Essie Stroke of Brilliance is, well, a stroke of frickin brilliance!!

OMG, you guys, Essie has me swooning again. It's one of those "can't stop staring at my nails" days, thanks to Stroke of Brilliance, the newest addition to Essie's Luxeffects glitter topcoat line. The pictures don't even come close to capturing the "hammina hamminaness" of this polish!!

 click pics to enlarge

outside sun

outside sun

outside shade--look at all dat SHINY!!!

outside shade

I promise you this polish is about 5 zillion times more sparkly and drop-dead gorgeous in real life. Large hex glitters and micro glitters together in a clear base and they are the most breath-taking periwinkle blue that just barely walks the line between sky and lavender. This is actually a relatively simple glitter compared to the stuff I've been obsessed with lately--like 40 million shapes, sizes and colors in one bottle or holy holo crazyness--but Stroke of Brilliance has totally stolen my heart. It's just uncomplicated and stunning and I freakin love it! 

It gave me no trouble formula-wise. The glitters come out of the bottle easily, spread out nicely on the nail, you don't have to fish for the larger pieces and the base is the perfect consistency. Well done, Essie!!

In the above photos, I have 2 coats of Stroke of Brilliance layered over 3 coats of Wet N Wild Rain Check, a blue-tinged silver frosty metallic polish that, unlike S of B, was a total pain in the butt to work with. Sheer as heck and brush-stroke ridden. Good thing I only paid $.69 for it! (Thanks be to Rite Aid and its current Wet N Wild sale--all $.99 products reduced to $.69 this week)...

So what do you think? Are you as smitten as I am?