Cuticles are still travel ravaged. And I tried using the Nfu.Oh cuticle remover (like, for real, not on fairly neat cuticles while wearing nail polish) and gotta say, I find it pretty useless! No removing powers as far as I could see. So I went back to my trusty old Blue Cross Cuticle Remover and voila! a good job done quickly for far cheaper.
Anyway, here are the rest of the Essie Fall 2010 samples that their PR folks sent me. Predictably, I was less excited by these than the first three I showed but they are actually very nice polishes nonetheless. All three are very glossy without topcoat, which is always a plus (even though I never fail to put on topcoat unless it's a matte finish).
Essie Little Brown Dress
Dark and delicious. Applied very easily and neatly in two thin coats. It's such a warm, fall/winter color. It definitely can appear near black in some lights (as in the second picture) but in other lights, it's more obviously brown (as in the first).
I just don't like the way reds look on me. This one was not particularly stunning to me one way or another besides that it's super glossy (almost jelly-like). Nice that it was opaque in two coats though! I did find this one harder to apply for some reason: a little gloopier than the others, perhaps? Or maybe I just have an unconscious bias against reds. :P
I feel so gross to have not exercised at all right before I left for Chicago until the day after I arrived home. I ate sooo much crap -- and, let's face it, drank toooo much -- at the conference. I guess I'll be not getting 31 polishes in September. :( Aug 20th (40m cardio), Aug 21st (20m cardio), Aug 22nd (45m cardio+strength).
