Zoya Rica and Tanzy: Swatches and Review

One of my favorite things lately is to paint the nails on each hand a different color. I usually try to pick colors that are similar enough so that it's not obvious at first glance that it's actually two different colors. My favorite combo so far has been Zoya Rica and Tanzy from the Sunshine collection.

Zoya - Tanzy and Zoya - Rica

Tanzy is an amazing light orange base that's absolutely packed with sparkly golden glass flecks. Rica is the same formula except with a coral pink base, and both are absolutely amazing. Zoya's Sparkle (summer 2010) and Sunshine (summer 2011) are two of my favorite collections of all time from any company, which is why I was a little disappointed in the 2012 summer collection. Oh well, maybe next year they'll come out with something even more spectacular!

It started out as one of those "I can't decide which one I want to wear!" days, and since I never actually made a decision, I just ended up painting one hand with Tanzy and one with Rica. Turns out, the crazy gold sparkles in both pulled them together into an awesome mismatched manicure, and I ended up loving the rebel feeling of having two different colors. I will certainly be doing this again!

Both of these are shown at two easy coats, but for some reason these have a longer-than-normal dry time.  They were still slightly dentable after a couple hours even with Cult Nail Wicked Fast (quick dry) topcoat.

Zoya Rica and Tanzy are both available on Zoya's website for $8 each, but if you love gold sparkles, I highly recommend picking up the whole Sunshine set. Every single one is a stunner.

Zoya Beach and Surf: Accent Nails

The first thing I noticed about the Zoya Beach and Surf collections was that they all seem to have a "match" in the other collection. There are plenty of swatches out there for Beach and Surf already, so I wanted to give it a twist and show how wonderfully these work for multi-finger accent manicures! I like more contrast for single-finger accents, but prefer the colors to be more closely related for the multi-finger accents.

Check out how well these go together!

Zoya - Wednesday and Zuza

Zoya - Tracie and Meg

Zoya - Arizona and Myrta

Zoya - Shelby and Rory

Zoya - Lara and Kimber

Zoya - Reagan and Carly

Of course, you don't have to pair them up with the most matching color. You can also pair random ones together. For instance, I loved the look of the orange and teal together so I paired Arizona with Zuza for this single-accent:

Zoya - Arizona and Zuza

Overall, while the colors are quite pretty and beach-y and summery, I have to admit that I was disappointed in the collections.  After the killer Sparkle (Summer 2010) and Sunshine (Summer 2011) collections, I was REALLY hoping for more spectacular bling from Zoya for this year.  I know that many others love shimmers and cremes and will be delighted with this collection, but I can't help but feel let down a bit.

I think Arizona was my favorite even though I don't own or like very many orange polishes.  It is the perfect soft, yet bright creamsicle orange that I think would be perfect on finger or toes at the beach!  Carly was also a standout.  It's a rich, intense purple foil that I have nothing even close to in my collection, and it's nearly a one-coater!  Some of the others I liked, some I didn't, but all had excellent formula.  Most are slightly thick and cover in two coats.

The Zoya Beach and Surf collections are both available now at the Zoya website.  They retail for $8 each or $48 for each sampler set.


(These products were sent for review.)

Nailventurous - Floam, Pinkerbell, Orange You Unique, and Humble Bee: Swatches and Review

The polishes featured in this post are all handmade by a blogger friend of mine named Amy from Nailventurous. She recently opened a shop on Etsy and in her first sale she sold out in less than five minutes! It was absolutely crazy! I was incredibly lucky and snagged the set of three (Floam, Pinkerbell, and Orange You Unique) as well as Humble Bee.

Nailventurous - Floam

Floam is one that's slipped just out of my reach a few times, so I'm REALLY excited to finally own it! Floam is a mix of neon blue and green matte glitter (in other words, it's not metallic) in a shiny clear base. It's a bit thick, but it makes application really easy and Floam only takes two coats to be fully opaque. I love this polish so much!

Nailventurous - Pinkerbell

Pinkerbell is a mix of the same blue and green glitter in Floam, but with some smaller neon pink glitter as well. From a distance I think it has kind of a greyish blue look, but up close you can see all the beautiful specks of color. Very fairy-esque to me. Kind of light and dainty, but bright and playful at the same time. It had the same slightly thick formula that covered nicely in two coats

Nailventurous - Orange You Unique

This one, a mix of orange and blue matte glitter, looks to me like a summer day by the pool. At a distance, this one kind of blends into my skin and is a neutral orange color, but the blue really pops against the orange up close. I think it has white glitter in it, but the base is tinted a slightly neon coral color so they look a bit pink. Again, two (kind of thick) easy coats for opacity.

Nailventurous - Humble Bee

This is the one that's not part of the "original three" set. This is one of Amy's newer creations, and it won me over instantly! It's a combination of small neon yellow glitter and small and medium black glitter in a clear base. As much as I was excited for Floam, this one may be in a tie for my favorite one here. I really want to try layering this over a bright blue or coral! This one is two coats as well.

All in all, I'm SO incredibly impressed with Amy's unique frankens and their wonderful formula! It's important to wait a few minutes between coats so you don't drag the glitter around, and a topcoat of Gelous then Seche Vite is required to make them glassy smooth.

As I mentioned, these are a tad bit hard to get ahold of, but not impossible. Amy should be stocking the Nailventurous Esty shop again in the near future (for Humble Bee), and you can also watch out for Floam, Pinkerbell, and Orange You Unique on Ninja Polish (you can sign up for email notifications on both sites).

Katniss, Girl on Fire: Hunger Games Midnight Release Mani

Edited to add sun pictures.

After re-reading the Hunger Games in the last couple of days, I was reminded that Katniss herself had her nails done for the interview directly preceding the beginning of the Games. In the book, Katniss says Cinna's team decorates her by "painting flame designs on [her] twenty perfect nails." So of course, I had to do a flame design.

(sun)

(sun)

(artificial light)

For a background, I used Orly Iron Butterfly. I wanted it to look a bit like smoke and ashes as well as being representative of District 12's coal industry. It's an easy one-coater matte black with silver shimmer, and it resembles China Glaze Stone Cold from the Colors from the Capitol collection.

(artificial light)

I wanted a flame design but I wanted it to look a little more natural than the typical hot rod flames. So I opted to paint the flames right over the charcoal instead of using a more opaque base. I started by freehanding the flame design in China Glaze Riveting, a red-orange glass fleck.  At first I'd planned the flames coming up my nails from the tip, but decided since Katniss was the girl on fire, the flames should be coming from her nails instead.

(indirect sunlight)

After doing all the red, I used Zoya Tanzy to fill in all the flames, leaving a bit of a red outline around the edges. I went over it twice to make it a little more opaque.

(indirect sunlight)

Lastly, I added some Milani Gold Glitz to the base of each flame (at the cuticle), to make it fully opaque and add a little bit of extra sparkle. It also toned down the fire to a bronzey-gold. Again, I didn't want bright hot rod flames, but more natural coppery flames.

(indirect sunlight)

I tried so many "versions" of flames (including the "hot rod type" which were made by painting black over the flames instead of the flames on the charcoal), but these actually came out exactly how I wanted them to.  I had a heck of a time trying to get pictures of these in natural light because the glare wanted to wipe out the flame shapes.

I won't lie, these were NOT easy, and it took a LONG time. But the result made it all worth it to me. I feel like the Girl on Fire.

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?

Hard Candy Glossaholic - Chill Out

I may have said this before, but I rarely EVER wear makeup. However, I TRY to wear lip balm/gloss as much as I can because I have this horrible habit of picking at my lips when they are chapped (which is all the time... because I pick at them *sigh*).

I was nail polish hunting at Wal Mart when I noticed these awesome flaky lip glosses by Hard Candy, so I figured I'd try one for only $5. Why not?

Hard Candy Glossaholic - Chill Out

One thing I didn't notice just by looking at them is the awesome HUGE applicator that it comes with! I mean seriously, this thing is about two and a half times thicker than most lip gloss applicators, and I think it's great (I don't know why, I just like it)! It does seem to have some serious suction behind it though every time I pull it out. Check this doozy out!

It actually looks really neat on as well! It contains both blue and orange flakies in a clear base - this is similar to Finger Paints Asylum or Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory flakies nail polishes.

**BTW... I'm desperately trying to find Asylum at the moment and not for ridiculous ebay prices... if your Sally's has them I'd love to buy one from you!!!**

Here is how Chill Out looks on:

The second picture shows how the orange flakies change to green at an angle - totally awesome! It won't add any color to your lips, but I kind of like that because you could wear it over your favorite color to add some sparkle!

N.NAIL Water Decals French Tip Nail Art- WDB069

Today I have for you some French tip water decals from KKcenterhk. Even though they are flowery, they feel really "fall" to me. Check out this awesome design (N.NAIL-WDB069):

Unfortunately, I had a bit of trouble with application. I think it may take me a few times to get the hang of water decals like this. For some reason, when I tried to file off the ends they ended up kind of ragged, so I tried to put topcoat on first before I filed the extra off... that didn't really work either. Also, the Seche Vite top coat I put on smeared the decals. I was really surprised about this because Seche Vite rarely ever smears polish, even if it's wet, and these were dry. I imagine there are topcoats that would work with these decals, just like there are topcoats that work over foils while others don't. I'm glad I only used a few of them for this swatch so I can try it again with the ten that are left on the little sheet.  Hopefully I'll get a little better results with a second try.

These are available on KKcenterhk's site here along with many other nail art decals. I'd love to try some foil ones in the future!

Hawaiian Color Matte and Blitzen

Of course, because everyone loves China Glaze Fortune Teller mattified, I had to try it with Hawaiian Color as well, and here it is! I just hate how matte topcoats make the polish cloudy instead of just matte. This is China Glaze Matte Magic, but I think I'm going to go looking for Essie Matte About You because it looks like it may be a little better.

China Glaze Matte Magic over Island Girl Hawaiian Color and China Glaze Liquid Leather

NOTE:  Seche Vite's shrinkage drives me nuts... but it's the only one I've found that REALLY dries my polish in minutes.  As in, I took two rambunctious German shepherds to puppy school RIGHT after finishing my nails once and didn't get a single ding!

Oh speaking of, here's a bonus pic of my little white shepherd boy, Blitzen.  I adopted him from the White German Shepherd Rescue here in Phoenix last November and I consider us to be each others' Christmas present last year.

 Blitzen (White German Shepherd)

Isn't he smiley?  He's ALWAYS smiling, where my little girl dog always has sad puppy dog eyes.  It may not show in the picture, but this guy has a HUGE HONKER.  It's a diabolical nose that knocks over anything and everything.  Also, he's the shedding-est dog EVER, and I wouldn't give him up for anything in the world.

Happy Halloween - Island Girl Hawaiian Color Swatch

Happy Halloween!!

I know this looks like China Glaze Fortune Teller, but it's actually Island Girl Hawaiian Color. I wanted so bad to find Fortune Teller a while ago, and when I finally got this polish while in Vegas I was so happy! I don't have both to compare them obviously, but I understand that they are close anyway. Good enough for me! The base color in this is a little brown so I layered one coat over black (China Glaze Liquid Leather, 2 coats) to get a nice black and orange for Halloween.

Island Girl Hawaiian Color over China Glaze Liquid Leather

OPI The Show Must Go On and Orly Rock It Swatches

Today I have a couple of pink/red/orange duochromes for you. I like these for fall, but they seem like they'd be fitting for summer as well. I put Orly Rock It on today and it reminded me I had pics of OPI The Show Must Go On to post as well. Both of these seem to have lots of pink/red/orange duochrome foil flecks in them but with different base colors.

The first up is OPI The Show Must Go On.

OPI - The Show Must Go On

The duochrome in this one is quite strong and beautiful. While I'm not much a pink fan, I very much enjoy this one.


Next is Orly Rock It from their current fall collection:

Orly - Rock It

The duochrome in this is much less pronounced and (unfortunately) is a lot harder to catch. I love the orange end of the spectrum in this one, but it can only be seen at certain angles. Nevertheless, it is still gorgeous. A beautiful rich dark magenta that turns crimson and a kind of burnt orange.

I know sometimes (a lot of times?) I forget to comment on application. Honestly, it's probably because I don't much care how hard it is to put on. If I love a color enough, I'll go through hell and back to have it on my nails. I'll try to include the number of coats and a little comment on application if I remember from now on though. These were both two coats and had very easy, smooth application. Removal is a slight pain just because of all the sparkly particles.