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Zoya Island Fun Collection Summer 2015

Posted on 24 May, 2015 by Cynthia

Hey you. Are you enjoying your weekend so far? I basically have not left the house since Friday, and I’m enjoying it more than I should. There are tons of things that I could be doing, but here I am in my sweats watching movies and swatching tons of polishes. Have you been doing anything fun this weekend? I’m currently watching the movie Chef (for the 3rd time), and now I want a crazy delicious grilled cheese. Anyway, today I’m going to show you my swatches of the Zoya Island Fun Collection which is the creme half of their Summer Collection. If you read my blog regularly, you know creme polish is life to me so I’m always excited to try these out first. Let me show you my swatches, and then I’ll let you know what I think.

Zoya Jace

Zoya Nana

Zoya Serenity

Zoya Cecilia

Zoya Talia

Zoya Demetria

Well, you know I’m gonna say it: these are all gorgeous cremes. Lately I have been super obsessed with green nail polish so I was super excited about Jace, but it was super thin. I like the color, but it took 3 coats to get the color opaque. All of the other colors were opaque with 2 coats, which is typical with the Zoya creme formula. I had minor staining with Cecilia and Talia, but I’m sure that with a good base coat, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Overall, the colors are really nice and very Summer appropriate but they’re staples that you probably have dupes for already. If you don’t have something similar, then I can definitely recommend these. What do you think of these shades? Are there any that you are planning to pick up or have purchased already? Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!

31 Inspired Days of Nail Art – Day 10 : Gradient Nails

Posted on 7 October, 2012 by Cynthia

Gradient Nails: you are my mortal enemy. It doesn’t matter how many tutorials I watch or how many tips people give me, I just can’t get this technique down. I’ve used a bout a million different type of sponges, and I’ve never been able to achieve the beautiful results I’ve seen on other blogs. I was fearing this challenge day because I hadn’t attempted a gradient mani in a long time so I wasn’t looking forward to yet another nail fail.

I started out with two coats of Serenity.

I love Serenity! This polish is one of their new Rubber Brights so it dries to a satin/rubber finish.

And here is my gradient……………………………..

I don’t hate this, but I don’t like it either. I don’t know what happened when I tried to photograph this, but my camera took a million dumps on me and did not want to photograph Muse. What the heck, Sony Cyber-Shot?! These were the best pictures of maybe 50…yes, 50! So anyway, I used Muse on my gradient tip which doesn’t really look like a gradient but whatever. At least I tried, and if you think it’s ugly, tweet me a picture of your gradient so I can mock it too. 😛 The next challenge revolves around half-moons which is pretty hard to mess up so at least I won’t worry about it.

Anywho, don’t forget to check out all of the other submissions for gradient nails below. Let us know what you think.

Illamasqua Serenity

Posted on 22 August, 2012 by Cynthia

Why does Illamasqua keep putting out such lovely polishes? Why do they want to push me to financial ruin? It’s ok, Illamasqua: I forgive you. It’s not your fault that I have no self control whatsoever. When I saw that they had added a few colors to their rubber finish polishes, this was the first one that made me run out to Sephora to see if it was in stock. It wasn’t yet, so I ordered it online along with 2 other colors from this line. For those of you who have NARS Koliary, how does this color compare? I didn’t get Koliary so this color kind of makes up for it in my mind.

(Before I forget, I would really appreciate some input about my pictures. I am using a new light box system that I set up today, and I don’t know if I need to change it up or what. I am used to taking direct sunlight pictures, but I need to move away from that because my schedule won’t allow it in the near future. So please let me know what you think.)

Serenity is such a beautiful shade of blue. Like its name states, it definitely has a serene quality to it. This polish is pretty freaking pigmented so you only need two coats but make sure that you don’t overwork the polish like I did. You can kind of see some brushstrokes, right? I wore a good ridge filling base coat because I find that this formula tends to show every single imperfection.

The two pictures show Serenity with a coat of Seche Vite. Ahhh….glossy and lovely.

And here is my feeble attempt at some type of nail art. I am such a fail at this stuff…I should just face the fact that all I can do is stamping!

What do you think of Illamasqua polishes? Are you a fan of the brand? Is there a color from their new Rubber Brights that you are interested in getting? Thanks for stopping by and have a great Wednesday.

P.S. As you can tell, I am finally trying out some watermarking. Today I got a few emails from people I had contacted about using my pics without giving me credit. They were all apologetic and said they would have credited me if they knew where the pics came from. Weak defense in my opinion, but maybe if I had watermarked, they would have credited. We shall see how it all pans out. As most of you know, there are a lot of shameless people out there who don’t care about stealing/using other people’s work.