Zoya Blaze

Good evening Ninjas!

As this weekend comes to a close, I have to say I'm pretty thankful for the time I've had off and been able to spend with my husband. Right now we're watching Aliens and just relaxing before the start of another work week.

Tonight's manicure is two coats of Blaze from Zoya's Ornate collection. Zoya describes Blaze as, "a full coverage, cool-toned medium mulberry red with a high concentration of micro fine diamond holographic glitter." I'd say that's a pretty accurate description except for the red. This is definitely more of a pinkish berry color, though it does lean towards the redder end of the spectrum. The formula is great, only two coats for opacity. However, this polish did not dry with the same high shine we saw on Storm from this same collection. In the sunlight, you can't tell but Blaze might have benefited from a second coat of topcoat to give a smooth shine.

Sorry there's no label shot this time, my computer corrupted the file and I couldn't recover it :(

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.

OPI Miss Universe Collection

So, in a gift swap my dog forum does every summer, my swap partner sent me some great gifts. The one I was most excited about and jumped up and down when I opened it was the entire OPI Miss Universe Collection. Best gift ever to come back to after a loooong car ride home from NY.

I could not for the life of me get a good picture of the four bottles together but here's a quick run down of all of the colors. My absolute favorite was Swimsuit...Nailed it! and I got at least 20 compliments on it the two days I wore it. I don't really like Crown Me Already but maybe it was because I only did a quick (and messy) swatch of it.  Its My Year was great, I loved the gold glitter but I had a lot of trouble getting the shimmer to show up in Congeniality is My Middle Name.