Essie’s Armed and Ready review

Posted on Wednesday, at bought • 954 views

  • Manufacturer: Essie
  • Availability: part of the regular line; released in spring 2012 as part of the Go Overboard collection
  • Description: charcoal grey-brown with red and gold shimmer
  • Cost/Amount: USD$8 for 13.6 ml / .46 fl oz
  • Would you purchase again: yes
Essie’s Armed and Ready

This was My First Essie Polish. I saw the photos on beauty blogs, and knew that I really had to have this one. The color in the bottle looks like your somewhat-standard-ish cement-grey with beige tones. Then you look closely and see the red and gold shimmer, and BAM suddenly two bottles have jumped into your shopping basket and well, when they're so eager like that it's rude to put them back on the shelf. (And they're so pretty!!)

The polish applied very smoothly. I could have stopped at two coats, but I wanted to get more of the shimmer to be visible. It wore fairly well, and honestly, I wasn't too happy that my favorite stand-by top coat (Zoya's Armor) kind of dulled the shimmer a bit. I possibly could have gotten more than three days' wear from this manicure had I applied a fourth coat and just added a top coat; but I really wanted to capture the red and gold shimmer in the photos.

Photos that show how the product actually performs...! See how I create my swatches

Close-up photo of the middle three fingernails of the left hand, showing the nail color applied. The left hand holding a bottle of nail polish and displaying all manicured fingernails, with 2 coats of Essie's Armed and Ready Four fingers in a row, resting on the thumb, with all nails displaying 2 coats of Essie's Armed and Ready

For most polishes, I only take indoor photos - first, because I live in a rain forest, so sunny days are most definitely a seasonal thing. Second, I spend most of my time indoors, and I'm guessing that most of us spend at least half our waking time indoors, so if a polish has to have full sun to show its beauty, it needs to be nice enough for me to wear without that. The sunlight-dazzle is definitely a rarely-glimpsed bonus. This polish is like my holographic polishes: looks lovely under indoor lighting, I really enjoy wearing it, but there's something extra that - for me - only shows up in sunlight. The second group of pictures is a series of outdoor shots: different angles, and one that's more close up to show some of the detail.

I'm glad I got this polish, and I'm glad it's part of the regular line (from what I can see - it's now on the regular Orly stands, not pulled off shelves like many other seasonal colors.)

Like this entry? Check these out:


or look at other entries tagged with Brand: Essie, grey, nail color, neutral, shimmer

Comments

Commenting is not available in this channel entry.