Orange Layering

Good evening Ninjas!

Well, our loan passed underwriting so we're going to be home owners! It's very exciting and I'm starting to feel like a real grown up now. My favorite part of the house is the extra space in the back yard that I plan to turn into an archery range. I'll be Hawkeye in no time!

Tonight's manicure is one I did for a creative layering challenge. The base is two coats of butter LONDON MacBeth followed by one coat of a nameless orange duochrome by Funky Fingers and topped off with a coat of *Chloe from Zoya's Fleck Effect collection. The overall manicure was quite pretty and very interesting to look at in different lighting scenarios.

Chloe provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

Flakies Galore!

Hello Ninjas!

This week seems to be particularly heavy on the flakies. I'm not entirely sure why that is, I guess all the polishes I recently acquired from Cult Nails have flakies in them. That's ok, that's why I chose them!

Today's manicure is a really pretty purple combination. I used two coats of Zoya Monica as a base for one medium coat of Cult Nails Seduction. Seduction is a sheer purple jelly base with blue and iridescent orange/green/red flakies suspended throughout. I really liked this combination and it was surprisingly easy to apply the two together. I was worried that the number of coats might cause bubbling but when I used Wicked Fast to top it off, the whole manicure dried wonderfully!

 Monica provided by the Zoya PR team for honest review.

Christmas Nails!

Hello lovely Ninjas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas day with their family. Between the cold, being away from my parents, and leaving my pets behind, I'm a little sad. Ah well, that's what happens when you get married, you have to spend time with a whole new family. I still miss the food and traditions though, this if my first year not getting to see my parents for the holidays :(

Today's manicure is a shimmery evergreen color from Cult Nails: Coveted. I used a base of two coats of Zoya Envy before adding a coat of coveted over top. Coveted is a really pretty deep green polish with a jelly base that suspends green shimmer as well as flakies. Some of the flakies didn't want to lay flat on the nail but overall this was a very pretty manicure for the holiday.

With this manicure I also used the Cult Nails Wicked Fast topcoat and it did a great job of helping even out the stubborn flakes. This was a much easier polish to work with than Iconic which gave me issues. I'm very happy I decided to get the Cult another try :)

Layering with Zoya Designer, Fleck, and Gloss

Hello Ninjas!

Tonight is graduation at the dojo so work is bound to be busy today. On the bright side, I was ready for graduation well in advance this time. Sometimes it's nice to have a calm day when you can go in to work early before the customer rush and get your tasks done without interruption. Tonight will be a small graduation for colored belts but it is the first time 23 of our new black belts will be able to sit at the front of the mat on the black belt panel. They'll be recognized as completing their black belt journey by the community of our dojo for the first time!

Today's post is a neat little layering manicure I did with Zoya Monica, Zoya Chloe, and Zoya Katherine. I didn't have a lot of time the night I needed to change my manicure so instead of removing my existing two coat manicure of Monica, I added one coat of Chloe with her orange and green flakies, then I topped it off with a coat of the pretty plum jelly Katherine.

Zoya Arizona and Chloe

Hello Ninjas!

My newest ailment appears to be a bout of TMJ issues in my right jaw *sigh* I would really love a normal, pain free week!  I'm hoping next week will be better. I'm spending the weekend at my parents' house for a little TLC.

Tonight I've got a combination I was surprised hadn't been blogged yet. I started off with three coats of Zoya Arizona from their Beach Collection. This was a very pigmented bright orange polish but it went on streaky like some neon colors are prone to. Zoya describes Arizona as "Softened bright citrus orange with a muted cream finish." Even though it isn't a complete neon, this color was very bright and did a good job giving me a good mood lift when I wore it!

I wore an orange shirt with this polish because they matched really well!

And then, because I thought this would be an awesome combination, I added a coat of Chloe from the

Fleck Effect Collection. This combination was amazing! The flakies caught the sun and reflected orange and green both; the end result looked like flickering flames on my nails. Hunger Games anyone?

Products in this post were provided by the Zoya PR team for honest review.

Zoya Skylar and Maisie

Hello Ninjas!

Tonight I've got a pretty combination of two different finishes from Zoya's Spring collections. I started off with Zoya Skylar which is described as "a medium steel blue with a softened, dusty look and speckled by visible gold and silver shimmer flecks" I loved this! And I'm glad to know I wasn't going crazy when I thought it had silver shimmer in one lighting then gold shimmer in another lighting! This was a great color to wear when the sky was all cloudy because it reminded me of sunny days.

The formula on Skylar was as wonderful as I have come to expect from Zoya's level 5 polishes (1 sheer -> 5 opaque) Two coats that self leveled and were easy to manage with a great color pay off made this a very easy application process.

After wearing Skylar plain for two days, I added a the very pretty Fleck Effect shade, Maisie. I figured the blue jelly base was meant to compliment Skylar and I was right! Maisie is described as "a sheer turquoise blue base with reflective Mylar flakes that shift from green to blue" And the blue shift was awesome on this. Seriously, it didn't just flash blue, it flashed indigo. LOVED this combination.

Products in this post were provided by the Zoya PR team for.honest review.

China Glaze Stone Cold and Luxe & Lush

Hello Ninjas!

Since yesterday's post wasn't really a post, I've got a picture heavy manicure for you today! This is the beautiful Stone Cold from the China Glaze Hunger Games Collection. While the technical name of the collection is Capitol Colors, everyone knows what you're talking about when you call it the Hunger Games Collection. I've seen the collection at Ulta and Hot Topic, I was slightly surprised to see it at HT but given the amount of HG merchandise they have, it isn't too out of character.

Stone Cold is District 2's color and is a matte that resembles asphalt. Since Dist. 2 is masonry, the color and finish are very fitting. Application was super easy on this despite the thick formula. As long as you know how to work with matte polish and can work quickly, this color requires little to no clean up. This is a nice dark grey with plenty of silver micro-glitter in it.  When you add a glossy topcoat,Stone Cold looks much darker, almost black at the base but the shimmer really pops. For the first couple of days. I wore this matte with a glossy accent nail.

After that, I added a coat of the mylar shards (They really don't look like flakes to me) topcoat from the same collection, Luxe & Lush. L&L is District 1's color/effect which is fitting since Dist.1 is luxuries. The combination of these two polishes was really pretty because of the combined shards and shimmer looks, not to mention the way the shards iridescence flashed in sunlight.

Zoya Bevin and Opal

Hello Ninjas!

In preparation for St. Patrick's day, I decided I'd show you a manicure I did that reminded me of a field of clover. I ended up wearing Bevin from Zoya's awesome Spring 2012 collection, Tru. Zoya describes it as "... a dusty, medium sage green with teal tones and a creamy opaque finish." I basically agree though I use less words, I just call this a sage green. I love sage! I love cooking with it, eating it, and just looking at it so I was thrilled to have this color on my nails. Bevin worked wonderfully with my skin tone and was opaque in two easy coats.

The color of Bevin also reminds me of the really pretty pale green succulent plants they have in a garden nearby:

Can you tell I have as thing for plants?

Anyways, After two days of wearing the wonderful Bevin by itself, I added the beautiful Mylar fleck topcoat, Opal, from Zoya's Fleck Effect collection. Zoya describes Opal as "...a sheer green base with reflective Mylar flakes that shift from bright green to blue." Which is pretty spot on. I loved this combination! I also couldn't take my eyes off my nails when they were in the sunlight, the shift from green to blue is stunning!

 

These combined colors are what reminded me of a field of clover:

Products in this post were provided by the Zoya PR team for honest review.

Cult Nails Iconic

Hello lovely Ninjas!

Today I've got a manicure done with Cult Nails Iconic. According to their website, Iconic "is a deep berry creme with gorgeous red flakes and hidden gold shimmer throughout. Iconic is destined to become an instant classic. " So it's safe to say Iconic has a complex formula to go along with the complex finish of the polish. When I got my bottle, I was wowed by how wonderful it looked just sitting there but the beauty was not entirely translated to the nail. I had a lot of problems with the formula on this one. It was fast drying which is good but since it dried to fast and was relatively thick to begin with, it was sort of goopy when I applied it. Due to the goopiness, I ended up with much thicker coats than I would like to avoid dragging with such a sticky polish

On top of that, the polish did not play well with others. What I mean by that is that it did not end up with a high shine finish I was expecting after a generous coat of Seche Vite. I think because of it's goopy consistency, Iconic was craving more polish to help it self level, sort of like a hungry glitter polish. You'll see in my pictures that there isn't the usual perfect mirror shine on the nails. There were even small indentations each place where a flakie was close to the surface like it sunk back into the nail. Very strange and very disappointing for the price of this polish. There was also tipwear on Iconic (Probably because it didn't like Seche) in less thank 24hours of wear. Nothing like I was expecting at $10 a bottle. I will probably refrain form buying any more Cult Nails colors and spend my money on a brand I trust implicitly like AEngland.

Opal Nails

Hello darling ninjas,

Today I've got the outcome at my attempt to make my nails look like fire opals. I started with a base of 4 coats of Sally Hansen Brilliant blush which I wore by itself for two days. It's a pretty translucent pearl with amazing multichrome flashes of red, pink, and orange. On top of that I added a coat of Essie Shine of the Times to be the silica inclusions that make opal so pretty. It wasn't exactly what I wanted but it was still very pretty!

Holiday Haul and NYE Mani

Hello lovely ninjas!

Tonight I've got for you the polishes I got as a gift from my great friend Elizabeth. She got me these lovely polishes from my wish-list <3 She's one of the people who has gotten as obsessed with polish as I have since I started my blog and she's just awesome!

Altogether she got me four polishes and a HUGE container of Seche Vite. I was super excited about all of these but I think I nearly had a heartattack when I saw Piu Mosso and Scrangie! And the LuxeEffects definitely got a squeal of happiness. *sigh* I love all the pretties so much. 

Of course, she also brought the polishes she thought I'd be more interested in trying so I made a huge mash-up for my New Years Manicure. I did AEngland Lancelot on my thumb, middle, and pinky fingers and AEngland Galahad on my index and ring fingers as base colors. On Lancelot I did one coat of Morgan le Fay then one coat of one of the Color Club scattered holo's from their holiday collection. Over Galahad I did one coat of Essie Shine of the time. This was a super blingy manicure that I thought was a perfect way to ring in the new year.

Stay tuned for another haul post soon! I picked up 10 polishes between clearance at Ulta and Target today since my no-buy is officially OVER. Muahahahaha.