Recent NOTD: Essie Viva la Vespa

I missed out on many great polishes during the years I was focusing on other things before my love of lacquer got rekindled. Polishes like Essie Viva la Vespa, a glowy purple shimmer that I drooled over in other people's swatches of but never thought I'd own due to my reluctance to pay three times original retail price for it on eBay. I was mostly okay with that, since I've certainly been able to amass a great assortment of other purple shimmers, but Viva la Vespa lurked in the back of my brain, one of the great white whales I knew were out there somewhere but which I didn't think I had a great chance of ever seeing for real. Yet here I am, posting an entry about my nails of the day featuring Viva La Vespa.

This wonderful turn of events was made possible by the internet. I have a friend on a message board who found a bottle of Viva la Vespa while dusty hunting. She could have bought it and kept it as a backup (she already had one at home), but instead she bought it and gave it away to celebrate her birthday in a random act of kindness drawing. Of course I put my name in, and when it came time for her to pick a winner, my number came up! There was most definitely some chair dancing when I read that on my screen!

I didn't want to just swatch this; I wanted to wear it for a while once I put it on, so I waited a bit for the right opportunity to use it for a full manicure. That time came after I decided to just get over myself and make the nails on my left hand match the length of the ones on my right (which were noticeabley shorter, as you may recall from the Nabi magnetics NOTD post a while back). Whenever I shorten my nails, it takes me a little bit to get used to them again, during which I don't swatch or otherwise mess with them, so I knew Viva la Vespa would get a chance to stick around.

I used two coats of the Essie over my usual treatment and base coats and topped with OPI RapiDry, which I am still experimenting with because I want Sally Hansen to know I have other options in case she's contemplating discontinuing my preferred Insta Dri topper.





Viva la Vespa is a warm-toned purple and the shimmer is as glowy as I was led to believe by other bloggers' posts about it.





Depending on how the light is hitting it, the purple does look darker and sometimes cooler, but the shimmer never disappears.



Here it is in dim lamplight:



And here it is after nearly a full week's wear, in the sun, where you can see the colors of the shimmer popping out:



I am thrilled to have this oldie but very goodie in my collection—thanks friend whom I'm not sure want to be named!