New Essie Haul - Swatches and Review

Hi all!

It's late at the weekend for posting I know, am having to work Saturday mornings again, and it really throws out my routine.  This achilles problem seems to be dragging on and on....

However, the sun actually came out yesterday, and I finally got around to swatching the Essies I bought a week or so ago from my trusty TK Maxx.  Good job too, because it's done nothing but rain today, if it carries on I'll need a canoe to get to work in the morning!

I was so excited when I saw these in the shop, because it actually contained polishes I'd heard of, they were Ballet Slippers, Orange It's Obvious, Tour De Finance, and Navigate Her.  For £9.99 for all four, I didn't need asking twice to pick this set up.  I'd been disappointed with the last set of Essies I got there, reviewed HERE so if I hadn't heard of these ones, I probably wouldn't have picked them up.

The first one I swatched, I nearly didn't bother with, because I knew I wouldn't like it, Ballet Slippers.  I already know it's a sheer and as you know I hate VNL, so wasn't expecting too much.  As it was, I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would.  Here's the pics.  Firstly outdoors:

Next indoors in shaded light:

As I always do, I made notes while I was swatching, and next to this one I wrote, first coat - not even there, which tells you how sheer it is.  The second coat was a bit patchy and streaky, so I did a third coat and this evened it out. It is super-shiny, and dry time was medium.  I don't despise it, so it can't be all bad.

Next I swatched Navigate Her.  This was the one I was most excited to try, as alot of people seem to like it.  The formula was a bit of a nightmare, I had to take off my first attempt to apply this, as it just looked so scruffy.  It managed somehow to be runny without having any nice flowy-ness.  The first coat went on streaky.  I used 3 coats for the photos and it needed them all, as the second coat produced bald patches as it was drying.  Here's what it looked like in the garden:

It's lucky for it that it's such a pretty colour, kind of a pastelly khaki, or I wouldn't consider using it again because of the formula.  As it is, I'll probably get this one out again from time to time.  Here's a pic taken inside:

Next up we have Tour De Finance, I loved the name of this one, I don't wear many pinks but this one has a nice purply shimmer running through it, which gives it a nice depth.  I liked the formula of this one.  The first coat was patchy, but I only needed two coats for these pictures.  Firstly outside:

Next indoors.  This shows the shimmer quite well:

Last but not least, we have Orange, It's Obvious.  In the bottle this is a really bright primary orange.  It had a reasonably good opacity, this is 3 coats, but I could still tell where my nail tips were, so it's not going to be a go-to.  It reminded me very much of Nails Inc's Portobello, which I reviewed HERE it had the same runny formula, but it was reasonably fast drying.  Here's the outside pic:

And here's a close up.  I didn't have any inside pics, as my cuticles were starting to look a bit ick, and this was one of the least disgusting pics I could find out of the ones I took:

And last but not least, here's the brush shot.  It was a wide but flat brush, it was actually very wide, and if you have narrow fingers you might struggle, but I didn't find it too bad.  The green brush is sideways on:

So there we have it, one set swatched, do you own any of these?  What do you think?

Until next time......

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~