Zoya True and Fleck Effects 2012 Swatches & Review

I have the new, spring 2012 collection from Zoya for review today. It features 6 colors in the "True" collection, with 3 fleck polishes that can either be worn alone, or layered on top of the nail polishes.

TRUE

This is Lotus. This one was kind of hard for me to capture! It's a really nice cool purple with pink shimmer. This is three coats, although it was mostly opaque at two. Very nice application (although I did manage to get too impatient and accidentally made a mark on my ring finger). Looks good with my skintone, so I can envision wearing this often. (And I completely forgot to clean off my cuticles in the second picture, so I'm sorry!)

This is Tru. Flash in the second picture to show the shimmer. A nice, deep, red-toned purple with pink shimmer. It dries a shade darker than the bottle (not that you can really tell the bottle's color from my picture, with the way I'm clutching at it), which is kind of weird but it looks really nice!

Cho. Maybe I'm the only one, but when I first heard that name, I thought of Cho Chang from Harry Potter. Just me? Anyways, this is a creamy, yellow-toned shade with a subtle silver shimmer. It actually looks good with my skintone, and I might wear it more often (I don't usually do neutrals/tannish colors like this).

Farah. Dirty beige. It does not look good with my skintone as well, so I probably won't wear it very often. It is pretty though, darker than Cho, and stays close to the bottle color.

Skylar. Wow. This is so pretty! It dries a shade darker than the bottle, actually. I thought it would be a dupe for a Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure color, but no way. Skylar is a deep, unique blue with gold and silver shimmer. Awesome shimmer, too. It always turned out in my pictures. The first picture is more true to color.

Bevin. Would it be weird to say that this nail polish reminds me of a person? Not the name or anything, but when I saw Bevin, I instantly thought of my friend. Strange. It is a soft, turquoise-y green. It's extremely pretty! And it actually looked good on me, which I didn't expect from the bottle. I wore it for the longest, a week, and got tons of compliments on it.

Blurred to show the flakes. This is two coats of Lotus with one coat of Chloe on top. It's so pretty! The pink base is (obviously) unnoticeable when it's layered with Lotus.

Two coats of Tru with one coat of Chloe.

Two coats of Cho with one coat of Chloe. (It looks unbelievably beautiful!! In this picture, at least)

Two coats of Farah with one coat of Opal.

Three coats of Skylar with one coat of Maise.

From left: Zoya Maisie, Opal, and Chloe

From left: Zoya Cho, True, and Farah

From left: Zoya Bevin, Lotus, and Skylar

Dry time: Fast for the True Collection, but the Fleck collection takes awhile to dry. Not too long, but it is a bit longer than average dry time.

Color selection: I love the True collection, except I wish they'd done another color instead of two beiges. And the Fleck collection is amazing-- I'm a sucker for flakie top coats. But I do wish that Opal and Maisie weren't so close! Over another polish, they look exactly the same.

Wear time: I wore Bevin for a week, and at the end of the week, the only signs were some average tip wear.

Overall, this collection is very nice, and I'm glad that I got to review it! It was released on Jan. 13th, and you can buy it online at www.zoya.com

(Zoya sent these to me to review).

Depression + Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Two updates in one week?

I forewent one of my last nail designs so that I could post these (just finished them yesterday).



This one is using a regular shiny topcoat.



And this one uses Essie Matte About You (just because I love the look of it... no real purpose.

I chose green and pink for this week because green is the color for Depression Awareness Month, which is October, and pink is for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is also in October. To raise awareness, I'll be wearing these nails for a week and posting a picture of them in Soompi and on my Facebook and Twitter. For every comment (either on Facebook or my blog), "like," (Facebook) "thumbs up" (Soompi) "retweet" (Twitter) and new follower I get from this post, I will donate $0.50 to the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade Foundation, and $0.50 to Hope for Depression Research Foundation. I'm also hoping to get together a giveaway of Pink items to be given away by the end of the month.

I used OPI Jade Is the New Black as the base, three coats for each. Then I used my pink striper polish to draw the design. The thumb nail is kind of random, the pointer finger is supposed to be the Breast Cancer ribbon, the middle finger is just a cross, the ring finger is a french manicure with lines, and the pinky finger says HOPE.

I really love these, and I'm glad that I can actually do my nails for a reason this time, instead of just for fun. (:

(Also, the picture turned out fine!! Now if only I could actually get a good picture, with clean up, without tip wear (need to thin out my Seche Vite... it's getting goopy and dragging my nail polish back)

Star nail of the week

Heyy.

Okay, so I did do a nail design last week. And this week.

But I didn't post it because I am lazy. :)


Here is my nail art from two weeks ago. It came from a nail artist on Soompi, but I'm afraid that I did not write down who did it (I just saved the picture a couple of months ago. Regret.) I kind of failed.

The blue color is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Dive Deeper. Sort of. When I put on the first coat, is quite sheer. And way too light for my tastes. So I frankened the entire bottle to be darker, by adding 4-5 drops of a Sinful Colors nail polish. Whose name (and bottle) escapes me, but I will find it and update it.

Anyways! Then I drew the design with a very dark blue glitter striper polish (okay, I know. That was doomed for failure). It was too liquidy and sheer, so it barely showed up. So I went over that with a silver glitter striper polish. Then I didn't like the way that looked. So I went over it with a purple glittery striper, and then outlined the purple with silver.

I spent way too long on such an easy nail art. And then I was patting myself on the back for that, and completely failed with the picture. Wow. I have no idea HOW I did not see that before I put my camera away (Oh, right. I'm too lazy to check! sob) I should really warn you, by the way, that you can click on the picture to expand it. But if you do, it's blurry. It kind of looks okay (from really far away and without expanding it. And if you just hit spacebar over and over until you get past it).

Anyways! There's a swatch too. One coat of Dive Deeper. (without any cleanup. As you can very clearly tell). It's such a pretty color in the bottle, I'm sad it's so sheer and light.



Any tips for how to get good nail shots? Sometimes I take them outside, but that usually makes them look worse as opposed to better. Here I was, thinking that I was getting better.

I was sadly mistaken. Till next time.

Also, I just cleaned my nail polish collection. And organized it. 30 minutes later and 89 polishes later, well... Just expect a post soon. :)

Nail of the Week + Stranger Tides swatch!

Wow, I am fail. It takes me two weeks, and all I come back with is a long-overdue swatch and a sort of fail nail art? (I also did not buy any nail polishes. A lot of my money has been going to coffee.)

Anyways! I didn't have enough time last week to do a nail art, I just used some nail treatments on my nails. For a science project that is required for graduation, I'll be testing the effects of Toluene (one of the Big 3 chemicals in nail polish) on insects. What's the purpose of that?

... I do not know. But what could be better than being around nail polish, and poking roly-polys with a stick? Exactly.



My nails for the past week. A bit of tip wear because it was a day or two after I first did the design before I could take the picture.

I followed the tutorial off of this tutorial with a few major differences.

I used a sponge brush to apply Sinful Colors This Is It, then drew the flower design (although my friend remarked that it resembled a cracked egg) with my pink striper brush, and went over that with my black striper.

I didn't add the cheetah print marks because I don't really care for animal patterns. I also didn't put gold glitter in the center of the flowers, partially because I was lazy and also because I forgot. Overall though, I liked the effect :)

Here is my swatch for the week (since I have not bought anything over the weekend, you'll have to live with just a swatch. OPI Stranger Tides from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection.



I should have warned you that it was a swatch that I hadn't cleaned up my nails yet in. I'm sorry. (I'm also sorry that my watermarks and stuff kind of suck. I edit my pictures with the free picnik on Flickr, and I just pick a random color for the border and fade the Rakuzen.)

I'm working on a new design right now, so I'll post that soon hopefully.

Happy Labor Day + nail haul

Happy Labor Day!

I had the day off, so I went with my family to take my sister back to college and go to the mall.

I was very sad to find out that BeautyFirst had closed. They always had some kind of good sale going on, so yeah.



On the bright side, I went to Trade Secret and bought this. Seche Restore. My Seche Vite topcoat is getting a bit too thick and gooey, and I have a couple of older nail polishes that need to be restored to a thinner consistency so that I can use them. I'm really happy (except I paid $10 for it and then, as I was walking out, noticed one that was marked for cheaper. :\)

This is kind of a beauty post, too. I also bought this Hello Kitty clutch from Sephora. Originally marked $25, it was on sale for $10.



I'd almost had my mom buy it for me online over the summer, but eventually gave up because I couldn't justify spending $25 on a clutch that probably wouldn't get too much use. So I was overjoyed that it went on sale.



And also, I received my fimo nail art in the mail! There's 50 assorted flakes, with flowers, Hello Kitty (can you tell that I'm a freak for HK?), and a lot of random stuff. And 100 slices of bunny. And a new roll of a white butterfly. I'm so geeked; trying to think of a nail design.



I had some nails from last week, but it wasn't anything too fancy and it chipped after a day, so I didn't get any pictures. Just Super Junior written in Korean with white polish over pink nail polish (in retrospect, I ought to have used sapphire blue.)

I didn't pick up any OPI products because I'm still getting a list together for my salon supplier so that it will be cheaper. I love you, OPI, but I don't have the kind of cash to shell out $8.50 for every bottle.

Nail haul from the (last) week

Still haven't found my SD card. So I will just post about my haul for the last week.
Walgreens was having a sale on Sinful Colors, 99 cents per bottle (not including their new collection). I stopped by and picked up three bottles:



Left to Right: Hot Spot 943, Why Not 951, and All About You 921.

I haven't swatched them/tried them on, but I will soon. Yay. Cheap nail polish :)

Nail of the Week + One old manicure

Since my flickr account is filled with pictures of my manicures, most of which have never seen the light of my blog... I'll be doing one manicure of the week (my current nails) and one of my old manicures every week, until they're all posted :)

Also, I love nail polish sales. And so I tend to buy a lot of nail polishes that sit, unused, in my box. In an effort to keep up with posting my collection, I'll be posting my nail polish haul from the week (or day...).

First up, my current manicure:



(Look at that. My picture actually turned out really well, not blurry, and true to color. In two tries. :)

I used China Glaze Recycle on my thumb, drew the design (four lines) with my black striper polish, and added a rhinestone. For my pointer finger, I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On nail polish, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear The Real Teal for the dots. For my middle finger, I painted it in SH The Real Teal, then drew the lines with my white striper polish, added a white french to the tip, and drew the bow with my black striper, before placing a rhinestone in the middle of the bow. My ring finger has China Glaze Recycle on it, with simple white and black diagonal stripes and a rhinestone where I messed up (:P). I used White On on my pinky finger, drew an X shape with my black striper, and filled in two of the triangles with The Real Teal.

I really, really like the designs in this batch. Very simple, but they're pretty and I've gotten a lot of compliments on them. Plus, I love using rhinestones.

Now for a picture of an old manicure.



This is a couple of months old, from November. I was trying to do the "fun dots" nail art, but I didn't look at a tutorial, just some pictures of finished products.

Not such a great idea. As you can see, it was basically a fail. But I have since learned how to do it, so I'll try again soon.

Also, some exciting news (for me). I've found someone (a salon owner with a beauty license) who is willing (and happy) to supply me with nail polish-- China Glaze, CND, OPI, Essie, and more-- at cost. Which is a lot cheaper than at most locations (retail value for OPI is $8.50. But the nearest store is two hours away, so it costs more in gas.)

I lost my SD card (well, not lost persay, more like misplaced) that had pictures of my last nail polish haul and some swatches, but as soon as I find it I'll update with those.