Hi, me again, J!
If you guys remember from the last post, in the first photo were two nail polishes I got on the same day from a nail polish store called Cher2. One is a plummy-wine creme by China Glaze called Purr-fect Plum. It's my first plum polish, and I'm absolutely in love with it. It reminds me of Hilary Duff's album Dignity...not sure why. It's a more toned down version of a burgundy which makes it appropriate for any event whether it be casual or formal! For those who want to experiment with darker shades, this is a great transition colour as it has some red hues and it's not too dark, preventing the vampy look (unless that's what you're going for). It looks amazing with gold and I can only imagine how lovely it would look with a gold leaf polish such as OPI's The Man with the Golden Gun or Zoya's Gilty! Sadly I would never be able to afford one...
The formula is good, I get a reasonable opaque finish in two coats but I usually prefer three coats just to get the true colour. No problems with streaking. No huge problems with chipping, just at the tip of the nail around two days after it's been painted. I use the Seche Vite dry fast top coat to give my nails some shine.
The second polish I got was Essie's Leading Lady, a beautiful red glitter polish. This isn't your typical clear-based glitter top coat, but instead it has it's own raspberry red base. It's kind of sheer, but you would get an opaque finish in about three or four coats. As with typical Essie polishes, the formula is not too thick so there are no problems with the polish getting too thick. Personally I wouldn't wear this polish on all my nails on a day-to-day basis just because it's a bit too bling for me (and also a huge pain in the you-know-what to remove), but it would look nice as a French tip on a white base, as an accent nail, or how I recently paired it: with China Glaze's Merry Berry, by painting a dense amount of glitter by the tip of the nail and spreading it gradually down to the cuticle to create a gradient effect.
There are two sizes of circle-shaped glitters in the polish, but both are relatively small (but not fine). There is just the right amount of glitter in the formula to not have any bald spots on the nail, and you can definitely build up the intensity by layering the polish to create a densely-packed glitter nail. After you're done with applying the polish, make sure you use a layer (or perhaps even two) to seal the polish and to smooth the surface of the nail.
Hope you enjoyed this post!
xx,
J
