Tag: Zoya

Of Life and Lacquer > Zoya

Sephora by OPI My Personal Serpent

Posted on by Cynthia

I was debating what to wear on my nails today, and bright cheery colors just weren’t appealing. I’ve been in a crappy mood today so I wanted something dark and smoky. I looked at my untried stash and pulled out SOPI My Personal Serpent which I recently got on sale at Sephora. This color is part of their Fall 2011 collection called The Garden Of Good And Evil which included seven other polishes. Before I get into swatches and the stamping I did, I wanted to do a quick polish comparison. My Personal Serpent reminded me of Essie Bobbing For Baubles and Zoya Cynthia so I did a side-by-side comparison

Pretty similar, right?  I purchased Bobbing For Baubles first and really liked it. Out of the three, Essie has the best formula. They actually all are pretty great when it comes to the formula and you reach opacity with 2 thin coats.  I purchased Cynthia because…well…it’s my namesake so how could resist? I just imagined that my namesake polish is a crazy glitter in an alternate universe. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! So why did I purchase My Personal Serpent even though I have 2 other nearly identical colors? Because it was on sale, and who can resist any nail polish sales? I am such a psycho nail polish hoarder….

You already know I like blues so this dark smoky blue fit the bill today. This color is just so dark and saturated that it makes me dream of fall/winter colors. Ahhhh!

I am anxiously waiting the arrival of my Bundle Monster plates so I took out my konad and used my favorite mummy bandage plate design.

Do you have multiple dupe polishes from different brands? Do you feel dumb once you realize you purchased a dupe? I need a polish intervention.

Zoya Wednesday

Posted on by Cynthia

I have way too many untried polishes. It makes me feel bad that I now have over 500 bottles of nail polish and I continue to add to my collection without having worn all the ones I already have. Wednesday is a color that I picked up during the Zoya Earth Day Promo along with another dozen or so polishes. Yeah, I know…terrible. You can’t really go wrong with Zoya most of the time.

Really beautiful and creamy, right? I’m sure there are a lot of dupes out there…Essie Turquoise & Caicos is the one that comes to mind first, but I haven’t done a side by side comparison yet. This is 3 thin coats.

 

Since I’m getting back into stamping with a fury, I used Konad M73 and the special black polish. I love the pigment in the black polish, but it is a huge pain to clean up. I still have staining on my skin.

 

Do you have Zoya Wednesday? Can you think of any other dupes? Let me know what you think!

Zoya Stella

Posted on by Cynthia

Stella is another polish that I purchased during the Zoya Earth Day Extravaganza. As you may recall, I ended up purchasing 14 bottles. Yeah, that’s right so don’t judge me you hypocrite. I really like that all these polishes have first names because it’s fun to pick out the polish with your name. Cynthia is a super dark and smoky color so I think it fits me perfectly.

I used this polish in honor of my friend Mavel who encouraged me to start this blog. We were always sharing nail polish stuff and she always told me I should blog. Additionally, she is the one who told me about all the nail places that I now basically live at. I can say that I have Mavel to thank for my rampant polish purchases. Mavel has the most adorable daughter named Stella–hence the choice of polish.

I couldn’t see the shimmer that much in the bottle so I really loved it when I went out in the sun. I only used two coats which seemed like full coverage but now I’m seeing some vnl.  🙁 I still like this polish despite the vnl.

What are you wearing today?

Zoya Breezi

Posted on by Cynthia

I guess there comes a point in every nail polish hoarder collector’s life where you realize that you kind of have all the colors out there.  There will always be slight finish variations, but the base colors will all start to resemble each other. Today I was looking at Zoya Breezi wondering what do do with it. Once I painted my nails with it, I immediately saw OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui. Do I really want the same colors a million times just by different brands? YES!

Ok, maybe not but I am starting to rethink my nail polish purchases. Once the excitement of buying new stuff wears off, I am not that happy that I am so easily duped. Since I haven’t been purchasing nail polish this month, I realize that it’s not really a big deal. I’m not saying I don’t love nail polish anymore. I guess I am saying that I need to be much more practical with my nail polish purchases.

Breezi is such a pretty color. I am just so into these blues. The formula was perfect and I only needed two coats. It dries very glossy, but I still topped it with Poshé.

 

I did some konading on top of this, but I just did such a crappy job with it that I didn’t even take pictures. It’s just kind of sloppy and crooked.

To quote one of the funniest teen movies ever:

Tai: Do you think she’s pretty?
Cher: No, she’s a full-on Monet.
Tai: What’s a monet?
Cher: It’s like a painting, see? From far away, it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess.

So that’s what my nails are like: from a distance they look fine, but up close they look like a mess.

How was your Monday? I still have to drag myself to the gym. I feel gross today. I’m getting cramps. 🙁 Blaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Zoya Charisma

Posted on by Cynthia

Now that I took off yesterday’s ick job, I wanted to try out something super bright. Zoya Charisma to the rescue! I was really surprised that this dried matte; I should have paid more attention to the description on Zoya’s page.

I love how saturated this color is: it’s glowing. I didn’t notice that there is slight vnl, but it doesn’t really bother me. This could be a one-coater if you’re careful enough, but I did two coats to even everything out. I guess I don’t have too much to say about this polish except that it’s pretty!

I should not have taken a freaking nap in the middle of the day…if you can call sleeping for 3 hours a nap. I hope I can fall asleep tonight. Soooo…I am debating about going to the gym tonight. I feel like everything I’ve been posting lately is all about the gym, but I just really have to lose weight for my health. Since I’m feeling motivated lately, I might as well take advantage of it, right? Sorry if all the gym talk is boring!

I hope you had a nice weekend, and thanks for reading.

Sunday Morning

Posted on by Cynthia

Am I the  only one who really really likes this song?

Anyway, happy Sunday to all. Thanks for stopping by! I am kind of exhausted right now. I didn’t get home until around midnight last night and didn’t fall asleep until almost 2 am. Then I woke up at 6 am because my friend and I wanted to go to the beach. It’s been eons since I’ve been to the beach even though it’s literally like 10 minutes from my place. It was so nice to be out that early breathing fresh air and hearing the sound of the waves. I also saw tons of people with their dogs. When can I get my dog, dangit?!

We were there for a long time. We walked along the sand laughing and making fun of each other. See, I’ve known V since we were like 10 years old. We didn’t like each other very much until we were stuck working together on a project for one of our classes in 8th grade. So 20-some years later, we’re still friends and I’m very lucky to have her in my life. I always tell people that my litmus test for friendship is to travel together. Well, we have gone on vacation twice and we had a fantastic time. The first time we went to Hawaii which was freaking awesome…even if we got so hammered we could barely walk up the stairs at the hotel. Ok, maybe that was just me but I  know she was probably pointing and laughing. The next time we took a trip to Europe and went to Paris, Florence and Rome. She reminded me today of how we were freezing in Florence (it was late fall/early winter) but we HAD to have some gelato late at night. So we went to find a place that was open and walked outside eating our gelato and freezing our bums off.

Since V is a true friend, she told me that my nails looked ugly. Haha! Yeah, true biatch. (I still love you, though!) I can’t say that she’s wrong because I didn’t like my nails much so I didn’t even post them yesterday. They just turned out so ugly…kind of ghettoish. I started with Zoya Malia. I don’t have a lot to say about Malia. It just looks like OPI Do You Lilac It? to me. It is a color that I like but not terribly exciting. The formula was great, and it only needed two thin coats.

You can tell by the crappy job that I wasn’t that excited about doing my nails for some reason. I didn’t even do decent clean up! But wait till you see them after konading.

My nails are starting to look wonky to me because they are so long. However, I can’t cut them because I am going to beat Nicole at our imaginary nail competition. I just noticed a hair or fiber that got stuck on my middle nail. Can you spot it? How gross.  Anyway, I need to take these things off asap and try another color.

Last night was really fun as well. I went into a sushicoma with my sil. We both didn’t eat all day so we could fully enjoy our sushi. So this place that we go to is a little neighborhood joint. The sushi is really good, fresh, delicious and reasonably priced. Their service has always been on the slow side which we don’t usually mind because we are slow eaters and talk the whole time. Sometimes it does get a little ridiculous like waiting an hour or more to get our food when they are super busy. Surprisingly, they weren’t busy last night so we were annoyed with attentiveness. We should have counted how many times the waiter came by our table or the busboy peeked to see if we had any empty dishes. It might have been 20 or more times. It was getting beyond annoying. At one point, we thought we were on some hidden camera show to see how much we could take before we told them to fuck off and let us eat in peace. After we were done eating, they brought us the check without even asking if we wanted dessert!!! So of course we had to order some out of spite (and cause who are we kidding? we love our sweets!). We laid a bet to see how many times someone would come to our table to bug us while we ate dessert. My sil said 3 and I said 5. I won. 5 times!!!!!!!!!

After that we watched The Lucky One which was ok. There really wasn’t anything else we could watch and The Avengers was sold out for the rest of the night. Is it just me or does Zac Effron still look like a baby?

I don’t know what to do right now. I want to change my nails, but I really want to take a nap. Wow, a nap sounds so good…………………

Zoya Is Here!

Posted on by Cynthia

Remember the Valentine’s Day promotion that Zoya ran that I posted about? Well, my two polishes came today! Woot! I am surprised that they got here so soon because usually it takes eons for Zoya to ship stuff when they have promotions. If you recall, they ran a promo where you picked one of their classic reds and then picked another polish from any of their collections and you only paid $8 and got free shipping. My one beef with Zoya is their high shipping costs, so I only order when they have a promo code that includes free shipping.

Here is the classic red that I picked: Diana. I freaking love this polish. Red with a jelly finish? In looooove! It reminds me a lot of OPI’s Vodka & Caviar. This was perfect with two coats and I still can’t get over how beautiful and shiny this is.

 

Lotus is part of Zoya’s new True Collection for Spring 2012. Of course I wanted this beautiful purple even though I kept thinking in my head that I already had some somewhat similar colors (Zoya Neeka, OPI Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI). Well, the shimmer on this is super understated. Unless you’re looking at it in the sun, it can just blend in the background. I like the pink shimmer but it’s so faint that it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. I thought the formula was deceptively sheer. I thought it would be more opaque, but it took 3 coats for these swatches.

 

So keep an eye out for Zoya’s frequent promotions. They are very generous!

 

Zoya Promotion

Posted on by Cynthia

If you stumble upon my blog early enough today, Zoya is running a promotion:

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Will You Be Our Valentine?

Roses are red,
Such a romantic hue,
With over 50 perfect reds,
We have one just for you!

We want you to be our Valentine this year! Now through 2/15/2012 11:59PM EST you will receive one bottle of Red Zoya Nail Polish in the shade of your choice (picked from our Red Nail Polish Page FREE + FREE Shipping with any purchase* at zoya.com.

Zoya has over 50 shades of red nail polish colors in metallic, cream, pearl, matte and dual chrome finishes that are available in cool, warm and neutral tones to perfectly compliment your skin tone and personal fashion style. We suggest Zoya Valentina, Zoya Sarah, and Zoya Carmen.

How it works:

1. Add any non-spoon item to your cart along with your favorite red nail polish choice from this page.
2. Enter WELUVU into the promotion code field in the shopping cart and press the “Apply Code” button
3. Complete Check-Out Process & Submit Order

*Excludes Zoya Color Spoons & NYFW Custom Color Box Trios

Terms & Conditions
This promotion is valid online only at www.zoya.com, www.qtica.com & www.artofbeauty.com. Continental USA only (shipping and processing charges apply). Void where prohibited.  Limit one promotion per account and household. Orders with promotion codes are not eligible for returns or exchanges. We are not responsible for incorrect addresses and credit card entry errors.  Please allow up to 4 weeks for shipping if volume warrants it.  Not valid with any other coupons, codes or promotions.

Free polish?! Yes please. Honestly, Zoya runs the best promotions. I just ordered Lotus from the True Collection and Diana all for $8 and free shipping. Woot! If you’ve never tried Zoya before, jump on this deal.