Cheeky Monkey Party Whore is medium coral pink and quite a pretty spring color. Because of the coral (and maybe because of my new China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy), this almost looked neon to me during the day, but it is definitely a creme.
I have a new friend who is in LOVE with corals and so I wore this one especially for her. ^_^ Because I'm freaking that I still have my long nails, I used a base coat of Seche Retain, followed by Cheeky Monkey Wet Dream. Next was 2 coats of Party Whore, which had excellent coverage but the formula was a little thick for me. I may end up thinning this one just a little. I topped it with a coat of Seche Vite for faster drying time, and happily wore this manicure for two straight days.
Here's a sun picture - as you can see, there is a tiny neon like quality in this polish, but nope, just a creme.
I actually took this picture the day before, when we were still overcasted. It's such a smooth buttery polish - very happy with this color, when I didn't originally think I was a coral person.
Cheeky Monkey can be purchased on their website [official website] for $15 a bottle.
While Zoya released glass fleck glitters this summer, it was China Glaze who did so last year around this time. China Glaze's "Summer Days" collection was much talked about at the time, and I happily grabbed all of them, but sadly the first time I tried on Grape Juice, I had horrible issues with application. I was just learning and my nails were a mess. I couldn't get the color to be opaque and I was MUCH too impatient, so I put the color back on the shelf and waited for a sunny day to try it again.
When I was applying Mimi yesterday, my mind wandered back to Grape Juice and I wondered how similar they were to each other. China Glaze is cheaper than Zoya ($3.50 versus $6.00) and last I saw, China Glaze moved Grape Juice to their core lines at Sally's Beauty Supply.
In the bottle picture above, you can clearly see that Mimi is already a darker color than Grape Juice, but I still wanted to try it out on the nail.
Mimi isn't really THAT dark but when paired up with Grape Juice, the camera goes nuts. This is 2 coats of Mimi but 3 coats of Grape Juice and I still had some VNL under it. I have to hand it to Zoya for having loads of pigment in their Sparkle collection.
Here in my shade picture, not only can you tell these are completely different but even the glass flecked glitter is a different - Mimi is more of a purple silver glitter where Grape Juice is definitely a silver glitter.
I still love both polishes, and I've thought of using Grape Juice as an overlay on China Glaze Grape Pop sometime. Both polishes had a smooth consistency and great removal process.
Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration. For more information, please read this post.
Zoya Mimi is one of the new glass fleck glitters from the Summer 2010 Sparkle Collection. Well, I'm calling it glass fleck glitter, even though Zoya has called Mimi "royal purple sparkling metallic" I'm not sure where the metallic is, but maybe that's the glitter? Anyway, I'm a BIG sucker for purples, and as much as I love glitter, I hate taking glitter OFF, so this is the best formula for me ever. Purple? Check. Glitter look without glitter grit? Check. And away we go!
To achieve the best possible feel, I used 1 coat of Zoya Anchor (step 2 from their Color Lock system), only 2 coats of Mimi (!) and first I used the top coat Zoya Armor (step 4 from their Color Lock system). However, I'm super impatient and so I ended up smudging everything with the Armor top coat. So I took it all off, and went with the Anchor, Mimi, and a top coat of Seche Vite.
Why didn't I use Seche Vite in the first place? Well dear readers, I am going to ask you to read this in your spare time from All Lacquered Up. She knows what she's talking about - I just know because I read this from her: Wear Test
Oh goodness Mimi, be still my heart! Now in the sun, this hot number is much more purple than blue, but the glitter flecks metallic whatever! is beautiful.
In the shade, you can really see the true color here - such a pretty happy color. This is definitely one of my top favorite polishes ever, and I'm thinking of using it on my next pedicure. I'm very pleased with this color and the formula over all.
Removal was a snap. I used a bottle polish remover (the one with the sponge inside a cylinder) to let the polish soak for 15 seconds or so, then rubbed my nail against the sponge and pulled out my finger. When I was done with that, I took Zoya Remove (step 1 in the Color Lock system) to wipe all nail plates of any polish that was still stuck in the sides. You an see a little bit still stuck in my pinkie in the above pictures. I attempted to swatch a color yesterday but accidentally deleted the pictures before editing the pictures so that will be a post for another day.
Zoya [official website] can be purchased on their website for $7/bottle
Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration. For more information, please read this post.
Illamasqua Phallic is quite an interesting color. The company describes it as a shimmering midnight navy, which is pretty darn accurate. I haven't seen a bottle of Essie "Starry Night" in person, but this is what I'd imagine it would look like. Illamasqua's website shows Phallic to be lighter than it is - it's definitely a DARK color. I'm calling this a glitter since it has glitter in it - more so than a shimmer. The polish was very easy to take off as well. I wore it overnight and didn't have a problem with color bleed on my cuticles when I was removing it.
The squared off bottle is a little hard to work with but I preferred it to the actual brush top, after I removed the square top.
I used Seche Retain as my base coat (trying to keep my nails strong!), 2 coats of Phallic to cover all bald spots, and a top coat of Seche Vite. The formula on this polish was quite nice - I didn't have any pooling into the cuticles and but it wasn't too thin either.
Shade pictures just wouldn't work here, so instead I have 2 sun pictures for you.
This one shows you more of the blue in the bottle - while this picture is color accurate for the blue, it's definitely not what you see mostly on your nails.
This is more like it. Very dark dark navy with a hint of blue glitter. It's still very pretty but not a good spring color by any means. ^_^ I'm interested in trying more of this line - the application was very nice.
For those in the States, you can purchase Illamasqua from Sephora [official website] for $14 a bottle.
Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration. For more information, please read this post.
It's back! Zoya kicked off their Nail Polish Exchange on Earth Day, and this will last a whole 2 months! I still can't get into the site myself, but from what I have seen from others and from Zoya's Twitter [official Twitter page], there is NO MAXIMUM for this, but there is a minimum of 6 bottles per order. Additionally, you have to include $3.50 per bottle. You can send Zoya your old top coats, base coats, polish (even mini bottles!) but you can only order Zoya polish for your exchange.
From Zoya: Zoya Nail Polish will exchange your old, out-of-style, unwanted nail color and replenish your nail polish supply with fresh Zoya fashion colors. Simply send in six or more bottles of old polish - any brand other than Zoya, Qtica or Nocti, new or used - and we'll send you the new Zoya colors of your choice in a bottle-for-bottle exchange.
To start exchanging your polish, please click [here] to go to Zoya's website. *In case of crashing, please wait and try again.
