Assorted Sparkly Zoyas

LEFT HAND (click to enlarge)

This mani is some of the sparkliest Zoya polishes I own.  Of course these photos do not do them justice.  After many photos I did get the colour quite accurate.  Purple is always a tough colour to photograph as it tends to come out more blue.  The pinky pink is a bit brighter and deeper in person with visible pink sparkle.  Hot Pink!  The gorgeous blue, which I call peacock blue, has a light green sparkle.  I did this mani on June 6th.  Didn't take photos until the next day.  The 4 colours on the left hand fingers (not the thumb) are from the Zoya Sparkle Collection.  Ivanka, on the right hand, is also from that collection.  It was a favourite collection for sure.

RIGHT HAND (click to enlarge)

LEFT HAND
Thumb - Julieanne
Index - Alegra
Middle - Charla
Ring - Mimi
Pinky - Gilda

RIGHT HAND
Thumb - Edyta
Index - Gloria
Middle - Crystal
Ring - Tiffany
Pinky - Ivanka

I could not find my Zoya basecoat so I used OPI Start to Finish.  I used a single layer of the Zoya Armor topcoat.

About a week after doing the mani I did some stamping on the left hand. There was a bit of tip wear but I was happy with how well the Zoya held up. The polish I used for stamping was a very old Sally Hansen Chrome polish called Diamond. The plate used is Konad M57.  The pattern on my index finger is noticeably a smidge to short to cover the entire length of the nail. I did not apply top coat after stamping as I had not planned on keeping it on very long. It was my intention to do a fresh mani later that day.

I ended up keeping it on for another week!  You can see the grow out gap between the cuticle and the polish and some tip wear.  You can also see the stamped on polish worn off in spots. Even more remarkable is that I washed dishes several times in the 3 days before this picture was taken.  Normally I wear gloves to protect the polish but I was planning on taking it off anyway.  I fully expected it to peel at it didn't.  I'm kinda shocked that this is how it looks after 2 weeks with just one top coat and some dish washing to test it!  Yay Zoya!

I have been very impatiently waiting about 2 months now for the Zoya Sunshine Collection to be available here in Canada.  So frustrating!!!!!

Burgundy Bounty

This weeks' mani is 5 polishes that look like one of my favourite colours in the bottle.... burgundy!  I define burgundy as purple that is so red it is no longer purple and is now burgundy.  On the nail is another story.  It's a fine line between burgundy and wine and one of them actually is closer to what I have seen others call Raspberry.  Here are the names of the polishes I used in order, thumb to pinky:

Social Animal by China Glaze - Worst smelling.  Skinny brush means many strokes to cover nail.
Rihana by Zoya - Best application!  Thick little brush.  Love it.
Cowgirl Up by China Glaze - Slighly thicker than other China Glaze so went on a touch easier despite skinny  brush.
Adoring Amethyst by Sally Hansen  - Worst application.  Streaky and watery.  Horrible uneven coverage.  Took 3 coats when bottle says 2 and is much lighter on the nail than in the bottle.  Not to mention, how weird is the name?  When I hear Amethyst I think purple.  This is not purple.  It's also not drying.  Still tacky after 45 minutes.
Dark Roses by Sally Hansen - Easy application and good coverage.

Sorry, I didn't realize how late it is.  Photos of my nails is going to have to wait until tomorrow night. Bye for now!

P.S. Look what I got....
The new Bundle Monster Plates!
Those will be my next post!

Ok, here are some photos using my cell phone.  It's always good at getting the colour right.  Have to say this is the most messed up mani I have had in a long time!  The polish just didn't want to dry.  Perhaps it is the humidity we had.  Did it too close to bed so woke up with every nail messed up somehow.  I chip, a piece fuzz, fingerprint, sheet print, and more! Was amazed at how much the top coat hides!


Low Light





Decent Light



Bright Light



Thumb - Social Animal by China Glaze

Index - Rihana by Zoya

Middle - Cowgirl Up by China Glaze - Slighly thicker than other China Glaze so went on a touch easier despite skinny  brush.

Ring - Adoring Amethyst by Sally Hansen

Pinky - Dark Roses by Sally Hansen


Rhiana, Cowgirl Up and Dark Roses are pretty much identical. 

Social Animal and Adoring Amethyst are very close.  I thinkAdoring Amethyst is red rather than burgundy.  Social Animal has a fair amount of pinkish shimmer.  It makes me think "jelly" when I look at it but I don't think it is . As for colour, it is more of a cranberry or raspberry.  It's an unusual colour that is growing on me more and more.

Easter 2011

Happy Easter Weekend!!!!!  Also happy Earth Day today!!!!!


This mani is inspired by jelly beans and those plastic eggs that you can put Easter treats in for Easter egg hunts.  Bright, beautiful, vibrant spring colours!  Love them!!!  Loads of sparkly glass fleck!

Thumb - 2 coats of Mimi by Zoya + 1 coat Byte by Sally Hansen

Index - 3 coats of Byte by Sally Hansen

Middle - 3 coats of Spectrum by Sally Hansen

Ring - 3 coats of Lighthouse by China Glaze

Pinky - 2 coats of Orange Marmalade
by China Glaze + 1 coat Lighthouse by China Glaze


Of course photos don't do it justice so a short video is necessary!  : )  Yet even that cannot capture it 100%.

Valerie

I debated long and hard about bothering to post this mani. The base polish colour is Valerie by Zoya. This polish looks magical in the bottle. It is so many colours all at once and they flash as you move the bottle! A burgundy purple with fuschia, red and gold glittery sparkles. Just gorgeous.   I couldn't wait to put it on! 

Photos I have found, including the one at the Zoya website make it simply look like a rich royal purple. This picture on the right I took indoors under an Ott lite and it too turned out very purple on my nails.  So strange that the colour on my nail is not true but the colour in the bottle is correct!  If I had to pin it down to one colour I would describe it as burgundy. So a purple with more red like in the bottle rather than with more blue making pure purple as it appears on my nails.

This poor quality pic when the polish is several days old, the top coat is dull and icky and there is tip wear (sorry) comes pretty close to being the right colour. Sadly the beauty in the bottle does not show up on the nail. Not even close. I see burgundy and very subtle fuschia sparkle hidden deep inside. Bright light is required to see more sparkle. So sad. : (

Of course, after a few days, I had to do some stamping!
Some ok, some not so ok.
Thumb - OPI DS Amethyst + BM20 Plate
Index - OPI DS Radiance + BM05 Plate
Middle - OPI DS Extravagance + BM20 Plate
Ring - China Glaze OMG + BM21 Plate
Pinkie - Sally Hansen Chrome Champagne + BM14

Addition: April 22nd

Check this out!  When I was removing this polish the first thing to come off was a blackened purple colour leaving a layer of metallic red.  Interesting!  I guess all the sparkly goodness settles to the bottom when applied.

Going Green

With St. Patrick's Day coming up on the 17th the obvious colour choice this week was green. Three of them are loaded with glass fleck and of course it is impossible to capture the full magical beauty of them with a still photograph. Dozens of pictures taken in dozens of different lighting situations. If only it was a sunny day! Poor light makes it very difficult to get a good photo. I wish these were a little sharper but they are the best I can do right now As you can see these are a wide variety of greens.  The one on my pinky looked green with a slight blue sheen in the store.  At home it looks like blue with a green sheen!  So I covered it with glitter after this photo. Still looks blue.

Thumb = It's Not Rocket Science by Orly
Index = Ivy League by Sally Hansen
Middle = Ivanka by Zoya
Ring = Simply Smashing by OPI
Pinky = Resolution by Sally Hansen with Glow Up Already! by OPI on top

All were pretty sheer so 3 coats for every one.  Sadly there are bubbles on my index finger.  No top coat yet.

As always if you click on a photo it will open in a window all by iteself and larger than what you see here.  Click it again for the largest size.

I like really blurry pictures of sparkle.

Need to go through my nail stamping plates to see if I have anything applicable to the holiday. I don't think I do. Won't be able to do that until tomorrow. For now we have just the beginning!

Just for fun lets add one more picture.  The first 3 were from my Nikon Coolpix S80.  This last one is from my new phone which is a Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro and has a 5.1 MP Camera. Not too shabby. Both cameras got the colours right. Even my not so sharp Nikon pics still do beat the cell phone pics.  I would hope so with nearly 3X the MP's.

Looks like I have bubbles in the polish of the my middle finger too.  Crap!

Update March 14th.  I couldn't bring myself to cover any of the glass fleck yet.  That leaves one shimmery frosted index finger.  I found a four leaf clover on plate BM03 from the Bundle Monster set.  I used Where's the Tire Jack? by Sephora.  It's quite thin.  After the 17th I'm going to experiment with scotch tape patterns.  Bye for now!

Sally Hansen Hi-Definition Nail Colour

ADDITION - March 25, 2011

Everywhere I go now I am finding Byte!  I have 5 bottles now but I still had to really force myself to walk away when I found another 2 bottles the other day.  I also found again the blog post that started my obsession!  When I wrote this post I had forgotten where and searched forever and couldn't find it.  Just found it again now while looking through one of my top 3 fave blogs "ThatsSOfresh".  The same blog I mentioned in a recent post about scotch tape manicures.  Here is the specific post:  Where did you get that from!?  Thanks again for the inspiration ThatSOfresh!  Now that I have seen those photos again that is for sure my next mani!

About a month ago while spending hours looking through blogs dedicated to nail polish I came across the most amazing, electric purple I had ever seen!  I had to have it!  Turns out it was a layered polish.  Sally Hansen's Byte layered on black.  As soon as I had given up on finding it I found 3 bottles!  I bought them all.  Maybe, if I can bring myself to part with it, I will give one away when I reach 100 followers.  In the meantime it is time to start experimenting!

I love, love, love, love, LOVE how shiny and sparkly this polish is.  It is LOADED with glass flecks.  Pink and blue.  I also bought two other glass fleck loaded colours.  Spectrum and DVD.  The colours remind me of Spring and Easter Eggs.  When I first put them on I thought I would never wear them on their own again.  However they are growing on me!  These will only stay this way for a day.  Tomorrow I'm going to add something to them.  Man, they are gorgeous!    Of course my photos don't do them justice.  There are loads of other photos out there to drool over if you google them.

This is 3 coats with top coat.  Ring finger has 4 coats.  You'll see why....
Index = Byte
Middle = Spectrum
Ring = 3 coats of Byte + 1 coat of Spectrum on top.
Pinky = DVD
Thumb = Patchy stripes of Spectrum, DVD and Byte topped with OPI Shatter

As you can see it is a very sheer polish.  I imagine that is the price you pay for having so much awesome glass fleck!  These are going to look fantastic peeking out from under scotch tape manicures or stamping.  Also already experimenting with layering them on top of other colours.  Here is what Byte looks like on top of white, black, dark purple, silver and red!  They all got dinged and mucked up because I did stuff before they were dry.  Byte on white looks neon but my camera didn't quite catch that. On silver it becomes an old school pastel pink frost.  Where it really shines is on black and on red!  Wow!  On the nail byte is lighter than in the bottle.  On red it looks like the colour in the bottle but a little darker.

Before Byte:

Index = Queen of Everything by Sephora

Middle = Just a Little Dangerous by Sephora

Ring = Where's The Tire Jack by Sephora

Pinky = Alpine Snow by OPI

Thumb = Karina by Zoya

 Next I want to try Spectrum (the turquoise blue) on black, blue, purple and red.  So many possibilities and so little time!

What are some of your favourite layering polishes and colour combinations?  Please share!

Purple Polish Party!

As I mentioned Wednesday it was a purple polish party day.  If only I could actually capture the colour purple!  It always looks more blue as in indigo rather than the yummy grape juice purple that it is. At least I thought I wasn't getting it but now that I look at it on my work computer it looks purple!  In fact I'm happy with how close it is to in person.  Yay!  I bought a new camera and so far I am quite happy with it.  It was the only brand (Nikon) in the store that seemed to be getting the colour right and capturing the sparkle. Spent more than I intended.  Got a Nikon Coolpix S80.  Back to sparkly stuff!  On my left hand I tried 5 different purples.  One less is shown in the picture because it was a duplicate colour.

Index finger = Zoya, Mimi

Middle finger = Nicole, Gone Wishin'

Ring finger = Orly, Out of This World

Pinky finger = Sephora, Just a Little Dangerous

Sorry for the mess on my fingers  when you click on the photos to see the larger size.  : )

Gone Wishin' is now one of my top 10 all time favourites.  I just found it this weekend.  I'll be sharing that haul next blog post.  It is a gorgeous polish.  It is a clearish base with tiny purple specks and then bigger peacock blue and hot pink glitter.  Just a Little Dangerous is a disappointment.  When you apply it you see loads of purple shimmer.  It must all sink to the bottom because on the nail once it is dry it looks like a cream.  I did manage to catch a little sparkle in the photo but it is nearly impossible to see in real life.

On my right hand I experimented with things I could put on top of Just a Little Dangerous so I could wear it as I will never wear it on it's own.  The following are on top of JALD.

Index finger = Cover Girl, Amethyst Mist

Middle finger = Cover Girl, City Lights

Ring finger = Color Club, Covered in Diamonds

Pinky finger = Nubar, 2010

I have more I want to try so that's just the first round!

Julieanne is Out of This World!

Today was a purple polish party for my nails.  If only I could take a picture that even came close to capturing the sparkle! It's not just the camera it's the lighting.  Indirect light on a bright sunny day works best I think.  However I live in the Pacific Northwest and it seems we only have that for about 25% of the year! I will post something tomorrow. 

Until then I wanted post about discovering that Julieanne by Zoya and Out of This World by Orly are a DUPE.  Somehow I missed this when I recently searched this subject for my DUPE page.  I'm certainly not the first to discover this. As I gathered all my purple polishes up I thought they looked the same in the bottle.  Same on the nail too.  Gorgeous colour!  Wish I could capture it with my camera. This picture in the bottles is a pretty good representation.  Just can't capture the purple sparkle when it's on my nails.

This is, excuse the mess, one coat.  The left is Zoya Julieanne and right nail is Orly Out of This World. You can see right away they are the same blackened purple / indigo base with purple sparkles.  The sparkles aren't obvious until the second coat.  After seeing how sheer the first coat was I thought for sure it would need 3 coats but I am a "heavy coater" and 2 coats was just fine.  Sorry, no pic of the 2 side by side with a second coat.  Once I realized they were the same I covered one of them with Gone Wishin' by Nicole as I wanted every nail to be different.  Perhaps you will see the final results tomorrow if I can get a picture!  Nail polish photography advice welcome!!!

Inventory Day 2

Last weekend I finished entering all of my polishes in the Excel document I started the week before. You can check it out by clicking on the STASH tab above and then following the link to the document. Before I properly organize all of my polishes over 2 racks I wanted to see what 3 of my fave brands look like together. Here is a picture of most of my OPI, Zoya and China Glaze.

Click on the pic to get a larger version in a window all it's own.  Once there if click on it again you should get an even larger version.  you can also go check it out at flickr photo album linked to in the header above.  So pretty!  : ) There are only two non-sparkly colours in my entire collection of almost 200 bottles and that is black and white.  I LOVE SPARKLE!

I am also still working on designing this blog.  Added a few more tabs above. Hope you will explore a little!  Thanks for stopping by!

Inventory Day!

Today was a relaxing, stay at home, rainy day! I spent the majority of it entering my nail polish stash in an excel spreadsheet. I'm about half way done! You can view it by clicking on the stash tab above and following the link. Some of them are so old you can't find them using Google. : ) I just bought 2 of these racks in the last couple of weeks. Not organized yet but here is the first rack which I worked on and completed today.  These bottles will not stay in this order.

Click on the picture for a larger view in a window by itself.  Click on that photo and it will give you an even larger view that is about 50% of actual size.  You can read the labels and see the colours quite clearly.  They are even the true colours which can be hard to capture at times!  When I am all done I will take pictures of the final order and add text to each bottle with the name of the colour.


This does not include dozens of bottles of Zoya and China Glaze I have purchased in the last month. The Burlesque collection by OPI set me off on a feeding frenzy! I've kinda been out of the loop and didn't even know about Zoya and China Glaze! LOL  I am now cut off and cannot buy another bottle for a long, long, long time.  Hopefully I will find duplicates so I can trade for colours on my wish list.  Must stop now.......