Parts of Zoya Island Fun and Paradise Sun

Back in June, Zoya ran one of their best promotions: any 3 nail polishes for $15 shipped!  I think this is the third time in a little over a year that they've run this promotion, and I've taken advantage of it every single time.  I mean, how could I not?

This time, I went with three of the colors from Island Fun and Paradise Sun, this summer's awesome brights.  Obviously I got Oceane, because again, how could I not?  The other two I picked might surprise you - Aphrodite and Demetria!  I was debating getting the creme that matches Oceane, Talia, but I looked at my blue creme polishes and decided that I definitely didn't need it.  And Selene looks so darn much like Giovanna that even I would feel ridiculous for owning both.  So I decided to pick my other two colors by name.  I absolutely love Greek mythology, and owning polishes named after mythology is a small passion of mine, so I went with the two colors named after goddesses!  Aphrodite, I'm sure you all know, is the goddess of love, sex, and romance.  Demeter, sometimes called Demetria, is the goddess of corn, grain, and the harvest.  You may know her as the mother of Persephone, the girl kidnapped by Hades; it is Demeter's mourning for the loss of her daughter that causes the cold, barren weather of winter.  Normally I wouldn't associate a bright red polish released in a summer collection with Demeter, but I had to have Demetria anyway!

Zoya Paradise Sun: Oceane

Oceane is a beautiful turquoise-blue.  I believe the texture is slightly new to Zoya: it's a metallic, with veeery subtle, yet very beautiful, tiny flakies in it.  The flakies are similar in size and texture to OPI's This Color's Making Waves, which I swatched here.  But since they're the same shade of blue as the background of Oceane, it creates less of a color shift effect and more of an extra, gorgeous sparkle.  I'm in love!

Oceane applied pretty thickly, and sadly not in the One-Coat-Wonder-way; it was pretty thick and almost goopy.  It wasn't insufferable, though; I just had to be sure to use super thin coats.  The coverage is dense enough, though, that even using super thin coats, two coats is perfectly opaque.

There is a very subtle purple colorshift to Oceane, but it's so subtle I might even be imagining it.  If it's really there, it barely shows up on camera; the only photo that was able to capture it was a macro at the edge of the bottle.  But that could just be the glass bending the light and making it look purple, because I really don't see any purple in Oceane when it's on my nails!  Whether the purple is in the polish or not, it looks pretty:

I have a lot of macros of this one, because I'm starting to get used to my macro lens and that really excites me.

Brush shots are definitely the hardest for me, but when they turn out well, I absolutely adore them!

Just look at those flakies! :)

Zoya Paradise Sun: Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the same beautiful flakie-metallic texture as Oceane, though I don't think the texture showed up very well on camera.  (Cameras have an annoying habit of washing out bright colors and reds, so it's especially difficult to photograph bright reds.)  It's a gorgeous, vibrantly bright red with a very slight pink-gold colorshift.  Like Oceane, this colorshift is really subtle and mostly only visible around the edges of the bottle.

The formula on Aphrodite is better than Oceane.  It's a bit thinner, so I didn't have any trouble with the polish applying too thickly or flooding my cuticles.  Oceane's formula is a little bit disappointing for Zoya, but Aphrodite is the perfect consistency that I've come to expect from Zoya.  Absolutely flawless coverage in two coats!

The next was taken in direct sunlight and slightly out of focus in order to better show off the sparkle:

 

This is definitely the perfect summer metallic.  I love Zoya's new flakie metallic texture!  I hope we'll see more colors like it in the coming seasons.

Zoya Island Fun: Demetria 

Demetria is a brilliant bright red-almost-orange creme polish.  The formula is flawless; goes on smoothly and evenly, and two coats is perfectly opaque.

As always, my camera kind of flattened out the color of this vibrant red polish, so I did my best to edit the color of the photo to make it look more accurate.  In my editing software, it looks pretty close, but all monitors are different and I think the upload into Blogger may even had altered the coloring a little bit. 

So these are the summer 2015 polishes that I purchased!  If I end up getting more, I'll probably go for the purples, since my purple collection is pretty lacking.  What are your favorite colors from Island Fun and Paradise Sun?  Does another polish brand have you drooling over their summer brights/neons?  Let me know in the comments!