Essie - Cocktail Bling

I was thinking it was about time I actually tried an Essie polish (a colour rather than their nail treatments or special effect top coat). So I bought a couple of Essie polishes from Candy Girl and although we had a minor courier issue (too lazy to buzz the apartment so just left the "wasn't home" card in the letter box), 4 more days on, they finally arrived. I got three polishes - 'Lapis Of Luxury', 'School Of Hard Rocks' and 'Cocktail Bling' - I also got my first China Glaze ('Four Leaf Clover'). So today I have the first of them... Essie 'Cocktail Bling'.

'Cocktail Bling' is the title polish of the 2011 Winter collection for Essie. It's one of those polishes where it depends who you are and where you are as to what colour you would call it. I say it's a greyed lavender/blue crème (in other words I have no idea)! Every time I turn back to look at the polish (or the photos) I think "oh yes, it's definitely... *insert several different colours here*"...

Lots of bloggers have said it's grey with blue hues etc, but personally I lean more to it being a dusty blue/purple with grey hues.

In this photo you can get a tiny preview of how this polish starts to shift colour with varying light. My pinky finger is in more direct light and the colour becomes a slightly more stark grey, head over to the middle/ index fingers and you get a  warmer more purple leaning blue. Whatever you decide this colour is, I think we can all agree that it's really pretty. I love these soft, easy-to-wear colours that suit everyone on every occasion.


To the formula... Before we get too excited about how pretty this colour is I have to admit that it was a complete rat-bag to apply! I have never had so much difficulty with a polish. This is three coats. The first coat went on so thin and VERY streaky, I didn't think much of it as this is pretty usual for a pastel polish. Second coat similar story only this time it was really hard to spread the polish on the nail. Third coat... Ridiculous. Bald patches on some parts and massive unspread chunks of polish on other parts. I'm not quite sure what the solution is here as all the reviews I've read of this polish say "great formula, 2 easy coats". As usual, I'm not prepared to write this polish off (formula-wise) as I always suspect it's something wrong with my technique rather than the formula of such a well regarded polish brand. Perhaps next time I'll aim for 2 slightly thicker coats rather than 3-4 thin ones... I'll let you know how that goes when I eventually try it again. I used Essie 'Millionails' as my base coat and Essie 'Good To Go' as the top coat. These photos were all taken under Auckland's VERY grey and overcast "summer" sky, hence the lack of real sunlight photos.