Essence Choose Me! with Gold Stamping

I had a lot of fun with this mani!  This particular polish, despite being glittery, wears well on me.  I paired it up with some other colors to achieve the final look.

Zoya Frida - Funky Fingers Platinum Record - Essence Choose Me!

Layering goes as follows:

1. Nailtek II Foundation
2. Two coats Choose Me!
3. Stamped: BM 204, FF Platinum Record
4. One coat Zoya Frida
5. One coat OTD

I'm super happy with how this came out! Bonus: the gold gets a bit purposefully "lost" in the manicure, the stamping doesn't need to be perfect. 

I used the floral full nail design right above BM204 for the stamping.

Zoya Bevin with Accent Nails

Doesn't this manicure remind you of mint chocolate chip ice cream? Maybe it's just me? I loved how this one came together!

For the light mint nails, I used three thin coats of Zoya Bevin (two thick coats would have worked as well), the accent nail is 2 coats of Zoya Dea and the index glitter nail is Sephora by OPI in Only Gold for Me Topcoat, one thin coat.  I did this over a base of NailTek II Foundation and sealed with one coat of OTD.  Excuse the tip wear as this mani was a day old at time of photographing!

 

The Zoya cremes applied wonderfully and the glitter was easy to use as well. I like the sparsity of it as it still lets the base color shine through. Loved this mani!

May Ipsy Bag Review and Photos

I got my Ipsy, formerly known as MyGlam Bag, package a few days ago but was held up due to surgery recuperation.   All is well though, so now I have lots of pictures to share with you!  That being said this post is a bit picture heavy, just a heads up.

What's in the bag?!

This bag this time around was really cute.  And oddly enough, there was a second bag included.  There was no note of why, however.  The products came in the bag pictured above, the white bag was empty.  I wonder if this is because last month's bag was a duplicate?  If so, major points for that consideration!

Bonus Bag

This month's bag had five products in it, including a full size Zoya!  That nearly covers the cost of the bag alone; Zoya $8 - Ipsy subscription $10. I like it already. Lets get into the products.

A full size bottle of Zoya Neely, a color I actually really like!  It's a super light minty green creme.  Shown on the swatch wheel below is one super thick coat, no top coat. Such a pretty, seasonally appropriate color.

Next is Pacifica Coconut Crushed Pearl Luminizing Body Butter.  So, I really haven't a clue how to review these sorts of things so (and I know I say that every time, because it's true every time!) bear with me on this.

 

This stuff has a light coconut scent; not overbearing like sunscreen, but really delicate and pleasant.  It also has the luminizing flecks in it which are all over my entire upper body thanks to my inability to measure an appropriate amount.

Shown above is the palm of my hand that I used to rub the body butter into my arm.  It shows on my arm too, but I was able to capture more of the effect on my palm.

So this thing threw me off a little bit.  I thought yaby was the color at first. And then I realized it's actually the name brand and that buff is the color.  I still didn't know what it was, foundation? Concealer?  A quick Google search leads me to believe it's foundation.  It doesn't match my skin though.  And as I was trying to test it on my arm, the little metal disc popped out and fell on my cat that was by my feet. So now it's really worthless being the wrong color and having cat fur in it.

Also included was Juice Beauty lip gloss in "pink". Yep.. it's called pink, and it isn't even really. It's pretty and sparkly though and smells like citrus? Grapefruit maybe?

Finally we come to the dud of the group (I'm not even counting the yaby thing).  Although I should preface this and say I'm terribly biased and that's why I don't care for this item.

Pacifica Tahitian Gardenia Perfume Roll On.  The packaging is so cute, and I really wanted to love it, but I don't, not even close.  Floral scents trigger migraines for me most of the time, and this is heavily floral scented, obviously.  Smells like flowers and I don't spend enough time sniffing floral scents to be able to discern it's attributes.

Overall, I was pleased with this bag (as I always am, it seems!)  I was really happy to see a full size polish of a brand I love (Zoya) as well as the lotion, which I like as well.  Also, I think it was really nice of the company to send an additional bag to make up for last month's repeat - and I do think that's why they sent two this time around.

One last group photo:

Layered Jelly Sandwich - Zoya Frida

As much as I'd love to take creative credit for this, I was inspired from a post on Reddit that I saw some weeks ago.  I pretty much copied the manicure exactly, layering coats of Zoya Frida with dotticured flowers.  Below is the final result!

There is four layers of Zoya Frida; I started with a coat of it before putting on the first flowers.  I LOVE the final look of this.  So much depth!

Glowy Blue Embers

Every once in a while I'll layer some polishes together and fall in love and want to set up residency on my fingernails, hahaha. I'm currently wearing one of my favorite polish combinations ever and I'm super excited to share with you!

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This is one coat (!) of Zoya Song, with one coat Hits Phenomena Afterglow and one coat Finger Paint Asylum.  The layerings are over a coat of Orly Bonder, sealed with a coat of Gelous and then Out the Door. There's like, a circus-y carnival on my nails.

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Don't forget! The dual giveaway is still active!

The prizes!

Click HERE to enter!

Zoya Bevin and Essie As Gold As It Gets

I got this Zoya from a promo a few months back but didn't get around to wearing it until now.  Sometimes I know there are certain polishes I'm interested in but they don't scream out to me once I get them, then they sit until I finally wear them and then.. it's love! I've had this on for three days which is unheard of for me. I either pick it off or get too bored of it and remove within 48 hours. This combo has staying power.

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Shown is two coats of Zoya Bevin topped with Essie As Gold As It Gets, all over Orly Bonder & sealed with OTD. Zoya describes Bevin as "a dusty, medium sage green color with teal tones and a creamy opaque finish", which I think is a perfect description!  Essie's AGAIG is slowly inching its way into my Top 25 at least. Not usually a fan of gold anything, but this polish is so delicate and pretty.

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Hope everybody has a safe and happy holiday!

Zoya Zuza Mattified with Stamping

I meant to post this so long ago, oops!  Zoya Zuza has become one of my favorite polishes, I absolutely love it.  I did a full post on it previously but since I did add to the mani, I wanted to share that with you, too.

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This is the previous mani stamped with BM314 and Konad Special White polish and I used the NYC Matte Top Coat to mattify it. It created a whole different look :D

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I reaaally like how Zuza looks.. but I also reaaally like how it looks matte, too.  This didn't last long though, it began to chip after a few hours. Harrumph!

Don't forget to enter my Halloween Harvest Giveaway! Ends this weekend!

CLICK TO ENTER!

Hey, Sailor!

I didn't do a Memorial Day mani, or a Fourth of July mani, so I felt it was due time for a patriotic Labor Day manicure! This one is inspired by the colors but it also reminds me of a sailor costume for Halloween maybe. You know how all costumes have a "sexy" version? Sexy witch, sexy cat, sexy ophthalmologist? I don't know, lol.

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So yea, there is smudging. I really didn't wait long at all before applying the topcoat so this was more of a user error than a product one. I use a cheap striper I get from the local dollar store, no brand name really.  I use it on my toes all the time for a French pedi and it never smudged because I wait long enough. I was excited to see this finished so.. smudging it is.

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I used the incredibly gorgeous Zoya Song for the tips. I'm pretty sure it's a one coater, I only needed to run the brush over once to get this opacity!  It's sparkly and a deep blue and uh, really pretty. I used nail guides I bought from Ebay:

There are so many fun designs included in the package!  The lines on my nails were really neat but I wanted to add so white which is why I went over them.  I applied topcoat and added a gem while it was still tacky.

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Zoya Zuza & Greetings from Virginia!

Originally, I had planned to write schedule posts in advance and have then trickle out throughout the week.  I forgot how bad I was a time management and wasn't even close to getting them done. We have internet access despite being in the mountains and I have some downtime right now considering its evening and raining.. I'm tired and want to do nothing constructive.  I like when vacations are low key then they feel like actual vacations.

I took some pictures and saved them before I left of Zoya Zuza so I have them to share today. I usually blog from my desktop, not my laptop, but I thought ahead. Zoya Zuza is just beautiful, I got some great shots of it.  Since I'm having trouble pinpointing the attributes of this polish, I'll just cite Zoya directly "Zoya Nail Polish in Zuza can be best described as: Deep, saturated, oceanic turquoise with gold and silver metallic shimmer and a foil-like finish. A beachy, colorful, foil-like shade with the perfect balance between blue and green." Pretty spectacular description! I almost called it glass fleck, which I know it's not.. foil didn't occur to me!

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All photos shown here are two coats of Zuza over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door.

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I found a Ross here, the closest one to me in NJ is an hour away and the time I did go, had nothing even remotely interesting in terms of nail polish.  The Ross here had a ton of stuff, I got lots of pretty polishes to add to my stash.

Thanks for reading (=

Zoya Arizona and Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side Up Comparison

I kept hearing that Zoya Arizona was a dupe for Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side up, and since I own both I decided to do a swatch comparison.We appear to have what seems to be a dead on dupe!

My bottle of Sunny Side Up is a bit worm but you can see the color similarity in the bottles alone.

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This is three coats of each over Orly bonder and sealed with Brucci Nail Dryer.  You really can't tell the difference, can you?

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Flash

As one might expect, Zoya had a much better formula.  It should also be mentioned though that my Zoya was brand new while my Wet 'n' Wild is not.  It was a bit goopier which could've been from air exposure, use, etc.  Aside from that though, Zoya was more opaque which I'm not really sure is affected by use.