Essie - Shine Of The Times and OPI - Over The Taupe

I got my first flakie! I'm so excited about this polish! I've have been dreaming of owning Essie 'Shine Of The Times' since it first was blogged about last year, but unfortunately New Zealand doesn't really get much in the way of new collections by Essie. I've been keeping an eye out online for this pretty polish and it has never been in stock until Wednesday when I saw that Candy Girl (candygirl.co.nz - a Christchurch based online shop) had it back in stock! I ordered it straight away and it was in my letterbox yesterday morning (the very next day)! :)

I used OPI 'Over The Taupe' as my base colour underneath 'Shine Of The Times'...

'Over The Taupe' is a brown/taupe crème by OPI. The best way I can describe this colour is "mousey". It's such a soft and gentle colour.

I love this colour. It's a perfect work colour - subtle but something a little different. I love the way that it's essentially a brown nail polish but that in some lights it looks as though there is some grey in there and even at times a bit of a purple hue.



Now onto the wonder that is Essie's 'Shine Of The Times'...

This is from the 'Luxeffects' Collection released late last year. As I earlier mentioned, this is a flakie top coat.

The flakes in this polish are multi-chromatic and depending on the light, they range from looking red to  orange to gold to yellow to green. Like all of autumn in a single bottle of polish.

In this photo you can see more of the yellows and greens that shine through in this top coat when the light hits it at a more extreme angle.

From a more front on angle the reds and golds shine through. It's like a reflection of a bonfire burning on my nails.

You can really see the irregular beauty of the flakie pieces. Interestingly at some angles it looks as though there's nothing extra on your nails then you move just the tiniest bit and this fiery light suddenly bursts out to catch your eye.

Final macro pic just because I can't get enough of this polish!!


Now to the formulas of these polishes...
'Over The Taupe' is not my favourite polish to apply. Lucky I like the colour so much that it seems to make up for it. This polish is reasonably thin and is very difficult to make the colour even on the nail. It is a 2 coater if I take extra care during application, otherwise it is generally a careful 3 coater in order to get nice even coverage. The above swatches of 'Over The Taupe' are 2 coats using Essie 'Millionails' as my base coat and no top coat. Even though there's no top coat, you can see the beautiful gloss that results from this polish.
'Shine Of The Times' is rather thick and I thought it was going to be difficult to make it spread evenly. But... turns out it was really nice and easy to apply. It sort of just glided over the nail without much thought. On top of 'Shine Of The Times' I used a-England's 'The Shield' top coat and I'm super pleased to say that I have not one single chip after work last night. I was behind the bar last night which means scrubbing coffee machine, hands constantly in water and cleaning products and meths etc! Walking out with zero tip wear hardly ever happens after a Friday night.

Hope you enjoyed sharing my excitement about my first flakie! :)