Kokie Seasonal Trio

PR Sample provided for review

 

It's still technically summer for another week, so I'm squeaking in here with three shades that Kokie sent me to celebrate summer: Sparkler Send Off, Cayenne, and Café Olé. I'd wear these year round, myself, because I'm flexible that way.

 

Being me, I started with the glitter, Sparkler Send Off, which has gold and pink metallic hexes in a sheer gold shimmer base. Here's how it looks worn alone at two coats:

 

 

For a similar look with no visible nail line, I layered one coat of Sparkler Send Off over Café Olé, a rosy tan creme. You can see Café Olé swatched on its own in this post I did last December.

 

 

To see Sparkler Send Off topping a light pink shimmer, see this post I did in 2019, before I started swatching for the brand. Cayenne is a red-leaning orange creme. It covered nicely in two coats. This shade is definitely perfect for summer, and also works for fall (some of the leaves are turning just this color right now).

 

I added one coat of Sparkler Send Off to Cayenne and really liked the combination. I thought the pink glitter on the orange might not be great, but the gold is so prominent it works just fine. Sparkler Send Off lays flat enough on its own that I didn't even add top coat for this swatch.

 

I did one more look with these polishes, using Cayenne and Café Olé to do a freehand clouds/stairstep sort of design. This I did add topcoat to in order to smooth the borders between the colors.

 

 

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The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.

Sinful Colors Quick Bliss

Today I have nine of the Sinful Colors Quick Bliss shades, bought at Walmart in person before before I went into isolation for the pandemic. Since then, two more colors were released, but I haven't been able to get those since the Walmart closest to me doesn't carry the brand anymore, and I'm staying close to home. I do have a preorder in for a set which includes them plus an exclusive shade but shipping of that has been delayed twice and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see them. Ah well, time will tell. For now, let's enjoy the ones I do have. Top, left to right: Sweet Cheeks, Juicy, Climaxxx, Cherry Chaser. Bottom: Blackcherry, Flushed, Ice Ice Cherry, Hit the Spot, and Bite.



There are two pink cremes, because of course there are ... that's what a lot of people want. I probably shouldn't have bought them because my interests are elsewhere now, and I have several lifetime's supply of pink cremes already, but my completist nature got the better of me, so I have them. Climaxxx is the lighter pink, swatched at three coats on my index and middle fingers. Juicy is the darker pink, also three coats, on my ring and pinky. They're fine. This is supposed to be Sinful's quick dry line, but I didn't notice them being especially fast, maybe because of the three coats I used. Two didn't seem like enough to me. I'm not crazy about the names for these; Climaxxx is just trying too hard and Juicy would seem better suited for an orange rather than a pink.



Ice Ice Cherry is also pink, but much more up my alley because it's a shimmer that works as a topper. It's got pink and gold shimmer with a bit of shiftyness to it.



I added one coat of Ice Ice Cherry over the pinks, and it made them so much more interesting to look at.







I played with the reds and yellow orange next. Top to bottom: Hit the Spot (yellow orange creme) with cloud design in Cherry Chaser, Hit the Spot alone, Cherry Chaser (orange-leaning red creme), and Sweet Cheeks (pink-leaning red crelly). All of these were three coats. You can see that Sweet Cheeks was not quite opaque at that point (and I swear my nail line wasn't actually dirty).





You know I had to try Ice Ice Cherry over these. I added another cloud to my index finger with it and put one coat on the other three nails.







I wanted to take advantage of the sheerness of Sweet Cheeks by doing a jelly sandwich, so I put two coats of it on, fished some glitter out of SinfulColors Love Sprinkles, and topped with two more coats of Sweet Cheeks. There's my next Valentine's Day mani sorted.





For reference, here's what Love Sprinkles looks like in the bottle.



The next shades I tried were what I think of as the two sophisticates in the collection: Flushed, a rose gold flecked shimmer, with an accent nail of Blackcherry, a vampy red subtle shimmer. I used two coats of each of these.





Direct light shows off the shimmer in Blackcherry better than indirect:



I added one coat of Ice Ice Baby to my accent nail, and the deep base provided by Blackcherry really brought out the pink to gold shift in the topper. Cool.



Bite was the last one I bought (first store was sold out or hadn't gotten it yet, I don't know which) and the last one I swatched. This lime green has blue and pink shimmer it in.



I used three coats for my swatch and my nail line was still visible (though did not look as dirty as Sweet Cheeks had made it look). The pink shimmer I could see in the bottle was mostly absent on the nail, letting the blue dominate, though at some angles I could see the pink too.







I did one last swatch before I put these away, of one coat of Bite over a cool green creme base. I liked this better than Bite alone. If I'd used a brighter, warmer green for the base it would have looked closer to Bite by itself; I plan to try that next time I pull it out. If I remember, which let's face it, I likely won't.



I think Sinful did a decent job with the shades in this new (well, new-ish by now) line. There are the reds and pinks for the mass market but also some interesting things for those of us who want more. One of the newer shades I don't have yet is purple so I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Essie Expressie Nail Art

Essie is one of my favorite mainstream brands—the bottles are quite space efficient, for one thing, which very pleasing to look at in a Helmer drawer—so there was no question that I'd try their Expressie line of quick dry polishes when they were released earlier this year (was it? or was it late last year? time is blur to me now). The problem was these new polishes were overwhelmingly creams, and I've been on another of my "you don't need more cremes" campaigns designed to limit my stash expansion. So I compromised with myself and focused on buying the colors underrepresented in my stash. Today I have three of them that I used to do some retro-hued nail art. Purple is still my favorite color but lately I've been drawn to the 70s era earthy palette. I think it's general nostalgia, plus missing my mom, who was big into these shades (there were still a lot of them in her house when my brother and I sold it a few years ago).

The three colors I used were Don't Hate Curate, Bolt and Be Bold, and Precious Cargo-go. These were the closest representations I saw to those 70s classic shades of harvest gold, burnt orange, and avocado. These bottles are a taller, slimmer version of the classic squat square Essie look. They hold 10ml of polish vs. 13.5ml or 15ml for the regular Essies (I had it in my head that those were all 15ml, but some Googling tells me no, some are 13.5).



The brush for this line is a departure ... it's wide and angled. Apparently the width is intended to make it easier to cover the nail in one stroke (in keeping with the fast/express idea) and the angle is to help with painting one's non-dominant hand. Since I've had so much practice I don't struggle with my non-dominant hand, so the angle is not something I need. I found it a bit awkward to work with since I'm not used to having a brush that's assymetricial along two axes.



I combined these shades to make a cloud mani a la Nailside. I put a base of Don't Hate Curate down first, followed by clouds of Bold and Be Bold and Precious Cargo-go, with clear topcoat to smooth everything over. The Expressie are nicely pigmented, which worked well for this design.







Despite the angled brush and the overabundance of cremes in the lineup, I like this line. The forumla applied nicely and it seemed to dry fairly quickly. I'm glad they included some less common shades rather than letting pinks and reds have the majority of the slots. I did buy several more colors and will have swatches/comparisons of those soon.

Zoya Naturel Satins Swatches and Nail Art

Sample provided for review

The weather is starting to warm up around my part of Michigan, but there is still some snow lingering, the remains of the piles where walks and parking lots were cleared over the winter, so it seems a perfect time to share the winter to spring transitional collection from Zoya, the Naturel Satins. This consists of six subdued neutral and near neutral shades with a satin finish both on the bottles and the polish: Rowan, Leah, Sage, Tove, Ana, and Brittany.



I paired these up for swatching purposes to better show the differences between similar colors. First up are Ana and Brittany. Ana is the paler of the two that's on most of my fingers; Zoya describes this as "light toasted almond" but on me it pulls toward a light peach. Brittany is a pastel dusty rose. I used two coats of each, no topcoat in order to display the satin finish.





Leah and Rowan are the taupe contingent in this collection. The lighter Leah is on most of my nails below with Rowan as an accent; both were two coats and shown with no topcoat.





I alternated the last two shades; Tove is a greyed blue and Sage is a greyed green. Again, these were two coats.





Given that I can't turn to quick dry topcoat with these if I want to enjoy the finish, I was glad these were all two coaters. Still, I found myself a bit impatient waiting for them to dry. It's not that they're slow to dry, just that I hate waiting, and because these are smooth finish, the repercussions from not letting them dry thoroughly are more noticeable than with something like the PixieDust polishes, which can take a few dings and not show them. If I were in a real hurry, I think I'd be tempted to use a quick dry top coat then top with one my matte toppers that finishes satin to get the look. Yes, those additional two coats would probably take as long to apply as if I'd just waited for the color to dry on its own, but I'm better at keeping busy than sitting still.

I used the time I saved by swatching these in pairs to play with some nail art. Tove and Sage just seemed to be crying out to pair up with their PixieDust conterparts, Nyx and Vespa. I freehanded a diagonal block of the textures over the satins and loved the results (might have loved them more if I'd taken the time to tape off the blocks for neater lines, but see above re: impatience).





I did clouds (inspired, of course, by Nailside) with some of the other satins plus a glittery friend. I put down a base of Rowan, then freehanded clouds with Ana, Godiva (from the PixieDust line), and Brittany, smoothing clear topcoat over all to even out the layers and see how the satins would take to being shiny. I've said enough time that gold is not my color, yet I really like the bit of it peeking out here, adding some sparkle to the otherwise very subdued hues but not so much sparkle that it detracts from the overall look.





I think there's a color for everyone here, assuming you want something subtle. Tove and Sage are the least subdued of this quiet group and are therefore my favorites. Twenty years ago, I was in a different headspace and probably would have shied away from them as being odd—I love how things can change!

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.