China Glaze and Essie

Last week I bought a couple nail polishes from the new China Glaze Anchors Away collection from Head2Toe, and got them just a couple days later. I purchased Ahoy! and Below Deck. I wore Ahoy! first. I wasn't blown away by it, but it's nice enough. Raspberry pink with microglitter. Kind of a jelly finish, and the application was smooth. As usual, it started chipping on me by the second day, so I took it off and applied Below Deck, which is one of the trendy colors these days. Mushroomy, grey, purpley, taupey color. Strange, but strangely pretty. It changes hue depending on what it's near. If it's near purple, it looks more brown; near brown or gray, it looks more purple. The formula was a little on the thick side, but that works to its benefit I think. Fully opaque in two coats, and pretty glossy on its own. I wore that for almost three days, but it was chipping on me, and had to come off.

In my shopping today, I found the new Essie display at Walmart, and bought Dive Bar. It's a dark, nearly black polish, with strong blue/green shimmer. Gorgeous in the bottle. I put that on this evening. Formula: thin and kind of watery. Has a tendency to pool in the brush, then suddenly flood the nail with polish. Difficult to control. Thin coats look watery and streaky, so I ended up doing a thick coat for the first, and following up with a relatively thin coat for the second. Good opacity and color in two coats. *sigh* I just notice I have some crud stuck IN my ring fingernail. It looks like this mani will be very short lived. I'll have to do it again, probably tomorrow. Hopefully I can manage it better next time. I've never dealt with a thin formula and a sparse brush at the same time.