Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Don't get too crazy tonight! And be safe in this rainy weather. I celebrated last night with a shot of Nyquil and going to bed before midnight. So crazy. Anyways, just a quick post on my St. Patty's Day mani. I did 2 coats of Zoya Shawn with ring and thumb accents of Sinful Colors Green Ocean. I'm still sick so there was no motivation to do this mani, but I still like it. But while taking pictures I smudged my ring finger...which you'll see. Oh well, this'll probably come off tomorrow!

Really dark photo, but it showed Green Ocean the best.

Shawn is a grassy green creme polish, the formula was great. Green Ocean is a mixture of blue/green flakies in a slightly tinted green jelly base. It was a gloopy mess and is taking forever to dry, even with my quick dry top coat. That's why it's smudged in the photos. But I still love it...it's my love for anything flakie. Anyways, enjoy and be safe!

CM

Hits - Twist

First off, a very Happy Birthday to my mom! I hope you have a great day, I love you! (:

So a while back I showed you guys some Hits nail polish from Brazil (remember, the awesome duochromes?). Today I have one of their flakies for you. I bought 3 flakies, and for some reason only have 1 swatched, so that's what I have for you today.

Twist is a blue jelly base with blue/green flakies. This was two coats.

Formula was a bit thick, but easy to work with. It seemed really sheer at first but built up nicely. Hits can be bought from Llarowe and are $8 each.

CM

Zoya Tru (and even more layering)

Zoya has their new Spring 2012 collection out, called True. There were two colors that really called out to me in the collection: Lotus and Tru. Today I have Tru to show you. Tru is a "red-toned grape purple with speckled shimmer that reflects gold, orange and red." (Taken from Zoya's site here). It was hard to capture the shimmer in this baby, but you can definitely see it in the bottle. This polish is so pretty in real life, my pictures do not do it justice. Enough talking though, on with the pictures!

There's a good shimmer shot in the bottle.

This collection was released in conjunction with their Flecked collection consisting of 3 flakies. I haven't gotten any of them, simply because I don't have the money to, but that doesn't mean I can't play with the flakies that I already have! So I layered my newly acquired Twisted (from the Finger Paints Special Effects collection) that my mom stalked 12 Sally's Beauty stores for (no joke!) over it. Take a look!

Ew, dry hands! Hardcore dry hands, sorry about that! But isn't that so pretty? Twisted is like a rainbow in a bottle, there's blue, green, purple, orange, yellow, red. So pretty and complex! 

By the way, this is the longest that my nails have ever been. But, sadly, I couldn't operate with them (more specifically, I couldn't take my contacts out without tearing them...it's happened twice with these bad boys). So now I have nubbins again. Ok, they're not that short, but compared to these, they're so short! Oh well. 

Have you hopped on to the flakie band wagon?

CM

Zoya - Caitlin (and layering fun)

Zoya Caitlin. What is there to say about her? She's pure perfection. She's a beautiful shade of blue (with some hints of grey), with the perfect amount of dustiness thrown in. So in other words, a dusty blue-grey (that was easy). The formula was perfect...she applied like butter. Zoya is really dependable with their formulas...I've only gotten 1 or 2 polishes out of several from them that I did not like. Let's see her! (And sorry for the bad application, it was a speedy manicure and I have yet to find my clean-up brush).

Caitlin - artificial light.

Caitlin - artificial light.

As is the case with most blues and purples, they switch up. Caitlin is much more blue in real life, and less purple. 

There's a better shot of the blue. This is under direct artificial light and with flash.

Now, there are a few big polishes on my lemming list. One of those is Raindrops by Illamasqua. I had recently gotten one of the new Sally Hansen Diamond Strength polishes. Glass Slipper is a silver flakie suspended in a clear base, and I figured that this would help create a dupe. Unfortunately, Caitlin isn't the right base, and Glass Slipper's flakes are a little bit too big (maybe Diamond will work better). But, nonetheless it was still a pretty combination and I really liked it.

Natural light.

Natural light.

Direct sunlight.

Direct sunlight.

Direct sunlight.

Direct sunlight.

The flakies in Glass Slipper are bigger, and pretty dense. This is one coat in these photos. The formula was thick, but that's ok seeing how it was really meant for layering. Still a really pretty combination. Hope you enjoyed it!

CM