Zoya Marley

Essie- Going Incognito

This is a first for me, as in my first Essie nail polish. I am pleased to report that I could not be happier with it! I bought GI from a giant blog sale recently and could not wait to try it, even though I was sad to see Sea Spray go. I wavered back and forth about purchasing GI for months because I try to limit myself to polishes that are completely unique to my collection and I was so sure that this one would be very very similar to OPI Jade Is the New Black. When I saw GI on this blog sale for the price of merely $4 I took that as a sign and put that lemming to rest. 

 
 Going Incognito is a deep green creme that leans just a touch blue, enough to make the color extremely rich without pulling it teal at all. It is a true forest green. The application was just a touch streaky on the first coat and the polish seemed a little runny at first but it smooths out completely by the second coat for a flawless finish in two coats. The polish dried a bit darker on my nails then in appears in the bottle color but that is fine by me because this color is green perfection! (And I'm a  true green lover- it's second only to medium purple cremes in my heart!) I'm playing with picture sizes, how does Essie look extra-large?

Essie has one extremely satisfied customer with this polish. Now it's probably time to go and grab that bottle of Mesmerized that I have had my eye on!

Incognito huh? I would go just about anywhere for this polish! ;-)

Color me obsessed.

With moon mani's. I will never again shun a mani technique I have not tried for myself again. And yes, I'm still working with Sea Spray, and still in love with it. Yesterday when I did skittles of different techniques I did my entire right hand in a moon mani with a silver foil polish, and it looked so amazing that I went and did the left hand. I'm not that crazy about the accent nail but it is kind of pretty.

The silver foil polish I used is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Celeb City.

Experimenting with Sea Spray on a rainy day.

Yep. More rain. After about a week of glorious sunshine and 65 degree weather it is chilly and rainy again here in the midwest. My current mani is still Sea Spray from yesterday's post, and while I am totally in love with the color I decided to practice my hand at some scotch tape mani's and other variations on the muted light blue theme.

Not that anyone needs reminding, but here's Sea Spray on it's own.

And here's the after shot!

I'm not over the moon with how it turned out because I am a perfectionist when it comes to my nails but since it was my first try I'm giving myself a break. Next time I will put top coat over each layer of the scotch taping on my thumb and middle finger. I'm actually surprised at how much I like the moon mani since I've never been crazy about them in the past.

Polishes used:

Thumb- China Glaze Midnight Mission and Jingle Bells
Index- Zoya Luna
Middle- China Glaze Jitterbug and Frosty
Ring- Orly Pure Porcelain
Pinkie- China Glaze Midnight Mission

Grey Kinda Day.

The sky is grey and so is my mood. In the spirit of my grey mood I have grey polishes. Don't get me wrong, I actually love grey polish, especially grey cremes.

ChG Sea Spray, OPI I Vant To Be A-lone Star, Claire's Rain Drops, Zoya Dove

Polish Teal I Drop

Teal comparisons! Teal is such a lovely spring color and now that the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and... I have an insane amount of studying to do? What's wrong with this picture? Well I'll take a break from that to play around with my stash. I've been meaning to do a myriad of comparison posts for a long time so I am mighty proud of myself for getting around to this. Yay me!

From L to R: Orly Viridian Vinyl, China Glaze Flyin' High, Sally Hansen The Real Teal, China Glaze Custom Kicks

Custom Kickin' it old school

Custom Kicks is the headline polish from the Spring 2009 collection. i picked it up from Ulta a while ago and it has been lingering in my untrieds pile for ages. Now that it is springtime I am ready to break out the bright colors again! (I will miss you dark purple.. until next fall. Au revoir.) I own quite a few teal polishes so I try not to collect dupes but something about Custom Kicks caught my eye. And by something I mean, an amazing gold shimmer that really pops in the sunlight.

See it? It does a pretty good job of hiding in the pictures even though I took them in the direct sunlight from my open window. Shown here is two coats of Custom Kicks with a coat of topcoat over it, which seemed to dull the shimmer a little bit. I have another teal shimmer by Sally Hansen I'm going to compare it to. They won't be dupes because the shimmer in the other polish isn't gold but they'll be close.

New Editions!

To my ever growing collection. After another successful dusty dive today I now own the entire 2BKEWL half of the OMG collection from China Glaze. I was so excited to find LOL and 2NITE to round off the cool half of the collection as well as He's Going in Circles from the Kaleidoscope collection.

In honor of Autism Awareness I am wearing 2NITE first.

Just soak up the holo goodness, and please disregard the lack of cleanup on my part, I was too excited to take and post the pictures of this amazing find! I was never crazy about holos until I bought a couple to try them out and now I am hooked. line and sinker. I'd really love to get my hands on the Tronica counterparts to the OMG's that I have but I can't find them anywhere and I really should give my debit card a break.

I found this baby for a mere $3 at a place called Nail Expo. The little Asian lady was very confused as to why I wanted a bottle that had a little usage. Just a little though, like it had been used for one mani before I bought it. Have any of you ever bought a used polish from a nail salon that you'd been hunting down? If not, is there a polish you'd consider buying used if you stumbled across it. I know I'd never turn down Lippmann Across the Universe, used or not!