Zoya - Neeka

I took advantage of the zoya deal in early January. I yoinked up five colors. This is the first.

Pros: great moody dark color. One flipping coat.

Cons: I think I'm maybe too pale for it right now.

Urban Nights

Another creme from China Glaze's Metro Collection from fall 2011. This deep shade looks like a vampy plum indoors but turns straight up purple in the light. This was a fab palette cleanser after my excursion to bright blue! Great application, lovely color. Gold star, China Glaze.

Velvet Two Ways

So for today, I have Orly's Velvet Rope done two ways. The first is the basic Velvet Rope. And this is a great color. It's a nice deep pure purple with little teeny silver microglitter running throughout.

Next is Velvet Rope, but with two coats of OPI's stunner Serving up Sparkle on top of it. Serving up sparkle has a great holo glitter with big hex pieces mixed in. It was somewhat difficult to apply the hex glitter evenly. You really have to shake the heck out of the bottle. Frequently. But it was super pretty.

This combo is actually how I rang in the new year and it definitely felt appropriately festive!

Zoya Jem

When I saw the previews for the Zoya Mirrors collection, I knew I needed to have Jem. Then I found a blogger who was having a mystery grab bag blog sale (10 for 27!) and this gem came in it (hah, Jem/Gem!)

Jem is a lovely purpley-red color with a lot of shimmery goodness. It pulls redder on me than most people (which is odd, because I tend to pull things bluer). Pictures 'neath:

Sally Hansen DVD

This one is an oldie but a goodie.

Sally Hansen DVD is in my most favorite of color veins: the periwinkle or "blurple." This color is really sheer and is great as a top layer (I tried it over Commander in Chic long before I started polish blogging and the results were delightful).

The pictures below are three coats with some seriously visible nail line. One is natural light and one is blur to really get a feel for the color and sparkle.

Misa Genie in This Bottle

Oh Misa, my love affair continues...

Genie in This Bottle comes from Misa's Wishes collection. You can see the Touch the Rainbow post for another gem from Wishes. Like the rest of the collection, Genie in This Bottle is a shimmery pastel. This one is tricky, though. In certain lights she looks purple, in others she looks pink, in others still, light gray with multi-color sparkles. I've seen her described elsewhere as a green with purple and pink sparkly bits. I think that may be the most apt description. Regardless, my camera had a hard time capturing her accurately as she changes quite a bit.

This polish comes in the wondrous square bottle. I find I love the Misa brushes more than is reasonable for this type of thing. Genie in This Bottle's formula is pretty thick, but not unmanageably so. I understand that's fairly common for the pastel princess polishes. Regardless, she's a beauty and worth any small amount of extra application trouble.

Images below are two coats with OPI Natural base and Seche Vite top coats.

Hard Candy Beetle

At my heart, I love sparkles...and shininess. Also? Duochrome.

Thus, it was only a matter of time until I stumbled across Beetle. I'd seen pictures and eventually darkened Walmart's doors just to go get the stuff. It was totally worth it. This stuff flips in every kind of light and it's gorgeous.

It has my newly-discovered love of the square bottle with a decent, easy-to-control brush. The formula is thin and sheer. The pictures below are four coats (no top coat because my Seche was temporarily lost). I should've taken video because the pictures cannot begin to capture how flippy the colors are.

Smooth Sailing

So, for as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of nail polish. I saved my allowance for weeks and bought three shades of Wet & Wild when I was seven, and I configured them into different designs over and over (my mom thought more than three was unnecessary). When I was a teenager, the first inexpensive nail salon came to town and I was forever getting acrylic nails with fun new colors on. What I'm sayin' is... despite my recent addiction to the collecting of nail polishes, I've loved nail polish the overwhelming majority of my life.

Along the way, I've had specific colors I've loved! Midnight in Moscow immediately springs to mind... as does Chanel's Vamp. If it's deep and sparkly, there's a better than even chance that I've given it an "oooh!" whilst it's applied to my nails, and vainly preen my fingers to glance at it myriad times once it's on.

But I only thought I knew love.

Because when I saw Essie's Smooth Sailing (from their 2011 Summer Braziliant line) applied to my nails, I knew I'd found the one. The polish that, were I forced to monogamously wear one color for the rest of my life, I would commit to. This is my would-be nail hubs.

Examine the awesome:
1. It's a gorgeous color of periwinkle (honestly, the color itself is my most favorite color in the entire known universe).
2. It has gorgeous, gorgeous silver sparkly bits in it.
3. The application is a dream.


With some flash.


In the fading natural light of the day. Apparently sunset makes my hands all pink. That part's not cute... but the color of my nails certainly is!


Close Up. Look at that sparkly!

Spinning Out of Control

I have two things presently Spinning Out of Control...
1. My burgeoning obsession with MISA nail polishes.
2. My ability to keep a blog going.

So on the 29th of May, I had a one-night only manicure in the color of Spinning Out of Control. This color, from MISA's What I Like About You fall collection is a gorgeous dark blue-purple with all kinds of depth to it. It has some pink/purple shimmer in it and almost seems to glow. The formula on the color was great -- it was thin and self-leveled. I really feel like every MISA nail polish I've tried so far is basically idiot-proof. Which is a bonus for me.

I do want to note that this color pulled WAY blue on me compared to other swatches I've seen online. My picture may be a touch bluer than it was in reality, but not much. My red-blue undertones really took this to a blue place. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm suddenly feeling like I need to buy the entirety of the MISA line. All of it.

Below Deck.

Last night I delved into my new stash and painted my nails in China Glaze Below Deck, a beautiful purple-grey creme. The formula was thicker than a lot of the China Glaze I've used, and I could almost have gotten by with a single coat. I did two just to increase consistency. It self-leveled marvelously and has great shininess. This color is REALLY close to Sally Hansen's Commander in Chic -- just a little bit more purple than brown. The following pictures are one coat of OPI base coat, two coats of Below Deck and a top coat of Seche Vite.

China Glaze Tantalize Me

So this is not a freshly swatched (HEY, I'm swatching! Kind of...) set of nails. This is from Friday (the weekend totally got away from me).

SO... China Glaze Tantalize Me. I understand this came from the Fiji Fling collection they put out for Spring/Summer 2006. It looks like they did the entire collection in duos of contrasting color which is kind of cool. That could be a fun thing to do an accent nail with. Hm....

Digressing!

So this color is a lovely lilac color that has a really excellent blue shimmer running through it. The formula on my bottle was a bit runny. I got decent coverage with two coats, but even with the Seche Vite top coat, I managed to dent one of my nails about 20 minutes after painting. I may have pouted as I reapplied the polish to the offending finger, but in the end it was totally worth it. I have pale skin and am a red-blue undertoned girl which presents copious color challenges. This color not only didn't give me any lobster hands, it actually made me look somewhat tan. Magic! And that blue shimmer is gorgeous.

Now, please remember that this color is now four days old... and yes... that is Peachy Keen embarrassingly hanging out on a couple cuticles. My only saving grace right now is that nobody knows I exist and with any luck, by the time they do, I'll have several excellent swatches to make this one not seem so bad! But let's not focus on these sad imperfections. Check out the beauty that is this color. She's so pretty.

I would absolutely recommend this to a friend.