Manicure Mondays – Essie LuxeEffects

Essie LuxeEffects is a gorgeous collection of five shimmer, glitter and flakies top coats. I can’t remember the last time a brand came out with an entire collection of top coats, so this was really fun to review. I swatched one coat of each LuxeEffects over a neutral nude polish to showcase the difference between each topper.

Sand Tropez (not included in the collection) is a beautiful khaki tan creme polish from Essie’s Spring 2011 A French Affair collection. I used this as the base color for each LuxeEffect. This is two coats.

Pure Pearlfection is a gorgeous white silver micro-shimmer. I love that it is so packed full of shimmer and looks like it was actually built into my polish, transforming the look of any color. It makes my Sand Tropez base coat look like shimmering beach sand.

As Gold As It Gets is a gold flakies and micro-shimmer top coat. For some reason (ever since I reviewed Chanel’s Morning Rose), I have been crazy-craze about any polish that includes a hint of gold shimmer, and now I can easily add that gold glow to any polish in my collection with this top coat (see it over pastel blue below).

Shine Of The Times is an iridescent holographic flakies top coat that looks completely different over any base color and in any light. Over a light nude, the flakies look pearly pink and blue, but over a dark polish (see it over black creme below), the flakies look coppery red in direct light and have a bright lime green glow in indirect lighting.

A Cut Above is a pink sequin and glitter top coat. There are other pink sequin top coats out there, but this one has way more GPS (glitter per stroke, I just made that up lol) and the clear coat is not thick at all, allowing your to add more coats if you’d like. A lot of sequin top coats have very little GPS and you have to place each piece of glitter with the top of your brush to get the desired effect. This is even more difficult if the clear coat is thick and goopey, which this polish is not.

Set In Stones is exactly like A Cut Above, but in silver. It also has a lot of sequin GPS and the clear coat is thin and easy to apply.

How I Wore Essie LuxeEffects

This week, I’ve already tried a couple of variations of LuxeEffects to get an idea of how they transform over different base colors. For a daytime look, I used As Gold As It Gets over China Glaze Sea Spray and for a nighttime look, I layered Shine Of The Times over China Glaze Liquid Leather.

My Thoughts On Essie LuxeEffects

Please note again that I only used one coat of each topper, which goes to show just how much LuxeEffect is packed into each stoke. Each top coat could be applied thick, but was easy to thin out with a couple of strokes and the entire collection was extremely easy to apply!

When I first saw this collection online, I was only interested in Shine of the Times and As Gold As It Gets, but Pure Pearlfection immediately became one of my must haves. See any toppers in this collection that you’d like to try?