Essie Navigate Her + Mini Haul

Essie Navigate Her is a lovely pistachio style green. I think of all polish colors, I am drawn toward green more than any other color (followed very closely by pink!). I’ve read on some blogs that Navigate Her is similar to, if not a dupe for Butter London’s Bossy Boots; however, Bossy Boots seems a lot lighter to me. This can also be verified on The Polish Squirrel, who has a great comparison between Navigate Her, Bossy Boots, and Essie’s Da Bush.

I adore Navigate Her, and it was easy to apply. This is two coats plus a top coat, in full sunlight.

Even though this is a warmer toned green, it isn’t so warm that it will look bad on people with cool skin tones (like myself!).

I also have a little mini Essie haul to share! Ever since I discovered that one of the local Wal-Mart stores frequently marks down Essie to prices as low as $3, I check their store every once in awhile to see if there’s anything new on clearance, and this weekend the holiday Luxe Effects collection was marked down to $3.75, so I purchased Pure Pearlfection. I also got the two mini bottles picture above: Braziliant and Super Bossa Nova. They had another set of minis and the large bottle of As Gold As It Gets, but they were all pretty similar to polishes I already have.

May Favorites!

Once again, since the month is winding down, I am going to recap with five of my favorite polishes for May. While Butter London reigned supreme in April, I think Essie was my favorite polish this month! Here are my top five for May.

First up, Essie’s Bikini So Teeny! Crisp and clean, great application, and an overall gorgeous color!

Next  is OCC’s Grandma! This polish has made it into my “take on vacation” bag (make note of this, MOM). I even found a dress that goes with it perfectly from Old Navy. It’s one of those “ugly beautiful” dresses.

This is the dress, but the photo does not look like it does in person. In real life, the dress is more green hued and you can also see the colors in the floral design a bit better. Grandma matches the pink and red hues nicely!

Nicole by OPI’s Kim Konfidential is definitely a favorite this month. I love everything about this polish, except for the fact that it doesn’t show up too well in photos!

Lights from Essie is probably my favorite neon polish right now. It is bright, but not uncomfortably bright, and the application is great. This is one of my all-time favorite pinks!

I had a hard time choosing the last polish, but ultimately went with Cream Tea from Butter London. I LOVE wearing white in polish and with clothes, so this polish is just an all over win for me! We’ll see what June brings! This should be an interesting month, because I’ll be gone for nearly two weeks to visit my parents (aka the “vacation”). I’ll also be seeing my grandmother who inspired this blog, so I’ll see what she has to say about my polish this time! 🙂

 

Sally Hansen HD -Byte

I can’t believe I’m typing this right now…It’s nearly 11:30 pm and I’ve been awake since 5:30 this morning thanks to a thunderstorm that ended up lasting SIX hours. When we get storms, two of our dogs get REALLY scared and of course they come to me for comfort, so going back to bed was not happening. Plus, when I’m up, I’m up.

Anyway, enough rambling and on to the polish! This Sally Hansen HD polish is called Byte and these photos don’t do it justice. This is another polish I got when the HD polishes were 75% off at Rite Aid, just like Hue.

Byte is a hot pink polish with a duochrome effect thanks to some blue flecks. I tried really hard to capture this on camera, but it shows through in real life a lot more. This polish is a little thin and sheer, and I really want to try it by layering it over black, but this time I just used three coats of it.

The blue comes across a little more in this indoor shot. Just like I did with Hue, I could not stop looking at my hands with this stuff on! I love it!

Essie Bikini So Teeny

Bikini So Teeny is one of the new shades in Essie’s summer collection. Described as a “sparkling, cornflower blue” (cornflower was also a favorite of mine in the giant Crayola box), this polish is one of the more unique blues I have and it seems to have a *touch* of periwinkle to it. Also, the shimmer is barely there and hard to see, but that is not a deal breaker for me. I love this color!

And there’s my sad middle finger. Would you believe that’s still not as short as it was when I chewed my nails? Shave a couple millimeters off and there you have it. Anyway, this is in full sun. I did not capture the shimmer whatsoever in these photos; that’s how small it is!

Here it is indoors. The colors in this collection are really pretty, but this is the one I wanted the most. I still want Mojito Madness, which is a gorgeous, grassy green shade, although it’s described by Essie as lime green.

Essie Lights

Lights is from the new summer neon collection, Poppy-Razzi, and it is a simply divine BRIGHT pink! As a girl who has loved pink her entire life (and wanted everything in my bedroom to be pink, which my parents lovingly obliged to with pink walls and bedding), I clearly LOVE this color!

This time I was smart enough to put a layer of white down first to make the pink really pop! I used two coats of Lights over one coat of plain white (by Sinful Colors), and added Seche Vite as a top coat.

Here it is indoors. Sigh…look at my middle nail all long…It broke in half right in the middle and now the whole nail is gone. I knew that if I managed to save the nail I would be wanting to chew it, so it’s best to just remove it. Anyway, I highly recommend Lights! It’s a fun color and more rich than some of the other neon pinks out there.

CND Blueberry Whip

WHAT a work week this has been….I have been swamped with grading and late grading and all of that fun stuff that comes along with teaching. Anyway, I have photos and photos sitting on my camera and finally got some sorted! CND Blueberry Whip looks exactly like when you eat blueberries in cereal and milk is tinted in the bottom of the bowl. 🙂

These photos have a bit of a yellow tint since I took them late in the day outside! This color is very pale and creamy. It is also one of the first polishes I got when I stopped biting my nails, and the name “Blueberry Whip” is totally sentimental because of my grandparents and spending summers at their camp in the summer.

Here it is with China Glaze White Cap over it. This ended up being really pretty with just the right amount of shimmer, which is difficult to see here thanks to the sun! The application of Blueberry Whip is nice and smooth, and when layering it with another polish it’s easy to get away with one coat.

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Grandma

Grandma is one of my FAVORITE polish names! Described as a “bright, clean coral”, this polish is a unique color to me. It looks more red in the photos, but like Butter London Trout Pout, it has a little something that makes it different than the typical red or coral. This polish is like Trout Pout’s mom (or grandma!).

Here it is in full sun. It’s vibrant, but still has an element of softness to it. OH! This color is also exactly the same as the font on Faygo’s Diet Rock & Rye pop (except the font has shimmer in it).

Here it is indoors, in natural light. I might have to wear this when I see my grandma (who inspired this blog) in a few weeks, just to see what she says. Like my other OCC polishes, the application was easy and perfect. This is two coats with Seche Vite on top.

Essence You Belong to Me + Milani Jewel FX Gold

Essence’s You Belong To Me is probably one of the most famous Essence shades, since a lot of people feel it is a good Tiffany blue shade, and this is always a popular color. From what I’ve read, the actual shade of blue is under some kind of copyright and legally can’t be reproduced. Anyway, I decided to pair this shade with something very bold: the huge glitters in Milani Jewel FX polish!

I actually like this combination a lot! The blue is nice and soft, and the gold gives it a cute pop. Plus, I like these colors together.

In the sun, this big glitter gives off a wonderful sparkle. I LOVE this huge glitter!

For such a chunky glitter, it is easy to apply. I used two coats of Essence and one coat of the glitter polish. I’ve worn this glitter a few times and this is definitely my favorite combination so far. It also looks great with hot pink (Sinful Colors 24/7- a combo my hubby loved).

Nicole by OPI Kim Konfidential

I can’t believe I got this polish, because I am not a big Kardashian fan. Not that I hate them or anything, but I usually don’t go for the stuff they’re hocking. I found the Kim Kardashian nail polishes marked 50% off in a bin at Meijer, and I bought Kim Konfidential and Lights, Kim-Era, Action (a shimmery top coat). I worried this nude would be too yellowy for my cool skin tone, but I am very happy to report that I LOVE this polish. I love it so much that I went back and got a spare, which I have NEVER done.

Here it is indoors, in natural light. This color is described as a “honey-nude”. It definitely looks more tan here.

Here it is in full sunlight. It is a touch lighter than my actual skin tone, which makes it pretty much a perfect nude shade for me. I think this might be a good choice for wearing to weddings. It’s hard to capture the true color of this polish on camera, but I think it would work for a lot of skin tones and types.

 

NYX Moonwalk + L’Oreal Raven’s Strength

These two polishes together ended up being a dreamy combination. L’Oreal Raven’s Strength is a limited edition polish that came out with the Project Runway collection in late 2011. This polish is GORGEOUS. It’s a very deep gray with some shimmer, but has a very creamy quality to it. NYX Moonbeam is comparable to Orly Androgynie, but I think the glitter might be more obvious in the NYX polish. I don’t have both though, so I’m just going by other swatches and what it looks like in the bottle!

The bright sunlight detracts from the steely quality of the finish, but I ended up seriously loving this combination!

The formula on this L’Oreal polish was a lot better than Now You Sea Me. It was also opaque in one coat, and then I used one coat of Moonwalk.