My current obsession, aside from holos and matte topcoats and indie polish companies, is Essence, and especially their Colour & Go line. They’re ridiculously cheap, rarely fully stocked, and strangely awesome. I have yet to find one that I think has an awful formula, and most of them are quite fantastic. I buy them whenever I find them, in twos and threes and fives (when I find a display that actually has that many colors stocked), and as they’re only 5 ml bottles, they’re economical for space as well as cost. This fascinating charmer is 73 – Princess Prunella, paired with a pretty neutral holo called Flash Mob from an indie company called Piper Polish Co.
Princess Prunella is not only fun to say, but also a very peculiar color, both brown and purple in nearly equal measure. I’m pretty sure that the base polish is a frosty milk chocolate brown, but there’s so much purple shimmer that it overwhelms the base much of the time. They managed to recreate the effect in plastic on the cap, too, which amused me. I love the coordinating caps on these; it makes them really stand out in the sea of black and silver in my polish boxes. The brushes aren’t bad, either.
Flash Mob is a very pretty shade, but it’s almost a non-color. Tan? Taupe? Pale gold? Except it’s grayer than those; it’s like a holo topcoat with a tint and good coverage. It is described as a “bronze metallic”, but I think of bronze as darker than this is. I want to describe it as a “my nails but better”-style of color. This is two coats and in person had zero visible nail line. It had a pretty good formula and dried quickly, though it did like to flood a bit.
Yep, back to my old alternating accents tricks again. This picture really shows the base of Princess Prunella. I used Butter London P.D. Quick topcoat with these to heighten the shine, especially on Prunella, which can get a bit brushstrokey due to the frostiness.
Flash Mob has a nice semi-linear holo. It’s not tremendously strong (it actually photographed stronger than it looked in person), but pretty. This morning I stacked on a Spectraflair topcoat (also from Piper Polish Co., though many companies, indie and major, carry them), which intensified and unified the look considerably as well as looking fantastic on Princess Prunella. However, I didn’t manage to get any photos. Can you see my sad little broken thumbnail peeking through in this photo? All my nails are that length now, as I worked at my old comic shop again today and managed to drop boxes and catch my nails on cases with sliding doors and broke two others. :/ So I’ll have stubs for a little while. Bah, humbug.
I bought the Essence at a Fred Meyers, but you may find them at Ulta, or possibly Target, or other similar places. Flash Mob was purchased from Piper Polish Co., who has a shop on Etsy.
Vanitas Rex 