NOTD: Polka Dot Bomb

I'm on a roll with these nail posts, aren't I?  I have three whole days off from work this week.  Three days in a row!  That means I have to put nail polish on.  That small mountain I have acquired over the past two years isn't just going to use itself up, after all.

I tried my hand at nail art.  I opted for a simple polka dot pattern at first but I love glitz and glamour so I threw bling in.

I grabbed Essie's Coat Azure as my main base color and Zoya's Christinna as my accent nail color.  I didn't particularly like how Christinna turned out as it was super duper sheer and not as bright as I wanted.  I used Essie's Blanc instead to dot over Coat Azure since it was a more solid white and thus made a sharper contrast against the blue.  Just for fun, I dotted Zara and Tangy over the white dots.  Both are sheer, duo chrome colors, and are also by Zoya.  They acted more as accents so even though there are a lot of details on my nails, they're not necessarily over powering each other.

Top L-R: Essie Coat Azure, Zoya Christinna, OPI Save Me
Bottom L-R: Zoya Zara, Zoya Tangy, Essie Blanc

I get to keep my nail polish for 3 days. Woohoo!!!!!

Anybody do anything fun with their nails lately? Please share =D

June 2011 Favorites!

Another month is gone, another bunch of favorites are due, and for yet another month I'm late on doing so.  Pooh.

Well, I'll just jump right into it!

1. Zoya nail polish in Tangy.  What a lovely summer color!  It's bright and fun, but not obnoxiously so.  The best part is the duochromity (is that a word?) and if you tilt your nails ever so slightly, you can see the orange glitter. So pretty :)

2. Diorskin Nude Glow Healthy Glow Summer Powder.  I admit.  I got this cause it was pretty and limited edition.  Of course, if it didn't work well, I would have returned it promptly.  And none of this has to do with why it's a well loved product.  I have been mixing foundations lately because my regular foundation has gotten too light, and I'd rather not go out and buy a darker foundation.  I sometimes end up going too light, and I like to use this product to bronze up a little.  It looks wonderfully naturally, and I think I could find myself using this a lot even when it gets cooler.  This is adds just a perfect all over glow to my face.  I like it so much that the idea of purchasing a backup as crossed my mind....

3. NARS Laguna Bronzer.  Only during the summer would you find a blogger with two bronzing products in a single favorites post.  I have fallen prey to this cult favorite when I decided to finally try the bronzer on at Sephora one day.  I really love how this works wonderfully as a contour color or all over bronzing powder.  I still like my NYC Matte Bronzer but Laguna is just so wonderfully smooth and has that hint of shimmer that I have to lean more towards Laguna.

4. Stila eyeshadow in Kitten.  Ah, another cult favorite.  This is Stila's best selling eyeshadow.  It's a lovely peachy champagne color that is essentially a more refined glitterbomb, as it is super shimmery but is not chunky or frosty.  Last month a wore a lot of smokey brown/taupe looks, and Kitten was absolutely the most perfect inner corner highlight.

5. Sephora eyelash curler.  My last eyelash curler died tragically from overuse.  I ran into Sephora, demanded for their best eyelash curler, and was presented with a Sephora brand eyelash curler.  I was skeptical because that's like telling people you bake the best cookies in town.  But!--This actually works quite nicely!  I have to work really hard to pinch myself, and I can wedge this sucker right to the base of my lashes to really amp up the curls.

6. Urban Decay Alice in Wonderland Book of Shadows.  This was a very neglected palette until I decided to take on Project 7 Day Palette with it.  It's funny how creative you can get when you're forced to use one palette for your eye looks.  Not to say I didn't enjoy it, otherwise it wouldn't belong in my favorites.  Like with all Books of Shadows, there is a good variety of colors to choose from.  I'm happy to report that all the eyeshadows except for the chunky glittery ones are just lovely.

7.  MAC Painterly Paintpot. In addition to smokey neutrals, I have been playing a lot with color this month.  I used this product a lot because it's a nice sticky, neutral base.  I can pop any color on top of it and make it look nice and bright!

I like to move it move it x]

[I have nothing to disclose.]

NOTD: Tangy

Tangy was amongst my first purchase of Zoya nail polishes.  This is such a fun bright color, but unfortunately I was so sloppy with my application that some of my finger nails looked diseased.  This pictures features 3 coats of Zoya's Tangy nail polish.  It's actually quite sheer, and if you look closely, you can see the line where the pink part and the white part of my nails meet.

Tangy also has a slight duochrome to it.  There is a hint of orange in this green apple color that makes it really something special.  A lot of Zoya nail polishes have this duochrome effect, which is probably the biggest reason as to why I'm such a big fan of them.

Tell me--what are your secrets to a smooth, even finish?  My nails always get messed up one way or another, as you can see in the picture above.

Don't forget to check out my blog sale!  I really need to get rid of everything by August!  http://jannysblogsale.blogspot.com/

[I have nothing to disclose.]

NOTD: Deidra

First of all, I do apologize for my lack of posts.  Every once in a while life comes around and kicks you really hard in the bum and this is one of those times.  My energy and motivation to blog has been depleted for the past few days, but I really do miss it so I hope to be dishing out more stuffs.

For now, however, I wanted to share my NOTD from late last week.  Lo and behold, allow me to introduce you to Zoya's Deidra:

Definitely not my usual.  I prefer to go for brights or darks when it comes to nail polishes.  I wasn't in love with this color at first but the more I looked at it the more I liked it.  This is the first time I applied a sort of neutral on my nails, and it reminds me a lot of wedding and generally a color a bride would wear on her wedding day.

In this picture, I have two coats of Deidra, with no base or top coat.  Unlike many of Zoya's other nail polishes, one coat of Deidra is quite decent and will suffice if you're in a hurry, but two coats definitely delivers a more opaque finish.  I love the duochrome effect of the nails.  If you look closely you can see that a golden sheen shines through the gorgeous purple-y pink color.

Life is exhausting me but I hope every one of you is happy and healthy.  Thanks for stopping by!

Much love,
Janny

[I have nothing to disclose.]

NOTD: Ki by Zoya

I'll be honest.  This is a bit of a filler post, because the one that I was originally going to post tonight is going through some technical difficulties.  My 13 minute video is probably going to take all night to upload, and I really want the blog post to supplement it so it will probably have to wait till tomorrow morning.  But trust me, it's worth it.

Anyways, this is an odd color.  Ki by Zoya, I don't know what possessed me to order this when I did but it sure is interesting.  I'm not sure I like it, since it's a bit similar to another Zoya polish that I own called Edyta.  Below, you'll see two coats of Ki without a base or top coat.  Check it out.

With flash

Without flash

See what I mean?  This is a crazy multichrome nail polish that can show up as either green or purple depending on the lighting.  You would think there were two different products featured in these two pictures.

Zoya describes this as  a complex multichromatic shade combining silver, purple, blue and green in a shimmery metallic finish. A unique shade for a truly fascinating nail look.

Color Family Purples 

Finish Metallic

Intensity 4 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque )

Tone Cool

Original Collection Suede

I must say, the green and purple is most dominant.  I can see a bit of silver but not so much the blue.  It's a nice funky color to wear, but I'm not sure if it's my cup of tea.  I'll probably throw this into my blog sale.

But hey, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read this.  Hope you're all having a fantastic evening =)

My Free Zoya Polishes are Here!

Hey ladies and gents~

At the beginning of the month, Zoya had a promotion to celebrate their 20,000 fans on Facebook, and decided to give away 3 nail polishes free (just pay shipping)!  I only ordered one order, but I really regret not making another one because they are absolutely gorgeous.  They just came into the mail today!

Marry, Jo, and Ki

As usual, Zoya delivers beautiful nail polishes that I really think are unique to other brands.  Just one tiny problem with this order: They sent me the wrong color.  I had ordered MarryJ, which is a gorgeous purple, but they sent me Marry instead.  Easy mistake to make.  I do love this color and I already have a purple (Ki is purple, more on in a second!), but I don't think warm colors look too good on me.  So I'm going to contact Zoya and see how that turns out.

I fell in love with Jo (the nail polish, mind you) when I saw it on the website, but I'm not sure how I feel about it now. I thought it would be more duochrome, perhaps with gold shimmer in it, so Jo is brighter than I expected.

Ki....I don't remember why I ordered this one.  But it sure looks complex, almost similar to Edyta, which you can see a swatch of in my last post on Zoya.  It looks purple, but if you tilt it, it can look green or brown.  Crazy sauce.

I promise I'll do swatches later, but for now I have two papers to do.  I just got so excited to share these that I jumped on my computer right after I got my mail.  I hope everyone one else is having a less stressful day!

Cheers,
Janny

I'm Digging My Toes ;D

Warning: This post is not for toe-phobic people.

That aside, it's not really my toes that I've been admiring but the lovely nail polish.

Friends, meet Akyra by Zoya.  It's a gorgeous sparkly teal that seems more blue for some reason in the photo.  I applied two coats of it on my toes a few days ago and have been admiring them ever since.  What you see in the bottle is exactly what you get on your nails.

I have a thing for blue toes.  I've tried red before and it just looked too old ladyish.  There is something magical about blue toes....I can't quite put my finger on it.  But nail color on my toes usually last a good couple of weeks, and I don't have to worry about the nail polish chipping off into the food I prepare.  Speaking of which, do you guys have any tips on long lasting nail color?  I don't usually use a top coat, and maybe that could be it.

I do realize this is an unusually short post.  My mind is kind of ...hmm....how do I put it?  I think about random things all the time and I won't share all of them, but maybe sometimes I can't help it.  This is one of those times.

Back to reading I go =( I hope you are all sporting amazing toe colors :)

Much love,
Janny

Zoya Nail Polish Haul + First Impresions

A couple weeks ago, Zoya had a sale on their website featuring BOGO free on nail polishes.  I was absolutely ecstatic because this is a brand of polishes I have been wanting to try for a really long time.  What caught my eye from the beginning was the beautiful duochrome-ity of the colors that made them so shiny and so unique.  It was EXTREMELY difficult to narrow my selection down to these 8 colors:

Swatches (1 coat over Revlon Base Coat):

More swatches (2 coats over Revlon Base Coat):

 Akyra (#4) actually only has one coat.  I messed up on it and forgot to do the second coat.

Sorry this pic was taken without flash.  The pictures don't look the same on the tiny screen on my camera and I thought the lighting would turn out better.  Obviously my nails haven't bee cleaned up.  I didn't bother because I was removing these swatches right after.


As Zoya describes the colors best, I'm going to take the descriptions straight from their website.

1.Tangy: Bright apple green shimmer with peachy-orange duochrome. Fun and funky yet easy to wear. 
Color Family: Greens 
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 4 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: Candy 
Thoughts: I love the brightness of this color, but I was quite disappointed by the first coat.  A second coat does wonders and is absolutely necessary for this polish.  I wouldn't say that the intensity is at a level 4, but rather a 2 or a 3.

2. Irene: Muted, mossy camouflage olive green accented by fine yellow-based green shimmer. An earthy way to wear the green nail trend.  
Color Family: Greens 
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 4 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: Utopia
Thoughts: I do like this color.  It reminds me of the holidays, which is probably why I chose it.  I wish it was a tad bit darker though.  Again, this requires two coats to look right, and I would disagree on the intensity level that Zoya gives it.

3. Veruschka: Deep blue-kissed emerald evergreen garnished with strong metallic shimmer in a velvety matte finish. The ultimate combination of this year's hottest trends- deep green and matte finish. 
Color Family: Greens  
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 5 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: MatteVelvet 
Thoughts: I truly love this color.  When I first looked at the color on the brush, I was disappointed because it just looked like a metallic emerald.  While I love emeralds, a sparkly emerald isn't all that special at all.  I'm glad that I decided to try it out because I absolutely love this color, and plan to buy more from this collection. Check out my NOTD post on this color here.

4. Akyra: Medium metallic teal shimmer in a dark smoky blue base. A dark aquatic shade for a hip and edgy nail look.  
Color Family: Blues 
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 3 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: Utopia 
Thoughts:  Quite sheer, but very pretty.  A good 2 or 3 coats should do the trick.

5. Deidra: A delicate mauve-purple with an overlay of shimmering gold frost. A whimsical shade for fairy-tale nails.  
Color Family: Purples 
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 2 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: Classics
Thoughts: Loooove this color!  It's like a light golden purple, very pretty and feminine.  I would rate the intensity level at a 4, because as you can see  from the picture above, a single coat is quite good compared to most of the other polishes.

6. Kelly: A rich gray shade with soft purple and blue undertones. An easy to wear alternative to black and a perfect NEW neutral.  
Color Family: Purples, Greys, Blues 
Finish: Cream 
Intensity: 5 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: Wonderful 
Thoughts: It was a much deeper grey than I expected, but still a nice neutral.  I think I like this one the least from the bunch.  If I were to wear this, I would probably settle for just one coat.

7. Kotori: A dense bright blue shimmer superimposed over a sheer black base. Dark and edgy yet perfectly chic.  
Color Family: Blues 
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 3 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection:  Downtown 
Thoughts:  Was super disappointed with how sheer this was considering how I fell head over heels in love with the swatch on the website.  I suppose I just have to layer on more coats but I don't like wearing too many layers as the polish seems to chip and peel more easily.

8. Edyta: A complex mixture of gold, olive, blue-green and smoky grey with a sparkling metallic finish.A dark shade balanced with sparkle for a dramatic look.  
Color Family: Greens 
Finish: Metallic 
Intensity: 5 ( 1=Sheer - 5=Opaque ) 
Tone: Cool 
Original Collection: Wicked 
Thoughts: This is a very deep green, almost black color that is LOADED with gold shimmer.  All that glitter may be the reason why it was a pain in the butt to smooth over my nail the first time.  Again, nothing a second coat can't fix.

Overall~
These polishes met maybe 90% of my expectation, which is decent.  They are very runny so you will have to be careful not to drip it all over the place like I did.  I would absolutely buy these polishes again for the gorgeous unique colors, but preferably when another sale comes around.  Until then, what Zoya polishes (or polishes in general) do you recommend?

NOTD: Veruschka by Zoya

Behold~

Veruschka by Zoya, and boy is it a mouthful.

I got this polish (and 7 others) from Zoya's website a few weeks ago when they had their buy one get one free sale.  As I had said before, I've been lusting after these polishes since they started selling them at my campus bookstore right next to the Clinique counter, so I was ecstatic to try these out at a significantly lower price.

Anyways, Veruschka is a very unique polish, at least for someone like me who is just getting into nail polish.  To me, it seems to have a dulled out metallic green.  A matte version of a matte finish.  Does that even make sense?  I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. Here is how Zoya describes it: "Deep blue-kissed emerald evergreen garnished with strong metallic shimmer in a velvety matte finish. The ultimate combination of this year's hottest trends- deep green and matte finish."  Funny thing is, Zoya categorizes it in the Metallic family. See!? Zoya is as mindboggled as me!  I took this picture to further confuse the cheese out of you folks.  My ring finger is sporting the dried version of Veruschka, and my index finger features the polish when it is still wet.

I actually considered giving this polish away because i thought it was a normal metallic green that I could find in any drugstore brand but boy am I glad to have tried it out first.


The first picture features 2 coats of Veruschka over my Revlon Base Coat.  It's actually quite opaque (rates 5 in opaqueness by Zoya) but I thought I would do 2 coats for good measure.  The nails are very messy as you can see; I didn't do that good of a job cleaning it up last night because I had taken off some swatches for the rest of my Zoya polishes (coming up soon!!) and got lazy and tired of the smell.  I used to hate how short my nails were because I thought they would never look as pretty as the girls with long natural gorgeous nails.  But I think I have learned to accept my short stubs, and really enjoy my "massive collection of nail polish for someone who used to not use nail polish."  I'm such a noob.

If you would like to purchase this product, you may do so here.

In any case, if you have tried Zoya polishes or this color in particular, please let me know what you think. It seems like Zoya is not a brand I see very much of in the beauty world these days so I would love to hear about your experiences =)

Much love and Veruschka,

Janny