Zoya Summertime Collection Summer 2011 Swatches and Review

Here's part two of the big Zoya summer collection. It's called Summertime and it's six creme shades.


Areej. This one's a deep pink / fuchsia creme. Very smooth and creamy looking, slight muted quality to it.


Breezi. A teal-blue shade. More blue than teal, but has a definite teal tone to it on the nails. My picture makes it seem brighter than it is; in real life it has a soft dustiness/murkiness to it that just doesn't come across in my picture.


Kieko. A red-purple creme. Much more red toned in real life, more of a berry than a true purple. Think Jessica Feather Boa from the Burlesque collection to give you an idea of the shade, it's similar to that but with a little more blue to it.


Mira. A medium purple creme. Again, my picture makes this purple pull too blue toned, it's much more red toned in real life. It's actually really similar to those China Glaze Grape Pop / Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas type purple cremes that came out in the past few years. It's just a touch lighter and warmer toned, but still very similar.



Sooki. Bright cherry red creme. This is my favorite of the collection. It is loud and obnoxious and AWESOME. It's one of those flashy bright reds that you can see from a mile away. It seems to have a less dense creme finish, like it's almost a jelly, but not quite squishy enough looking. Very hot.


Tamsen. My second favorite in the collection! Can you believe it? A collection with two purples and a blue and my favorite colors are the red cremes... But I'm totally serious. This is a great red. I took two pictures to try to convey the warm orange tone that's in this compared to the coolness of Sooki. This is like a brick red, or even a red-orange. It's muted and a bit dusty looking like some of the other shades in this set. This one changes in different lighting, too... In artificial light it looks more pure red to me, but in sunlight it looks almost entirely orange. Really like the warmth and softness of this particular red.

The formula on these was great. Smooth and consistent, not too thick or thin and no difference in formula across the whole set. Opacity was great, too. They only needed two coats, but I did three just to see how it looked. These do not suffer from the extremely long dry time that the Sunshine shades have, these have a normal/average dry time.

Overall, I can't say I think this is a super exciting collection. I do like the shades, but I feel like I've seen them all too many times before- medium pink creme, purple-berry, dusty teal, medium warm purple, red creme... Nothing really unique or new. Sooki and Tamsen really stand out to me. The vivid brightness of Sooki and the warm rustiness of Tamsen make them very visually appealing compared to the muted pinks and purples in this set. Breezi is a really nice interesting shade, too, but it doesn't excite me the way Tamsen and Sooki do.

Nice formula, though!

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Ulta Exclusives Holiday 2010

Every year around Christmas, OPI does a set of three holiday-themed polishes exclusively for Ulta. Last year's collection raised the bar so high, that I was super excited to see what they did this year.... But I was sadly disappointed, after hearing from a very reliable source, that no one knew anything about them and there probably wouldn't be any this year.

Then, imagine my surprise, when everyone on Twitter was, well, atwitter with excitement over this new OPI Ulta exclusive gold glitter polish. I immediately drove to Ulta and returned home with these safely in tow.




All The Berry Best. A medium berry toned red shimmer. It's rather washed out here because of the lighting; it's a couple shades darker in real life. Regardless, it's my least favorite of the collection. It has some really great gold duochrome in the bottle, but on the nail it's just an average looking red shimmer. It does have a really nice velvety looking finish, though.



Gift of Gold. Now THIS is a glitter. Amazing. It's so ridiculously sparkly. It's a lighter gold mixed with some darker gold and even a bit of what looks like copper or bronze glitter. It's very opaque, too, needing only one to two coats depending on how thick or even you do your coats. It's still rough and hard to remove like other glitters, but it's just soooooo pretty. The best one in the collection for sure. OPI really knows how to do glitter and I'm really glad they've been doing a lot of it lately.


Plum Full Of Cheer. The flash picture shows the base color of the polish and also shows the pretty multi-colored shimmer, but in real life it looks more like the top picture. This is not a bad color at all, it's extremely pretty, one of my favorite types of purples, but it's just so common lately that it doesn't feel special to me. Shimmery, glowy, red-based dark purples are great, I think I'm just a little burned out on them. I had hoped for something really special like last year's Visions of Sugarplum.

Wait a minute... Wasn't last year's Ulta Exclusive holiday collection a gold, a berry-red and a dark purple? What was the year before that? I only remember the gorgeous pink microglitter one.

The formula was good, so no complaints there. The Gift of Gold shade was really thick, but that's part of what makes it so opaque and dense. I only needed two coats of each color (and that's what I'm wearing in these pictures) and the drying time was very good. They were a little dull without topcoat, so I am also wearing topcoat for these pictures.

They're nice, and Gift of Gold is very nice, but they didn't knock me over with awesome like last year's set. Maybe they'll do something more unique this year!

More random Zoya swatches- Sheers, nudes, reds/berries

Uma

Rose (this has green duochrome shimmer!)

Riley

Racquel

Quinn

Portia

Parker

Mia

Kat

Jaime

Isabel

Heather

Diana (jelly finish!)

Dharma

Celeste

Angel

Jessica Paint The Town Collection 2010

I love nail polish with a gimmick. These Jessicas come in little paint cans! How cute is that? They also have some that come in teddy bear shaped bottles like the old Fing'rs polishes (I'll post those soon too).

Though, unlike most products that have a gimmick, the colors/product are actually quite nice.


Funkytown. I know that there are a lot of these types of glitters- the blue/pink/purple glitter in a clear base combination. This one, though, is the prettiest of them all. I don't know why but this one sparkles way more than the others I have like this. Maybe they use a special kind of glitter, I don't know, all I know is that this one is blindingly sparkly and I love it.


Girls Night Out. My least favorite of the bunch but still not bad. Much nicer in real life. It's a cranberry red shimmer. It has more depth of finish and color but I couldn't seem to capture it. This shade of berry red does weird things to my camera.



Pajama Party. Awesome color. Hard to photograph. Let me describe. It's a dark blue-based purple base with strong blue shimmer. It sits on the color like a flash or duochrome but it doesn't really shift with the angle. It's more like a blue overlay. It reminds me a lot of the old Jane polish Gem X if you remember that one.


Scene Stealer. A nice teal shimmer. Color is more accurate in the indoor picture. Sunlight picture shows the reflective metallic qualities of the finish.


Shake Your Booty. I love this name. It makes me want to wear it just because of the silly name. Besides, how many polishes do you know of with the word 'booty' in the name? Ignore the fact that I can't stand the word booty unless it is referring to something a pirate obtains. Anyway... pretty standard medium blue shimmer with green accents. Seems like I see this color a lot. Not a bad shade, just a little common.


Shopping Spree. THIS is my favorite of the collection. It looks like velvet on the nails. It's a shimmering red-based purple and it has so much depth. Reminds me of China Glaze Cowgirl Up. It's so pretty.

Formula on these is okay, a little bit runny and sheer on some shades. I did three coats of all and all of them needed the third. Application is a little tricky because the brush doesn't like to conform to my nails or flex as easily as I think it should. Drying time is long.

Love the paint can bottles. We need more cute shaped bottles. I want someone to make some old retro looking bottles with the fancy elongated handles and really intricate designs on the glass, maybe like an Anna Sui or KO bottle.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Jessica Cosmetics Muse Collection Fall 2010

I really, really like this collection. Colors straight out of my "nail polish wishes" post!


Bittersweet. Break this bittersweet spell on me... A warm, yellowy milk chocolate brown with really subtle warm toned shimmer. Reminds me of brown leather boots. Murky, muddy and lovely. It seems so much darker on my nail than it does in the bottle, and it looks not as yellow-toned on my skin as it does in the bottle as well. Same with Victorian Crush. Something about my really red lobster hands!


Crimson Reflections... Ehh... not my thing. A deep berry red. I don't do berry so I don't have much to say about this one!


Intrigue. Ooh la la! Purple taupe! Love these types of colors. Good combination of purple, brown and grey. This is probably similar to something else but my memory is failing me at the moment. The name reminds me of one of my favorite scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (Intrigue!).


Majesty Blue. Jessica does some pretty fabulous blues, and this is one of the most fabulous. The base color is common- deep midnight blue shimmer- but what makes this one special are the large shimmer flecks that flash green through the blue base. Click on the indoor picture to enlarge and check out the little speckles of glitter/shimmer!


Scarlet. SUPER bright red. This is one of the few types of red I'll wear- the really bright, loud, obnoxious ones. Always makes me feel like a pin-up girl.

The star of the collection- Victorian Crush!! Murky, yellow-toned drab olive green! LOVE! Looks different on my nail/against my skintone than it does in the bottle... Very strange... but I do adore this color. By the way, this is the base for my fail Konad from the other day. Forgot to add that detail.


The formula on these was good. Thinner than I'm used to for Jessica and that was a good thing. Jessicas tend to be a little on the thick side but this new thinner formula was much easier for me to apply. No streaking or sheerness issues, the colors only needed two coats (and that's what's pictured here) but the drying time is long. Better than average for Jessica (probably because of the new thinner formula) but still on the long side.

I love these colors. Camouflage colors. Muted earth tones. Mr. Scrangie loved them too- I was showing them to him and he said, "those look like camouflage!". I think he likes camo. I do too. Bonus. No complaints about this collection... Okay, maybe one... that berry color is a snorefest! But I can't think of another color they should have done instead. Maybe a grey? Oh well. I like 5 out of 6!

These are kinda hard to find on Jessica's website, so I looked up the direct link in case you wanted to see their bottle pics: Jessica Muse Collection on JessicaCosmetics.com

Jessica's bottle pics are very good and very color-accurate. I think they have the best, most true-to-life product photos around- they haven't mislead me yet! I think some of the other polish companies need to hire Jessica's photographer... Would make online polish buying much easier!

(These were sent to me for review)