Essie Expressie Comparisons

As I mentioned in Monday's post, most of the Essie Expressie line is made up of cremes, which I bought several of because of course I did. There are a few shimmers in the line as well, and I'm kicking off today's post with the one I bought: Mic Drop-It-Low, a purple-leaning deep pink, or as Essie describes it on their website, a "shimmering magenta pink". My swatch is two coats. I was happy to see that the shimmer shows on the nail even in the indirect light of my lightbox.







For comparison purposes, I grabbed the closest polish I could easily find (yes, my stash is still in transition to a more organized state), SinfulColors Frozen Rose from the Vanessa Hudgens winter 2018 collection.



Top to bottom, below (2 coats each): Sinful, Essie, Sinful, Essie. The base colors of these are very close to each other, with the Sinful being perhaps a touch more purple. Frozen Rose has more visible shimmer and its shimmer is more varied, showing both pink and purple particles. The shimmer in Mic Drop-It-Hot is about as dense as the Sinful but it doesn't show on the nail as much (not even in direct light, the photos of which I'm not posting as they don't show anything different than these lightbox ones do).





I also did comparisons for four of the cremes I bought (two of which I used in Monday's nail art): Precious Cargo-go, Taxi Topping, Don't Hate Curate, and Saffr-on the Move.



Before I get to the comparisons, here are these four as Skittles; I'll have to remember this combination come autumn. Top to bottom: Saffr-on the Move, Don't Hate Curate, Taxi Topping, and Precious Cargo-go. All were two coats.



Kicking off the creme comparisons with Saffr-on the Move. Bottles, left to right: Barielle Aura Angora (now suffering from a case of Ugly Bottle Syndrome, aka UBS), Essie Saffr-on the Move, and Revlon Street Wear Burnt.



On the nail, left to right (all two coats): Aura Angora, Saffr-on the Move, Burnt, Saffr-on the Move. No dupes here, though Burnt comes closer, being a touch lighter and less orange than Saffr-on the Move. Aura Angora is rather more yellow than Saffr-on the Move.



I held over Aura Angora for the next comparison. Left to right: Barielle Aura Angora, Essie Don't Hate Curate, Nails Inc. Hampstead Gardens.



On the nail, left to right: Aura Angora, Don't Hate Curate, Hampstead Gardens, Don't Hate Curate. Again, two coats of each. No matches here. Aura Angora and Hampstead Gardens are both darker than Don't Hate Curate. Aura Angora and Hampstead Gardens are closer to each other than either is to Don't Hate, though Aura looks a bit more muted.



I could only easily find one decent comparison possibility for Taxi Hopping: L'Oreal The Perfect Trench.



And, nope, not a match. Left to right: L'Oreal, Essie, L'Oreal, Essie (all two coats). The Perfect Trench is ligher and more muted on the nail in comparison to Taxi Hopping; I thought they looked closer than that in the bottles.



And finally, the greens: OPI Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window, Essie Precious Cargo-go, Zoya Dree.



On the nail, left to right (2 coats each): OPI, Essie, Zoya, Essie. The OPI and Zoya are both darker than the Essie and pretty much a dupe of each other.



That I didn't find any dupes for the Essies in the course of swatching for this post makes me feel better about buying more cremes. Now granted, I didn't do an exhaustive search of my stash (see previous note about reorganizing), so I can't be sure I don't have dupes out there somewhere but at least they didn't pop out at me right away.