I actually still feel caught up and timely on my posts?? Am I a real blogger now? Should I not admit this and pretend I always have it together? How was everyone’s weekend? How did you spend it? I had a lovely productive time, and got a lot of swatching done. Weekends are where I catch up on a lot of stuff that got pushed back throughout the week, and they’re so relaxing and they’re just very important to me, okay. I need my weekend time. Are you the same way? Is it about being productive or relaxing?

Alright, onto the polish. Today we’re looking at something else that’s all about speed and time! Sorry, bad segue into talking about a quick dry polish line.

Essie recently released their new Expressie line, a new formula all centered around a quick dry formula.  There are FORTY new shades that they dropped, and they’re all available online at Ulta, Target & CVS, as well as being in stores at various drugstores. They seem to be mostly cream finishes with 4-5 shimmery shades. I only picked up creams to test out first, and of course, in some ugly pretty colors – my favorite.

As you can see, these are the same height as Normal Essie bottles, but skinnier. They have only .33 fl oz., less than the .5 fl oz that comes in normal polish bottles. For that reason, I don’t love that they’re priced at $9, the same as normal Essie shades but with less product. I do think the price should be lowered – or if you’re able to buy them at a discount would help. I had a bunch of Walgreens rewards that I used for these, so I got them all for about half off.

And then there is the brush. Essie calls this their first angled brush. It’s the typical wide brush, but as you can see with an angle out from the stem. It supposedly makes it easier to paint on the shade, even with your non-dominant hand.

I mean, I use a lot of polish and paint my nails practically every day so I like to think I’m pretty practiced up with all sorts of polish brushes. I didn’t notice this completely changing my life or anything, so I can’t speak to how much easier it makes it to paint your nails. I do, of course, love the wide brush which is something that definitely makes it easier to paint my nails.

Now for the drying time! The whole idea behind this line is that it’s quick drying for speedy, on-the-go polishing. Essie’s website claims it dries in about a minute. So I got out my phone with a timer and everything, and I do think that’s pretty true. I will say it was pretty dry to a light touch after about a minute. But I don’t think it was completely press-proof. If you put more pressure on the polish, it’ll get divots still. It was fully completely dry for me totally in about 5 minutes. Which honestly, is still pretty dang good for a polish. That’s still quick drying time in relation to normal polish, and I do think the quick dry aspect is there.

Obviously that timing will be for thinner coats. If you’re doing thicker coats here, of course, you’ll have to add on more drying time. That’s true for any polish.

And let’s get into the swatches!

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(Also first post with the new hand pose, new year, new me and all that jazz!)

Up first we have ‘Don’t Hate, Curate’. (How I feel about these more ugly shades, don’t hate, I LOVE THEM). This is a warm orangey golden toned cream. As mentioned above, I did thinner coats with all of these to get the quicker drying time, so I might use more coats than you would with thicker ones.

The first coat on this was a little uneven on the ridges of my nails. This could be pretty well good on everyone else with 2 coats – though I did end up doing a 3rd to completely smooth out my ridges.

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‘Saffr-on the Move’ is a deeper, warm-toned brown cream. This was a little more thicker than the others, so even with thinner coats, it was very pigmented and smooth. It was an easy 2 coats, and so nice to paint on.

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When this line dropped, this was the first shade I knew I just HAD to have. This is ‘Taxi Hopping’, and it’s this lovely pea soup green yellowy baby poop cream shade, and I LOVE IT. As I say, give me the ugly shades, I will take them all in.

After the first coat, there was still some unevenness from my ridges, and some nail line peeking through. It could be good with two thinner coats, but again I did a 3rd to cover up any last ridges and patches that had poked through.

As I said, I love it, and you can pry this ugly af color from my cold dead hands. Pls give me all of the ugly yellow green colors ever.

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The last shade I picked up was ‘Precious Cargo-Go!’. This is a dusty more warm toned green cream. This one felt a little more jelly-like and sheer than the others. But even with that more sheer feeling, I was able to get it easily opaque with 2 thinner coats.

That jelly-like formula just gives it a nice squishy look on the nails, and I ended up loving this a lot.

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So those are the 4 shades of Expressie that I picked up! My overall thoughts, I do think they’re nice, and even with more, thinner coats, they dry quickly and make for a quick easy nail look. I liked the formula overall and would consider picking up more of the shades they have! Looking through them all, there are more that look unique that I would be interested in grabbing.

The one thing I don’t love is the price on these, just because of the lesser amount of polish (I’m pretty sure with my calculations, if you kept the same pricing it would technically be $12 for .5 fl oz for these, oop). So I think I’ll only be picking up more if I’m able to get more of a discount on them.

They’re not bad polishes at all, so in the end it’s your price preference! There are some gorgeous colors, and I think there will be a shade for anyone with such a large release.

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Upcoming Posts
Nails: OPI Mexico City Spring 2019 • Sally Hansen New Miracle Gel shades • Essie Flying Solo Collection • Revlon Holochrome Shades

Makeup: Colourpop Butter Me Up Palette • Revolution Pro All That Glistens Palette • Colourpop Bye Bye Birdie • Colourpop Smoke Show

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