Wordless Wednesday

Product sent for review by Zoya PR.

Review: Zoya Tinsley

Good evening Ninjas!

I hope you've been doing well. The weather in NC has been very off an on. The last few days have been scattered thunderstorms interspersed with sunny spots. And you never know which will be happening when you need to go anywhere! I've taken to keeping my umbrella in my purse all the time.

Tonight's manicure is a polish sent for review by Zoya, Tinsely. Zoya describes Tinsley as "a full-coverage, rose gold foil metallic." Tinsley is one of the polishes I was super excited to try and it was very unique. At some angles it was a lovely rose color while at others is was a bright metallic gilded rose. This was two smooth coats and it wore very well!

 Polish sent for review by Zoya PR.

Sally Hansen Firefly

Good evening Ninjas,

How was your week? Mine was a little hectic but fun so that was good. Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day, are there any places around you participating?

Tonight's manicure is two coats of Sally Hansen Firefly. This polish was actually much more multichromatic in person and these pictures don't do it any justice. While wearing it, I was able to see gold, orange,  pink, green, and the occasional blue flash on my nails.

Orange, some pink flash on the pinky.

Gold with slight green tinting around edges.

Review: Zoya PixieDust for Summer 2013

Good afternoon Ninjas!

I hope you're having a lovely Friday. I'll be working today and tomorrow, as I usually do over the weekends but hubby and I do have Sunday off together so that will be fun :)

Today's post is the swatches for Zoya's summer PixieDust polishes. These polishes were sent to me for unbiased review. I really like the color combinations Zoya did for this collection! In fact, they're pretty much perfect for doing color block manicures. Since I thought the colors paired up so well, I swatched them side by side with the color I thought would make a fitting color block manicure. Not only did this save me time swatching but it gives you a neat idea for how to use these summer colors in pairs!

Descriptions of the colors below are from Zoya's site. Links lead to external affiliate website.

Solange:  Zoya Nail Polish in Solange can be best described as a gold metal foil sparkle featuring a Zoya EXCLUSIVE GOLD PIGMENT in the best-selling Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Foil Twinkle formula.

Beatrix:  Zoya Nail Polish in Beatrix can be best described as a tangerine metal sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Foil Twinkle formula

Left: Beatrix, Right: Solange

Destiny:  Zoya Nail Polish in Destiny can be best described as a coral metal sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Foil Twinkle formula.

Miranda: Zoya Nail Polish in Miranda can be best described as a rose sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Sparkle formula.

Left: Destiny, Right: Miranda

Stevie:  Zoya Nail Polish in Stevie can be best described as a violet sparkle, in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Sparkle formula.

Liberty:  Zoya Nail Polish in Liberty can be best described as a blue sugary sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Sparkle formula.

Left: Liberty, Right: Stevie

Polishes provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

Cinderella manicure!

Good evening Ninjas!

Sorry I missed Wedesday, I had a party to go to and didn't have any time between work and fun time to stop to post. Sorry about that! If it makes it any better, I specifically brought my laptop to my babysitting job tonight to post once the kids were asleep just so I didn't miss two posts in one week!

Tonight's very pretty manicure is done with a base of China Glaze Fade into Hue which is an awesome periwinkle blue. For some reason the polishes from the Avant Garden collection have been bubbling on me so I added a coat of Essie As Gold as it Gets to mask the bubbling issue. To make this pretty blue manicure a little blingy, I added a spiral of light blue rhinestones that I received from MASH for review purposes. When I posted this look in a facebook group, some of the ladies commended on how it was a Cinderella blue manicure and I agree! With all the shine and sparkle it's pretty princess-y too :)

Rhinestones provided by MASH PR for honest review. Affiliate link included in this post.

Wordless Wednesday: Green and Gold scallops

Zoya Logan, Zoya Ziv, Ulta Maine Attraction

Zoya Logan, Zoya Ziv, Ulta Maine Attraction

Zoya Logan, Zoya Ziv, Ulta Maine Attraction

Zoya Logan

Good evening Ninjas,

How has your week been going? It's test/stripe week at the dojo and I earned my first stripe on my red-white belt! I'm having a lot of fun in the fire element and much to his surprise my husband is also doing really well.

Tonight's manicure is two pretty coats of Zoya Logan from their Ornate collection. Zoya describes Logan as, "a full coverage, yellow-toned forest green with dense, foil-like yellow-gold and blue-green duochrome shimmer!" I kept putting off wearing Logan because it had such hard competition for my affections against the scattered holos in the Ornate collection. I really loved wearing Logan though, it was less gold than I expected and a very rich forest green. I'm definitely a big fan!

Triple Gold Manicure

Good evening Ninjas!

Tomorrow is test day and I'm freaking out! I spent and hour today reviewing earth techniques and then I felt like I forgot half of the water techniques I was supposed to know. So much stress!

Tonight's manicure is three different golds I used for Chinese New Year. I should have mixed in a red but I was sort of enjoying the subtle nail art with all gold dotting. This is two coats of Pure Ice Viva Las Vegas with dots of "313CP" and Bare it All along one side of the nail.

Product provided by Bari Cosmetics for honest review.

Solstice Nails!

Hello Ninjas!

I hope everyone is travelling safely to an from all of the cool people they get to visit this holiday season. I'll be in NY with my husband's family until New Years which means scheduled posts!

I'm doing Solstice before 4 and 5 because it comes first on the calendar! Solstice was the 21st when the world was supposed to end so I figured my nails for the End of the World party qualified. This is two coats of ManGlaze #Matte is Murder with one/two coats of the Sephora by OPI gold leaf topcoat. I used Essie Matte About You to top it all off.

 I chose this combination because Famine is the black Horseman of the Apocalypse and he is often portrayed carrying golden scales. It applies to Solstice anyways since it looks like a starry night and Solstice has the longest night of the year!

Shimmery Layering

Hello Ninjas!

I'm a Blue-Black Belt! Graduation was last night and it went really well. Now I'm counting down the months until the big transition into Fire, only three to go :)

Tonight's manicure was a little simple layering. This is two coats of Noot from the Designer collection by Zoya topped off with a coat of Flashlight from NYC. Flashlight is a neat gold fleck topcoat with little pink and purple bits mixed in. This actually had really great coverage in one coat and two would have completely drowned out the dark smokey color of Noot.

Zoya Ziv

Good evening Ninjas!

Hope everyone's week is going well. I can't believe it's only Tuesday here, it feels much later in the week.

Tonight's manicure is Ziv from Zoya's Ornate Collection for Winter 2012/13. Zoya describes Ziv as, "a full coverage, yellow-toned metallic gold foil with silver highlights and warm gold flake glitter accents." I wasn't entirely sure I wanted another gold metallic in my collection but Ziv is really a neat and complex metallic polish. The different color flecks of gold and silver as well as the various sizes of the metallic particles make this one a fun polish to look at, even just in the bottle! This is two coats of easy coverage with one coat of Seche QD on top.

Sparkly layering combination!

Hello Ninjas!

Thanksgiving break has started, the dojo is closed until next Monday so I'll hopefully have time to post every other day as usual.

Tonight's manicure is one I really loved wearing. Despite telling myself I never wanted to own a gold leaf topcoat, I couldn't pass up the Sephora by OPI version when I saw it on clearance at Sephora. To be fair, I tried it on over my existing manicure and it looked fantastic. To make a really dynamic and textured look, I put one layer of the $OPI 18k Gold Leaf topcoat over two surprisingly opaque coats of Essie Leading Lady. I actually expected to have to do at least three coats of LL but the raspberry red jelly that the glitter is suspended in was very easily buildable!

Fifth Degree Nail Art

Hello Ninjas!

Sorry I didn't finish the Halloween Challenge, I had too much going on between the outrageous costume I was doing and work that I didn't have time to do a costume manicure and a repeat manicure of another blogger's design. Maybe the next challenge I do I'll complete!

Tonight's manicure is the one I did for the huge Ninja Festival in Dayton, Ohio way back on September 29th. I replicated the belt that our dojo owner was recently awarded, his Godan or Fifth Degree black belt.  The Godan belts are black with a metallic silver stripe down the middle with the kanji for Toshindo in red on one end and the warrior name on the other end. I did the Toshindo kanji as well as the five gold bars that accompany them to represent each degree. The symbol on my pinky is what we call a kuginuki and is one of the crests of our martial art.

L'Oreal Brit Invasion

Good evening Ninjas!

I'm in the process of letting my nails dry so this might be a short post. There's a huge Ninjutsu seminar this coming weekend that I've already got a manicure request for (Co-worker wants me to go the grandmaster's belt, gold with red kanji) And I'm also participating in a Halloween nail challenge but I'll be out of town at the seminar through late Sunday night. Therefore, I'll have to do my Day 1 Halloween manicure early and probably schedule the post. Hubby thinks it's funny that I'm stressed about upcoming manicures; he just doesn't get it!

Tonight's polish is Brit Invasion from L'Oreal which came out with a handful of other British themed polishes in honor of the 2012 Summer Olympics being held in Great Britain this summer.  This was the only polish left in the display that I had any interest in. Brit Invasion is a really nice medium taupe base with a lot of gold shimmer. In some lighting the taupe would lean grey and in others it was decidedly brown. I really liked this manicure and the formula was very easy to work with! Two coats of color with nearly no clean up thanks to the nice shape of L'Oreal's polish brush.