Zoya Bubbly: Muse

I have a slight problem with an addiction to anything and everything bright blue.  When it comes to nail polish, I'll settle for medium blue, dark blue, greenish blue, and purplish blue.  My favorite, it seems, is greenish blue, perhaps with a goldish hue.  You can see it immediately in my polish collection.  I have seven different colors that, at first glance, look almost exactly the same:

OPI ""Austin-tatious Turqoiuse" (one of my oldest polishes)

 Zoya "Charla"

Nicole by OPI "Candid Cameron" (from the Modern Family collection - I HAD to get one and I love Cameron!)

Sinful Colors ""Nail Junkie" (a gift - and it's the first in this color family that I got that was a 3D glitter)

Julep "Lizanne" (that one comes out much more green than blue, but in the bottle it looks very close to the rest)

Nicole by OPI "That's What I Mint" (in my defense, that one is from the Gumdrops collection - I NEEDED that different texture!)

Edit 8/21: I now also have Zoya "Remy."  It looks much darker in swatches, but in the bottle, it looks almost exactly the same as "Candid Cameron."  So that makes it eight colors that look almost exactly the same at first glance! 
 

and, finally,

Zoya "Muse."

For a little while I tried to control myself, and stop buying these green-gold-turquoise blues.  But then I decided, what's the fun in that?  If it's my favorite color to use, there's nothing wrong with that!  So, the last time Zoya had their amazing three-polishes-for-only-the-cost-of-shipping sales, I went ahead and treated myself to Muse, even though there were more than two other types of colors that I lack pretty severely in my collection.

I considered reviewing all of these polishes at once, but then decided that I didn't want to.  I was actually going to do a double review like in my first post, swatch a different color on each hand, but my brain went into autopilot and I painted Muse on both hands.  Probably in time I'll end up reviewing at least most of these seven colors, and maybe I'll put them all into this post, but for now, here is my review of Zoya's "Muse."

Zoya "Muse"

Muse is from Zoya's 2014 summer collection, "Bubbly."  As I've seen on various other blogs, it pairs very well with "Ling," from the summer 2014 collection "Tickled."  Unfortunately I'm too poor to order every color in both collections, so the only one I got is Muse.  I'm quite happy with my decision!

Muse is a 3D glitter polish.  Its base hue changes drastically in different lighting, which is always interesting and sometimes rather mesmerizing.  In yellower lighting (tungsten), it's quite greenish; in bluer lighting (fluorescent), there is hardly any green tint to it.  The sparkle is also somehow less dazzling in tungsten lighting - or that could just be that my overhead bedroom light is much dimmer than my fluorescent lamp.

Anyway, the application is really nice.  The glitters don't clump together, or cling to the nail upon application - it spreads neatly and flatly over the nail just like any non-glitter polish.  It's quite sheer; definitely needs at least two coats.  I did three.  It's actually kind of interesting: the first coat is almost disappointingly sheer, but when you add the second coat - WOW, what a difference.  (I didn't take any pictures after one coat, so you'll just have to see that for yourself.)  I've had some polishes that are still so sheer after the second coat, you can barely tell the difference between one and two coats, but this polish is definitely not that sheer.  Probably thanks to the glitter.

Zoya's brushes are super skinny, which is generally a frustrating shape to deal with - especially with wide and/or long nails.  That's not such a big deal with Muse.  Since the glitters don't clump together, it won't hurt your manicure to have to brush over your nail more than the standard three times per coat.  There are some polishes where if you do that, you end up with really uneven brushstrokes, but I didn't have that problem with Muse.

Cleanup is easy - it's so sheer that it won't stain your skin if you get some on your cuticles.  In fact, to ensure nice, even lines inside my cuticles, I even dabbed a little bit onto my cuticle on purpose, and then wiped if off the skin using an orangewood stick dipped in acetone.  Removal is kind of a pain, unless you're pro at removing glitters (I'm not).  Scrub n' rub is definitely a no-no on this one; you'll need to let your polish remover really soak in to the layers of polish.  I ended up with teeny glitters stuck under my nails until after my next shower - glitter just likes me too much, I guess!

All in all, this is a wonderful polish and I'm very glad that I added it to my collection of blue-green-gold-turqoise-glittter-shimmer!