Illamasqua Viridian

Hello lovely Ninjas!

Yestderday two of my nails broke, one on each hand, so I am completely nubbinized! Fear not though, I have quite the backlog of manicures to post for your viewing pleasure. The last time my wonderful Mother in Law visited, we took a short road trip to the nearest mall said to carry Illamasqua in it's Sephora so I could oogle the lacquers. My MIL let me pick out four beautiful colors to take home and the stunning Viridian was one of those colors!

Illamasqua calls Viridian a "peacock green, metallic finish". Not the most descriptive blurb about a nail polish ever and not entirely accurate if you ask me. Viridian is definitely metallic and definitely green but I'm not sure it's vibrant enough to be called peacock. The base for the metallic green shimmer is a pretty dark black jelly so this color isn't a bright as I was hoping after seeing some of the promotional pictures. The formula was amazing though, two super easy coats that nearly applied themselves and I had to do almost zero clean up! This reminds me of a twice as expensive, slightly darker version of Ulta Envy. Do you have anything like this in your collection?

Zoya Zuza

Hello darling Ninjas!

Today I've got another one of Zoya's fabulous summer colors for you: Zuza. Of the Surf and Turf collections, the two colors that most appealed to me were Wednesday and her metallic sister Zuza. I'm a huge fan of all things teal and these beauties are a great seafoam teal color. I was tempted to sponge on white or silver tips with this color to make it look like waves at a beach but I was very short on time the week I wore this (Lots of prep for graduation at work!)

Zoya describes Zuza as " Deep, saturated, oceanic turquoise with gold and silver metallic shimmer and a foil-like finish". I can respect the description of turquoise instead of teal but I'm not so sure about deep. To me, Zuza was more the color of the ocean you see in commercials for trips to tropical locations, a gorgeous blue-green with a bit of mystery. I applied two easy coats for opacity and this wore very nicely with minimal tipwear. Please excuse my pictures, I'm not sure why but my camera did not want to pick up the sunlight very well. This is a gorgeous polish.

 

Products in thei post were provided by Zoya PR for my honest review.

AEngland St. George

Hello Ninjas!

My arms are super sore tonight, I have a feeling my polish application may suffer so I'll have to wait another day to change my polish. But, at least the reason they're sore is super awesome! I went to an archery range yesterday and spent about an hour getting accessories added to my new compound bow and getting sighted in. My dad has been a bow hunter since years before I was born and he let my husband have one of his bows last weekend. Not one to let my hubby have all the fun, I picked up a smaller compound bow for myself so we can get good at archery together! I'm very excited about the shop I found too; they not only repair and sell supplies for bows but they also offer lessons and have leagues! I hope to be proficient enough to join a league next season with my husband.

On to the polish! Today I've got one of the most sought polishes of 2012, AEngland St. George. This is a gorgeous dark teal scattered holographic from AEngland's Legend Collection. Many people said they had luck with St. Georgeas a one coater and I could see how that is but I guess my application was less than stellar so I used two. Two ended up being a great idea because I wore this mani twice as long as usual when I went out of town for Easter with no tipwear! I love how Adina's formula is always perfect, easy to manage and dries super high-gloss <3

Glitters and Bubbles: Pegasus Poop

Hi Ninjas!

Ok, so I know the title of this post makes little to no sense at all but soon you'll understand! The wonderful Amanda over at Glitters and Bubbles has created an absolutely amazing Franken-Polish. This polish is a multi-chrome and a LINEAR HOLOGRAPHIC! After asking for suggestions, Ms. Amanda named her beautiful creation Pegasus Poop, probably along the lines of many of the famous polishes in the lacquer world being named after Unicorn... excretions. 

Since it is a franken, Amanda isn't going to be making this color in bulk, I'm glad to own one of the bottles from the very first batch of PP! I've heard that there will be no more than 50 bottles of this released into the wild world of polish so get yours while you can! Here is the glory of Pegasus Poop in two coats over one coat of Zoya Raven:

Sorry for the picture spam but it's super hard to catch all of the colors in this polish AND get a good picture of the linear holo without having direct sunlight.

Cool new sales over at Apothica/SkincareRX

Hi Ninjas!

This is just a quick, non-swatching post to let you know about some neat deals happening over at SkincareRX.com and it's sister site Apothica.com. They put together the "Spring Beauty Cache" which is a great way to get your skin beach ready and beautiful for summer at a great price:


Beauty Cache

You can also use the code 13YEARS at checkout to save 13% in celebration of their 13th Anniversary! Happy shopping readers, Apothica has some AMAZING polish and cosmetic products.

China Glaze Agro

Hello Ninjas!

Today I've got another Hunger Games polish from the Capitol Colors line for you. This is District 11's color, Agro. Appropriately named considering Dist. 11 is Agriculture. One of the most well known characters in the book, Rue, was from Dist. 11 and her district is one of the most outspoken against the government of Panem.

Agro is a gorgeous forest green with golden shimmer in it. The amount of gold in Agro makes it behave like a duochrome in some lighting. I adored this color, it went on fairly easily in two coats and had little to no tipwear when I was sporting a full manicure of it.

Quoth the Raven

Hello Ninjas!

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend! Sorry I wasn't able to post yesterday, I was out of town with my grandparents having too much fun dying Easter Eggs. I'll have to see if I got any good pictures of them to put up, some turned out really neat!

This look is the one I did for Toxid Lotus' Makeup Challenge: Raven/Crow. I went a little bit more in the literal direction of this and did black makeup in a mask that was almost a raven shape. I also added metallic blue and purple accents but they were really hard to keep vivid on top of the black shadow I did  most of the look with.

I love how this looks in the pictures but it was definitely too costume-y to wear out in public. I might do a super dark night look with similar coloring for a date-night sometime. On a related note, check out these amazing earring I bought from Luna! They're black and green brushed polymer clay with peridot accent stones. They are meant to raise awareness about Lyme Disease and you can check out her similar earwings here!

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.

China Glaze Riveting

Hello Ninjas!

Tonight I've got the highly prized Riveting from the Capitol Colors/Hunger Games collection. Riveting is District 3's polish. Dist. 3 is technology and while the name seems more like auto-shop, I think the color is appropriate when you think of red-hot wires in an overworked computer. This is a great bright orange jelly packed with matching glass flecks that was incredibly vibrant on the nail. I did three coats to cover all traces of VNL but those of you with less free nail edge could probably get away with two coats.

Zoya Kimber

Hello Ninjas!

Tonight I've got one of the new summer colors by Zoya from their Surf Collection. After spending the day in the hospital with not polish on, I decided I HAD to wear something bright. With the whole Beach and Surf Collection to choose from, I chose Kimber as the most lively of the bunch. I adore Wednesday and Zuza but I didn't want something that reminded me of being short of breath like I was at the ER.

Anyways, on the the gorgeous polish. To my eye, Kimber looks like a warm metallic strawberry polish with a strong gold shimmer. Zoya describes it as " Rich, bright and saturated medium magenta pink with strong gold metallic shimmer and a foil-like finish." I don't know that I would call it magenta but it definitely has a foil-like finish instead of a full foil finish. Overall, this a very pretty shade that will go great with a summer tan and flip flops. I ended up using three coats to completely cover the VNL. If you're careful to avoid bubbles, you could probably get opacity in two thicker coats.

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

"Watermelon" eyes

Hello Ninjas.

Sorry for the late post, I spent the morning and part of the afternoon in the ER with a gallbladder attack. I'm home and fine now so don't worry!

I did this look super simply, I covered the entire eyelid area with Tease from Brazen Cosmetics then used a metallic green eyeliner from Essence on my bottom lashline before adding a shimmery green shadow to set the liner. I liked how this turned out but the effect of watermelon wasn't intentional; it was one of my male co-workers who told me that my eyes looked like watermelon slices. Tah-dah!

China Glaze Dress Me Up

Hello Ninjas!

It's a beautiful day here in North Carolina and I've got a pretty neutral that goes well with warmer weather. When the Hunger Games movie came out, I thought I'd wear the polish from the district my Panem ID randomly assigned me. The district I got was 8, textiles. I've actually been wanting to wear this color for a while now but just had so many other colors to wear I kept forgetting!

Dress Me Up is appropriately named considering the nature of Dist 8 but I liked it better when the original name was Primrose after Kat's sister. Regardless, this is a very pretty dusty mauve/rose color that was actually much more flattering than I thought it would be for my skin tone. In the right lighting, this actually looked almost like mannequin hands on me which is wear because I have a very fair complexion. I guess I've got to look for neutrals with mauve undertones! Two coats for this very calming manicure.

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.