Essie Blossom Dandy

I came across the Essie spring collection yesterday! It's a pretty set of colors, but the only one that really screamed "BUY ME!" was Blossom Dandy. I think it's the most unique of the bunch. Blossom Dandy is a cool-toned pastel blue with a nice hint of mint to it.

Outdoors:

Basking in the direct sunlight: 

LOVE. THIS. COLOR. It's beyond gorgeous, guys. This was a instant shoe-in for one of my all-time favorite Essie's! The color is so stinkin' cute and absolutely perfect for spring. It's pastel and it manages to be sort of both blue AND green, so this polish is just hitting all my buttons.

The formula is pretty good. By pastel standards, it's really not all that streaky. However, I did find it doesn't self-level especially well, but it was nothing a little top coat couldn't fix. I used three coats here.

To me, this is the hands-down standout from all of Essie's spring collections. Just Stitched from Cashmere Matte is my second favorite, but Blossom Dandy is just freakin' perfect.

Butter London Chuffed

The sun is finally shining here these last few days, so I was in the mood for something fun and colorful on my nails. Enter Butter London Chuffed, a gleaming orange with iridescent gold-green shimmer. With its dense golden shimmer, it's the perfect polish to celebrate the sunshine with!

The color shift in the shimmer is very slight. I catch a fleeting glimpse of the green here and there (mostly with low, indoor lighting) but for the most part, it's gold--and that's not a bad thing, because the shimmer in this polish is AMAZING. Seriously, well done, Butter! I can't remember the last time I was so smitten with a shimmer polish!

Chuffed has a nice, workable consistency but it does go on sheer at first. If you don't share my rabid hatred for VNL, three coats should suffice. I used four here.

Essie Wrap Me Up

Let's continue our journey through Essie's Cashmere Matte Collection today with Wrap Me Up, a porcelain nude satin. This was one of the shades I was most looking forward to. I love me some off-whites and the satin finish of Wrap Me Up makes for absolutely perfect china doll nails!

The formula on Wrap Me Up was okay. It doesn't have the drag that Comfy In Cashmere does, but it is the streakiest of the Cashmere Mattes. It took me four coats to get full, even opacity. I also found it interesting that while the rest of the Cashmere Mattes have worn quite well on me (especially when you consider that I wear them without topcoat), Wrap Me Up chipped quickly. After less than a day of wear, I had a large chip on my right index finger and even when I wore it with topcoat, it still continued to chip consistently.

With topcoat, this one doesn't have the shimmer to it that the other Cashmere Mattes do; it looks more like a creme than anything else. If you're curious, you can see a pic of it with topcoat in yesterday's Twinsie Tuesday post. It's a great blank canvas shade to either wear alone or use as a base for glitter and other goodies!

Twinsie Tuesday: Soft And Feminine

Sorry I'm late, guys! I haven't been feeling too well since last night, so my blogging plans fell by the wayside. But I did still try to whip up a lil' something that fit our theme of "soft and feminine." When all else fails, you can always slap some glitter on top and call it good--words to live by! Here's what I was able to muster:

I stuck with a nice, clean neutral base (Essie Wrap Me Up), then threw in a dash of white and pastel pink glitter (OPI Let's Do Anything We Want!) to try and girly things up. Again, nothing extraordinary but I do think it makes for a cute combo and it's pretty dainty-looking, which I think fits the bill well enough for this theme. :)

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Lisa at The Polish Playground

Lakeisha at Refined and Polished

Kristine at Pink and Polished Nails

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amanda at Amandalandish

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Lumina Lacquer All Tied Up

Lumina Lacquer All Tied Up is a pink, purple and white explosion of circle and hex glitters. Usually the mere presence of circle glitter (let alone holographic circle glitter, as is the case with All Tied Up) is enough to earn my stamp of approval, but what's really magical about All Tied Up is the inclusion of bow-shaped glitters!

All Tied Up was originally a holiday polish from Lumina, but with the right base, I think it makes an awesome spring glitter topper too! My choice here was Deborah Lippmann Build Me Up Buttercup. I was tempted to use a baby pink creme, but I thought the pastel yellow gave the glitters more of a chance to pop.

All Tied Up was a little tricky to apply. It took some maneuvering to keep the glitters from bunching all together. The dabbling method of application is your best bet to ensure even distribution across the nail. I used two coats here.

All Tied Up is a discontinued polish (sorry y'all), but there are plenty of other goodies to be found at Lumina Lacquer's website.

Review: Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food

We all have it: somewhere, in our vast hordes of cremes, shimmers and sparkles, that one glitter polish that hasn't stood the test of time. Whether it's gotten all gummed up or the glitter has sunk to the bottom of the base, for one reason or another, it's just not what it used to be. I was really bummed when I went to wear one of my favorite indie glitters a while back and found it had changed for the worse. The glitter had sunk to the bottom and the suspension base was super thick and gunky. Maybe I didn't seal this polish up well enough or maybe it just didn't hold up--either way, it was completely flat and virtually unusable.

I tried to salvage it with polish thinner (PSA: DO NOT use polish remover to thin a polish--all you'll do is damage your polish) and even after putting an insane amount of thinner, there was no visible difference. The base had gotten so thick that the metal mixing balls inside couldn't move and help disperse the thinner throughout the bottle.

I have a couple sunken down glitters (none near as bad as this one) I've been meaning to try and fix anyways, so I figured the time was right to try Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food. I'm a huge fan of their Glitter A-Peel peel-off basecoat for glitter manis and I've always wanted to try Glitter Food after hearing so many positive things about it.

Glitter Food is a two-in-one product. Its first purpose--and the one that interested me the most--is that it can help save glitters experiencing any of the issues I mentioned above. When you have a polish where the original suspension base used was not strong enough to hold up the glitter (this is more common with polishes that have larger glitter pieces), Glitter Food gives it an extra boost to help the polish look and apply the way it should.

I tried it on a couple of my sunken glitters and it worked exactly as described! If you have a bottle that is nearly full or a bottle where the clear base has completely separated from the glitter, you might need to suck out some of the old suspension base with an eyedropper and then replace it with Glitter Food. It takes a little shaking up and then a few minutes to let Glitter Food do its magic (I usually turn the bottle upside-down while it sits), then you've got a glitter polish that looks good as new! Your big glitter pieces float back up to the top of the bottle and everything is distributed nice and evenly!

So it worked with mild cases, but could it save my poor pink glitter? This bottle was so flat, that no eyedropper was needed; I just poured some Glitter Food straight in. After lots of shaking and giving Glitter Food a few minutes to settle in, I used an orange stick to stir the glitter around a bit and let the Glitter Food penetrate deeper into the bottle. After a few more minutes, here's how it looked:

 Ta-da! I have my polish back!! It looks and applies wonderfully and you'd never guess that just a few minutes before, it looked like this polish was done for. If Glitter Food can salvage this worst-case scenario, I'm confident in recommending it as a fix for virtually any glitter polish problem!

Those results alone were worth the price of Glitter Food for me. But as I said earlier, that's not all Glitter Food does! It can also be used for smoothing out "hungry" glitters that eat topcoat and leave a rough or gritty finish. You'll find it's thicker than most top coats, but that's what makes it so smoothing. I also want to note that on its own, Glitter Food has a semi-matte finish to it, so you'll need to use regular topcoat over Glitter Food if you want some shine.

 So there you have it: another genius, innovative product from Nail Pattern Boldness! I hear NPB makes a fantastic base and top coat system as well, so that's next on my list to try. But it's going to take a lot to dethrone my current fav, Deborah Lippmann Gel Lab!

You can purchase Glitter Food from Nail Pattern Boldness' website.

Twinsie Tuesday: Endometriosis Awareness Nails

Endometriosis is a hormonal and immune system disease in which cell grows outside the uterine cavity, causing extreme pain and infertility. This female reproductive disease affects approximately 1 in 10 women worldwide. Today, the Twinsie Tuesday girls are wearing yellow to bring awareness to this debilitating disease.

I chose a pastel yellow creme, Deborah Lippmann Build Me Up Buttercup. When you're as pale and as blonde as I am, you have to be careful with yellows, but I can usually do okay with pastel ones like this.

The formula is pretty decent--certainly world better than the other DL yellow I own, Yellow Brick Road. It goes on a little streaky (still, show me a pastel yellow that doesn't) but it's not chalky in the slightest. I used three coats here.

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Chelsea at Nailed

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Erin at Paint Those Piggies

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

Lakeisha at Refined and Polished
​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Tiffany at Polished To Precision