Zoya Ornate Collection 2012 Swatches & Review *pic heavy*

As soon as I saw Zoya's Ornate collection I knew that I HAD to have it.  This line is right in my ballpark and I immediately called E and laid claim to this review!  I received my collection on Friday and got busy swatching as soon as the sun came up on Saturday!  Thank God that Ohio had a sunny day because these colors in the sun are ridiculous!

Zoya has really been impressing me with their 2012 releases and this time is no different. Ornate is a group of six really deep rich colors. Zoya describes the collection as, "perfect to decorate your nails with stunning jewel tone colors and special effect pigments this season." I would have to say that I agree!  

All of my swatches, with the exception of Electra, were done using Beauty Secrets Base Coat, two coats of polish and Orly Glosser for the top coat.

Aurora is described by Zoya as "plum with a multicolored crystal shimmer". I would say that Aurora is more of a raspberry plum with a bit of holo. Aurora painted like a dream and with two coats of polish, was at full opacity.

Storm, described by Zoya as "black with multicolor crystal shimmer", is one of my favorites. Again, this polish painted flawlessly. The "multicolor crystal shimmer" or as I would call it, holo, is amazing and creates such depth. It looks almost juicy with the Glosser top coat!  

I am not usually a lover of the red hues but Blaze has really surprised me! I love it!  Zoya describes Blaze as "cranberry glitter glam crystal" and that is just what it is! With two coats of polish and the Glosser top coat, this color almost looked like a jelly sandwich all on its own!  

Gold is another one of my not so favorite hues. I just hadn't found one that really looked good with my skin tone. As an unspoken rule, any golds that I came across I would automatically put in a box for my next shipment to E! Thank you Zoya for giving me a gold that I actually like and think looks good on my skin. This polish was a bit more tricky to paint with. Ziv is a "gold foil glitter crystal" according to Zoya and just that description alone should give you a hint on how carefully you need to paint this one. With two coats I had full opacity but the clean up was a bit trying. The little crystals and glitter seemed to get everywhere but the final outcome looked great so it was worth the extra elbow grease!!! 

I am a green girl and when I saw Logan in the bottle my jaw dropped!  Zoya describes Logan as a "green foil glitter crystal" and it is just beautiful. Same rules apply to Logan as did Ziv. With a nice steady stoke and some tricky clean up, two coats of this polish amazed me!  

Last but not least is what some would consider the show stopper of this collection. Electra is a "holo tinsel special effect" and Zoya suggests that you "wear it alone or layer it for extra drama". For this polish I used Gelous as a base and top coat. This was also a bit of a challenge to paint with.  I didn't really need to manage glitter placement too much however, because of the tinsel being what it is, there was some natural overhang that I fixed with a quick swipe of the brush across the tips of my nails.  

And for the extra drama that Zoya describes I did quick swatch of Electra over some basic colors.  I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Rimmel London Black Satin, Finger Paints Inkblot Blue and Wet'n'Wild Red Red. 

Overall, I have to say that I LOVE THIS COLLECTION!  The colors are amazing and the formula is great!  I would recommend this line to anyone looking for something special for this fall and winter season!  All of these products can be found at Zoya.com for $8 a piece or $48 for the entire collection.  

Let me know what you think!  Do you have a favorite color from this collection or any other 2012 Zoya collection?  

This is a free sample given to me by a company. Either directly from the manufacturer or from a PR company. Receiving this sample in no way impacts my review of the product. My views are my own and are expressed as accurately and fairly to the best of my ability.

Bizarre? Nah! Beautiful! Oh Yeah!!!

October marks one of my favorite times of the year!  Some of the reasons that I love October so much are as follows - fall is officially beginning, my wedding anniversary, awesome hoodie weather and HALLOWEEN!  Oh ... and let's not forget the fact that I LOVE fall polish lines.  I did come to appreciate some of this past summers bright and bold colors but honestly, I am a fall polish girl through and through!  I love the richness of the colors that fall brings.

China Glaze has come correct this season with the 2012 Wicked Collection.  There are six really pretty Halloween inspired colors with names like Cast a Spell and Immortal in this collection.  You can buy the collection at Ulta right now and they will be available at Sally Beauty Supply this coming Monday, October 1, 2012.

I was on a trip to Ulta last week when I spotted an entire rack of Halloween goodies.  As I got closer and closer I realized that they had put out the Wicked collection a bit early and without hesitation I grabbed the one color that I knew I needed to have!  Bizarre Blurple is an amazing purple base with loads of blue shimmer.

I DIE!!!  Bizarre Blurple! 

In the bottle, this polish looks ridiculous and it does not disappoint on the nail!  When I brought it home I made my hubby let me test it, with some other newbies, on his nails!  Bizarre Blurple was by far his favorite of the haul.  (YES, I make my husband let me test colors on his nails!)

Now let's see what it looks like on lady hands, shall we?  

w/Flash 

w/o Flash

w/o Flash

SO PRETTY!  Bizarre Blurple has a really nice formula and with two coats I got full opacity.  This color is gorgeous and I didn't even need a top coat.  I have several similar colors in my collection but nothing quite like Bizarre Blurple.  The two colors that came to mind immediately when I bought BB were Orly Mysterious Curse and Royal Velvet.  They look really similar in the bottle so I decided to do a quick comparison to see how similar they really are.

Don't they look the same in the bottle?

But, they are not the same at all!

Well, there ya have it!  In my opinion Bizarre Blurple is the must own of the Wicked Collection.  Let me know what you think?  Do you have any other favorites from this collection?  

Going On Safari... Maybe!

Sally Beauty Supply is one of my go to polish stores and on one of my recent trips I came across the China Glaze On Safari Collection.  I have to be honest and say that I really wasn't terribly excited about this collection.  I was feeling a bit like I had seen these colors before.  They are all beautiful colors however, I have several similar colors in my collection.  With that said, I can't seem to pass up on a nice purple or pretty blue no matter what.

While at Sally's I noticed the latest sale on China Glaze.  If you purchased two colors from the new collection you got a bottle of Diamond Dry for free.  Talk about helping me make a decision!  LOL!  I left the store with the Jungle Queen and Man Hunt (plus my free bottle of Diamond Dry).  The most unique of the two is Jungle Queen.

Jungle Queen is a really earthy taupe/dusty purple color with a really nice light purple shimmer in certain light.  I love this color!  As usual, this polish applied really well.  It is a really nice formula and nearly a one and done.  I applied a nice coat and then went over with a really thin coat just out of habit. At first it looked really flat but when I started taking pictures the shimmer really came through!  

Flash

Manhunt is a really pretty deep blue creme.  The formula is great and the color is ridiculous.  It really is a sort of mix between a navy blue and a cobalt blue.  This a great polish to wear alone and would look great with a nice pair of jeans!

Sunlight

Flash

I am not sure at this point if I am going to pick up any of the other colors in this collection but you will be the first to know if I do!  LOL!  Let me know what you think and if you have any of the other colors in this collection.  What are your favorites?  

Techo... am I Raving Again?

I will admit that I was a rave girl once upon a time and boy were those days fun!  Seems so long ago now that I think about it, but one thing that I will never forget is how they made me feel.  Depending on the party planner, the overall feeling that I would usually leave with would be one of shock and awe.  Had I really just partied the night away inside a disco ball?  All the lights and pounding music was such a rush. People dressed in crazy clothes, waving glow sticks around and dancing so hard that it hurt the next day!

Please excuse my rant about my youth but it does have a point, I promise!   All of those excited feelings that I used to have getting ready for a rave hit me all at once one day at the local Ulta.  Sounds silly I know, but stay with me here and hopefully it'll all make sense.

While shopping around and looking for a good deal I suddenly stopped in my tracks.  In my peripheral vision I had spotted something sparkly and my ADHD kicked in big time.  I had a feeling that once I turned my head I was going to fall in love and boy was I right!  Just like all those old excited feelings that I used to have getting ready for a night of ridiculous dancing and eye catching flashiness, I was hooked on my new love, China Glaze - Techno.  However, I managed to leave the store without my new best-friend!  :(  Unfortunately I already had a bag full of polish that had reached my max budget for the trip.  Booooooo!  I know!  But, I try my hardest to be a responsible spender even when it comes to polish!  I was so sad that I had to leave Techno at the store especially since she was the last one.  A couple days later when I called to see if she was still at Ulta, I was not surprised to find out that Techno had been sold.  I then began calling the Sally's in and out of my area but it was the same story each time.  Techno was sold out!

Fast forward a couple of weeks and some serious Amazon.com consideration later, I still had not bought Techno.  Here is where the story gets happy... on a shopping trip with my husband one of the stops that we needed to make was to a Sally's to pick up some raincheck items on hold.  I also warned him that I would most likely find a few more polishes to add to the collection, so he was prepared.

My first stop in the store was the China Glaze display shelf.  On a previous shopping trip I had picked up a few of the new Prismatic Collection and loved them, so I decided to try and complete the collection.  I noticed a polish on the display that I had not seen the last time I was in the store so I was really intrigued.  When I picked it up and looked closely I almost had a heart attack!  Could it be?  Had the polish gods picked that day to smile down on little old me!  I looked at the bottom again... low and behold... it was Techno!  I took that as a sign of course and added it to my basket for the day!

China Glaze had done it again and Techno is just how they did it!  Techno is part of the Electropop Collection release for Spring 2012.  I had seen the collection at Sally's several times but was not really excited by any of the colors on display (Techno was obviously missing!).

In the bottle, Techno looks like a million little disco balls.  A beautiful collection of round holographic glitter mixed with a bit of micro glitter.  I couldn't wait to try it out and I hope you enjoy what I came up with!

The Magic Duo... Rimmel London Steel Grey & China Glaze TECHNO!!!!

With flash

Close up with flash

After two coats of Steel Grey and two coats of Techno, I am giving this polish an amazing A+!  I love it! For some crazy reason I feel like I should be holding some glow sticks, flailing my arms around creating trails with these magnificent nails!  (all you former ravers know exactly what I am talking about)

Schwagin' Nail Mail

Let me start by giving a bit of background information.  Like most little girls, I have loved nail polish since I can remember.  My obsession with nails really kicked into high gear when I was about 15 years old and acrylic nails became super popular.  I had a really tight knit group of friends and we would go and get our nails done weekly at the local nail shop.  We would try to top each other with style and length, at times getting a bit out of control.  When you're 15 years old trying to keep up with whats hot, it can become expensive.  Even $10 a week on a balance and polish became a bit much!  

One of my girls; who was obviously paying more attention at the nail shop than the rest of us, had the bright idea to go to Sally's and buy all of the products that the nail techs used on us. She quickly figured out how to do our nails at home instead! From that point on we became guinea pigs in Kim's quest to save us money and be creative.

After some mishaps, Kim quickly became a pretty good basement nail tech and we always had the best nails around.  To sum it up, as soon as we graduated high school Kim went and got her nail tech license.  And, as they say, the rest is history.  

So now the story of my day begins.  I got up like any other day and decided that I needed to run to my favorite stores and check out what was new or on sale in the world of polish.  I hit up a few of my local Sally's and an Ulta store to pick up some great new colors. The entire time I was shopping I had E on the phone, as usual, looking up polish swatches and helping me shop from 5 states away.

A good start to my day, but not even close to what was coming up next! I finally finished shopping and headed home. The whole time I was thinking about my haul from this mornings trip.  So, I pull up to the house and wait! What do I see?! A BIG BOX ON MY FRONT STEP ADDRESSED TO ME!! The address section of the box was in handwriting that I knew, and it said KIMMIE!

Why is this so exciting you ask?  Well, I knew right away that my girl, Kimmie Kyees, had sent me a care package.  Immediately I called E back; she was possibly more excited that I was at the posibility of what was inside the box! LOL

Anyways, I'll just get straight to it.  Inside the box was NAIL POLISH and NAIL TREATMENTS and and an entire set of GEL POLISHES INCLUDING THE UV LIGHT!!!  (insert hallelujah chorus with angels singing back up)

So, below you will find pictures of all my goodies that Kimmie sent me including the upcoming line of SPARITUAL Gold Collection due out in May.

Please share in my joy while you look at these pics!

Everything that was in the box!

Red Carpet Nails Gel Polish Pro Kit + Gel Polish

What seems to be the entire line of Wet'n'Wild Wild Shine Polish

Wet'n'Wild Megalast Polish

Orly Mini's and Kimmie Kyees & Elegant Touch Nail Creations

drumroll please...

SPARITUALS new Gold Collection, due in May 2012

Keep and eye out because I will be swatching and reviewing these soon!  

Needless to say my day was already great but now it's awesome! I have even more nail trickery to get myself into!  Good thing Kimmie sent me some awesome nail care products too! The amount of remover these nails are going to be subjected to in the next week or so is going to be insane!