Thursday, January 12, 2012

Zoya Ibiza

I've been wanting this polish for a while and finally got my little hands on it!

Ibiza is from the fall 2009 collection, Dare. It's a very pretty inky deep blue. The application was pretty good but when I got close to my cuticles it flooded them so I had to take it extra careful.  It's such a dark color that I thought some metallic stamping would look nice. Using Pure Ice Silver Mercedes, I stamped with Bundle Monster plate BM-224.

with flash

natural light


I'm really happy with how the stamping came out, I've been trying for so long to find a silver polish that stamped well without having to buy the konad silver.  I'm trying to find a drugstore gold polish that stamps well, any suggestions?? 

Thanks for visiting! :D


Sunday, January 8, 2012

NYX Las Vegas (I like Emerald City...)

After seeing some posts on other nail blogs I had to hunt for the old NYX bottles. Mostly looking for NYX Jungle, which is a duochrome greenish blue gold polish, I stopped at one of many many beauty supply stores here in the city. This particular chain has each store with its own individual name and they mostly have hair products and lower end cosmetics. But they all have old NYX products.

So I find the display and see the old rounded bottles of NYX polishes at the bottom. No Jungle.. darn. Then I see a dark, very glittery green. I turn it over, no label. Grab the one behind it.. no label. A lot of the bottles are so old the labels fell off. After several bottles slide to the front I finally find one with a label.. haha! Las Vegas. After the last bottle slides to the front, I gasp to find it's one lonely Jungle hidden behind a slew of Las Vegas! A trip well worth the traffic!



Even though the entire reason I went to this place was to find Jungle, the other looked so interesting I had to try it.. all I can saw is wow. It is an emerald green JELLY with emerald and blue microglitter.  LOOKIT!


indoors no flash
You can see the blue duochrome of the glitter peek through.


indoors flash

indoors no flash

outdoors shade


outdoors sunlight



indoors no flash



Sorry about the bare tips, I used Seche Vite as a top coat and it shrank the polish. These pictures really don't show this polish at its best, it is so beautiful in real life. I don't know why they named it Las Vegas, if it's gotta be a place I think Emerald City would have been better! haha!

I will be wearing Jungle soon and will post that when I do, until then, on to more hunting!! Thanks for visiting!









Friday, January 6, 2012

L'Oreal VIP Status & Luxeffects Set In Stones

I am so excited to be back! I haven't so much as logged into my blog for about 5 months and now I have the motivation to get back into the swing of things! Around mid July things got pretty crazy for me and a month later I uprooted myself from a small quiet town to a very large city and am with my husband trying to get our lives on track. I start a new job in a few days and basically am ready to put 2011 behind me 'cuz believe me, you can have it..

With all the craziness of the last few months I have hardly painted my nails at all. Considering that I would paint my nails a new color every 2-3 days, I can say I was extremely stressed and depressed and bad things were coming up one after another but things are looking up and I'm feeling a lot better. So with all that being said I feel so happy to be back in my little corner of the internet.

Here is my first manicure of the new year! L'Oreal VIP Status with one coat of Essie Luxeffects Set in Stones
natural light

with flash

And coincidentally this is also my first try with a new basecoat. I swear by Nailtek, their ridgefiller is the best! But it's expensive and thickens around half way through the bottle. On a whim I bought Orly Ridgefiller because it was $3. It dries smooth which I don't care for since Nailtek dries with a rough texture. When I applied VIP Status it went on patchy so I don't know if it had to do with the slick surface of the ridgefiller or the polish itself. This is only my second purchase of a L'Oreal polish so I'm not familiar with their formula. I don't ever give drugstore brands anymore than a glance over but I was at my local Wal-Mart yesterday and I saw a brand new display with about 25 polishes. For some strange reason there was only one of each color and this shade caught my eye.

It's a very pretty steel greyish blue with a silver microshimmer to it. In the bottle it has a slight purple duochrome but it didn't show up on the nail. It did brush on a little goopy as well but after the second coat it levelled out just fine.

The Essie top coat, Set in Stones, applied really well. I didn't have any trouble getting the glitter even on the nail and I like it a lot more than I expected to. It's full of hex shaped and very tiny silver glitter particles. Soo sparkly..  This is part of a 5 piece collection of gorgeous effects topcoats which I received from my very dear friend Natalie as part of a Christmas gift, she is beyond awesome!!

Here are some photos of the polish alone:
with flash

full sun

in shade

I have several pictures of nail art I've done in the last few months so in between manicures I will be posting those. Hopefully I can stick with this since I really do enjoy it and I've learned a lot from many other nail bloggers I've come to look up to. Thanks for visiting and happy new year to you!