The Evolution of a Mani featuring Essie Shelter Island

I don't get to change my mani as often as I'd like to. I'm a full time student and have a part time job, so needless to say, I'm usually pretty busy. During the school year, I typically change my polish once a week. In order to keep my nails looking good and prevent me from getting bored, I experiment with layering. I'd like to take you on a journey through my latest layering mani, which occurred during my last week of summer school.

Essie Shelter Island. It's slightly sheer/streaky, but nothing outrageous, so I used three coats. It has that half creme/half jelly finish going on that Essie loves to do. I love it, too. It's a gorgeous, dusty light blue. I have no dupes for this. SI is from the popular Northfolk Collection, which also includes Greenport & Sag Harbor.

A few days later, this happened...

I added one coat Essie Kisses & Bisses. I apologize for the terrible picture; I took this at work under my fluorescent office lights. K&B is a very sheer (think topcoat) shimmer polish. In the bottle, it looks mostly red, but over the blue of Shelter Island it pulled more purple. At first I thought it was similar to CND Amethyst Sparkle, but the CND is sparkley (duh) and K&B is shimmery. Kisses & Bisses came out this spring in the French Affair collection.

And finally...

One coat of OPI Servin Up Sparkle. You can see how terrible my outgrowth is. *shudder* SUS has small silver holo glitters and large silver holo hex pieces in a clear base. It was recently released in a Serena Williams duo with Grape... Set... Match (the one I got) or that silver foil who's name escapes me.

Thanks for reading this giant post. Speaking of posting, I hope to be doing more of it now that summer school is over. I have less than a month til fall semester. We're having a huge sale at work this weekend, I'm helping DBF move two weekends in a row, and he's taking a week of in between those weekends, so I'll still be busy, but it'll be "free time" busy, not "I have so many cases to read" busy.