Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Jessica Botanicals Collection Spring 2009

I think this may be the first time I've ever reviewed Jessica products on my blog! I don't have very much experience at all with this brand, but I've been doing a little more research and I found out some cool facts.

In 1969, the founder of Jessica Cosmetics, Jessica Vartoughian, opened a salon just for natural nails called Jessica Nail Clinic. The salon was the first of it's kind: the main focus of Jessica Nail Clinic is to care for and 'cultivate' the natural nail instead of covering them with enhancements. This is interesting because most nail salons don't seem to care about the health of the natural nail and almost all of their services involve applying or maintaining artificial nails.

Since I'm a natural nail girl myself, this seems like a brand that I can really get into.

Anyway, Jessica does a color line as well as natural nail treatments, and I've been playing with their beautiful spring collection, Botanicals.




Birds of Paradise. A pearly, glowy purple. This color was completely unexpected and it has me absolutely THRILLED. It's one of the most beautiful purples I've ever seen. It's bright and shimmery but it also has a soft, pearly, glowy quality that keeps it from being too loud. It looks less blue and more purple in real life.



Butterfly Kisses. A metallic blue. This is another unexpected color and also ridiculously cool! It's a foily metallic blue with lots of shimmery silver particles. It's not a shiny chrome finish metallic, more of a foil like Zoya Trixie, but blue.



Color Me Calla Lily. A soft pink-purple creme. My camera can't do this color justice. It's extremely soft and pretty like petals of a beautiful flower. It's more purple than pink like this picture shows and has a muted, dusty quality to it.



Coral Reef Daisies. A metallic coral. This is another foil metallic, but in a soft coral shade. Same texture as Butterfly Kisses.




Loving The Lilacs. Pale, shimmery lilac. Another muted lilac shade for spring. This one's not quite as colorful as the other shades in this collection. It has more of a dense shimmer finish as opposed to the foil metallic finish the other polishes in this collection have.





Rosy Romance. Rose pink metallic. This is another foil-finish metallic shade like the others. The color of this seems a lot more pale and dusty indoors, but in the sunlight it becomes a cleaner, brighter rose pink.


The formula on these polishes is great. I have not tried very many Jessica polishes so I'm not sure how they compare to each other, but based on these I'm quite impressed with the quality. The polish is on the thin side and very smooth. The drying time is average. The wear on these is really good- I wore a few of these before I photographed them and didn't experience any major tipwear and there was no chipping.


This collection was a surprise for me. For the most part, these shades all look pretty bland and uninteresting in the bottle, but when you apply them they come to life. Birds of Paradise is especially amazing, and I'd highly recommend it for purple lovers like me. The metallics are smooth and sparkly and the shades are not what you'd typically find when looking for metallic polishes. My least favorite shade is Loving The Lilacs- it seems lifeless to me compared to the other spring-like shades in the collection. Overall, a little mainstream but still a beautiful, enjoyable spring collection.

Jessica can be purchased directly from their website, but I have also seen a limited selection at Target.

12 comments:

  1. Yay Scrangie! I've been waiting for someone to swatch these forever since I saw them on the Jessica site a few weeks ago. Your swatches are amazing as usual, and I think I want all of them except one! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pretty. Very pretty. Thanks for swatching, Scrangie.

    Scott

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful collection! I need Birds of Paradise and Calla Lily. Do you know if Jessicas are Big 3 Free?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Butterfly Kisses and the Purple are both beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Birds of Paradise is gorgeous!! Of course everything looks great on your nails!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Those are beautiful! I'll definitely check them out.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jessica is a really underrated brand IMHO.
    How does Birds of Paradise compare to NUBAR Pasadena Purple?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very pretty collection! They all look beautiful on you. Added them all to my "wants" list.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks for the review! I've seen them and wondered... Our Target carries them

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thank you for swatching these. I'm a real fan of Jessica Polishes already. I actually think she has better Polishes, for Manicures, than RBL. Last way longer and much cleaner looking. Love. I think I might need Birds of Paradise, from this collection.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Scrangie, these colors are beautiful, especially Birds of Paradise!
    Maybe because it's just an incredible color, but it might be because it looks SO gorgeous on your perfect nails! This one makes me wish I polished my on fingernails (but I don't)!
    Sky High Top is incredible too!

    Thank you for consistently providing us such wonderful examples of all the newly released colors. :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Karman, aww, thanks!!

    Scott, you're welcome and thank you for commenting!

    Sarah, They are :)

    Phyrra, those are my favorites for sure!

    Jennifer, haha thanks!

    Pixie, I was surprised!

    Diann_co, they are *very* similar!

    Lucy, thank you! :)

    NailsIt, thanks! :)

    SW, ooh, interesting! I need to learn more!

    Jason, aww, thank you so much!

    ReplyDelete

Please be respectful. Refrain from using my comments for unsolicited advertising. If you would like me to check out your blog or product, please email me. Thank you!