Zoya Isti

Still working through swatching the polishes I got from Zoya last last year. Today it's Isti, a silver and light blue Pixie Dust textured polish.

 

I used two coats for my swatch and let it dry. It doesn't seem as textured as I recall the older Pixie Dust polishes were. Maybe it's the density of the glitter or the silver reflecting light. I'm not sure.

 

Here's Isti with topcoat. It's shinier, yes, but not a dramatic difference that I could see.

 

 

What I should have done at this point was put the Leopard Spots topper on to see if it looked more leopard-y over texture, but I didn't see it (it got put away with the other crackles from last week's nail wheel). Instead, I grabbed Meredith and did funky French tips (plus slicked on more clear topcoat). I like this combination.

 

 

I am going to try very hard to do the Leopard Spots plus texture at some point. Maybe I can also do a Pixie Dust comparison between old and new shades. In the meantime, enjoy this pretty blue.

Zoya Meredith

Just a quickie today, with one of the polishes from my Zoya order late last year. Meredith is a deep blue (but not so deep as to be navy) shimmer. This was quick to apply, too: my swatch is one coat, plus clear topcoat to bring out the shimmer. It's really pretty.

 

The label on my bottle calls this "Merredith", with two r's, which looked odd to me, but that's how nail polish names go, so I didn't necessarily think "typo" when I saw it. Looking at the Zoya site now, they call it Meredith, though there are several references across the web to the two-r version of the name so who the heck knows. Not me.

 

 

 

In direct light, the shimmer shows little sparks of lighter blue, rather than the silver it shows under indirect light, which I also think is really pretty.

 

A pretty one coat blue shimmer ... the only thing better for me personally would be if it were purple! And such a thing may indeed exist in the hundreds of colors Zoya has available, so if you have seen such a purple, please let me know.

Zoya Avi with Leopard Spots Topper

One of Zoya's special deals hit me at just the right time late last year, and I got about a dozen polishes along with my big refill bottle of Remove+. Today I've got two of those polishes to share, starting with Avi, a creme that the Zoya website describes as "a smoky greige cream with a hint of red-brown". My swatch is two coats.

 

Avi seems to be something of a chameleon. On me, it pulls toward a greyed out purple. I've seen other swatches that look way less grey and way more purple. I don't see any of the red-brown the description mentions on my nails.

 

Because I have some odd desire to own as many crackle-type polishes as I can, I included the Leopard Spots Topper in my order. It's a black crackle that Zoya says gives "an edgy leopard spots effect". They also say to use it over a textured polish but you know I didn't listen and put it over this creme called Avi. I did a thick coat on my index finger with thinner ones on my other fingers. None of them especially looked like leopard spots to me, so I guess I will have to try it again over a texture at some point.

 

 

Essie Expressie Comparisons

As I mentioned in Monday's post, most of the Essie Expressie line is made up of cremes, which I bought several of because of course I did. There are a few shimmers in the line as well, and I'm kicking off today's post with the one I bought: Mic Drop-It-Low, a purple-leaning deep pink, or as Essie describes it on their website, a "shimmering magenta pink". My swatch is two coats. I was happy to see that the shimmer shows on the nail even in the indirect light of my lightbox.







For comparison purposes, I grabbed the closest polish I could easily find (yes, my stash is still in transition to a more organized state), SinfulColors Frozen Rose from the Vanessa Hudgens winter 2018 collection.



Top to bottom, below (2 coats each): Sinful, Essie, Sinful, Essie. The base colors of these are very close to each other, with the Sinful being perhaps a touch more purple. Frozen Rose has more visible shimmer and its shimmer is more varied, showing both pink and purple particles. The shimmer in Mic Drop-It-Hot is about as dense as the Sinful but it doesn't show on the nail as much (not even in direct light, the photos of which I'm not posting as they don't show anything different than these lightbox ones do).





I also did comparisons for four of the cremes I bought (two of which I used in Monday's nail art): Precious Cargo-go, Taxi Topping, Don't Hate Curate, and Saffr-on the Move.



Before I get to the comparisons, here are these four as Skittles; I'll have to remember this combination come autumn. Top to bottom: Saffr-on the Move, Don't Hate Curate, Taxi Topping, and Precious Cargo-go. All were two coats.



Kicking off the creme comparisons with Saffr-on the Move. Bottles, left to right: Barielle Aura Angora (now suffering from a case of Ugly Bottle Syndrome, aka UBS), Essie Saffr-on the Move, and Revlon Street Wear Burnt.



On the nail, left to right (all two coats): Aura Angora, Saffr-on the Move, Burnt, Saffr-on the Move. No dupes here, though Burnt comes closer, being a touch lighter and less orange than Saffr-on the Move. Aura Angora is rather more yellow than Saffr-on the Move.



I held over Aura Angora for the next comparison. Left to right: Barielle Aura Angora, Essie Don't Hate Curate, Nails Inc. Hampstead Gardens.



On the nail, left to right: Aura Angora, Don't Hate Curate, Hampstead Gardens, Don't Hate Curate. Again, two coats of each. No matches here. Aura Angora and Hampstead Gardens are both darker than Don't Hate Curate. Aura Angora and Hampstead Gardens are closer to each other than either is to Don't Hate, though Aura looks a bit more muted.



I could only easily find one decent comparison possibility for Taxi Hopping: L'Oreal The Perfect Trench.



And, nope, not a match. Left to right: L'Oreal, Essie, L'Oreal, Essie (all two coats). The Perfect Trench is ligher and more muted on the nail in comparison to Taxi Hopping; I thought they looked closer than that in the bottles.



And finally, the greens: OPI Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window, Essie Precious Cargo-go, Zoya Dree.



On the nail, left to right (2 coats each): OPI, Essie, Zoya, Essie. The OPI and Zoya are both darker than the Essie and pretty much a dupe of each other.



That I didn't find any dupes for the Essies in the course of swatching for this post makes me feel better about buying more cremes. Now granted, I didn't do an exhaustive search of my stash (see previous note about reorganizing), so I can't be sure I don't have dupes out there somewhere but at least they didn't pop out at me right away.

Social Distancing Nails of the Month

I last left the county I live in on March 11th because I'd read enough news about the coronavirus to make me think that cutting way back on my activities to reduce exposure was prudent. On March 12th, I decided to stop wearing fake nails because though I hadn't seen any guidance on it, I felt that the crevices around and under them could be good places for germs to hide from handwashing ... and even if they weren't, I was washing my hands way more often than usual and have found that can weaken the adhesive on some of the press-on tabs.

I kicked off this new regime with Zoya London, one of the textured Pixie Dust polishes. I chose it because textures are easy to touch up and grey is a neutral that would be appropriate in any situation and wouldn't clash with any of my clothes (why I thought this was a concern I do not know, given that at that point I'd pretty much decided to stop going anywhere people would be noticing that sort of thing). I put this on on my front porch instead of in my studio where my lightbox lives so the photos are not up to my usual standard (and that standard is far short of perfection to start with).





The Zoya was looking a bit ragged after a week, so I decided to got the strips plus light-cured gel topcoat route with Sally Hansen Salon Insta Gel Strips in Pinkies Up, a rose and silver glitter I'd gotten on clearance when Walgreens stopped carrying the line. The glitter on the strips is chunkier and less pink than that shown on the box, but that's okay; I like glitter regardless.



After a week, the gel topcoated nails still looked pretty good, so I stuck to that strategy for my next manicure, though this time I used regular Sally Hansen Salon Effects strips rather than ones packaged with the gel topcoat, as I'd never been able to see any difference between the regular strips and the ones in the Insta Gel line. These are Queen Cobra, a brown and gold snake design with tiny pops of holo glitter that only show up in certain lighting conditions (none of which I managed to capture on camera).



I went back to Insta Gel strips for my next manicure, the one that's still on my nails as I type this, a solid brownish rose called Plum's the Word. The gel topcoat makes them nice and shiny, for sure. You can see that my nails are getting shorter by the mani ... polish and strips just don't provide the same protection as fakes, plus there's all that exposure to extra handwashing and alcohol based hand sanitizers (which yes, maybe I'm overdoing given how rarely I'm going out). I cannot recall why I decided to leave such large gaps on my index and middle fingers; maybe I just got extra distracted by one of the podcasts I listen to and wasn't paying attention to my mani.




I'll wear fake nails again in the future I'm sure, definitely once the pandemic is over and perhaps before then if I can reassure myself I can sanitize around them sufficiently to ease my anxiety (or wear them only during stretches when I know I'm not going to be in higher risk situations). In the meantime, I've got my strips and regular polish, and that's working out just fine. I'm hoping to do a fresh manicure this afternoon ... choices, choices.

Wheel Z10: Zoya PixieDust Textures

I'm coming to you this time from an airport hotel despite being on yet another road trip, no airplanes involved. I ended up here because the hotel I have stayed at in the past a few exits down the freeway left (or got kicked out of) the chain that I try to collect all my points from. Regardless of where I am or why, I've got a slice of time right now between other activities to write up some words to go with some photos I took before I left home. Today it's Nail Wheel Wednesday with Zoya PixieDust textured polishes.



(all two coats, no topcoat)

1. Zoya Pixie Dust Ginni [I think these chunkier ones work better with topcoat but since they're designed to be textured, I left them bare for this wheel]
2. Zoya Pixie Dust Arlo
3. Zoya Pixie Dust Miranda
4. Zoya Pixie Dust Chyna
5. Zoya Pixie Dust Carter [love this one so much]
6. Zoya Pixie Dust Thea
7. Zoya Pixie Dust Liberty
8. Zoya Pixie Dust Nori
9. Zoya Pixie Dust Sunshine
10. Zoya Pixie Dust Nyx
11. Zoya Pixie Dust Chita
12. Zoya Pixie Dust Vega
13. Zoya Pixie Dust Vespa
14. Zoya Pixie Dust London
15. Zoya Pixie Dust Dahlia
16. Zoya Pixie Dust Imogen
17. Zoya Pixie Dust Cosmo
18. Zoya Pixie Dust Lux
19. Zoya Pixie Dust Bar
20. Zoya Pixie Dust Godiva


Bottles 1 through 6:



7 through 13:


14 through 20:

Many Nails of Many Days

So yes, I did disappear again. For some reason, I thought I could post at least occasionally while packing up my Michigan house prior to closing on the sale of it, caravaning cross country with Mr. Karen and I switching off driving our pickup and a 26-foot rental truck, then unloading and unpacking in Idaho. Turns out I couldn't. But now we have unpacked enough boxes that I can sit down and write for a bit without feeling horribly guilty, so here I am, aiming to catch up on about six weeks of nails of the day looks.

When I flew east as mentioned in my last post, I was wearing Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Snow Way, appropriate for the wintery weather. I think this was the second half of the box I opened when I wore this same design back in 2013.





When I got to Michigan, I wanted a change but didn't have time to do a full mani, so I just covered up the strips with Wet 'n' Wild Garnet My Heel Broke from the Holiday 2015 collection. The textured finish made for easy touch ups, which were needed since I was dinging my nails regularly while packing up stuff in Michigan.



Before I left for my conference (also mentioned in my last post), I changed to another polish from that Holiday 2015 Wet 'n' Wild collection, Where My Ho Ho Hos At. Again, I went for a texture for ease of touch up, and a neutral color to go with any outfit (not that I generally worry about that, but I was going to be socializing with people who might).



Here's a slightly blurry shot of this polish with a backdrop of some curtains that were in our house when we bought it 26 years ago and we never got around to replacing.



In the nail art session I taught at the conference, I demonstrated stamping by adding a scroll design in black on top of Where My Ho Ho Hos At. (I should have also demonstrated how to use a clean up brush, but time was limited.)





Post-conference, I returned to Sally Hansen Salon Effects strips, this time the Fur-ocious Vocals animal print from the 2012 Avril Lavigne collection.



I took time out from packing up our house to go to a party; I went quick and simple for that, with one coat of Zoya Godiva, since the textured approach was working well for me lately.



I added a second coat of Godiva a few days later.



As those of you who follow my Instagram (thekarend) know, I also took time out from packing to go to a Michigan Nail Girls meetup. My Godiva was the most boring mani there, but I'm just glad I was able to get away and have fun chatting with the ladies and swapping polish and seeing Native War Paints HQ.



Just before Mr. Karen and I started driving back to Idaho, I did something I don't remember doing for a long time: I took off a polish only to put it right back on. All the packing, including my thousands of bottles of polish, had not been kind to my nails, so I had to trim them back some, but Godiva had been good to me, so I reapplied it, topping it with Native War Paints Silver Nickels, which has many sizes of silver holo glitter in a clear base.





We were very fortunate and had good weather for our long drive across the country, which meant much sun for me to enjoy the rainbows sparking off Silver Nickels.



Since we pulled up with the big rental truck, I've been so busy unloading and unpacking that it was only yesterday that I took off the Godiva/Silver Nickels combination to put on a badly needed treatment sandwich.



Right now, most of my stash is in boxes in the garage, the Helmers partially disassembled for easier transport, but I do have more recent purchases more readily accessible, along with the four boxes of very special pretties that I packed separately and kept in the pickup rather than letting them fend for themselves in the big rental truck, so I will be able to do manis and swatches in the meantime before I get my stash setup in its new home.