Zesty

You all know this shade. I'm sure I have pulled it out pretty much every year since it's release and tried it out in a new way. Although my favorite way I wear China Glaze, Zombie Zest is on it's own, I decided to try it out over a deep green this year, China Glaze Holly-day.

Holly-day is a deep blue based green creme, I used one coat as a base. I then added two generous coats of Zombie Zest over top. Holly-day masks the overall murkiness of the swamp, green/yellow base, which I love. However, I find the deeper base makes this look more dramatic and vampy. Maybe even a little more wearable for those not used to pretty ugly colours like Zombie Zest.

The longer I have this on my nails the less I eat to remove it!

Oh, It's Real Alright!

Today I have a quick and easy mani refresh with one of my newly acquired (and discontinued) Sephora by OPI top coats. Surprisingly I almost left this polish behind, and it's the first once I choose to wear! Of course, right? My base is China Glaze Kinetic Candy, a lovely, dusty blue pastel. And the topper of choice is Sephora by OPI It's Real 18K Gold Top Coat.

In my photos below I used two coats of the fold flakie top coat, which is made up of real gold fragments. You may also notice that it is very subtle, the gold pieces are very tiny for the most part. I really like the contrast between the soft, diluted blue and bright shiny gold. I''m not really a huge fan of yellow gold, but in small amounts, it works!

I do wish the gold flakies were a bit more dense so that I could achieve the look of two coats in one. Other than that, I am really a fan of this polish. That means a lot considering I had intentions of gifting or selling this polish. Super happy I purchased it an tried it out :) That being said, I would probably not pick it up if it was sold at original price due to the low density of gold pieces per coat of polish.

A Winners Polish Win!

Today I have an exciting find I was not expecting at all during my last trip to Winners. I actually headed there on a whim since I was early for a bus on my way home from work Monday. I can usually expect to find, Color Club, China Glaze, OPI and Essie among other well known polish brands. But when I saw a Layla Ceramic Effect polish I got super excited! Unfortunately there was only one, luckily for me it was a flakie!

Layla Ceramic Effect 52, "The Butterfly Effect", is  a gorgeous flakie comprised of a blurple jelly base, multi-chromatic shimmer and opalescent flakies. This polish is a stunner! It is actually very close to another limited edition hard to find polish in my collection, Nfu-Oh 51. Side by side in the bottle they appear to have slight differences, but I think I will dedicate a separate post for the comparison for another time.

First let's talk about the bottle, the only Layla's I currently own are the holographics that come in the short round bottles. The Ceramic Effects come in a tapered, tall rectangular bottle with angled corners. An interesting shape for a polish bottle but easy to store in my opinion! The brush handle also appears to be made of actual ceramic.

Application was a breeze, no issues at all. Since the base is a jelly the first coat was a bit sheer and slightly patchy, but the second coat evened that right up! The lighting in some of my photos makes the polish apper sheer, but it reality the base is dark enough to avoid any visible nail line. The purple base is almost electric, is is dark but is so saturated I want to describe it as bright. The flakies colours shift between green, yellow orange and red along with the shimmer particles.

Such a pretty shade, I'm not sure if it is readily available for a lot of people, seeing as it is an Italian brand. I checked their site and saw that they still have it for sale. I wish Winners had more, there is a green flakie Ceramic Effect I have been lusting after!

Decisions, Decisions...

This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands, a mismatched mani due to indecisiveness! The other day I sat down to do my nails and was torn as to how I would be updating my previous mani of Zoya Envy. I have been seeing bloggers posting swatches of the new Finger Paints Flakies and it got me wanting to layer that on top. But, I also have been meaning to try out a tape mani since I purchased a bunch of striping tape last summer. These were the two options I was really stuck between among others of layering other polishes on top or stamping. Too many choices!

Soooo... I ended up trying out a tape mani... on a few fingers lol.

All above photos captured in natural lighting

Three tape designs on my right hand and two on my left to be exact. You have seen these before, basically you stick striping tape on the nail in various designs and patterns and paint over the nail with the tape stuck to the nail, when you remove it you have a cool design! I did a different design for each nail. I think they came out pretty good for my first time! I definitely will be doing this more often, especially with the amount of tape I have.

The polish I used on top of Envy for the stripe tape nails is Color Club Ho-Ho-Holly, one of the scented polishes from last years holiday collection. I picked this one up at Sally's on clearance for a dollar or something last year after Christmas. Such a beautiful shade! It is a golden green that flashes a slight duochrome of gold and teal/blue from the right angle. It has a slight evergreen scent that is not overbearing at all. I can only really smell it when I have my hands up to my nose.

For the other nails, two on my right and three on my left, I applied a generous coat of Finger Paints Flecked, a densely packed green flakie in a clear base. The green flakies flash between different shades of green and blue, so pretty! They go great with the deep green base of Envy

It was so hard to get decent photos of this mismatched mani, it is one of those that looks better in person, too much going on for the camera to capture it correctly. The first grouping of images at the tom were the most accurate to real life.

Howl You Doing?

I am super late on wearing China Glaze Howl You Doing? apart of their Monsters Ball collection from this past Halloween. I got the full collection only a few days before the 31st of October and was only able to sport Bump in the Night from the set. I really love this polish, it is super interesting, which I did not originally expect since I had heard it may be a dupe for other polishes in my collection. Lets break this polish down!

This is a deep vampy purple, almost pulling maroon, jelly base packed with purple glitter and copper orange flakie pieces. The combo of glitter plus flakies makes this polish special. I will be doing a comparison post soon versus OPI, Merry Midnight and Orly, Fowl Play, but I can safely say already this is not a dupe for either, but I will explain further in that post.

Although I love the colour and the complexity of this polish, I did have a few issues. Application wise the formula was thick and streaky on the first coat. I added some thinner after the first few nails to aid in smoother application and it helped. The second coat covered up any imperfections from the first and smoothed everything out perfectly! This is a very deep shade, at two coats, I don't think there is any need for a third. Problem solved formula wise!

A blurry phone shot I took while waiting for the bus, but it shows off the glitter beautifully.

Next issue is finish. I would consider the base a jelly, and jelly's usually really shine with a high gloss finish but Howl You doing remained quite dull. Even after one coat of Seche Vite it will was not as glossy as I had hoped it to be. I didn't realize how jam packed with glitter is was until I remove it! This may have been another reason why it was dull and gritty. Add to that, that it started chipping on me within 24 hours, I was feeling disappointed. Love this as a polish, however the finish and wear time for me were not the greatest.

Flakie Refresh!

Today I have a mani refresh with Orlys Androgynie, although I was liking it as is with the subtle glitter, I wanted to add a little more sparkle to it. So what did I decide to add on top? Some Finger Paints flakies! First I layered one coat of Asylum down then added one coat of Flecked on top of that.

Asylum is in both photos above

Asylum is a multicoloured flakie, I see mostly red, orange and blue and purple. Flecked is a green flakie that shifts through teal and blue. I found Flecked to be more of a dense flakie when compared to Asylum.

Flecked is in the photo above only

I really like the overall look, although there are many colours combined I still find it to be quite subtle.

Sale Haulin'

I was lucky enough to get an exclusive invite to the seasonal L'oreal sale this fall. I think I have mentioned it before but it is basically a warehouse sale that has a bunch of brand name cosmetics, haircare and fragrances. I was excited this year because L'Oreal recently bought out Essie and I hoped that I would find some reasonably priced polishes. I definitely did! Not only were there Essie polishes but L'Oreal and Maybelline as well.
The Essie's seemed to be the best deal at 5 for $24, so I picked some up. Here is what I got, first photo left to right is Camera and Marshmellow:

Camera is a bright neon pink/coral. It is super duper bright! On the nail it dries to a matte finish. Marshmallow is a squishy white jelly, it seems to even out really well for a white AND a jelly! Think of all the layering possibilities!

Next I have Mojito Madness and Navigate Her. Mojito Madness is a soft type of Kelly green that has a dusty quality to it. Navigate Her is more of a light, yellow based green. Both are cremes.

And last but not least As Gold As It Gets, this polish is apart of the Luxe Effects collection. It is is a clear base packed with shiny gold flakies.

One more polish I want to sneak in with this haul that I got the same weekend, but not at the sale is Sally Hanson Salon, Glided Lilly. Glided Lilly is a yellow-gold foil shimmer with a slight bronze/brown duotone shift. I just had to pick this one up when I saw it in store for the first time :)

Below are some swatches of all the polishes (minus Marshmallow which got cut off) in the sun...

And in the shade.

Bamboo-zled!

I haven't been using Konad/ fauxnad as much as I'd like to lately, and wanted a fresh new look without taking off Kustom Kicks, so I used my Konad dupe, M66 and stamped some bamboo with Konad special white polish!

To top everything off I applied two coats of Funky Fingers flakie, Asylum. In certain lighting my nails reminded me of a mermaids tail :) I kind of wish I had taken some more photos, by the time I looked at them on my computer I had already removed this mani. I can tell you is that it looked a lot cooler in real life.

P.S. My boyfriend takes credit for the title of this post! As soon as I showed him my nails he was like you should so name the blog post for these nails bamboozled!

My First Nfu Oh!

Of course it's a flakie, right!? When I first heard of Nfu Oh's is was because of their awesome collection of flakie polishes. Nfu Oh 51 had to of been one of my first lemmings, and to actually have it apart of my collection now is so exciting!

I didn't realize how complex this polish actually was. I has assumed it was a flakie in a purple jelly base with some shimmer. But I must have been missing the comments about the magical mutichrome shimmer comparable to Clarin's 230. And that is why there are so many photos for today's post :)

So, moving on, long story short this polish kicks ass! It was super hard to capture it's awesomeness but I tried! Now on to how I wore it, I layered two thin coats over Revlon's Royal.

It's like a new polish in different lighting! My favorite is when it's overcast, you really get to see all the depth this complex polish has to offer. My boyfriend noticed this on my nails and was like cool, it's green and orange! But when we were in different lighting he was confused by the red shimmer it gave off (like in the photo above). Wasn't it green?

Next time I want to try this on it's own, but I also can't wait to see what it looks like layered over some other polishes. Such a great polish and I actually love it more now than I ever have!