Saturday, February 13, 2010

Cozy Layering with Essie


I've had my OPI Got the Blues for Red mani on for almost a week now with absolutely ZERO chips, but I got bored. I have quite the vicious cold and I needed something soft and cuddly as opposed to va-va-va-voom vixen. (Plus my head is pounding and the red was just...too loud!) I decided that some of my new Essie sheers ($1 a piece at TJ Maxx!) might do the trick! So I did something I don't normally do and layered a sheer over a pastel. I'm not usually into layering because well, I'm lazy - but some of these Essies are just begging to be layered. So here is Essie Sophisticated Lady (1 coat) over Essie St. Lucia Lilac (2 coats):




Kind of like the snuggly grey sweatshirt I have layered over my PJs right now, Sophisticated Lady adds a layer of coziness to St. Lucia Lilac. On its own, St. Lucia Lilac can be a little stark, a little cold - but one layer of the pretty soft pink with blue shimmer of Sophisticated Lady warms it up a little and makes it feel more feminine and soft.


L: Essie St. Lucia Lilac; R: Essie Sophisticated Lady


The formula on both of these is impressive. I often find pastels to be a pain - thick and chalky or thin and runny. St. Lucia Lilac is neither of these and applied flawlessly and painlessly in 2 coats. Sophisticated Lady is a lovely sheer that is streak-free (I tried it on its own up to 3 coats - not a streak is sight!) and has a little something extra with a blue flash that is unfortunately hard to capture on camera - you can *kind of* see it in the bottle pics.

If these hadn't been easy to apply I would have trashed the idea of doing a mani today, because honestly I feel too icky. But it was completely painless and now that I have it on, I love looking at it! :)

Do you guys ever layer polishes? Do you like some of the effects it creates or is it too time-consuming for you?

My tissue box and I are quite enjoying the Olympics and cheering for the Dutch speed-skating team! I hope everyone is doing well, staying warm, and spending time with loved ones. :) Hubs and I are re-scheduling Valentine's Day to a non-Hallmark-sanctioned day because we can't be together tomorrow. Might be a good thing seeing how gross I am right now...at least my nails are pretty!

kittytokaren


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9 comments:

Paige said...

Ooo, that is a beautiful color!

mKat said...

Sorry to hear you aren't feeling well. *hugs* Rest up! (When I'm feeling like that the last thing I want to do is surround myself with polish fumes so you're a braver lady than I!)

I think your polish looks lovely layered. Great colour on you!

I've layered some stuff in the past. It's the closest I have gotten to frankening. :) I think I'm mostly inclined to layer when I'm sponging (though not exclusively).

PolishedSheep said...

I hope you're well soon!

The layering is wonderful!

I only layered once (and only one nail): CG Bermuda Breakaway + CG Dorothy Who? - but it killed the fresh vibe from Dotothy Who? so I didn't really like it.

Lucy said...

Aw, get well soon!

I only tend to layer glitter polishes over the top of other polishes, I'm not brave enough x

http://beauty-and-the-blogger.blogspot.com/

kittytokaren said...

@mKat - thanks for the hugs! I couldn't even smell the polish fumes and I was so bored but couldnt physically do anything else so it was good. :) Yeah I'm not a frankener (real word? no?) either so this is as close as I'm going to get...I've never been brave enough to sponge! I want to try a gradient mani soon though! (as soon as I can get my hands on some smudge fixer!)

@polishedsheep - thank youuu!! Yeah I was worried SL might totally kill St Lucia Lilac's prettiness like with your layering experiment, but its so sheer that it just softened it a little. If it looked ugly I would have gone *gasp* naked. :P

@Lucy - Thanks :) And I'm going to check out your bloggie!! <3

<3 kittytokaren

Grace said...

I don't layer too often, but sometimes I get fed up at vampy jellies that take too many coats to be opaque, so I'll layer two coats of the jelly over one coat of a black creme. I did hear about a neat trick where you do a coat of jelly a coat of a clear glitter or glass fleck polish, and then another coat of the jelly. It gives it a "ruby pumps - like" texture. I've only tried it once and it took way too long to dry, but I did like how it made the glitter much less obvious than it would be if you just layered it on top.

kelsealaurel said...

So pretty!!! Looks great on you. Happy vday! =)

kittytokaren said...

@Grace - I recently tried the trick of layering a jelly over a nude to get rid of VNL - totally works!!

@kelsealaurel - <3<3<3 happy vday to you too my friend!

Anonymous said...

5 days are impressive. Both chipping-wise and like-wise. I never keep a polish on more then max 3 days. But I'm planning to do a chip test post on my site. :)

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