Zoya Bottle Shots Pt. 2

~purchased by me~


So here is part deux of my zoya bottle spamming :) Textured! Or as Zoya likes to call them, PixieDusts. The ones that are still on my wishlist is Bar and Tomoko.

 

Cosmo - 2 coats, London - 2 coats, Chita - 2 coats

 Solange - 2 coats, Dhara - 2 coats, Chyna - 2 coats

 Liberty - 2 coats, Sunshine - 2 coats, Carter - 2 coats

Stay tuned for part. 3 tomorrow!

Zoya Bottle Shots Pt.1

~purchased by me~

I decided to take some bottle shots of my Zoya's and spam you guys with them.

I have about 44 Zoya polishes so I decided I better break them up otherwise this would be a loooong post. I separated it by finishes so I will post as follows:

Pt.1 = Shimmers

Pt.2 = Textured

Pt.3 = Creams

Pt.4 = Glitters/flakies/holographics

So today will be my shimmers, which I have the most of, because today is Friday and Friday should be fun!

 Tiffany - 3 coats, Reece - 2 coats, Happi - 2 coats

 

Kimber - 2 coats, Reva - 2 coats, Alegra - 2 coats

 Zuza - 2 coats, Song - 2 coats, Charla - 3 coats

Apple - 3 coats, Ivanka - 3 coats, FeiFei - 3 coats

 Daul - 3 coats, Carly - 2 coats, Mason - 2 coats

Julieanne - 2 coats, Mimi - 3 coats, Suri - 2 coats

 Myrta - 2 coats, Rica - 3 coats, Tanzy - 3 coats

Sally Hansen Color Foil Titanium Flush Swatch

~purchased be me~


Remember that mini-haul I had recently with the color foils? I went back to that target and not only did they have more colors on clearance, they had dropped the price down to $2.08! I finally was able to get the Cobalt Chrome shade I wanted, yay! Now if I can only find Liquid Gold I'll have all the colors that I wanted from the collection. Don't you love it when limited edition collections work in your favor? ^_^

I know these say to apply without base or top coat but I've heard from others that if you do it that way, not only do you see all the ridges and lines from your natural nails but the mani only lasts a day or two before chipping. So! I just applied this over an old manicure. Worked like a charm! These will work great for when you want a mani change but don't have time to remove your old one. Nail polish sweatpants!

They apply very smoothly but shake them very well before use! When I put my first coat on and didn't shake it properly, it applied almost like an ombre effect on my nails. I used two coats here with no topcoat. The chrome mirror-ness is very nice. When you apply, lightly "float" the brush and try not to go over the same spot too much to reduce brushstrokes. Next, I tried to apply top coat. I used a fast drying one on my pinky (NYC Grand Central Station) and a regular one on the rest of my fingers. At first I was worried that I ruined the chrome effect because the polish became slightly...cloudy? when the top coat was initially applied but that went away when it dried.

Topcoat does take away a tiny bit of the chrome-ness but not enough to be really noticeable. I think the extended wear time is worth that little bit of shine you lose. I think the regular non-fast drying topcoat is better over this than the fast drying. I haven't tried it with Seche Vite yet but I imagine it will be the same.

Sunlight pic! Sorry for the weird angle but I was losing sunlight and had to chase it around my kitchen haha. I think these color foils are pretty cool and I'm glad I was able to snag them (on clearance no less!) before they disappeared. If you haven't gotten these yet, go run and see if you can still catch them at stores.

Neon Orange Comparison (think Traffic Cones!)

~purchased by me~


I like neon's an awful lot, especially in the summer. They make your skin look so tan! I ran across some Milani Neons at my dollar tree and picked up this lovely little orange shade. When I got home, I remembered that I already had some other neon oranges and so of course, comparison time!

Color Club Wham! Pow!, Milani Neon Awesome Orange and Misa Six Pack Summer. I gotta say, the Color Club and Misa have super cute names haha. I have some more really bright oranges but they are much lighter and more yellow than what you see here. These are all traffic cone orange colors.

Wham! Pow! (Thumb), Awesome Orange (I+M), Six Pack Summer (R+P) 

Holy wow, neon oranges are super hard to take pictures of! They all look really similar in these pictures but IRL, you can tell the difference between them fairly easily. The moment I put on the Color Club shade, I could tell it was way brighter than the other two. Definitely no dupe there. The Milani and Misa were a lot closer but they are still actually different with the Milani being a shade darker than the Misa. Not dupes but you don't need both. I would actually recommend the one that is the most different, the Color Club. It's the brightest with the smoothest formula. The whole Color Club collection (Poptastic) was a win. Three coats, no topcoat was used on all of these.

I thought maybe if I took a pic of them separately that you could tell the difference better, but no not really lol. You'll just have to take my word for it. You can tell that Color Club Wham! Pow! is a lot brighter so I guess that's all that really matters.

Milani Neon Dude Blue vs Color Club Chelsea Girl Comparison

~purchased by me~


I have a hard time seeing the "neon" in neon blue polish. I don't really know if a bright neon highlighter blue color can be captured by nail polish. I keep on trying to find one anyway ;)

These are the only two neon blue polishes that I have; Milani Neon Dude Blue and Color Club Chelsea Girl from their poptastic collection. Both are cream (creme?) neon colors. I decided to do a quick swatch to see if they were dupes.

Milani Neon Dude Blue (I+M) vs Color Club Chelsea Girl (R+P)

Dude Blue is slightly darker than Chelsea Girl. I honestly don't really think they look all that neon but then again, I haven't ever seen a neon blue that looks neon to me. I mean, the color is the right shade of highlighter, as in I've seen a blue highlighter this color, but it seems to lack that bright intensity that a highlighter is. You know how highlighters look fluorescent? This just looks bright to me. And the Milani version isn't even all that bright, especially when compared to the Color Club.

Formula was good. I did two coats of each, no topcoat. I like how they were both not streaky or needed white undies to reach perfect opacity. Though they both didn't quite reach my standards of "neon", they are both lovely bright blues. Also, no dupes!

I don't usually like opaque bottles like the Milani bottle but they did a really good job with matching the bottle color to the actual color of the polish inside. The entire Color Club Poptastic collection is fantastic and if you can still find it, I would recommend getting them. They are all bright creams (cremes?) with great formulas. I believe I purchased the whole set at Marshall's for $8. The Milani Neon's are starting to pop up at dollar stores around my area so if you are interested you can check there. Do you have any blue neons that you absolutely adore? Comment to let me know what they are because as of now my search continues for the perfect neon blue!

Zoya Ali Swatch and Review

~purchased by me~


I love wearing neon shades in the summer and I think one color that compliments every skin tone is a good bright pink! I actually used to not like wearing pink anything, nail polish included and I also used to not like wearing cream (creme?) nail polishes. A lot has changed since then! This is what I used:

Ali is described on the Zoya website as "Ultra-bright warm medium neon pink creme.A fluorescent shade for maximum impact." I think this description is right on! Medium neon describes it perfectly! It definitely has some sort of neon pigment in it because it dries semi matte. You can use two coats if you have shorter nails but I needed three to cover VNL.

In sun

It dries a little darker than bottle shade but it's still bright. The formula was very easy to work with, not sheer nor streaky.

Some people say that Zoya polishes chip like mad on them. The only Zoya's I have worn for more then a few days were the PixieDusts, which wear like iron since they are basically glitter bombs so I can't really comment on that. I've also heard that the reason why Zoya's don't wear well for a lot of people is because they aren't using the Zoya base and top coats in conjunction with the polishes. I don't think it's so much the brand as the ingredients that Zoya polishes seem to have a problem with. A lot of bloggers have noted that using a base or top coat with the ingredient cellulose acetate butyrate (a common ingredient in fast dry top coats) may be causing the problem. I used Seche Vite as my topcoat which contains this ingredient so I'm not really expecting fantastic wear lol.

I like this color a lot! If you are on the market for a medium neon pink shade, consider this one! Also, I'll keep you updated on the wear ;).
Zoya polishes retail for $9-$10 and can be purchased on the Zoya website or at Ulta.