let's talk about nail polish

Well I'm going to talk, you can listen if you like.

I recently went to HEB to browse the cosmetic sales, for those of you outside Texas, HEB is a chain of supermarkets exclusive to TX. They're like a larger version of Kroger/ smaller version of WalMart. HEB tends to run really good sales on their cosmetics and beauty supplies, they also carry a small selection of NYX cosmetics. The NYX are never on sale, but HEB is closer to me than any large department stores with an actual makeup counter.

Anyway, on my most recent trip I was digging through the discount bin, because I love a good sale, and I found several Essie nail polishes marked down from $7.50 to $3.00, I had never tried Essie before, but I've been hearing great things, so I decided to go ahead and grab a few to try out.
I ended up just picking 4 colors that appeal to me.
From left to right the colors are Over the Edge, which is a gunmetal silver/black color with a touch of shimmer in it. Devil's Advocate which is a deep almost black plum. Secret Story is a tad deeper than bubblegum pink, and the last color I can't for the life of me find the name of, it is a pink/red color. I suppose it's some shade of fuchsia, unfortunately to picture is not very true to color, as I took it with my phone.

Now on to the review, I am a pretty frugal shopper and I rarely spend more than 4 dollars on a nail polish, but I would be willing to spend the $7-8 on Essie polishes, and here's why, they wear amazingly. My job requires me to work with my hands all day, my nails get smooshed, scraped, and chipped all day every day, I also wash my hands around 10 times a day at work.
The first color I tried out was Devil's Advocate, I put on two coats of the polish, with no base coat and no top coat, then I went to work, for 5 days. and had barely any chipping. The tips did chip, which is to be expected, but the centers & cuticle lines stayed mostly intact. Needless to say I was amazed, the durability of these polishes alone makes them completely worth it. There is a pretty large assortment of colors, and the finish is really nice, the polishes themselves are pretty thick, without being clumpy like some nail polishes can get. I almost never use a topcoat, and in my opinion these polishes don't really need a topcoat.

Now for the downside, two of the colors, Over the Edge & Secret Story came out very very light. To get Over the Edge to be the solid gunmetal color that it looks like in the bottle I actually had to apply 4 coats, Secret story required 3 coats.
Devil's Advocate only needed 2 coats and the unnamed fuchsia only took 1. That was the only flaw I could really find with these nail polishes, which isn't really a big deal. I personally don't like to devote a lot of time to painting my nails, but if you have the time & the patience adding a couple extra coats might not be an issue.

Overall I'm pretty fond of these little guys, I love the color selection, I love the finish and they wear like a dream. If you're not up for spending the full $8.00 I suggest waiting until you see them on sale somewhere & at least giving them the ol' college try.