Pink Wednesday - Essie French Affair

It's Wednesday which means it's time for pink polish.  Today I have for you Essie French Affair, which is the namesake polish of Essie's Spring 2011 French Affair collection.  I got this polish as part of one of Essie's mini sets, 4 mini bottles from a particular collection.  I was looking for a nice pastel purple for Easter, and this just came along in the collection.  I probably would never have bought it except the set was on clearance at Beauty Brands so I got it 50% off.

Bottle in the shade, the sun picture washed it out too much.

French Affair is what I would call a petal pink, almost bubblegum but leaning very slightly lavender.  A dusty Barbie pink, all in all a very pretty color, I got a few compliments from complete strangers on this color.

Sun

shade

The swatches are a base of Seche Retain, two coats of polish and a top of Seche Vite.  The formula on this one was ok, I seem to be having issues with almost all of Essie's polishes in terms of formula.  It wants to pull and streak on the first coat, and the the second coat doesn't want to self-level very well unless you put it on really thick, which leads to dry time issues.  The polish itself seemed of a good consistency coming out of the bottle i.e. didn't seem really thick and gloopy thus requiring thinning or really thin and runny.  It was a good consistency which is why I was surprised that it gave me so much trouble in application.  Unfortunately this seemed to be a going trend with all of the Essie polishes I have swatched recently.  It won't keep me from using the colors I really like, but it was a bit frustrating.

And since I never seem to be able to leave good enough alone, I present to you, for your viewing pleasure, the Essie French Affair funky french.

shade

 

For this I just added Orly Butterflies to the tips and another coat of Seche Vite.  You can see a little bit of shrinkage on the end of my pinky finger, but it's not really noticeable without the macro setting on my camera.

So there you have it, Essie French Affair and a funky french with Orly Butterflies to close out another Pink Wednesday.  I should have the other three colors I have of the French Affair collection posted in the coming days, stay tuned.  Until next time, thanks for stopping by.