Press Sample
Confession time … I have a stock pile of old swatches! I change my nail polish every single day, so when I don’t blog for a few days I get backed up on swatches and photographs to show you. I could probably not paint my nails for an entire month or two and still have new material for you guys. That is helping out so much now because if you follow me on Instagram you know that I had a really bad break. So I can still show you guys nice long nails while I give them time to grow.
Essence “Miss Universe” is a blackened navy with brighter blue shimmer. I normally gravitate towards creme’s in this color but the strong blue shimmer makes this polish a little more interesting and intense. I really love what it looks like when it hits the light because it makes it look almost like a black to blue duochrome.
The formula however was pretty bad! I hate giving bad reviews but I can’t even sugar coat this one. This formula was so sheer and watery it was hard to work with. This is 4 coats … yep, 4! It took 4 coats to get opaque, and when you have that many coats on your nails, even the fastest drying polish becomes as slow as molasses on dry time. The first 2 coats dried really quickly but the last 2 took forever! I wanted to love this, especially because its affordable and from a brand I love! But sadly, I can’t say I like it.
What do you guys think? What are your favorite Essence shades?
misshollyberries 
It’s pretty… that being said, anything over 2 coats gets too messy for me 😦
same here, totally not worth it. ain’t nobody got time for 4 coats
great blue color
I don’t like Essence or Catrice but you know that lol. The colour is ok 🙂
I really like that. I only have a couple of Essences – Break Through, I think, which is purple, and Ultimate Pink, and I just got Evil Queen from a blog sale, which is huge purple glitter. It’s awesome but it begs for glitter placement and I don’t know if I have the patience! (You did the glitter placement tutorial, didn’t you? I guess I need to go watch it again!)
I own many Essence products (which are easy to find here in Italy and really inexpensive!), mostly nail-related items. I have lots of fast base coats drying top coats and “Special Effect” toppers (with glitters, flakes, holo…) and I must say I really like them! The unpleasant part is removing chuncky glitters from my nails (they seem to want to stay there forever!), but I guess this is something to expect. I also have a few nail art items, such as caviar beads, flocking powder and stripers: nothing to complain about, for that price.
Talking about nail polish in the strict sense, I’ve only tried a few shades so far, and they’re not bad: one of them was a real one-coater, another one had a nice oil slick effect. I recently took advantage of a sale, so I have a bunch of new bottles to try, Miss Universe included!
Sorry for the loooooooooooooong message! 😛
I apologize for any mistakes or “weirdness” in my English – I’m not a native speaker.
Have a nice day, everybody!
no problem at all for the long message! i love long messages and you didn’t have any weirdness lol you’re awesome! thanks for commenting ilaria!
Ooops, I meant “base coats” and “fast dry top coats”, but my keyboard seems to have decided otherwise. Sorry!!
Thanks for your kind words, Holly, and keep up the good work!
Have you tried with a layer of black or dark blue underneath and a layer of this one on top? Since this is opaque it might work, right?
i haven’t but i might try that out. thanks for the suggestion!