This is a mani I did last week and liked a lot. The base colour is Zoya Kieko, a red-toned medium purple creme from last year’s Summertime collection. I used two coats of Kieko, which had a very nice formula, no complaints. I used a dotting tool to make the flowers – the centres are Zoya Reagan, and the petals are Zoya Lara, both from the Beach collection, and finished with Poshe top coat.
This amazing polish is Nicole by OPI Just Busta Mauve, which I haven’t seen for sale here in Canada (it’s supposed to be exclusive to Target stores and we don’t have those yet), but I was able to get with the help of someone having a blogsale! (Thanks again, Amy! :))
Shown are three coats plus a layer of topcoat; the polish is slightly sheer to allow the duochrome iridescent shimmer to show through.
I recommend waiting a minute between coats to avoid any balder spots near the cuticle, but other than that the formula was good!
These photos are in natural light, various degrees of shade/partial sun.
I love the finish on this polish! As you can see, there are a whole lot of colours in the flecked/foily particles: mauve, blue, copper, pink, plum, and a lovely warm golden orange colour shift at an angle. It’s the kind of polish that doesn’t really belong to just one colour family!
There are two other polishes in this release that have a similar finish, and I’ll be posting those at a later date. 😀
Two more shades in my project to photograph all my Soulstice polishes! Which is finished by the way, but most of them still need editing and uploading.
This is Prague, a very fall-appropriate dusty brick/burnt orange creme-based shade with mauve undertones and fine silver shimmer that falls somewhere between pearl and frost.
I used two coats here, and the formula was thin but smooth.
I love this colour! Here it is in the shade:
Next is Kauai, a pinkish strawberry shade with silvery microglitter-type shimmer that even looks good at one coat:
Here it is at two coats in the following picture, looking like a delicious strawberry!
The formula on Kauai was a little thicker than Prague’s, and was excellent. I swatched it without basecoat and I’d say this one is a potential stainer, so be sure to use a good basecoat!
In the shade:
More Soulstice swatches to come soon!
Like Flicker, this is another of my new favourite Orlys! This one is Preamp from the Electronica collection.
It’s a slightly jellyish lavender-pink with lots of hot pink glass-fleck shimmer.
These first photos in the shade show two thick coats of the polish. The formula was a little thick but smooth.
In these next sun photos, I have an accent nail of Milani Hot Pink, a bright pink jelly with golden glass-fleck shimmer. I believe this was three coats of Hot Pink. Both polishes have topcoat added here.
I thought these two went together really well!
I really love glass-fleck polishes in general, and Preamp is a great one!
Another quick post of a recent manicure! This is Ozotic 607, a pretty, slightly dusty pastel pink with scattered holo. I used three coats (I think I missed the third coat on my ring finger though, because that one appears more sheer than the others, whoops!) and OPI DS topcoat which is my go-to topcoat for holographic polishes. The formula was smooth, easy to apply, and dries relatively quickly, although not quite as quick as some holos do.
In sunlight:
Indoors with flash:
Here’s a post of photos from my most recent week-long foray into a pointy nail shape (which was a couple of months ago now)! This is Orly Emberstone from last year’s Mineral FX fall collection. It’s a gorgeous complex shade with a slightly duochrome finish that is somewhere in between foil and glass fleck. It’s a bright red full of sparkles of orange and magenta/pink.
This is three coats with topcoat, but the third coat wasn’t really necessary; I just did it to add even more depth to the colour. This has a great formula; I had no complaints. Really pretty shade! Be sure to click on the larger versions of the photos to see the flecky/foily detail of the finish and the slight duochrome that appears in the shade!
Shade photo:
Beauty Without Cruelty was one of the first brands to produce entirely vegan cosmetics and today I have swatches of my Beauty Without Cruelty polishes to show you. I only have four of them, and it just so happens that three of them are pink. For each of them, I have two photos in the sun followed by one in the shade. I didn’t use any topcoat for these photos.
Sweet Pea is a light/medium pink creme, not bright but not too dusty. The formula was thin and a bit runny; this is two coats (three on my index because I messed it up).
Next, Pink Crush. This is a bright fuchsia squishy-looking semi-jelly polish. The formula was not as runny as Sweet Pea, and this was two coats.
Rich Plum is a rich shimmery purple. This one made me realize that these polishes don’t have mixing balls, as the shimmer was uneven in my bottle and I had to shake it quite a bit to get it distributed. Shown are two coats; this one can show very slightly visible brushstrokes and I recommend waiting a few minutes between coats to prevent dragging.
The last one I have is Geranium, a magenta-pink creme. The formula was thin but not runny, and this is two coats.
These polishes have a flat brush that is less wide than the OPI pro-wide brush. The BWC nail polish line is pretty basic; there are only about 15 colours, but the polishes, brushes and bottles are pretty nice overall! I have two more of the shades on the way to me that I purchased from a blog sale, so I should have a couple more swatches to show once they arrive!
When I posted my Zoya Beach skittles, I promised swatches and comparisons of the Beach and Surf collection polishes, and the project is going slowly but I’ve finally got the first one ready: Zoya Shelby, a bubblegum pink creme.
I used three coats for this swatch because I was having issues with streaks and lumps, but I think I had just had too much coffee that day or something since I only needed two coats of Shelby when I did the skittles.
In shade:
These next two photos were taken the following day so they include top coat. I can’t remember what happened to my index finger to make it no longer presentable, I suppose probably a chip! As usual, the ridges on my ring finger are just the way the nail is, not the fault of the polish!
Now for some comparisons. Each swatch on the nail wheel progressively shows the polish at one, two and three coats from base to tip. These were taken in full sunlight which is probably not the best light for photographing nail wheels (diffused light would be better), so I’m including two photos at different angles.
Left to right: China Glaze Pink Underground, Wet n Wild Candylicious, Milani Tip Toe, Zoya Shelby, Gosh Bubblegum, Nubar Pink Creme, OPI Got a Date To-Knight, China Glaze Empowerment, OPI Pink Friday
I included one shimmer polish (Pink Underground) since the shimmer is subtle and the base colour is in the same family. I also included some popular darker (Candylicious) and lighter (Got a Date, Pink Friday, Empowerment) pinks to show where Shelby fits into the spectrum.
Left to right: China Glaze Pink Underground, Wet n Wild Candylicious, Milani Tip Toe, Zoya Shelby, Gosh Bubblegum, Nubar Pink Creme, OPI Got a Date To-Knight, China Glaze Empowerment, OPI Pink Friday
These last swatches are under the Ott Lite, showing just the polishes that are closest to Shelby.
Top to bottom: Nubar Pink Creme, Zoya Shelby, Gosh Bubblegum, Milani Tip Toe Pink
I’d say in one way that Gosh Bubblegum is the most similar of them since it also has a cool undertone while Tip Toe Pink and Pink Creme are slightly more warm. But Tip Toe Pink is the closest in terms of the depth of the shade, since the Gosh polish is definitely lighter!
I’ve been meaning to get this post up for a while and finally here it is. This is Enticing from Cult Nails’ second-to-last collection, Divas and Drama. I took these photos when the collection was just released, so you can see why I say “finally” since a whole other collection has come out since then!
I used a base of Milani Smoothe ridge-filling base coat, then two thick coats of Enticing. I didn’t have any problems with streaks applying this way.
As you can see it’s a pale milky pink with fleck-type shimmer in it, and is somewhat jellyish.
I have the other polishes in this collection as well but haven’t swatched them yet (strangely enough, in a collection with a coral, a minty blue, and a flakie, the first one I wore was the less-exciting sheer pale pink!)
These photos are all taken in sunlight.
I compared Enticing to other pale pink polishes that I have, from left, Kleancolor Sheer Pastel Pink, China Glaze Encouragement, Cult Nails Enticing, Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely in Love, and Zoya Audrey.
Kleancolor Sheer Pastel Pink, on my thumb, is much more of a bubblegum shade than the others. The other polishes, index to pinkie, follow the same order as the bottle pic: China Glaze Encouragement, Cult Nails Enticing, Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely in Love, Zoya Audrey. Each swatch is two thick-ish coats over Milani Smoothe.
The base colour of the China Glaze, Cult Nails, and Nicole are very similar, but the shimmer and application distinguish them. China Glaze has shimmer that is coarser than Enticing, while Nicole has coarser shimmer that is actually blue, although that doesn’t always show up very obviously on the nails. In terms of application, the Nicole polish was the streakiest/most prone to bald spots of these three, followed by the China Glaze, and the Cult Nails polish had the least-streaky application.
Zoya Audrey, on my pinkie, is a warmer shade of pink than the other three. This polish came from one of Zoya’s two limited edition New York Fashion Week trios that came out a few months ago, this one being the Peter Som trio, so it isn’t readily available anymore as far as I know. It’s also a little streaky on application.
So there you go, in terms of formula the Cult Nails polish is the clear winner here, although I do prefer the blue shimmer in the Nicole polish. Just wish there was more of it so that it’d be more visible, and that the formula was more like Cult Nails’!
At any rate, Enticing is a great choice if you’re in the market for a milky pale pink with a bit of shimmer. Hopefully I’ll get to swatch the rest of the Divas and Drama collection soon (adding it to the long list of swatches and comparisons that I want to get around to “really soon”! haha)
Today I have a skittle mani to show you, using the polishes from Zoya’s Beach collection for summer 2012.
Thumb to pinkie are Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, and Lara. The bottle I’m holding is Zoya Tracie, the only non-creme polish from Beach.
I plan on doing comparison posts for all of these polishes later, so I’m not going to talk much about the formulas right now. These swatches were all two coats, though.
Some shade photos:
Later on, I added a coat of Sally Girl Way2Disco, a blue-teal iridescent glitter (shown here in the shade, since the sun was not cooperating):
Stay tuned for comparisons of the Beach (and Surf, the other half of the collection!) polishes to other similar polishes in my stash! I hope to get those posts started in the near future.
Vegan Claws 
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