Last summer, I decided I needed the wrapped bottles that Target had for the Essie #essielove Moments collection (also known as the Celebration Moments collection, at least on the Ulta website). I decided this several months after the collection was released, by which time no Target seemed to have whole collection in the wrapped bottles, but I persisted and bought them when I found them until I had all six (left to right below): Nailed It, The Best-est, Sheer Luck, Birthday Girl, Mani Thanks, and Congrats.
The Best-est is a medium-toned cool grey creme. Of course I already have plenty of cool grey cremes, but the bottle wrap is a lure I wasn't able to resist in this case. This was opaque in two coats.
Congrats has blue, silver, rose, and pink glitter in a silver microflakie base. It probably would build to be opaque on its own, but you know me ... if I think it might work as a topper, I'm gonna try it that way. So I put one coat of Congrats over The Best-est, then added clear topcoat for extra shine though I didn't need it for smoothness.
Nailed It is a deep burgundy creme which I in no way needed to diversify my stash, but again, the bottle wrap. Two coats were plenty, and it was really shiny on its own without any topcoat.
Nailed It also got the Congrats as topper treatment. This was less pleasing than the combination with The Best-est, though it does show how dense the microflakie base of Congrats is ... too dense to make a good topper over such a dark color, I think.
Oh look, here's another shade I almost certainly have a dupe for: Sheer Luck, a white crelly shimmer. The Essie website calls this pink, but it's so light a pink that it pulls pretty much completely white on me. My swatch is three coats, leaving it not yet opaque.
The shimmer is subtle; I could only get it show up for the camera in direct light, and even then it's hard to see.
To show the sheerness of Sheer Luck, I dotted it with The Best-est and Nailed It, then added one more coat of Sheer Luck and a clear topcoat. It was interesting to see that Nailed It looked dusty purple when veiled like this.
Mani Thanks is a light gold metallic shimmer, opaque in two coats. There are some hints of pink in the shimmer along with the gold.
I added some dots of Nailed It to Mani Thanks to attempt to distract from how this shade of gold isn't the most flattering for me. I also added clear topcoat to smooth over the dots.
Finally we have Birthday Girl, a light pink shimmer that's slightly on the sheer side. I used two coats for my swatch and there's a hint of visible nail line remaining.
I plussed Birthday Girl with a glitter gradient using Congrats and a light hand.
I was running out of something at this point (attention span and/or time; my notes don't say) so I completed my swatching session by trying Birthday Girl as a topper over Nailed It and The Best-est, which I'm glad I did because only then did I see the gold as well as the pink the shimmer of Birthday Girl. It's really quite pretty this way.
I'm undecided on whether this collection was a good choice for me. Congrats, sure, yes, that is a good addition to my stash, but I feel like I either have dupes or close enoughs for everything else. Those bottle wraps sure are cute, though.
