Thursday, May 14, 2009

Essie Punchy Pink and Then Some!

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I was reasonably happy to find my nakey nails in decent shape this morning. They have a tiny bit of staining from the dark blue using Dazzle Dry Base Coat rather than the Nu Nails that's been saving them, but just a tiny bit. Since I have no breaks in the skin on any of my fingers, I might just soak my nails in peroxide today or tomorrow to see if I can get rid of the little staining I picked up.

After a few manicures of blues and greens, I was up for a nice pink this morning, and thought to myself, "If I'm using a pink, why not use the most retina-searing pink nail polish I have?" That, Dear Reader, is Essie Punchy Pink from the Essie 2009 Neons.

Then I thought, "If I'm going with the most retina-searing pink I have, why not Konad the hell out of it?" So I did. I made it way over the top, using the "girl" pattern and a lace pattern from Konad plate M71 with Konad White Special Nail Polish.

The base with the Essie took five (yes, five) coats to be opaque and even. If I'd had some caffeine running through my veins, I would have thought of using a coat of white under it, which would have limited the Essie to two to three coats, but alas, in the interest of better application, I held off on the coffee. But Diamont did not let me down - I was stamping away in under ten minutes.

I know some people have the initial reaction that Diamont's too expensive, but if you use the refill bottles (which I do), it's just a few cents more per bottle than Seche Vite is from the etailers. I get the smaller 8 oz bottle of Diamont for $40, which comes out to $2.50 per 0.5 oz bottle, and the 4 oz + 0.5 oz kit of SV is about $2.19 per bottle from Trans Design. To get something that's faster drying, causes no shrinkage or tipwear, and is basically bulletproof (six days is my record for a mani with it, no refresher, chips or tipwear and changed out of boredom), I'll pay $0.31 more. Also, Nubar's running a promo through tomorrow where you get a free bottle of Diamont & their base coat (not Nu Nails, their B3F equivalent of Stickey) with orders of $50 or more, which works out better than 25% off a $50 order, so if you've been tempted to try Diamont but thought it was too expensive, now's a good time to go get the little bottle to refill as a freebie if you missed out on the last sale and have a Nubar wishlist. It's also the only top coat I can use over Konad polish withut smudging (with the exception of Konad Black Special Nail Polish, which is the devil!!!), so I really doubt that I'll stray to something else. I said I wouldn't stray from SpaRitual Tout de Suite and it took a lot of arm-twisting to get me to, but I think I really mean it this time!

I'm rambling, I'm sorry - I still need that caffeine! I'll just stop that and show you the pictures... I wasn't able to capture the true retina-burning quality of the color this time, but trust me, it is! These show the tone well, and then imagine that in Day-Glo.

Essie Neon 2009 Nail Polish
Essie Neon Nail Polish Bottle

I told you it was over the top! I can't help it. I just love that "girl" profile stamp for some reason, and I also love the lace pattern I used, both from Konad plate M71. M71 also has another really nice lace pattern that I like, but I generally end up picking this one instead. The other has tiny little bows embedded into the lace - I'll have to use it to show it to you soon.

That's another deal going on I'll mention, and long as I'm so damn chatty and telling you about deals on things I use: WowSoCool, my one-stop shop for all things Konad, is offering 20% off everything but the already-discounted Build You Own Kit with coupon code "nailphile," and they ship for free over $20. Once of the reasons I'm a WowSoCool gal is that they've always sent me shipping notification within about two hours of hitting Send Order (for many, many orders before they knew I had a blog, so it isn't special treatment). They've also never screwed up an order of mine at all. I love them. They haven't set an end date on the code, as they'd never done one before and were going to just see how this one goes, so if you have a long wishist of plates or Konad Special Polishes, it's a good time to get them. I'm set on plates (as you probably noticed!), but I prefer Konad Special Nail Polish for white (most opaque), pastel green, green, yellow, and I just looked at the site to verify names to find they have more Princess Special Nail Polishes!!! Uh-oh. Some of them look really cool, but I'll concern myself with that in a minute, the ones I know I love of the Princess are Psyche Pink & Blue Pearl (those are the two Coraline ones I use a lot), and Light Gray. The only once I have in the Princess bottle is Light Gray, and the difference between it and the Special Polishes seems to be bottle shape, volume (slightly more in Princess), and nothing else.

I'm going to go load up on some Princess Special Nail Polishes now - some of the new colors look fantastic! Until next time, Dear Reader, love and nail polish to you!

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