Zoya Blaze

Today's polish is perfectly wonderful, in my opinion. It's sparkly holiday sensation Zoya Blaze!

 Zoya has a whole lovely line of scattered holos that everyone adores. Blaze is definitely the black sheep of the bunch, because it's the least holographic. The base is a bright cherry red (sorry it's so many different shades in these pics, the indoor lights make it appear darker than it is), and the saturated jelly base tints the holo flakes so that they mostly appear as pink, purple, and gold sparkles. Personally, I love the way this polish looks! It's definitely not as spectacular as Dream or Aurora, but it is very pretty in its own way.

I feel like I just gave myself holiday whiplash, going from so much Halloween directly to Christmas. Is this a blog, or Macy's? Haha! Yeah, that was totally lame, but Friday's polish is another fall-appropriate vampy sensation. Stop by to check it out!

Saturday Nail Art - Flakie Edition

So today's nail art is sort of a cheat. I really just wanted to take a bunch of pictures of Nfu-Oh #51.

Here's a collage of just bottle shots! 

 I did do a little nail art as the base of this mani: a gradient of clear and black polish (both Wet N Wild; I tried to use China Glaze Liquid Leather, but the base was too crelly-ish). This is just a simple gradient done with a makeup sponge.

L: Before top coat
R: After top coat

Writing this post, I'm wondering why I bothered to top coat before I applied Nfu-Oh #51; I think it's because I had brushed - rather than sponged - Wet N Wild Black Creme onto the tips, and was afraid it wouldn't level. Probably not necessary, but anyway, here it is after two coats of Nfu-Oh #51.

I bought it on Amazon for $12.50. 

So I didn't get into polish until spring 2015, and a lot of the trends seemed to be in decline at the time. I feel like I was reading a lot of people expressing delight and relief that crackle and texture were going away. I don't have a single crackle in my collection, and honestly I think they're hideous. I can see how they might be useful for nail art, but I never like the look of just crackle over a color. I do have quite a few textures, but the only ones I really love are Zoya Pixie Dusts. These clear flakies were also not as popular as they once were; 2015 seems to be the year that UCC (Ultra Chameleon Chrome, which sounds awesome) started taking over, and now I see a lot of UCC flakies in holo bases. It's a wonderful time to be alive.

The bottles are shaped like ladies, it's really adorable and weird.

My point is, this polish was all the rage back in like 2012. When I started getting into polish, I was a broke college student, so my collection was strictly drug store. I think I bought this lovely lady when I was temping at my current job and $12.50 started to see, like a reasonable price to spend on amazing polish. Mostly, I was so shocked to see this come up when I searched for it on Amazon (sometimes a surprising place to find discontinued polishes: I also scored Zoya Kotori and Crystal on there) that I knew I had to get it.

In a couple of pictures, you can see my thumb, which is three coats with no undies. The flakies shift from red to green to gold over black, but suspended in the jelly, they just flicker like little chips of ruby. Mattifed, the olive to gold shift becomes more prominent, but I honestly didn't like most of the photos I took of it matte. I'm going to put in one more picture of Nfu-Oh #51 and encourage anyone who might be reading this and not in possession of this beauty to search Amazon for it. It's still on there at the time of this writing.

Fantasy Makers Bloody Marie

Gosh, I feel like every week I work on this blog, I learn something. Like just now, I learned that, while it's great to take pictures and schedule posts ahead of time, sometimes you need to be wearing the polish while you edit the pictures because you can't remember what color it really is

It could be any of these! Just kidding, it's definitely not as dark the upper left box, but I think it's not as bright as on the right. Lower left is probably the most color-accurate. Not that you're likely to find this polish around, anyway...

It's a Fantasy Makers by Wet N Wild, and as far as I can tell, they don't appear to be a thing this year! They weren't even that impressive last year; I saw all four for $2 each at Rite-Aid and bought them all, mostly because I thought the bottles were cute, and Bloody Marie here turned out to be the best one. The others are a crappy black that I frankened with clear polish to try to turn into a jelly, a crappy white, a glow-in-the-dark that only glows in the bottle, and this red jelly that is basically a dupe for China Glaze Masai Red. 

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 Since I didn't have that many pictures of Bloody Marie, and the ones I have are ridiculous, I thought I'd better flesh out this collage with some pics I took of Wet N Wild Black Creme. Since it's the only polish I see at the Wet N Wild Halloween makeup displays this year, I guess it's officially a Halloween polish now, huh? In the upper left is the black Fantasy Makers polish, Black as Knight; that is not what I'm wearing on my nails. Black Creme is a great polish, Black as Knight sucks and was a streaky, watery mess before I even messed with it.

 I took these when I wore Black Creme under Bali Mist, so they are summer sun pictures and my nails were still pointy. This was the indoor pic under my horrible old bulb. I decided to go for it and just make the picture black and white...I mean, holding black polish with black nails in a black and white photo is a great idea, right? Friday will continue our spooky nail polish times with another black polish.

Saturday Nail Art - Are You Plaid to See Me?

So first off, you might notice in this nail art something I alluded to earlier in the week: a change in my nail shape. Yep, I filed 'em square. I did this for a few reasons; I had a peelie on my left hand that looked like it was going to get worse, I had a hard time filing my points evenly and wanted something neater-looking, and even though I never hear anyone talk about this, it's been my experience that pointy tips get tip wear faster. Your mileage may vary.

 As you probably guessed from this post's hilarious title, this week I was inspired to do some plaid nail art. Remember last week, when I inadvertently switched Zoya Bay and Cupcake Bat-chelor Pad? It actually worked out for the best this week, too. I started out by hand-painting striped of Bat-Chelor Pad and Wet N Wild Be More Pacific over a base of China Glaze Bend Over Backwards, which would not have gone as smoothly if I'd been trying to use a texture.

 I love this color scheme, makes me think of old wool blankets. I stamped with Konad White, as usual, and the plate was from Born Pretty.

To me, this is probably the most successful nail art I've had on the blog yet. I only did it on four fingers, but I would definitely recreate it maybe as an accent nail. Next week might get a little awkward, as I have three holos to swatch and the weather is starting to turn gloomy. I'm about to get daylight bulbs and invest in a second lamp so I can take better indoor pictures, since that's what I'm going to be stuck with starting in a month or so. Fortunately, next week's polishes are super sparkly, super holographic, and gorgeous in any light!

China Glaze Bend Over Backwards

I discovered this year that I really love red oranges. I was super pumped when I came across this polish at TJ Maxx, because at the time I didn't have any red metallic shimmers at all, and then I just never got around to wearing it. This summer, though, Nine Zero Lacquer had a sale and I picked up Volcanic, which is a beautiful red-orange creme packed with coarse gold shimmer. I wore it until it chipped. I've always liked red polish, but cool-toned reds just don't look as good on me as orangey ones, and I owe this realization to Nine Zero Volcanic.

Bend Over Backwards is from the Cirque du Soleil collection, which I just looked up and wow it's from 2012. This is kind of interesting, because in indies, it really seems like 2016 has been the year of the red-orange. Last year, I wanted an orange holo and ended up hunting down Different Dimension on Storenvy. This year, I could buy an orange or red-orange holo from Cupcake (actually they have a couple), Vapid, Different Dimension, Potion Polish, KBShimmer, Colores De Carole, Dreamland Lacquer, Nine Zero, Picture Polish (Autumn is actually from 2015), Powder Perfect, Pahlish, Tonic, Celestial, Polish M, and probably more. I have a mystery polish from Baroness X called Demeter that is an incredible red-orange, and one of September's Hella Holo Customs was an orange holo from Crow's Toes. Part of this surge stems from indie makers producing Halloween collections, because a lot of people love Halloween polish and mainstream brands seem to not really care about making them anymore. Part of it is probably because orange polish is awesome.

Bend Over Backwards is a nice shimmery metallic. It's got a good formula, thin but not runny, and it's opaque in two coats. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of brushstrokes. I feel like this is a very fine fall polish, definitely worth the $3.99 or whatever I paid for it. Both my local TJ Maxx stores used to have a lot of China Glaze polish; it's how I first tried the brand, and I have always been impressed with them. Unfortunately, the TJ Maxx by my work has mostly OPIs and Essies right now, and the TJ Maxx by the train station closer to my apartment just doesn't have nail polish at all anymore that I can see. Last holiday season, they had a ton and I cleaned up, but since then it's been dry as a bone. Geez, this was a wordy post! Check back tomorrow for less words and more nail art!