Essie Mesmerize
Mesmerize was released by Essie as part of its spring 2009 collection and took many nail polish enthusiasts by surprise with it's intensely saturated medium-dark vivid royal blue color. Nowadays (like I'm such a long time polish enthusiast, ha) I don't think too many of us blink an eye when Essie comes out with a collection bearing bright non-traditional polish colors like green, blue, orange or purple. But there was a time when it was out of the ordinary to see a color like this amongst the reds, pinks, nudes, whites and sheers that made up the bulk of Essie's offerings, and a very welcome phenomenon for lacquer heads everywhere.
This blue is a member of the azure family and I think that it meets the parameters for royal blue, being both dark and bright. Of the royal blues I've swatched recently, Orly Shockwave is a little darker and Butter London is lighter. Mesmerize sits happily in between these two, and has that "just right" Goldilocks feeling. It's a happy, energetic, superman's tights kind of blue that makes the best of its azure parentage.
Application was lovely once I reacquainted myself with Essie's slender brush. The consistency was very fluid and smooth and wanted to go on in thicker coats than necessary. Pigmentation is excellent with this polish, it's almost perfect in a single coat if applied carefully and with a steadier hand than I have. I got a few bubbles on one nail that received an especially thick first coat but in a truly miraculous event my new (to me) Glisten & Glow HK Girl topcoat smoothed out any trace of them. Amazing! Mesmerize dries naturally in good time to a glossy finish.
Photos show two coats of Mesmerize over Seche Rebuild treatment and Butter London Nail Foundation basecoat with a topcoat of HK Girl.
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My bottle of Mesmerize was purchased on ebay (where else?) and came to me with the top not entirely screwed as tightly as it could have been so that there was leakage into the cap that coated the threads of the neck and made it difficult to open. I cleaned the bottle neck only to have it recoated when I screwed the top back on. I guess I'll have to go after the interior of the top with a foam detailing swab and acetone to get it into proper shape.
Usually I'll clean a bottle neck if I've made a more of a mess that usual or if it's gotten crusty as in the case of glitter heavy polishes. My topcoat, treatment and basecoat bottle necks are easier to use with regular cleaning, and I've been taking care to clean the neck of my newest OPI Matte Top Coat after having two bottles of Essie's Matte About You ruined by bits of dried residue falling back into the bottle and creating white spots on the nail. I have a small box of OPI Experttouch Lint-Free Nail Wipes that I use for this purpose.
Is there any unspoken protocol regarding cleaning the necks of polish bottles? How often do you do it and what do you use?
love,
Liz
I love all of these blues you've been posting. They're very pretty. I actually don't have any like this in my collection but I really need to change that. I also have some polishes that need to be cleaned up around the neck but I haven't taken the time to do it. There's a few in particular that are getting a little hard to open because of it, but some of them I haven't even used. I'm thinking acetone might help, just as long as I don't get it into the bottle. I wouldn't want to ruin my polish. I'm not sure what else might work.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you've enjoyed my blue mini-spree, Melissa! I use those little lint-free wipes and dip them in acetone to clean bottle necks. They work great for this, don't drip into the polish and I've never liked using them for regular polish removal so they'd never get used otherwise. I have to plan for bottle cleaning by not having any polish on my nails and getting them well-moisturized beforehand. It's kind of a pain but it's much easier to do several bottles at once than doing them one at a time as you come across them.
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