Swatch Time + NOTD with Zoya - Phoebe!

Hey my lovelies!

So today I'm going to show you swatches of the third polish I got in Zoya's 4th of July sale, Phoebe! 

I've actually wanted Phoebe for a long time now, but every time I bought from Zoya, it was sold out. But this time around, I finally got lucky and they had it in stock! :)   

Phoebe is a gooorgeous blue matte shimmer, from Zoya's Mod Matte Summer 2011 Collection. 

I have one of the others from that collection, Mitzi, but they discontinued the third shade, Lolly, so unless someone has it and is wiling to sell it or trade for it, I won't get to own it. It's so pretty too! Matte hot pink! Sad Kate! :(  LOL

They also stopped making Electra from the Ornate Winter 2012 Collection, which I wanted sooo badly, but when I went to buy it in February I was too late. You snooze you lose with Zoya sometimes I guess. LOL :p

But anyways, more about Phoebe!

 3 coats, no top-coat!

Swatch Time!: Zoya PixieDusts!

Hey lovelies!

It's SwatchTime! I have some super pretty swatches for you today, Zoya PixieDusts!  

This past 4th of July (Independence Day here in America!) Zoya had another one of their awesome specials; if you bought the PixieDust shade Liberty, you got any other two shades FREE! :) 

So I did it, and I got Liberty, Stevie, and Phoebe. 

Zoya PixieDust - Liberty 

Zoya PixieDust - Stevie 

Zoya Matte Velvet - Phoebe 

So today I'll show you swatches of the first two, the Liberty and Stevie PixieDusts! 

Pixie Dust is Zoya's line of textured glitter polishes! These are the second textured polishes I've tried, I also tried one of the OPI Liquid Sand polishes. 

I have to say, I like Zoyas formula a lot better! I usually like OPI's formula the best, but Zoya's textured formula is really good! They dry super quick, and I love the way they look and feel. Both of the ones I tried were opaque in 2 coats! :)

What I liked better about the Zoya formula was that you can do more than two coats, and it still dries quickly, but with the OPI ones you can really only do 2 coats, or else it doesn't dry properly. That was really my only problem with the OPI formula though, was the drying time.

This is Liberty, the only one of the three that I paid for! Hehe :p  

Liberty is from the Summer PixieDust Collection.

Liberty is a super pretty dark blue matte textured glitter. It's a deep blue base, with dark and light blue, almost silver micro glitter. 

The only thing I didn't like about this polish, was that it does stain blue a little, especially during removal. I won't lie, I definitely got Smurf fingers when I took it off! LOL!

Other than that though, I have no complaints about this one! :)

This is Stevie! As soon as I saw this one advertised I knew I had to have it, it's soo pretty! :) 

Stevie is also from the Summer PixieDust Collection. 

Stevie is a gooorgeous lavender/pink matte textured glitter. It has a pinkish/lavender base, with silver micro glitter.  

I love these, I'm definitely going to be buying some more PixieDusts in the future, the Fall Collection especially looks really really pretty! :) 

Check back tomorrow for a swatch of Phoebe, the third polish I picked! :) 

Did you guys take advantage of this Zoya deal? Let me know in the comments what colors you picked if you did! :)

OPI Mariah Carey Liquid Sand Swatch & Review!

Hello again lovelies! 

Today I'm reviewing and swatching one of the polishes from the OPI Mariah Carey Liquid Sand collection, "Can't Let Go."

(P.s., my dumb brain forgot to take a bottle shot, so this is a stock photo I found online! Sorry about that! Total brain fart LOL) 

I actually borrowed this from my sister Jess. It is sooooo pretty you guys! 

This was my first time using a sand textured polish, and I have to say, it wasn't as rough as I thought it would it be. Which is a good thing, because even though I obviously wanted to try it, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about having scratchy nails! :p 

But they weren't scratchy at all! It's just like wearing a matte glitter, only like 20x more matte! 

Just look at this beauty! 

"Can't Let Go" is a beautiful violet purple, packed with purple and silver micro-glitters.

The formula is very good, I only had an issue with drying time, but that was my own fault. We all know I'm a little OCD about coverage, so I did three coats to make sure it was completely opaque. The problem with that is, I didn't know that you're only supposed to do two! LOL. I didn't read the bottle beforehand, I just went at it, and about 10 minutes later they still weren't dry all the way. I asked my sister if it took this long for hers to dry, and she asked how many coats I did. Thats when she said, "Oh no, didn't you read the bottle? It says you're only supposed to do two!" OOPS! :P 

It did dry, it was probably about 20-25 minutes before it was all the way dry though. 

But like I said, it was my own fault for being impatient and not reading the instructions! LOL. 

Overall this is a really good polish though! 

It did start to chip after two days, but then again that might just be because I did too many coats. 

Removal was what you expect for a glitter, not fun! LOL. But that's just because its glitter. The "sandy" parts removed pretty easily, it was just the glitter I had to scrub at. But that's glitter for you, removal is always a pain in the acetone! ;)

It's super pretty though, and I couldn't stop staring at my nails the whole time I had it on! I definitely want to try some more sandy textured polishes after this! :) 

 

(Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review, all opinions are my own! :) ) 

Swatch: Zoya - Mitzi!

Hello lovelies!
I have a quick little swatch for you today.
This is Zoya - Mitzi from the Mod Matte Velvet Collection.

I know I've swatched this polish before, but I wanted to re-swatch with my new camera to get a better photo for you guys. :)

You can read my full review of this polish here .

Flip/Flop February Day 14: Valentine's Day/French Manicure!

Hi again! Do, I'm late. Again. I'm sorry. LOL. But it's time for Flip/Flop February Day 14: Valentine's Edition!

So I completely blanked on posting this yesterday, I'm so sorry, and today's post won't be up until tomorrow along with tomorrows post, so I'm sorry about that too. I'm a fail lol.

But anyways, the Valentine's Day Flip/Flop was Valentine's Day/French Manicure.
I had every intention of doing both and having two different manis for this post, but as you can tell time kind of got away from me LOL. So only one mani today unfortunately, and that is the Flip.

For my Valentine's Day themed mani I decided to do a classic Valentine's candy: Conversation Hearts!
These were actually not terrible up until my dreadful handwriting ruined them. Poo. I guess I should've used a stamper like most people do, but I don't have one with words on it haha.

So to clear up what they say incase you can't decode my chicken-scratch
(I don't blame you), starting at the index finger they say:
Be Mine
Kiss Me
I <3 You
Hug Me
And of course, because I was celebrating Single's Awareness Day this year, (coughAGAINcoughcough) I just had to include one of those little passive aggressive hearts, so my thumb says,
WHATEVER. :p

I wanted them to be matte, but I had no matte top-coat, nor any cornstarch. So I decided to try something I've been wanting to try for awhile, the turning old eyeshadow into nail polish trick! :)
It really does work, and it really make them matte! I will be doing this again in the future for sure.

The eyeshadow I used may or may not be an ancient old palette from when I was a really little kid back way in the 90's/early 2000's that has been sitting in my make-up box untouched since I was 6... LOL.
Uhm, yeah. I started going through my older make-up trying to decide what to use and found this old fossil. I couldn't even believe that I still had it LOL. It's one of those little "my first make-up" type things, I remember being like 6 and sitting at my little tykes vanity and slapping this stuff on along with my lip smackers, then going out with my 101 Dalmatians purse and feeling like such a grown-up woman. xD
It's apparently called the "Petite Miss Designer Collection" palette.

I'm not very smart and forgot to take pictures before I destroyed it, but it wasn't very pretty beforehand either, it was a toddlers make-up after all. :p

To show which powders I used, I marked the photo. To be cutesy since this is a Valentines Day theme, I marked them with little hearts. You're welcome. :p
I actually used the blush for the pink, and it worked pretty well. It came out a tiny bit thicker than the others that I did with the eyeshadows, but it was still usable.

To do this, I scraped off some pigments of eyeshadow, crushed it up as smooth as possible (I just used a cuticle pusher stick and my finger) then dropped in a few drops of clear nail polish. Then I used a medium-sized brush to mix it and paint it on my nail, and voila!

Then I went and wrote on it in my scribbles and messed it all up. LOL.
The color I used for the writing is ELF - Fab Fuchsia.

So that's my Valentines day mani! I don't know how to feel about this one. It was a win until I failed all over it with my writing LOL.

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day filled with love! Or a wonderful Singles Awareness Day filled with pizza and Netflix, like me. :P

Don't forget to check out the other bloggers V-Day manis! :)

Flip/Flop February Day 12: Drips/Matte

Hello once again, lovies! So today is Dy 12 of Flip/Flop February!

Today our flip/flop is drips/matte.
So what did I do? Matte Drips, of course! :D

I love matte, I love drips, and I looove them together!

For this mani I used:
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Twisted Pink
Zoya - Mitzi

Mitzi is the matte in this mani, as you can see, Twisted Pink is not. But I really really loved the colors together, so I went with it! :)

I did 2 coats of Twisted Pink, then added on the Drips of Mitzi, and then for my accent nail I reversed it and did 3 coats of Mitzi and added on the Twisted Pink Drips.

I sooo didn't wanna take this one off! I love pink and green together! :)

Don't forget to go check out all the other bloggers amazing manis!!

Zoya - Mitzi Swatch!

Swatch Time!
So this Zoya - Mitzi!
Mitzi is a matte lime green polish from the Matte Velvet Collection, and it's sooo pretty!

This is actually my first actual matte polish, I've had matte top-coat before and I've had polishes that dry with a matte-like finish, but never a real true matte! So I'm excited about it! :)

The color is soo pretty, the formula is fantastic, it dries almost INSTANTLY (seriously, it's literally dry the touch in under a minute) it does take a few coats, but all the other aspects of it make up for that. There is a little bit of streaking, but that's to be expected with a matte formula, and the final coat pretty much covers it all up anyways. :)

And for an accent nail on my ring finger, I added Zoya - Opal. This took away the matte texture on that nail sadly, but they look cool together! I tried to get the Opal fleck effect on camera, but it's really hard! That's why the lighting is so weird and the color is so off. The first swatch is much more true to color. I did my best! :P LOL

LOVE this polish!! :)

Nail Mail! - Zoya Try 3 Free Promo!

So technically, this Nail Mail came yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to write up a post. So I'm a little late, sorry! :p

But I got my first Zoya polishes yesterday! I've seen Zoyas all over and heard how awesome they are, but up until now I never actually ordered from them.
But last week when they had their annual beginning of the year promotion, I finally ordered!
For those of you who missed it, the promotion was their Try 3 Free Promo, where you could pick any 3 polishes (excluding the 2013 collections) and apply the code "ZOYA2013" and it took off the price of the whole order! All you have to pay is the $10 shipping. So at $8 a piece, you're saving $24 dollars! If you do the math, since each polish is $8, it's pretty much like buy one get two free, $2 shipping! Awesome deal! :)

Oh and by the way, can I just say how cute it is that they come in an adorable tiny little box that fits all three?! Too cute! <3

So for my 3 polishes, I got Mitzi, Happi, and Opal!

Mitzi is from the Matte Velvet collection, it's an awesome Lime Green matte polish.
I really wanted to get one of the mattes, and I decided on this one. Well, technically Zoya decided for me because I was going back and forth between Mitzi and Phoebe (the blue matte from the collection) but Phoebe was sold out. So it was an easy choice. ;) LOL

Happi is a beautiful pink/coral duochrome sheer polish!
I was actually browsing around online looking at swatches of different Zoya polishes trying to decide on my 3rd polish, and I came across this color and fell in love with it! It's so pretty and pink and coral, and oh my gosh that shimmer!! This is so perfect for spring and summer, it makes me want warm weather even more than I already do.

And finally, Opal is green/blue fleck effect top-coat.
I actually first fell in love with the fleck effect collection when I saw swatches of them all over Pinterest, and I've wanted them ever since!
I was going back and forth between Opal and Maisie (the blue fleck effect) but I decided on Opal. Opal was the one I originally wanted, but I felt like since I was already getting another green, maybe I should've gotten the blue one (Maisie) but I decided to go with my gut and get Opal. I looked at swatches of both, and it seems like with Maisie it's harder to see the effect unless its over another blue, but with Opal you can see it easily. And in the end I'm glad I decided on Opal, because when it came I realized it has a blue/green duochrome to it anyway! So happy customer here! :)

So that's what I got! Swatches to come on all three of these! ;)

Did you guys do the Zoya promo? Let me know which ones you got in the comments! :)