Comic book nail art

I've been dying to give this nail art look a try for a while now, and recently I finally decided to dive in!  I was a little bit incensed to do it when I found some awesome comic book nail art stickers in a set by KISS Nails at Target.

So... this turned out to be a LOT harder than I'd imagined.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised - the entire concept of the comic nails are centered around freehand lines, after all.  And freehand lines are hard.  A word of advice if you're gonna try this out: don't bother getting your main color all the way to your cuticles like you normally would.  That way, you'll have an easier time of covering it all up with your black liner brush!

But look at me dominate this tiny Hulk figurine! :D I picked up several Marvel Mystery Minis from Target at Derek's request a few months ago.

The polishes that I used for this look are Zoya Ling, Finger Paints Ch-ART-coal Black (a striping polish), and Zoya's matte top coat (because comic book nails can't be glossy!).

 

Then I decided to have a bit of fun with Photoshop...

I borrowed some comic book skin from this source and laid it over my own skin; the background is borrowed from this source and laid over my own background.  And the lines around my hands and nails were painstakingly drawn by my own hand (made more difficult by the fact that my sister was telling me a funny story over the phone about my nephew while I was doing this!).  I'm very proud of this.

What do you think of this look?  Have you ever tried out comic book nails?  Let me know in the comments!

Polish Me Royalty: Strawberry Shortcake

A little while ago, I played a fun game on Instagram, started by one of the crocheters that I follow.  She promised to buy something from the winner's shop, and then the winner would start the next round and buy something from the next winner's shop.  I won the first round, so I got to host the second round!  Even though I posted the game on my crochet shop account and used hashtags to lure in fellow crocheters, most of the people who played wound up being indie polish makers.  I wasn't exactly complaining about that, though!  I ended up randomly selecting Polish Me Royalty, a UK-based polish company.  I briefly contemplated cheating and picking someone else, because of international shipping fees, but I'm really glad that I stayed honorable!  PMR only charges $9.51 (that's USD) in shipping to the US, and to be honest, I've paid close to that amount in shipping with domestic orders before.  So I picked out two mini polishes for myself.

I think we're past the point of me needing to introduce my obsession with strawberries.  It's a well-known fact that Kate's Nailing It loves strawberries by now, right?  So when I saw that Polish Me Royalty made a polish called Strawberry Shortcake, I knew I had to have it and that made me all the more glad that I'd drawn this shop as my winner in the Indie Shop Game.

Strawberry Shortcake is super highly pigmented.  Even with a mini bottle, and even with my super-long nails, it was very nearly a one-coater!  Incredible.  I'd be willing to bet that a full-sized bottle would be a OCW every time.

The color is exactly what you'd expect from a strawberry-inspired polish: bright, berry pink.  It's a creme formula, and there's a bit of a subtle shimmer to it.  Sadly, my camera could barely pick it up except in the bottle.  The shimmer is very pretty though, being pinkish-silver in tone.  I think that's why it's so subtle - because the shimmer color is so similar to the base color.  You can also see the shimmer pretty decently in the picture with flash:

Oh, and as it turns out, this polish is scented!  I noticed a scent on my nails the whole time I was wearing this one (I wore it for a few days on both hands), but I kept thinking that the raspberry scented cuticle oil I'd just started using had simply soaked in to my skin and made me smell like berries.  But I talked to Sarah, PMR's maker, on Facebook and it turns out that this polish has a strawberry scent to it.  Strawberry Shortcake is part of her Just Desserts trio, and each polish is scented like the fruity dessert that it's inspired by!  It is a fairly faint scent, though - I barely noticed it unless I was actively sniffing my nails.  But Sarah said that she's working on making the scent stronger, so future batches may be more noticeable than mine!

I really like PMR's little heart-shaped bottles.  They're so cute and delicate!

All in all, I'm very glad that I had an excuse to try out a new indie brand.  I also bought Space Wizzard, which I'll swatch on the blog somewhere down the line.  And Sarah was kind enough to throw in a mini bottle of Hollow, which was super nice of her!  I'll probably put those two in a post together since they're both incredible holographic glitters.

In the meantime, be sure to enter my blogiversary giveaway!  It's ending in just under a week and there are still VERY few individual entrants!

UPDATE: This post was initially posted with the wrong polish name!  I fixed it.  shhhhh

Watermarble Nail Art!

When I started really getting in to nail art, it didn't take me long to discover the art of water marbling.  I tried it once, but the polishes that I was using didn't marble well.  After a few attempts I gave up and would all but growl at every water marble tutorial video that I saw.  (This How Not to Watermarble tutorial by Simply Nailogical resonated really strongly with me.)

Then, for whatever reason, I recently decided screw it, I want to give this stuff another try!  I had this amazing neon mani planned out in my head, with negative space and utilizing my KB Shimmer zig-zag nail vinyls.  I've been fairly obsessed with neon manis lately, in case you couldn't tell.

Blessed by the Nail Art Gods, it actually worked this time!  The marbling worked so well that I wound up bummed that I had cut off half of my nails with the vinyls.  This mani looked a bit better in my head, but I'm still super happy with it because it's my first successful water marble!

I used my favorite neons that I own for this: Sephora Pink Bikini, Papaya Daiquiri, Brazilian Sun, and Caipi Freeze.  The last two, the yellow and green, are so similar that you can't really tell them apart in the marble.  I just love the way these polishes pop over white!

What do you think of this design?  Should I do a video next time I try water marbling?  Let me know in the comments!

Polka Dot nail art recreation

Whenever I'm feeling a bit of a nail art slump, I turn to other bloggers and nail artists for inspiration.  This week, I found an awesome design by Nessa of @nessas_nails_ that I decided to (mostly) recreate! 

Here is her original design, which she did for a nail art challenge back in May:

 

And of course, I'm super in to my neons lately so I chose to recreate Nessa's look using a neon orange - Deborah Lippmann Don't Stop Believin'.

I don't have any large charms like Nessa's, so I used a small gem from a set that I got as a gift a few years ago (I don't know the brand).  My white base, as always, is Salon Perfect Sugar Cube.  I used the white base beneath my solid orange nails as well so that it would perfectly match the tip of my middle finger.  Don't Stop Believin' is fairly sheer, which is common for neons, so a white base is always a good idea.

I had a lot of fun recreating this look!  Laying down the striping tape was tricky, because I'm not used to it, but I made it work - even on my right hand!

What do you think of this look?  Which color scheme do you like better?  Let me know in the comments!

Because it's basically summer already: Neon Gradient nail art!

I freaking love summer.  Pool time, beach time, barbecues and cookouts, sunning, everything is green, the neon fashion trends.  Especially the neon fashion trends.  The first day it hits above 70 - which here in Maryland was in April, can you believe it - I'm like, ditch the muted winter tones and bring out the poppin' neons!

I've also always been a fan of gradient nail art, because it's one of the few types of designs that I've found to be as easy as the tutorials make it look.  It definitely takes some technique in terms of speed and amount of polish you saturate the sponge with, but that technique happened to come easily to me!  So I decided to don a neon gradient, even though it's still technically spring.  Memorial Day may mark the start of summer for many people, and it has passed, but I actually did this a week before Memorial Day because yay neon!

The colors I used are my favorite little neons that I own: Sephora Pink Bikini, Papaya Daiquiri, Brazilian Sun, and Caipi Freeze.  They're from a collection called Paint Rio that came out about two years ago and I just love how they all look when used together!  Brazilian Sun and Caipi Freeze, the yellow and green, are both so similar that I'm not entirely sure you can tell the difference between them when they're sponged on.  To help the neons pop, I painted on a coat of Salon Perfect Sugar Cube before doing the gradient.

You can definitely look forward to seeing more of these four neons throughout the summer, because they're awesome and they're kind of the only plain neon cremes that I own!

What do you think of this design?  Would you like to see more tutorials for designs like this?  Let me know in the comments!

Drippy Spring nail art

A few weeks ago, Deborah Lippman had an incredible 50% off sale on select shades.  I've been hesitant in the past to spend the whopping $18 per bottle on Lippmann polish, but since 50% off put it at only $9 per bottle, I was definitely willing to buy a few shades!  I ended up getting Don't Stop Believin', Build Me Up Buttercup, and Spring Buds.  The weather has been so gorgeous, warm, and sunny spring lately that I decided to use the second two polishes along with some of last year's Zoya spring shades in a manicure together.

I got these drippy nail vinyls back in October from a Mani of the Month box; the vinyls are by Nails Redesigned.  Naturally, I used them in some blood-themed manis for Halloween, but this time I decided to use some spring colors for a drippy, melty mani!

This was, I think, the first manicure I did after reshaping my nails from the awkward squared-round to a much more delicate round.  I'm much happier with the new shape of my nails - to me, they look more neat, they match the way my nails curve at the sides, and they even make my fingers look a little thinner!

 

The sparkly blue that I have on top of Build Me Up Buttercup is Zoya Rayne, and the sparkly purple on top of Spring Buds is Zoya Leslie.  Both are from last year's spring collection, Delight.

I just love this look!  The colors work really well with each other.

What are some of your favorite spring color combinations or nail art designs?  Let me know (or show me) in the comments!

Cloud Mani for Valentine's Day!

Hey guys!  Valentine's Day may be over, but I wanted to share my look for the romantic weekend with all of you. 

Looking through my Jamberry collection, I found the very pink wraps that I won last year in Jamberry's Mother's Day giveaway.  They're much more pink and frilly than I like for my everyday style, but they're totally perfect for Valentine's Day, so I decided to use two of them!

 

Thus far, every time I've donned Jamberries I've had to remove them within a day.  Despite my best efforts I always end up with ripples at my nail tips AND at my cuticles.  Ugh.  But then one of my friends showed me the baseball method!  Cutting a tiny notch out of the side (or two sides, if your nails are suuuuper curved) allows the wrap to actually lay flat on my nail.  It only took about an extra 30 seconds per wrap and it allowed me to don the wraps for a few days until I was ready to redo my nails!

This was also the first time I tried out the cloud mani.  It was super easy - although deciding what order I should arrange the colors in took a while thanks to my indecisiveness. ;)  The darker purple at my cuticles is Zoya Demi, the lightest shade in the middle is Zoya Rue, and the medium rosy pink at my nail tips is Zoya Kate.  (Yay Kate!)

I didn't think to make a tutorial for this, so here's a link to the one that I followed to achieve this look.  Some day, I will remember that I bought a tripod for my phone so I can take videos of my nail art!

Derek and I went out to dinner on Saturday night to our favorite Mexican place, and we spent Sunday watching Netflix and playing games.  (I may or may not have played Sims 3 for a couple of hours.)  What did you do for Valentine's Day?  More importantly, what did you put on your nails for the holiday?  Let me know in the comments!

Hello Kitty by OPI + Nail art

I was super in to Hello Kitty when I was a kid.  I had a pretty decent collection - pencils, a cute little set of rainbow erasers, tiny sticker books whose stickers I never wanted to take out, the GameBoy Color game, and even a fairly nice matching pen/pencil set that came in a tin case.  It's been years since I've seen any of this, but I seem to recall having a little Hello Kitty basket to store everything in.

So when I heard recently that OPI was coming out with a Hello Kitty collection, I was totally stoked!  I knew I'd have to snag a few of the polishes in order to honor my little past self.  At a recent trip to ULTA, I was disappointed to see that they didn't have the entire collection, just two different boxed sets.  One set had minis of several of the colors, but being regular colors like blue, red, yellow, and black, I wasn't too impressed.  My polish collection, as you know, has grown to such a size that I need to really feel that I need a polish in order to buy it.  The other set had a pink creme and a pink glitter, and it came with a Hello Kitty coin purse.  Naturally, this is the one that I decided to go with.

Look At My Bow!

Look At My Bow is an adorably delicate shade of pink.  It's a perfectly Barbie-girlie-Hello-Kitty-feminine-so-sweet-it's-almost-disgusting shade of pink, really.  Its formula is a little on the thin side, not quite watery, but thin enough that cuticle pooling is a hazard.  Two coats is mostly opaque, but I could still see a tiny bit of my VNL.  I almost wanted to add a third layer, but I swatched this one while my friend Allison was visiting me and she assured me that it was fine.

Starry-Eyed for Dear Daniel

I honestly have no idea what the name of this polish refers to.  I was a huge HK fan, but I didn't really get in to her friends as much.  Nor did I care to learn much about her creator/s.  So, if anyone knows who Daniel is, please let me know!

This glitter is really fabulous.  It applies as smoothly as a creme - the glitters don't smear or cling or stick at all!  Its coverage is also very nice.  I have one coat of the glitter on top of Look at my Bow, and as you can see the base of the glitter is tinted a slightly different shade of pink.  I'm really impressed with the glitter coverage in just one coat!

Allison helped me with the Kitty on my middle finger.  I used Salon Perfect Sugar Cube to make Kitty's face, but I was nervous about the stability of my hand so Allison did the rest of Kitty's details.  The black is Finger Paints Ch-ART-coal Black, and the yellow for her nose is Zoya Darcy.  And I fished a bow glitter out of Ellagee Fancy Mister Waddlebutt.  Those bows sure have come in handy for nail art!

The coin purse that came with the two polishes is really cute!  It's almost big enough to be a clutch, or at least a wallet.  And as you can see, especially in the photo above, the glitter on Kitty's bow matches Dear Daniel super well!

I'm definitely glad that I bought these two polishes.  I'd like to own the other glitter in this collection, Charmmy & Sugar, as well, but sadly I haven't been able to find it anywhere!

What is your favorite polish from this collection?  Who else was a huge Hello Kitty fan as a kid (and/or remains one now)?  Let me know in the comments!

My first time using water decals!

Okay, so even though I used a whole bunch of water decals back in October for the Halloween nail art challenge, the first time I actually used any decals was way back over the summer.  I just found this post in my archives and figured I'd come back from my long, holiday hiatus with this bright spring-y look!  Don't worry, I'll show you all of my Christmas and New Year's Eve looks soon - probably next week.

My cousin got me a whole bunch of nail art supplies for Christmas in 2014.  For months, all of those awesome things sat around waiting to be used.  I did play with the water decals a little bit a while back, but it was highly experimental and did not yield a blog-worthy mani.  So I finally decided to put them on the blog!

I really enjoy picking out nail polishes that match a certain item - a particular dress, a pair of pajama pants, a tissue box, or a nail decal.  In this case, I went with (from thumb to pinky) Zoya Demetria, Sinful Colors Why Not?, Pop-Arazzi Lime-ousine Ride, and Virago Varnish Faith Hope Courage.  I have Zoya's Naked system on my ring finger to even out my nail tone and brighten my white tips.

I took this second photo on my phone at a really well-lit store just to show my Mom, but I was really impressed with how shiny the lights made my nails look!

 

This was a really simple and fun mani!  In the future, I would totally take the time to use a decal on more than one nail - but this was actually kind of rushed because I started working on it a little bit too late for my schedule that day.  Applying the decals was really easy, though, and I don't see myself losing patience while trying to use more than one!

I did learn two things about water decals: One, they are not like temporary tattoos.  You don't place the design face down on your nail and then peel the paper off; you have to peel the design off of the paper and place it on your nail.  Using it like a temporary tattoo will give you a solid white decal.  And Two, decals are not like stickers.  Once you peel a decal off of the paper, you either have to put it on your nail or throw it away.  You can't stick it back on the paper, re-wet it later, and peel it off again.  I hope you guys can learn from my mistakes so you don't end up wasting two decals! :)

The brand for these decals is pretty vague - I tried Googling "Nail Accessory," which is on the packaging, and of course that mostly turned up thousands of different types of nail art tools and accessories.  I usually like to give you a link to the products that I use, but in this case I just can't find it!  The product code on this particular sheet of decals is BLE1518.

What do you think of this design?  Have you ever used decals before?  What is your favorite type of nail decal?  Let me know in the comments!

Do I Need Them All? Zoya Ryan vs Essie Style Cartel

Welcome to this month's edition of Do I Need Them All!  Today we'll be looking at two lovely navy blue cremes: Zoya Ryan and Essie Style Cartel.  They're both from each company's Fall 2014 collections, but navy is always a good color for this time of year!  I actually bought Ryan shortly before breaking a no-buy policy to snatch up Style Cartel, and then I facepalmed at myself when I held them up next to each other.  Let's see how they actually compare!

Style Cartel is a little bit lighter and more blue-toned than Ryan.  Ryan is such a deep shade of navy that it almost looks black in lots of lighting.

Don't mind the airbubbles on my ring finger!  Or the bright blue glare, which is from my lamp and its blue shade.

Overall, I like Ryan more than Style Cartel.  Ryan's formula is dense and highly pigmented.  It can almost be a one-coater, as long as you have a steady hand.  I did use two coats in these photos, mainly to help neaten the line around my cuticles.  Style Cartel, however, is much thinner, almost the the point that it's watery.  I left it at two coats on my middle finger, and did three coats on my pinkie.  You can see that the third coat deepened the shade just a little bit, but it still looks lighter and bluer than Ryan.

So, Do I Need Them All?  Ehhhh, I would say no.  They are slightly different, so I wouldn't call them dupes, but they're so close that I don't think owning both is a must.  My personal recommendation is Ryan, simply because the formula is so much smoother and more opaque, but Style Cartel is also a  good navy blue polish.

Creative Cuticles Nail Polish: Creepy Cocktails collection

I have an awesome indie collection to share with you guys today!  You might remember seeing some of Creative Cuticles Nail Polish's Christmas polishes on the blog last winter; now, I have all 3 of her Halloween polishes to share with you!  I did receive these polishes in exchange for an honest review, and I want to assure you that I didn't promise to say anything in particular.  These words are my own and the fact that I didn't pay money for this nail polish doesn't influence my opinions in any way.

The Creepy Cocktails may have Halloween-y names and are perfect for Halloween manis, but they're also super versatile for any time of year!  As much as a love a good Halloween-themed glitter, I equally love a polish that I can use in anything.

O Negative, Please

The perfect blood-red nail polish, O Negative, Please is the most opaque in this collection.  Two coats was fully opaque with no VNL peeking out.  The formula is creme, but it felt like it leaned a tiny bit on the crelly side to me.  It's just so juicy looking, something I usually only see in jellies/crellies!

I don't really know what's going on with my ring finger in this picture; it looks a lot darker to me.

I guess maybe that finger was accidentally pointed out of the light, or something, I don't know. 

Witches Brew

Witches Brew is a beautiful dusty purple, perfect for fall and the ultimate shade of Halloween purple!  Two coats was mostly opaque for me, but there is still just a tiny bit of VNL.  It's not as noticeable in normal lighting, though - the lights I use for these photos are super bright, so the whites of my nails tend to stand out more than they do in other lighting.  The formula is very similar to that of O Negative, Please - a juicy, crelly-leaning creme.

My camera picked up this color a little weirdly, so I had to cool it down by adding some blue to the photo for color accuracy.

Ooze On The Rocks

I love the name of this one!  Ooze on the Rocks is a wonderful slime-green, absolutely perfect for Halloween manis but also great for any of your bright green needs.  This one is a true jelly, so it's the sheerest of the bunch.  I have three coats shown on my nails, and you can see that there is still just a hint of VNL.  Again, that VNL stands out more under my photo lamps than in other lighting, but if you want a fully opaque mani, I recommend either layering this on top of white or building up to four coats.

These polishes are set to release on October 1 in Creative Cuticles Nail Polish's shop.  Will you be adding these ones to your collection?  Do you have any favorite, must-have Halloween polishes or mani designs?  Let me know in the comments!

Nifty Color Blocking Nail Art

I had a lot of fun with this nail art design!  I guess I'm just best at abstract nail art.  That way my brain doesn't decide that the design has to look perfectly just so only to be disappointed in the wibbly turnout.

This look was inspired by Fierce Makeup and Nails, painting for The Beauty Buffs.  I took a screenshot of this design way back in November, but never got around to actually trying it out until a few weeks ago!

The original design by Fierce Makeup&Nails.

Naturally, I decided to go with blues rather than purples; but then I thought, why not throw some greens in there as well?  And then, when I got to my ring finger on my right hand, I decided that instead of doing a blue accent, I'd use pink - mainly because I really wanted to try out a newish pink polish, I Brake For Colour by China Glaze.  If I had a third hand, I'd probably have done pink with a blue accent on that hand! :)

The background for the blues is Chick Pick Polish Neon Blue, while the lighter blue is Zoya Ling.  (The moment I painted on Ling, I sort of wished I'd gone with Robyn instead - Robyn would have stood out from Neon Blue much better.  Oh well!)

 Don't want to leave my thumbs out! :)

The green background is Salon Perfect Escape to Neverland, and the lighter green is Zoya Tilda.  As I said before, the pink background is China Glaze I Brake For Colour; and the lighter pink is Zoya (sensing a pattern here?) Wendy.  I got Ling and Tilda fairly recently, so I was super excited to pair them up in a mani with my other creme from Zoya's Tickled collection!  The white polish on all nails is Salon Perfect Sugar Cube.  I want to point out that Escape to Neverland is a One-Coat Wonder!  The coat does have to be a tad on the thick side, though, so be careful not to flood your cuticles with too much polish.

I really, really like this design.  It's so very 70s groovy to me!  I actually kind of love how the green showed through the white polish.  Some people might think "that needs another coat of white," but I think that makes it all the more groovy!

What is your favorite style of nail art - abstract or traditional?  Let me know in the comments!

Want to see more nail art posts, or perhaps something different?  Let me know by giving your feedback here!

 

P.S. Don't forget - my blogiversary giveaway ends tonight at 11:59 pm!  There are lots of ways to enter, and lots of ways to find the giveaway too.  Head to the giveaway tab on my Facebook page, follow this link to the original blog post, click on the giveaway post in my Pages, or follow this mobile-friendly link!

Do I Need Them All?: Zoya Demetria vs China Glaze I Brake For Colour

Welcome to this month's edition of Do I Need Them All!  Today, we're going to look at two fairly new polishes: Zoya Demetria and China Glaze I Brake For Colour.  Demetria is from Zoya's Paradise Sun collection, while I Brake For Colour is from China Glaze's Road Trip collection.

I have Demetria on my pointer and ring fingers, and I Brake For Colour on my middle and pinkie fingers.

This image is slightly Photoshopped; please see the bottom section for an explanation!

They're pretty close in color, but definitely different!  (Unless you're part of the population who can't see as many shades of red, perhaps?)  Demetria is a bright, summery red that borders on neon, while I Brake For Colour is more of a bright pinkish coral.  In the bottle they look very close, but on the nail, they definitely belong to two different color families!

The formula on both polishes is very similar: both apply very smoothly and are highly pigmented, and both require two coats.  I Brake For Colour leans a tad to the thin side, so be careful of flooding your cuticles with too much polish.

So, do I need them all?  Sure!  It's always fun to have bright reds and pinks in one's nail polish collection.  These are definitely not dupes.

*    *    *

Okay, these polishes photographed kind of horribly.  My camera has a tendency to highly over-saturate very bright colors and reds.  So ask it to photograph a bright red polish, and it looks horrid.  I couldn't even hold either of the bottles in the photos because of how badly it flattened the reds and whitened my skin (as if my skin isn't already white enough)!  No amount of adjusting the white balance, ISO, shutter speed, or aperture seemed to help (for the non-photography savvy: I tried changing how much light the camera let in).  Here's how grossly over-saturated the polishes actually showed up on my camera:

As you can see, both polishes look much more orange than they truly are, and they don't really look all that different.  So I cooled down the color on the computer by adding a LOT of blue to the photo.  This photo more accurately shows the colors of the polishes:

My skin is so blue here that it's pretty jarring.  So for the first image that you saw, I crudely Photoshopped my nails in the blue photo onto my hands in the non-blue photo.  I know it's not the best job, but I wanted to show you what the polishes actually look like on my skin, rather than make you try to picture the blue-d nails on my non-blue skin.

What do you think of this new series?  Want to see more posts like it, or other types of posts that I haven't done many of?  Let me know in the comments or by giving your feedback here!

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!

Do I Need Them All?: A new comparison series!

Welcome to my new monthly series of blog posts, called "Do I Need Them All?"!  Once a month from now on, I'll be comparing nail polishes that look very similar or even identical and answering the question of whether or not one really needs them all.  (I was going to go with "Do I Need Them Both," but then as I was pulling out polishes for this post, I had four very similar polishes so I decided to make the series title a bit more open-ended.)  Similar or identical polishes, whether they were released by the same or by different companies, are often called "dupes," or duplicates, of each other.  Unless you're a professional nail artist or a collector, buying a dupe of a polish that you already have can be frustrating and expensive.  So I'm here to help you out by letting you know if you need them all!

For today's inaugural Do I Need Them All post, I'll be comparing four different blue creme polishes: Zoya Robyn, Zoya Ling, Sinful Colors Why Not?, and Essie Strut Your Stuff.

In the name of consistency, I made sure to line up the polishes in the same order from left to right in both photos.

 

As you can see, these are all very similar.  Probably the two that are most similar are Robyn and Why Not.  Although those two are nearly identical, they are still just a tiiiiny bit different: Why Not is a tad bit richer and bolder.  They both look pretty much 100% the same as Strut Your Stuff on camera, but you can see the variation better in person.

Ling is definitely the darkest and deepest, while Strut Your Stuff stands out as the most neon.

Even the formulas on these four was very similar.  They all required two coats, though Strut Your Stuff was the only one that I would say definitely always needs two coats.  The first three are pigmented enough that a very steady, skilled hand might be able to get away with using only one coat, but Strut Your Stuff was much thinner.  Blue polish is pretty notorious for staining, and even though I didn't wear these for long, 3 of these 4 were no exception.  Ling didn't really stain my nails or skin at all; Robyn, Why Not, and Strut Your Stuff all required some light scrubbing with toothpaste to get rid of all the blue.

So, to answer the question of do I need them all?: probably not.  If you love blue as much as I do, you might, but if you're just looking for a good bright sky blue creme, any one of these will satisfy your needs.  They're all so close in color and formula that your color palette won't be missing much by only owning one of these.  But if you really want two of them, make sure one of them is Ling.

What do you think of this new series?  Want to see more of it, or is there a different type of non-swatch post that you'd like to see?  Let me know in the comments or by giving your feedback here!

4th of July nail art - then, now, and then!

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!  Yay America! :)

You get a bonus post this week because I have too many posts waiting around and I didn't want to hold off on posting this one or yesterday's post.  Woohoo!  You also get some bonus nail art because the very first time I ever did a special themed nail art design was for the 4th of July in 2013.  So I find that this is the perfect time of year for me to look back and watch my nail art skills grow.

We'll go in chronological order, shall we?

July 2013

Two years ago, I had no nail art tools or brushes.  I used a toothpick for the white dots, and I freehanded the stripes!  The red was my ONLY red nail polish at the time - OPI's An Affair In Red Square, gifted to me by my mother before she moved to Greece for 3 months.  It is our absolute favorite red polish and I don't know what I would do without it!  The blue is China Glaze's Blue Iguana, and it's one of my all time favorite blue polishes.  And the white is the only white polish I had at the time, the white end of Revlon's Killer Watt duo.

July 2014

For last year's Fourth of July, I decided to go a little bit more abstract.  I had dotting tools and striping brushes by then, so it was all much easier for me!  The red and blue are the same as 2013's nails, and the silver is Sally Hansen CSM's Hi Ho Silver.  Silver metallic instead of white creme = more bling!  The design on my thumb, pointer and pinky fingers was inspired by reddit user Lyongirl.

July 2015

This year, I decided to stick with the abstract theme - and also with the same trusty red, blue, and silver polishes.  The design on all of my fingers except my ring finger is inspired by Robin Moses on YouTube- though admittedly, it didn't really turn out quite the way I wanted it to.  My striping brush was too thick and stiff to get those wonderfully smooth, swirly lines that Robin made.  Oh well, I still like it!  Hooray for abstract designs!  The blue stripes over the red tips is Sally Hansen CSM Blue My Mind, and the red stripes over the blue tips is Sally Hansen CSM's Red My Lips.

The background on the abstract nails is Nails Inc, London's Radnor Walk, while the fireworks background is Zoya's Ryan.  I'm really glad that I decided to throw in the fireworks nails!  I think they turned out awesome  The red is the OPI red, and the blue is the Sally Hansen - because the China Glaze blue was too sheer to show up over Ryan.

So there you go!  Three years of experimenting with themed nail art.  I can't wait to see what I'll come up with for next year!  Which design was your favorite?  Have you ever done some awesome Independence Day nail art?  Let me know in the comments!

Have a splendid holiday weekend!  Look forward to next weekend, too - I have something special planned for next Saturday. ;)