essie's "ole caliente" [featuring nubar 2010]

i'm not an essie fanatic. their colors have never really appealed to me and for 8 bucks i would rather buy an OPI polish. but i've seen a lot of awesome swatches of "ole caliente" from their "navigate her" collection, and couldn't resist picking it up when i stopped by cvs the other day - i'm so glad i did!

this is three coats of polish. i could have gotten away with two, but the light in my house kept making it look uneven and weird. application was easy and i barely needed to do any clean up.

this is a shot taken inside, with flash. and because i can't leave well enough alone, i added a coat of nubar 2010!

soooo shiny. soooo sparkly!

and here's a picture of my cat, mowgli. i thought the polish went really well with his fur :P.

essie polishes sell for 8 dollars in most drug stores [cvs, walgreens, target], or you can buy them from mbeautylounge for a little over 7 bucks.

zoya phoebe + nubar 2010 = robin's egg!

i have never purchased a matte nail polish. i have essie's "matte about you", but don't have a polish that starts off as matte. i have seen some beautiful swatches of matte zoya polishes, so when they did their buy three/get three free promo recently, i decided to take the plunge. boy, am i glad i did!

this is three coats of phoebe. i've read that it's common for matte polishes to dry quickly, and this one sure did!

look. how. beautiful! this color is so bright and fabulous. even my boyfriend said he really liked it!

and now...with flakies! i got nubar 2010 in the mail and was dying to try it out.

doesn't it look like a robin's egg?

outside, in natural light. as much as i love phoebe by herself, i like her even better shiny. even without flakies. she's just so bright and in your face!

overall consensus: buy it. do it now. you should have bought it five minutes ago. why are you still reading this when you should be buying that polish?