While at Sally's Beauty Supply during their "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" sale, I spied a rack of colors I had never heard of before - "Savvy". According to Sally's website "Savvy Nail Lacquers are beautiful and long-lasting. This professional formula bonds to the nail for extended wear. Infused with Hydraplex, a blend of botanicals which conditions, protects, strengthens and reinforces the nail to keep the nail flexible for all day, chip-resistant finish. UV absorbers protect against fading to maintain the true color of polish while intense pigments prevent polish from streaking for full coverage." I guess they had just got through a logo and other cosmetic makeover because the website has a very different looking bottle that this one.
Confession time. I am a logophile. There's just something about words that I adore. I'm obsessed with fonts and typography, but also just words themselves. First my eye was drawn to the purple, but then I read "Amethyst" and this beauty went into my basket.
Since I'm not familiar with this brand at all, I used Seche Retain as my base (a safe bet) and 2 coats of Deep Amethyst. The polish was a little runny for me, pooling a bit into my cuticles but not so much that I'd consider chunking it. The only let down is that I KNOW I have a dupe for this polish in my stash (which by the way has overgrown its cases and now I'm going to have to buy at least 2 more of).
This is a dark purple with blue undertones and has very fine red and blue microglitter in it, giving it a nice shimmer. Shade pictures just made it look dark, sadly.
Overall, a nice color but again I know I have a duplicate color so I hope to get a comparison shot some time.
I haven't found Savvy anywhere else online but Sally's (but I didn't look ALL that hard) and I bought it for $3.99 a bottle.
Zoya Charla was from the Summer 2010 Sparkle Collection and was described as a tropical blue sparkling metallic. Two of my favorite bloggers have called this color a "mermaid in a bottle" which oddly enough is what Zoya called its green shade (still to be swatched) not this one. I'll have to be honest, after seeing pictures of this color in blogs, I was NOT thrilled. I am NOT really a blue nail polish person.
Zoya, you've changed my mind.
I used Zoya Anchor as my base, 2 coats of Charla and for my top coat, I first used a coat of Zoya Armor, followed by 2 coats of Seche Vite. The first coat of Seche Vite I applied normally, the second coat, I brushed over the tops of my nails, to "wrap" the top coat around my nail, then applied normally. Success! No tip wear/pulling and fast drying top coat. Now, I didn't come up with this myself - another blogger did. However, I can't find the person's post to save my life. I'm sorry! If I find you, I will credit you properly.
I love the whole glass fleck movement of polishes. It's not gritty like glitter, but shines like it.
These two pictures in the shade, show my love affair.
It looks gritty, but it's not! Smooth as a baby's bottom.
Really such a pretty shade. I had a male friend tell me he thought he should make a wish since my nails were so shiny. Another male friend couldn't decide if it was green or blue polish (he saw it under artificial light) and yes, under artificial light you see a little more green cast that blue, as you can almost see in the bottle pictures in the shade, but it's definitely a beautiful blue.
I highly recommend this color to anyone who's hesitant about the "unnatural" colors of nail polish - it's so beautiful, you'll love looking at it!
As much as I didn't want to, I did remove the polish so I could post on removal process. Unlike glitter polishes, glass flecked polish wipes off more like a creme. I had a friend tell me she ended up with smurf fingers from her removal, but I didn't get any blue staining on my hands during removal. She also uses felt, I use a cheap bottle of remover that has the sponge inside. Again, very pleased with this polish.
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.
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.
