Review and Swatches--Zoya Breezi

Zoya Breezi was the base color for my Autism Awareness Manicure the other day. I liked it so much that I wanted Breezi to have its own post. 
*I purchased this product with my own money and I am not affiliated with or compensated by any of the brands mentioned in this post.*

I found Breezi to have multiple personalities. When I first looked at it in the bottle, I thought Breezi was a simple, medium blue. But as I wore it on my nails and took photos in different lighting, I started to see a slight teal twinge.

In all of these photos I am wearing three thin coats of Breezi topped with one coat of Butter London Hardwear P.D. Quick Top Coat. I used natural light, both indoors and out.

Application was easy; the first coat was slightly patchy, but evened out nicely by the second coat and everything seemed to self-level by the third.

Again, Zoya is my favorite nail polish brand so far (excluding indie brands). I looooove their formula and color selection.

It seemed like this polish dried a little bit faster than my Zoya polishes typically do. My top coat sped things up in the end, but the good dry time that I noticed was between coats.  

In my personal opinion, Zoya Breezi is a keeper. It will obviously flatter cooler skin tones, but I think that its almost hidden green personality will peek out and flatter warmer tones as well. 

If you've always wanted to try blue nail polish but were afraid of being too bold, I think a polish like this might be a good way to go. It is definitely blue, but it's not shocking like a cobalt blue or midnight blue and not potentially stark like a baby blue.

Zoya has some of the loveliest creme nail nail polishes. I enjoy all different sorts of finishes, but I have a special place in my heart for creme polishes. I think perhaps it's because I didn't have them most of the time I was growing up. At that time, the finishes seemed to be mostly brush-strokey-frost or tiny glitter. Maybe the cremes were out there and I just didn't see them. It was revolutionary to me as a teenager when Hard Candy came out with pastel cremes. 

What do you think? Do you feel comfortable rocking a blue nail polish?

Zoya nail polish typically retails for $8.00 and can be purchased on their Web site, ULTA, and various beauty salons. "Nail lacquers by Zoya are free of toluene, camphor, formaldehyde, and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) - chemicals that are known to cause cancer and birth defects."--source

*I purchased this product with my own money and I am not affiliated with or compensated by any of the brands mentioned in this post.*

Light It Up Blue--Autism Awareness Manicure

Blue is the designated color for Autism Awareness. Several bloggers did blue manicures for World Autism Awareness Day (April 2). I think I'm posting a little late, but I did the mani on April 2. I used two coats of Zoya Breezi. I freehanded the tips using Orly Snowcone. To top it off, I used two coats of Seche Vite.

Thanks for visiting!

Review and Swatches--Colores de Carol Best Polish Friend Forever

As promised, I have for you today my second polish (see the first here) that I purchased from Colores de Carol: BPFF (Best Polish Friend Forever). This was the polish that I wanted the most when Carolina first introduced her line. I love it even more on my nails!
*I purchased this polish with my own money and I am not affiliated with or compensated by any of the brands mentioned in this post.*

Carolina describes BPFF this way: "A slightly shimmery sky blue jelly base with small white hex glitter, large purple squares, small blue squares, teal and dark blue hex glitter and pink round glitter."--(source) 

Yeah, I would pretty much be sold just based on the description. But look at it! If a polish can be happy, this is a happy polish. 

I'll admit that I put many coats of this polish on to get it opaque, but the polish wasn't the problem. I wasn't thinking, so I didn't let the formula 'speak' to me. You don't need a billion coats with BPFF, but medium coats work much better with it than thin coats. When I tried to do thin coats, I would accidentally wipe too much polish off the brush and most of the glitter went with it. I experimented later and found that medium coats make it an easy-peasy application with even glitter distribution. 

Two or three medium coats would probably bring you to opacity, or you could layer one or two coats over a base color.

After I reached opacity, I topped it off with two coats of Seche Vite. Most of the glitter played really nicely and would lay flat on the nail. I had two or three of the purple squares that wanted to curl slightly. Speaking of the glitter, I love how the milky blue base still allows the glitter to stand out and be colorful. I especially love how the pink circles and the blue squares pop! 

Here's the bottle from a distance and up close:

I think that BPFF is well suited for spring, but also an awesome all-year-round polish. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, there seems to be a transition going on right now between the original Colores de Carol bottles/labels and the new ones, so yours may or may not look different than mine. The new bottles look to be square; I am not sure about the labels.

 

For me, it also worked nicely with my Seche Vite top coat. I didn't experience shrinkage (where the top coat dries so fast that it pulls back the edges of your polish) or chipping, and almost imperceptible tip wear after typing for a couple of days.

If you haven't already, you might also want to check out the Colores de Carol blog. Carolina does fantastic nail art and swatches. My personal favorite is her stamping.

Colores de Carol polishes are sold at $9.00 for a full-size bottle (15ml), and she sells them through her Big Cartel store: http://www.coloresdecarol.bigcartel.com/. Carolina also has some on sale right now for $7.00. She has some options listed for mini bottles as well, three for $13.50. Shipping is primarily to U.S.A., but if you discuss it with her, she mentions that she may be able to work something out for international shipping.

*I purchased this polish with my own money and I am not affiliated with or compensated by any of the brands mentioned in this post.*

Thanks for visiting!

Nail Fail--Smoosh!

Or, the day one bit of vanity devoured another...

Sometimes a look at another person's foibles can make us laugh or sympathize (or both) and can make a bad day better because you are not alone. That is why I'm sharing this Fail with you, just in case anyone needs it.

I was getting dressed up to go out for the evening, and my dress included the fabric shown below. The colors are somewhat reminiscent of peacock plumage. I was already wearing Essence Colour & Go nail polish in the shade 'Date in the Moonlight', a dark blue with an almost hidden royal blue shimmer. 

That day, I had just received in the mail from a blog sale Essence Nail Art Special Effects Glitter topper in 'Mrs. and Mr. Glitter'--perfect! Blue, green and black medium hex glitter, flashy fun. Then I added two coats of Gelous to make it glossy and glassy. I was happy, staring at my hands, rather proud of the manicure. I put a quick-dry top coat on and the polish was rapidly dry to the touch. 

The fatal mistake was trying to flatten my stomach--vanity. I started to put on a...Spanx-like apparatus...very carefully so as to not dent my nail polish. Dry to the touch is apparently a lot different than dry to the smoosh. One wrong snap of the elastic and the glossy, glassy glitter goodness died a slow, painful death.

Every layer of nail polish crinkled up toward my cuticles, even my base color from the day before. Above is my right hand, which fared better than my left, below.

Quick-dry top coat can't make you smarter. :)

Manicures with Friends

My good friends know that I have more nail polish than one woman needs. Yesterday I shared with my two friends Kathy and Winter. I painted their nails, because it's fun for me and it usually feels like a treat when someone else does your nails. They brought me lunch, in turn.

It is fun to work with someone else's nail length and shape. The differences change the entire look.

First off was Kathy. She usually wears very conservative nail polish. However, she was very open to branching out. She chose a lovely purple: OPI Dutch Ya Just Love OPI?

I used one coat of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Hard as Wraps Acrylic Gel + Nylon in Sheer Pink Gloss as a base coat. Next was two coats of OPI Dutch Ya Just Love OPI.

I topped the purple with Orly Sec 'n' Dry Multi-Layer Quick-Dry Topcoat to smooth things out and help speed up drying time.

I asked Kathy if she wanted to add something fun, and she agreed to it. We layered one coat of Essie Shine of the Times, a versatile flakie that has looked good over every polish I have paired with it so far.

Ooh la la! I was so happy with this look, I just kept taking photos. I love the length and width of her nail beds--just right. Below you can really see the flakie highlighted. It kind of looks like one of the fancy dark opals to me. (Have you ever seen blue or black opals? Amazing!) In the end, I finished with one coat of Butter London Hardwear P.D. Quick Top Coat and brushed on some Prolana Cuticle Oil.

My next model was Winter, Kathy's niece. I am a little jealous of her elongated 'piano fingers'. She is not even an adult, yet look how elegant her fingers and nail shape are!

Winter considered her color choices very carefully, as she specifically wanted a blue that would compliment her outfits for the next few days. (She is visiting from out-of-state.) We tried stamping first, but it was a disaster. I don't have good stamping supplies yet. So, moving on...

I used the same base coat on Winter, the Sally Hansen acrylic gel with nylon. It says that it's pink, but I find it to be a cool peachy nude. I started Winter's French tips with one line of N.Y.C. Water Street Blue to create some opacity. Then we went back over the tips with the color she really wanted--Wet 'n' Wild Teal or No Teal. After those two coats dried a little, we finished with Butter London Hardwear P.D. Quick Top Coat.

A big thank you to my lovely hand models! I certainly hope to have another 'nail party' soon. :)

What do you think? Are blue and purple nail polish intimidating to you, or do you say 'bring it on'?

Blue/green tape mani

Scotch tape is very useful. Through the wonders of the Internet, I found out that it is even useful for nail art. Some of the ladies online do tape manis that would blow your mind, like Erika from the seemingly-on-hiatus blog Chloe's Nails. I have started with a simple design, while I get used to the details like when to take off the tape, how hard to press down the tape, blah blah blah.

 

 

The lovely bright green creme is Courteney, by Julep, which is I used as my base color. (Julep nail colors retail for $14.00, but are $11.20 if you are part of their Maven program. My referral link to their subscription service: http://www.julep.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/25580/). I believe it was two coats. While Courteney is vibrant, there is a softness to the shade as well, so it is not neon.

 

After the base color dried, I put diagonal strips of tape over about half of each nail, and then painted on the blue shade. I removed each strip of tape after painting each nail.

 

The pop of blue for contrast is Mesmerized by Essie. (Essie nail polish typically retails for $8.00 and can be purchased on http://www.essie.com/shop/, or at retailers like CVS, Target, and I believe WalMart.) If you like blue, you kind of need this shade.

 

I adore both of these polishes. Yep, I used them again for a slightly different mani, shown below. This one was far less precise, since I didn't use any tape, just a blue brush stroke down the middle of my green polished nail.

 

 

 

I apologize for the older, grainy photos, but I enjoyed this color combination so much that I had to share it anyway.

 

What do you think? Have you ever tried a Scotch tape mani?