it. This one is a pastel sky blue, more of a baby blue really, but with a very dense milky white base. This color gives me major lobster hands, but I'd still wear it. Sky blue polishes always remind me of the 90s- the decade of excellent nail polish. Pretty sure I still have my original bottle of Hard Candy Sky somewhere around here...
First Dance. Whoa baby. Flaming bright red. In a bridal collection? Naughty, naughty. Is the name supposed to be some sort of innuendo? I like it. This is an excellent red, too. I've really been fond of these retro pinup girl cherry red cremes lately.
Made To Honor. And here we have the very traditional bridal nude. It's also a sheer, but here at four coats, it's mostly opaque, and even looks a bit jelly-like to me. This has a beige base to it, unlike Better Together which is pure pink. This is really fleshy looking.
The formula on these was decent. It varied between colors- Better Together and Made To Honor were a little runny and unwieldy, First Dance was absolute perfection, practically applied itself, and Borrowed and Blue was streaky on the first coat but nice and perfectly opaque and even at three. The brushes were good, very easy to control and get a nice even curve with them. Dry time was great.
Overall, it's still a bridal collection, but it's a step in a new direction. Sheer pinks and whites are traditional and appropriate for bridal collections, but more and more brides are going with fun colors of their own choosing instead of the seemingly required bleh cliche french manicure. This small collection has its expected sheer pinks, but it also has a bridal blue- you know, for 'something blue', and an audacious bright red. Love that.
(This was sent to me for review.)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Essie Bridal Collection 2008
I've been meaning to swatch this collection for MONTHS, but my nails are always so stained that I haven't been able to until now. For some reason my nails are really nice and white and pretty right now... I haven't done anything different! Maybe it's from all the swatching I've done this week. Who knows. I'm not complaining.
Anyway, just in case you like these polishes and don't want to read my less-than-glowing opinion of them, I'll post the pictures first and my review second :)
Blushing Bride. A sheer milky cream with a bit of a pink tint.
Cloud Nine. A sheer bright white jelly.
Happily Ever After. A sheer milky shade.
No Pre-Nup. A sheer pink jelly.
Tie The Knot. An off-white cream with a hint of beige.
True Love. A sheer peachy-pink jelly.
Now for my review.
Honestly, I HATE this collection. Sorry sheer-lovers. I just can't do it!
First of all, I never wear these types of colors so they are way outside of my comfort zone. They're not my style, not my personality, and really, really uninteresting to me. I'll go so far as to say that these polishes depress me. When I look down at my hands while wearing these, it's like seeing someone else's hands attached to my body. Freaky.
Second, what you're looking at is SIX COATS OF POLISH. No, I'm totally serious, six freaking coats of polish are on my nails here and they're not even close to being opaque. I do not like to see my nails through my polish. If I were to do only two or three coats of these polishes, it would pretty much look like I'm wearing nothing on my nails. I just don't see the point. With foundation it's one thing- wearing makeup to look like you're not wearing makeup. But my nails? This look is not for me, that's for sure.
Third, if your nails are even the least bit yellow or stained, these polishes will look like total crap. There is no hiding stains with these polishes. Any little bit of damage (like those white lines from where I slammed my finger in a cabinet) or discoloration will be glaringly obvious. These polishes require naturally flawless nails to wear, otherwise it just enhances and draws attention to any flaws that are present.
The colors are boring, plain, demure, uninteresting, natural and just all around too feminine for me. This means that a lot of women probably love these to death, and more power to them. If you like these colors, awesome for you. Thousands of them exist in the world and you can easily find something to suit your tastes. For me, they are the essence of frustration. When I go to the store looking for a cool new polish in a fun color, all I can find are hundreds of sheer pinks!! Sheer pinks are the bane of my existence, if you haven't noticed. Hah!
Okay, okay. I know I'm being harsh. But hey, this is my blog!
I guess there's one color I like from this collection. Cloud Nine.
Cloud Nine is really pretty. It's a bright white jelly that brightens your nails and makes them look very clean. I think it would be a good base for other colors and I'm sure it would make a really natural looking french manicure. If it wasn't so sheer, I might actually wear it. It's soft enough to not look retro, super bright but not stark and chalky looking! It is a really nice white jelly.
Why do all 'bridal' collections have to be so plain? Not every bride on earth wants plain nails on her wedding day. I sure didn't- I wore glitter! Holo glitter! OPI Paris Couture For Sure and Orly Love Each Other, to be exact. I wish someone would release a funky bridal collection for people like me. Seriously, not every bride wants to look identical and not every bride wants the stereotypical chunky fake pink-and-whites that plague the pages of bridal magazines and posters inside salons.
I can see that there are plenty of situations that call for these types of polishes. Job interviews, perhaps. Very conservative offices, sure. Jobs where you're not allowed to wear polish but want to do it anyway without drawing attention to it, totally.
Not all collections of sheer pinks are boring and plain. In fact, there is a collection of sheer pinks and whites that I absolutely love and would totally wear (and have actually worn)! I'll post about that later this week. Light feminine colors can have character and still be pretty (and not need six coats to wear).
*sigh*
