essie in the cab-ana

essie in the cab-ana, outdoors, shade

Today, I finally am going to review about a nail polish not made by Zoya. As you may have discovered, I'm sort of a Zoya fiend these days, and because they're also my newest, I have been wearing it most frequently. Last night, I put on essie's in the cab-ana polish, from their Spring 2013 line. I basically bought it because it was a color I have never previously owned: light, bright blue. In fact, I would call it Tiffany blue.

Now I know why Tiffany uses the color for their signature boxes instead of their jewelry.

essie in the cab-ana, outdoors, sun

I decided to use essie's first base base coat and good to go top coat to make it a true essie day. I think first base is a good base coat for color adhesion--better than their others, I think. Good to go is like many other polish drying top coats, and does what it advertises. I actually prefer it to Seche Vite's Dry Fast Top Coat; I find it significantly less goopy, which is a total win for me, and I think it is thin enough to not chip as much as Seche Vite.

essie in the cab-ana, indoors, natural light

In the cab-ana's formula isn't as nice as what I usually find in essie polishes. It's a creme or cream finish, which means that it has no shimmer or glitter. It was rather thick, and streaky. If you have a really heavy hand, you could get away with only one coat, but I needed two, and it was totally opaque.

essie in the cab-ana, indoors, artificial light

Sigh. I wanted to like this color. It's bright, cheery, and happy. In the bottle, I think it's really gorgeous, but on my nail it just looked odd. I'm wearing Zoya's Liberty on my toes, which is an electric blue shade, but it is less unnatural looking than in the cab-ana was on my fingers. It's really shiny with the top coat, though it isn't a shimmer or glitter. In the cab-ana was in the same collection as one of my favorite essie polishes, bond with whomever. I love bond with whomever, because it is a nice lilac shade of purple (actually, it's very similar to a non-sparkly and non-textured Zoya Stevie). I just wish I had the same luck with in the cab-ana. Maybe it's supposed to look like feathers in a tropical bird? I'm not sure, but I just don't like it on.

essie in the cab-ana, flash

I'm going to post again very soon, because this polish is not staying as it is.

Until we meet again,
Emily, the Manic Paintress

*Edit August 28, 2013: I took this polish off yesterday, and was quite alarmed by the fact that even with a base coat, this polish stained my fingernails blue. Actually, it also stained my fingers blue, as well. I know this happens sometimes with blue polish, but when I didn't even love the color, it was just adding insult to injury. It was a shame, because I really do love essie's polishes. They're generally beautiful and high quality, but this was not the polish for me.