Zoya - NYFW Peter Som Collection: Swatches and Review

I'm not really sure what made me spontaneously buy the Peter Som collection from Zoya during NYFW (probably the fact that it was LE and had free shipping), but I'm glad I did!

Zoya - Audrey

Audrey is a pale, sheer pink jelly that has a nice glossy finish. This was the one I was most excited about because of its "revolutionary magical gel look." And the finish IS very nice, but the color is a bit uneven on its own. Not really streaky, but just more sheer in some spots and more opaque in others. Very light and feminine, and I like how it looks with three coats (shown).

Zoya - Katharine

My favorite of the collection. Katharine is a subdued plum/raisin jelly (it looks more eggplant in the bottle though) that is quite sheer on the first two coats, but builds up into a nice squishy jelly finish. For this swatch I used three thin coats, but I think it looked a little better the night before when I tried it with slightly thicker coats. Either way, it looks more even in person than in the pictures.  I love that this is a more dusty/greyed shade of red purple.  So chic and juicy.

Zoya - Evvie

Evvie is a very opaque dark sage grey creme. The only creme in the collection, it is completely opaque in two easy, thin coats. Again, very chic with a little bit of edge. Zoya really hits it home with their greens and this is no exception. I think it is also neutral enough to complement a variety of skin tones from cool to warm. Simple, but quite flattering.

Overall I'm quite impressed with this whole set. All of the shades are nice, and Audrey is so unique! Unfortunately, the set was limited edition for NYFW and is currently sold out, but I've heard rumors of these colors making it into the Zoya core line this fall or so.

Pure Ice Yellow Polka and Catwalk: Swatches and Review

Here is another "set" from Pure Ice: a sunny yellow creme called Yellow Polka, and a yellow shimmer crackle named Catwalk.

Pure Ice - Yellow Polka

Wow. This is the perfect sunny yellow creme in my opinion. More warm and soft but still striking and lit up. All I can think of is summer and how much this color would look awesome with a bikini and a tan on a beach towel in the sun. My new favorite yellow creme.

The formula is pretty good on this one as well. I had only a tiny bit of cuticle drag and it was probably my own fault for not waiting in between coats. I did a thin third coat just to even it out and make it perfect, but it's probably not necessary if you wait for each coat to dry.

Pure Ice - Catwalk (over Yellow Polka)

Here is the yellow shimmer crackle called Catwalk. To be honest, I'm not sure I get this so much. I'm not even sure if it's supposed to be a "set" that's worn together like the Chinese New Year set. It's pretty, but I can't help feeling like anything added to Yellow Polka would take away from the creamy, dreamy yellow finish.

Pure Ice polishes retail for $1.99 and can be found at most Wal-Marts and on the Pure Ice Cosmetics site. If you don't have a perfect yellow creme yet, you may want to pick up Yellow Polka!

(This product was sent to me for review.)

Nostalgic - Bizarre Teenage Love Triangle: Swatches and Review

This is a set of nail polish that I saw awhile back on someone's blog and for some reason I passed on it (phooey!). Well, a few weeks later I managed to nab a set, along with the Truly Outrageous collection, which I will show later.

All three of these are multi size and color glitters in a sheer pastel jelly base. Because they are sheer, I decided to layer each one over one coat of a matching base color.

Nostalgic - Andie (over Color Club - I Believe in Amour)

Andie is a light pink jelly base with large salmon "pattern" hex glitters (click on the pic to see the crazy patterns on the large hexes!), and small lavender and magenta glitters. The small glitters are pretty prominent and are easy to get plenty on each nail. So light and pretty, yet with a bit of "pop" from the dark and large glitters!

Nostalgic - Blane (over OPI - A Grape Fit)

Blane is a lavender purple jelly with large dark blue hex glitters and small light blue and dark purple glitters.  I feel like I may have layered it over a color that was too dark, although I read somewhere that Nostalgic was going for a "moody" feeling with Blane. The glitters were a little bit harder to get even on this one, but not too bad.

Nostalgic - Duckie (over American Apparel - Office)

Duckie is a light teal jelly base with a sprinkling of large gold hexes, medium blue holo hexes and small gold glitters. The only one with a middle size glitter, it also has the most sparse glitter of the three. The application on this one is tough just because it's a bit difficult to get many glitter pieces in this one. But it's my favorite, so it's worth it.

None of these are pictured with topcoat, but I've tried Duckie with Seche Vite and it came out perfectly smooth with only one coat.

All three of these require a bit of patience in application and moving the glitters around. The trick I found was to pull the brush out of the nail polish and wipe it on the edge of the bottle neck a few times and wait for some of the polish to flow back down leaving some glitter in the neck. Then scoop up the patch of glitter that has what you want in it. Getting it on the nail just right takes a little time as well, but the end result it completely worth it in my mind. It's not a "quick manicure" by any means, but if you have the time to give it some more attention it looks so beautiful in the end!

The Bizarre Teenage Love Triangle collection is available in the NostalgicLacquer Etsy shop, but is in and out of stock frequently (because it's home made!). I know there is a planned restock with many of each color available in two days (Friday, Feb 24th) so keep your eye out if want to grab any of these!

Color Blind Test

Sarah at Chalkboard Nails is having a contest with a theme of "dotting tool," and this is the one I'm entering. As soon as I heard "dot" I thought of the color blind tests that are made up of colorful dots, and I was so excited to create this!

I started with a white backgroung and used three of each "shade" (blue, green, red, and orange) to first draw out each number in dots then fill in the rest of the nail with the opposite shade.

Then, just because I wanted to see how good I was at picking the colors, I changed it to black and white to see if the numbers were still readable:

I dunno about you, but I can only MAYBE pick out the "8" on the pinky in this pic... the others seem to have disappeared!

The numbers in the picture are representative of the night of Chief's and my first date... can you see it?

500 Follower Giveaway WINNER!

Congratulations to the winner of my 500 Follower SensatioNail Starter Kit giveaway:

Katie from The Nailaholic!

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butter LONDON - Knackered

I don't really know why I NEEDED Knackered, but nevertheless I bought it when I made an Ulta order for Revlon Whimsical recently. I feel like it's similar to Wet n Wild's Gray's Anatomy (maybe with China Glaze Fairy Dust or Northern Lights topcoat), but without directly comparing I feel like Knackered is a bit more brightly duochrome and has a more metallic finish.

butter LONDON - Knackered over Essie Fair Game

Knackered is a somewhat sheer purple to green duochrome metallic with silver holo micro glitter.  I decided to layer it over Essie Fair Game because it didn't seem like it'd be easily opaque on its own (it'd probably take 3-4 coats to be fully opaque). Plus, at $14 for .4oz (11mL) of polish, I'd like to conserve it. Essie Fair Game is kind of a gunmetal blue/grey shimmer and I used one coat under two coats of Knackered.  The edges in person look a tiny bit more green than in the pics above.

The thing I love about this polish is that in low light the duochrome really stands out, and in bright sunlight the holo glitter brings it to life. Luckily, the glitter doesn't seem to make the metallic finish look too lumpy.

This picture in artificial light shows off the metallic finish and pretty green to purple duochrome depth nicely:

Knackered is a part of butter LONDON's spring/summer 2012 collection and is available at Ulta and the butter LONDON website.  I also got Disco Biscuit which I'll be showing soon as well!

Cult Nails - Toxic Seaweed

This polish is part of Cult Nails latest collection Let's Get Nekkid and they've said that there are limited quantities available of this one, so I was super excited to get a hold of it. I knew I'd like it, but I didn't expect to be this blown away.

(shade)

(sun)

Cult Nails - Toxic Seaweed

This is just gorgeous. It's a teal jelly with gold glitter and orange flakies. This is built up to three coats, but it looks nice at two. It just seems to get deeper and darker with each coat. I don't know what else to say except that if you like jellies with glitter or flakies, you should definitely pick this one up.

As of now, Toxic Seaweed appears to be still available on the Cult Nails site for $10. Better grab one while you can!

Edit:  Wanted to add this cute bonus picture of the cute polish burrito that it came in!

Remember tomorrow is the last day to enter my 500 Follower SensatioNail Starter Kit giveaway if you haven't already!

Nars Zulu dupe: Nfu Oh 569

I'm a HUGE fan of green nail polish, and I've always loved the color of Nars Zulu, but not the hype about it. So even when it was re-released I passed on it because I already had this one from Nfu Oh: 569.

Nfu Oh - 569

Nfu-Oh 569 is a super deep (almost black) green jelly that definitely looks GREEN in direct sunlight or a camera flash, but looks nearly black in all other lights.

Like I said, I love the color of this, but this application just sort of turned me off to it for awhile. It looks pretty nice indoors and in dim light, although the shiny top (China Glaze Fast Forward) has gotten a little scuffed and it just doesn't always look shiny and pretty. But then I stepped out into the sun and HOLY BUBBLES, BATMAN. It ruins the awesome deep green jelly that would look so squishy in the sun. Instead it looks more like a green sponge... not pretty.  Over a couple hours some of the bubbles even breached the shiny surface. I remember I've had the same problem with another one of my favorites: Illamasqua Rampage. It's probably my own fault for not waiting long enough in between coats.

The formula is kinda hard to work with. It's a little thick and tends to end up looking streaky. The best color was at two coats, but to get rid of the uneven parts I had to do three. It also likes to run into cuticles a lot, and is a real pain to clean up.  And it tends to shrink away from the tips.  Maybe I'll add some thinner and wait longer between coats next time... like next winter, haha.

More Jelly/Glitter Sandwiches

After my successful black and white jelly/glitter sandwich I really wanted to try more. Here are some that I came up with:

Deborah Lippmann Yellow Brick Road and Spoiled Trust Fund Baby

I now have a reason to LOVE Yellow Brick Road (if you remember, I didn't care for it too much on its own). This is a coat of YBR then one coat of Trust Fund Baby (close to Wet n Wild Correction Tape, except the black glitter is hex instead of square), then two more coats of YBR. It looks like candy or sprinkles or Easter eggs. So springy and pretty! This is my favorite sandwich I've done so far

New York Summer Hot Baby Blue and Milani Jewel FX Gems (with purple)

This one came out looking a LOT like Deborah Lippmann's candy shop except in a light sky blue. Great if you want the look but don't care for pink (although it's fairly easy and cheap to franken a dupe or a similar effect with whatever base color you like). I liked the overall effect a lot. One coat of HBB, one coat of Gems, one coat of HBB.

OPI Too Hot To Hold 'Em and Love & Beauty unnamed (red, silver, and black hexes)

I'm not usually one for pinks but I do love the hot pink jelly base of this polish, and I like how the silver and red hexes all turned to shades of pink. Very Valentine's-ish. One coat of THPTHE, one coat L&B (which is similar to Spoiled Shuffle the Deck except that StD has slightly smaller black glitter), two coats THPTHE.

Deborah Lippmann Call Me Irresponsible and Lynnderella The Glittering Crowd

This one didn't wow me so much. The Glittering Crowd is such an eye-catching, stunning combination of glitters (the best multi-colored glitter EVER in my opinion), and the purple over top just seemed to wash it out a little. Maybe some top coat would have helped but I'm not sure. It still looked pretty, just disappointing compared to what I'd hoped for. One coat CMI, one coat Glittering Crowd, one coat CMI.

Remember you can always try adding depth to the sandwich by doing and extra glitter coat then another jelly coat.  It's really fun seeing the different effects with various glitters and jellies!



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Glitter Gal Type O (in the sun!)

Yesterday was so cloudy that I didn't even get to see how this looked in the sun. So today I was just doin' my thing and walked into the sun and holy gooses! This red gets even MORE deep and rich and sparkly. The picture kind of shows the depth, but not the sparkle factor.

Glitter Gal - Type O (sun)

Yep, this is one really freaking awesome red.


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