Zoya Freja

Did you know it's been almost TEN months since I posted a Zoya polish!? Well, prior to posting Rica. Not that I have a ton of them, but I haven't even posted half of what I have! (In my defense, I've posted 4... I have 9). So after reorganizing my Helmer this week, I decided it's definitely time I posted another Zoya! So I picked Freja.













2 coats Zoya Freja
1 coat Poshe

Freja is a beautiful charcoal grey metallic-y polish with a faint shimmer and almost a lilac/blue undertone (which is why I have so many photos). It's not metallic in a chrome sort of sense, but more of a metallic shimmer. I'm going with that. Metallic shimmer. I feel like if this weren't grey, it'd just be a shimmer and not necessarily metallic. Does that make sense?

Holy gosh I would put this polish on every day... if it would change colors =P. This polish was actually FUN to apply. The combination of Zoya's brush and the formula of this polish made it just amazing and easy. If you're a beginner with polishes or you need something easy to apply to help practice your technique, I HIGHLY suggest this polish. Like I said, not only have I not posted a Zoya polish in close to a year, I also haven't worn one. I don't remember if they all apply is great or if Freja is a stand out.

Here's why it was awesome. The brush is a perfect width for my nails. It is not perfectly round, but not flat. It's obvious which was the brush should be turned to allow the bristles to fan out properly. The tip of the brush is straight, not rounded or curved. The bristles were perfectly soft and flexible so they spread evenly but were stiff enough that you still had complete control of how the bristles fanned out depending on the pressure you used. The density of the bristles was also perfect in that it hid brush strokes very well, and each individual bristle was the right size so this also helped.

The formula could have gone two ways. Opaque in 1 thicker coat or opaque in 2 thinner coats. I chose the latter. This really was an amazingly friendly polish to work with. Formula alone should make you pick this up!!

Pretty Valentine's Day Stamping

So I had been wearing Rica and decided I loved it SO much I wasn't ready to take it off. But I hate wearing the same color on its own for a long time. Long time is relevant. For me, a long time is 2 days. Then it hit me! Duh! Valentine's Day!! And stamping is so quick and easy, so out came my plates, and here is the end result...










I've decided to start doing farther away hand photos of my nails like Nailtastic because I think it gives a much more realistic view of how the polish looks. More on that later, but here ya go!




2 coats Zoya Rica
1 coat Poshe
Stamping with Konad White and Bundle Monster plates BM17 and BM-209
1 coat Poshe (though I think I took the close up photos before putting this one)

I LOVE the way this came out. The foily-ness of Rica with the basic white. The lacy, delicate design and simple accent nails. I wore this mani for... THREE DAYS!! I had Rica on for two days on its own, then this for three days! That totals FIVE DAYS!! I think this might be a record, legit.

Speaking of which, I usually never discuss wear of polish because I never wear it long enough to comment. But as I type this, it's the fifth day and I have no signs of wear or chipping at all. I know people tend to have wear problems with Zoya. Honestly, I never wore a Zoya polish long enough to determine if I had that problem, too. But apparently I don't. Five days going strong! So if you're curious of my base and top coat combo, I used Nail Tek Intensive Therapy II as my base coat and Poshe as my top. Obviously I have two coats Poshe because of the stamping. Sometimes I have problems with a second coat of Poshe causing my polish to peel up pretty quickly. I don't know if this worked out so well because it's not a creme polish, or because it's just a really harmonious combination.
Also, I actually wore this for SEVEN days because I had no time to change or take off my polish, so I painted another color on top of Rica with another coat of polish. No chips with that, either!

Zoya Crystal

I got this back when Zoya did their three free polishes promo, along with Mimi and Veruschka. I had no idea what I wanted to put on, so I just opened my Helmer and grabbed the first polish I saw that was untried. It was Crystal. And here it is:













And here's a close up of the polish:


3 coats Crystal (opaque and fine in 2, I'm just ridiculous)
1 coat Poshe

First coat looked sheer-ish, but very easily and quickly buildable and went on smooth. I have no idea why I picked this, because I'm not fond of it for spring. It's a silvery metallic blue with scattered teeny tiny flakes of yellow gold. Despite the gold, it still gives an overall silvery blue metallic look to me rather than a gold-ish blue. I really wish it could pull the yellow gold out a little more. This would be a gorgeous wintery color. I don't know what it is, but I just really don't like it for spring.

On a side note, I actually know what I want to do for my Wednesday nails. I can't see myself doing anything else with this polish other than taking it off and storing it away for winter!! And I feel a water marble coming on. It won't be done this week or I wouldn't be able to wear my planned Wednesday nails, or I'd only be able to wear the water marble for one day (Thursday). The process is laborious, so when I water marble, it will stay on for at least 2 days. So possibly Sunday or Monday. We will see!!

Song:
Nickelback - Rockstar

Zoya Phoebe (finally!!)

In the Zoya BOGO promo, I picked up Phoebe and Faye. I received Faye a while ago on March 25. Just yesterday (April 7), I finally received Phoebe!! As much as I wanted to just wear Phoebe as soon as I got it, I knew I'd want to give myself a good full day (at least!!) of wearing Phoebe, so to put it on at 3 in the afternoon would have been pointless.

I have to mention how Phoebe came packaged. You totally know someone in the warehouse had a super fun time make sure this package was well secured:





Anyway, onto the good stuff!!













3 coats Phoebe

I am really really disappointed in this formula. Like REALLY disappointed. I have Veruschka, which is also a Zoya matte, and these two formulas are totally different. Veruschka is technically considered "matte velvet", but Phoebe gives that same velvet finish.
Phoebe was horrific. You could not paint over the same area twice without dragging up all of the polish you just put down. Thank goodness Zoya brushes aren't like the big, chunky OPI ProWide brushes (which I'm not a fan of). You had to use a very delicate touch and work quickly. You also have to have the patience to put on this polish. Don't try to swipe this on your nails and run out the door. It needs a little care and babying. I feel like 4 coats might have made it a bit smoother, but I was satisfied with 3. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't THAT bad, but it's still not an easy polish to apply.

What I suggest when using this polish that will make application easier:
♥ Work quickly
♥ Oversaturate your brush
♥ Minimize brush strokes
♥ Use a light touch

Oddly enough, I feel like I wanna have another go at using this polish, but I'll hold off for now. I'm sure I'll be wearing this again in the coming months.

Oh, and I've decided I'm going to try to do something a little fun with my posts. Ok, not that fun really, but I'd like to look back on it! When I post, I usually type this out while working on choosing my photos and watermarking/cropping them. But I also am usually listening to music. So I wanna start posting the song I'm listening to when I'm typing. Obviously this process takes me longer than a 4 minute song, but I'll just write what I'm listening to at the time I'm ready to write it.
Anyway, right now my iTunes shuffle has got me listening to:
"Ticks" by Brad Paisley. As I type that, it switches me to "Dare You To Move" by Switchfoot.

Usually I'm listening to some awesome 90s song, but not this time. Be prepared for a huge range of music!!

Zoya Faye

So I had ordered Pheobe and Faye as my BOGO Zoya's. I ordered the first day and still don't have Pheobe (open order), but I received Faye last week. Super fast shipping for that one!!

So this is my first time wearing Faye, obviously. I had a problem picking which other polish I wanted besides Pheobe. I love mattes (two polishes in one when you add a top coat!! Yay for frugal people!!), and I love blues, so I knew Pheobe was it. I knew I didn't want anything from the Summertime collection because they're just cremes. But the Sunshine collection is GORGEOUS. I debated mainly between Rica, Reva, and Kimmy. I tried looking at swatches on a few blogs, but all photos looked different!! I just couldn't pick. So I asked my boyfriend. I showed him all of the swatches from several different sites. He liked Faye. So I figured why not? Let's go with Faye. I don't have a lot of purples.

When I finally saw the polish in person, it was nightttime when I got out of work, but when I saw it in the light the next day... OH MY GOSH!! What a beautiful duochrome!! I thought it would have been too not-spring-ish. I was totally wrong. This color is absolutely stunning. (If you're curious, after getting those awesome swatches of each collection from my Zoya order, Rica would have been my next choice).

This polish is super interesting. I chose to put up a TON of photos because it's so dimensional. And if anyone stumbles across my blog looking for Faye swatches, I hope this helps them out!!


















The two photos above show Faye in direct sunlight. It's so interesting because you barely see any gold once it's in sunlight, and the purple color looks very different. It looks far more like a true purple in the light. It's gorgeous. It's bright and sparkly. Definitely catches your eye. The sparkly-ness is gold, so that's where you see the gold. But it does not look how it looks when not in direct sunlight. It's substantially more purple, just with a gold sparkle.


This is the color indoors, not near a window. You can see why I take photos next to a window. It doesn't necessarily make the polishes look better, but it makes the photos so much more clear while still being very accurate. And it doesn't make my skin look dry and flaky like this photo does. I swear that's not how my hands and cuticles really look!! Gross. Anyway, I wanted to show this, though, because the duochrome really looks different in all lights.

This is 3 coats, and some photos have 1 coat SV, some don't. I thought it might make a difference, but it doesn't. This was a fairly opaque duochrome. It still had that sheerness to it, but not much. I could have gotten away with 2 slightly thicker coats easily. The application was fantastic and the color was very even. Absolutely wonderful!!

The thing about this polish, like most duochromes, is they change SO much. This one in particular. So if you like a certain photo but don't like another, I say get it anyway. Every way you move your hand it will look different.

St. Patty's Day 4

I don't know what my problem is when it comes to trying to pick good green polishes. I think I just really want it to be spring, so I'm trying to avoid using my darker greens. I'm really disappointed in this mani. While it TOTALLY looks like it gives me lobster hands, it actually doesn't. The lighting is poor because it's taken at nighttime. Busy day!! Anyway, here's the atrocious mani:

1 coat Sally Hansen Lavender Cloud for underwear
2 coats Sally Hansen HD Hi-Def
1 coat Love & Beauty "Light Green"
1 coat SV

To make up for the fact that the mani is so not flattering, I'm posting this old photo of Veruschka, which is clearly what I should've worn today.


1 coat Zoya Veruschka