I recently picked up Essence Pastel Ombre nail art polish in Blurry Up! from Shoppers Drug Mart. While I do have similar polishes in most colours that can be used for an ombre look and have lots of whites I can mix, I wanted to give this a try to see if it gave a more uniform look as some polishes has slightly different finishes.
The Pastel Ombre top coat does work well on pastels, but if you want to go from darker polishes to light, it appears a little patchy. The only problem with that is while the colour difference was more noticeable than it appears on the photo above, lighter polishes do not make for a great ombre look as there is little difference between them.
To use the Pastel Ombre effect coat, you start on your index finger with one coat and work your way up to four coats on your baby finger. With two coats of your base colour, you are looking at six coats in total. It has a decent dry time to be able to add the next coat of the ombre top coat but that many layers of polish takes ages to fully dry with any polish. Despite being careful, this nick appeared in the polish after about 45 minutes of the final layer of effect coat.
You also have to be careful to make even layers and cover the colour coat fully. It is hard to pick up an even about of polish for each nail and a thicker coat on a middle finger can ruin the look. Personally, I find it easier to mix my preferred polish with some white so I can add an extra drop of colour if needed. You do get the occasional polish that will not mix well but even with mix time, the dry time is so much quicker two coats with only that you are good to actually use your nails sooner.
Essence Pastel Ombre Swatches
Over a mid toned polish such as piCture pOlish New York, the sparkle is unnoticeable and the ombre effect coat is a little patchy.
Over dark colours, it appears very patchy, shown here with two coats of effect top coat over various colours. Since the bottle says use over any Essence colour polish, I used all Essence polishes for my dark polish tests. Shown above over Fame Fatale, We Love Winter Holidays!, Amazed By You and Black is Back.
Essence is available exclusively at Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada and this Ombre effect coat sells for $3.99. It was on the regular display so should be around longer than the new limited edition collection, but like with many Essence products, they have limited quantities and it may disappear from the shelves soon.
wow love the pastel colors , great for spring and summer 🙂 thanks for sharing
I bought that one too, but have not tried it yet. It’s too bad that it didn’t work out because it’s a good concept for those who don’t have lots of colours like we do and want to do an ombre.
I thought the same and Essence polishes are usually fairly good for the price point, first the stampy and now this, I think I need to stay away from their nail art stuff
Aw man, the idea for the product seemed really promising but too bad it didn’t work that well.
Thanks for sharing!
I just tried this as well and was not overly impressed with the quality… it was a bummer because I had really high hopes! I will probably give it 1 more shot, but so far not good…
It would be an amazing product if it worked
I’m so going to have to get some of this polish. I’ve tried to get the look with polish I have but didn’t quite get there…lol. Love the pink! Thanks for sharing.