Smitten Polish Tornado Skies

*Purchased by me*

Happy Saturday! I hope you all have some good weekend plans. I'm just popping in with a quick unplanned post today. I found out that there is a Smitten Polish restock going on today at Smitten Polish's Big Cartel Store. I also found out that the lovely Smitten Polish Tornado Skies is going to be discontinued after this batch to make room for new things. I think Tornado Skies is really unique and awesome, so I wanted to post it before it leaves forever. Tornado Skies is a medium gray with tons of green shimmer, just like that menacing sky right before a huge storm, like a tornado or a hurricane. Indoors in low light, the green shimmer is less visible, but in the right lighting, it is crazy strong! My pictures do not show the gorgeous green shimmer to it's full extent. I wasn't really planning on doing this post until I heard about the restock, so these were taken fairly quickly. Also, please ignore the amount of shrinkage on my ring finger, it is clearly time to thin my top coat.

I highly recommend checking out Tornado Skies, it is way cooler in person. It's one of those distracting polishes that you stare at when you're wearing it. The Smitten restock will take place today at 2pm Central time at the Big Cartel store.

A Note About Comments

Unfortunately, I have been inundated with spam comments recently. I am working on cleaning them all up and removing them. I have also placed all comments on moderation. Your comment will be approved as soon as I see it, and I hope this will be temporary! Sorry for the inconvenience!

L'Oreal Skinny Jeans

 *gift from a friend*

I received L'Oreal Skinny Jeans as a gift from a student in late June and it's been languishing in my untrieds drawer ever since. I am not really sure why, it's a lovely color in the bottle. I think the last time I tried a lighter hued L'Oreal, I had to use four coats, so it's possible I was too lazy to deal with that. I also thought that Skinny Jeans was a creme polish and might be streaky/hard to apply/thick/whatever. Well, surprise, surprise! Skinny Jeans is a texture! A stunning periwinkle lavender texture! I remember seeing info somewhere about the collection Skinny Jeans was in, but I guess I wasn't paying attention because I had no clue it was a texture. I am still really into textures when I am too busy to do a real base coat/2-3 coats/top coat mani, so I am very happy to have a texture in this gorgeous bright blue shade.

This is two super easy coats of Skinny Jeans. It was easy as pie to apply, no issues at all. The texture isn't super rough or scratchy and the polish dries quickly. New nail pajamas for me!

Now, this collection was limited edition, but I did see it recently at Walgreen's, so if you look around you might still be able to get this polish.

Zoya Naturel 1 and Deux Skittles!

 *Sent for review*

When I first got the Zoya Naturel Deux collection, I had a burning desire to get out the first Naturel collection to see how they compare. Well let me just say, the two collections look AMAZING together. The shades are just dying to be used with each other! Naturel Deux is darker, so it provides some contrast to the lighter Naturel shades, but they have the same feel to them. For my first look with the two collections together, I decided I wanted to do purple skittles nails!

For this look, I used Zoya Brigitte on the thumb (from Naturel 1), Madeline on the index, Odette (also from 1) on the middle, Aubrey on the ring, and Marney on the pinkie. I did three coats of the two polishes from Naturel 1 and two coats of Madline, Aubrey and Marney (I do think Zoya's cream formula has improved so much!). I am calling this look skittles nails, rather than ombre, because Odette is a bit different in tone than the other shades. For a more true ombre look, you could use Zoya Rue (from Naturel 1), Brigitte, Madeline, Aubrey, and Marney. There are tons of combinations to be made from these two collections!

*Sent for review*

It's official- I love these skittle nails! I have decided to make it my first official fall mani whenever I'm ready for that (not yet). Both of the Naturel and Naturel Deux collections are available now on zoya.com!

Zoya Entice & Ignite Fall 2014 Preview!

ENTICE & IGNITE

FALL 2014-COLOR SEDUCTION

Inspired by the classic wools, textured brocades and metallic accents of the season, Zoya¹s new 

ENTICE & IGNITE collections create a palette of lush, deep color including wines, browns, navies and greys.

Zoya ENTICE delivers six new, glossy, intensely pigmented, full-coverage cream colors.

ZP748 ­ Nyssa: Milk Chocolate Brown, Full-Coverage Formula.

ZP749 ­ Claire: Rich Burgundy, Full-Coverage Formula.

ZP750 ­ Veronica: Brilliant Wine, Full-Coverage Formula.

ZP751 ­ Margo: Red Plum, Full-Coverage Formula.

ZP752 ­ Ryan: Classic Indigo, Full-Coverage Formula.

ZP753 ­ Genevieve: Leather Grey, Full-Coverage Formula.

Zoya IGNITE offers a six shimmering red, gold, copper and purple liquid metal metallics.

ZP754 ­ Autumn: Varnished Copper Liquid Metal.

ZP755 ­ India: Deep Red Gold Liquid Metal.

ZP756 ­ Teigen: Violet Plum with Copper Liquid Metal.

ZP757 ­ Sansa: Deepest Eggplant with Gold Liquid Metal.

ZP758 ­ Remy: Indigo with Copper & Gold Liquid Metal.

ZP759­ Yuna: Grey with Copper & Gold Liquid Metal.

COLLECTION PRE-ORDER STARTS August 12, 2014

ZOYA IS THE HEALTHY COLOR OF FASHION!

$9 (US) Available on Zoya.com and at finer salons and spas. 

Lynnderella SunnySide Easy

*Sent for review*

Blue and yellow is a really fun summer color combination that I seem to be extra fond of lately. I decided to wear Lynnderella SunnySide Easy over Zoya Ling this past weekend and it's a really gorgeous look. A summery look. You know, because it's still summer! (As much as I love fall, I am getting tired of hearing people talk about "the end of summer", yuck!). Anyway, Lynnderella SunnySide Easy is a peppy mix of yellow and white glitters in a heavily shimmered base. The shimmer is very rainbow-y, as you can see in the macro shot below. This polish contains yellow and white hex glitters, white squares, white circle glitter (my fave!) and both yellow and white large daisy glitters, among other kinds of glitter.

This is two coats of SunnySide Easy over two coats of Zoya Ling. The second coat was really just to even out the placement of a few of the larger glitters. SunnySide Easy is lovely to apply and has plenty of glitter, you will not have to try to dig it out! Just looking at this mani makes me happy and I feel like summer will last a bit longer if this is on my nails.

*Sent for review*

I did mention that I've been loving the blue and yellow combo lately, so here's a bonus Lynnderella mani! I wore Lynnderella Little Chicken Little about a week ago over China Glaze Bahamian Escape and it is my favorite mani of summer 2014 (so far!). Little Chicken Little is INSANELY gorgeous and Bahamian Escape is one of my all-time favorite polishes, so this pairing was made in heaven for me.

*Purchased by me*

Lynnderella lacquers are available at lynnderella.com and the Lynnderella Storenvy. For information about the latest Lynnderella collections, check out her blog. There will definitely be a new collection of core Lynnderellas in the fall, so I am really excited for that!

Zoya Naturel Deux Swatches!

 *Sent for review*

Today I have swatches of the fabulous Zoya Naturel Deux collection, a group of six polishes designed to expand Zoya's neutral wardrobe and to ease us into fall 2014! If you loved the Zoya Naturel collection, Naturel Deux is a deeper, smokier version, with all the same edgy neutral feel. The formula for five out of the six polishes was absolutely excellent. I think Zoya has improved their creme formula tremendously, not that it was bad before! I noticed the summer cremes were great and now these polishes are buttery smooth and so pigmented. I used two easy coats for all but Emilia, and I'll talk about that one when I get there.

This dusty mauve rose creme is Zoya Madeline. Madeline is a grayed out pink leaning purple. It's kind of a soft mix of colors, so you won't look at it and say "whoa, that's purple!" or anything, it's more neutral feeling than a straight pink or purple.

Zoya Aubrey might be my favorite of this collection. Aubrey is a rich eggplant creme. This one is a bit less neutral feeling and more of a red-violet than a taupe or grayish polish. It really screams fall to me and I really love it! Zoya always makes my favorite purples, and I think Aubrey might be my newest Zoya purple love.

With Zoya Marney, we get back into the brown-toned dustier look of the Naturel collection. Marney is a brown leaning deep plum creme. From a little ways away, it could easily be mistaken for a hot chocolate color, but up close, you can see the plum. If chocolate covered plums were a thing, this would be the matching polish!

By the way, that's no typo, my bottle says Zoya "Marney". The press release for this collection says "Marnie". I am never sure which spelling to use when this occurs!

Zoya Spencer is another version of that luxe camel creme shade that reminds me of a really nice camel colored wool coat. It makes me feel nice and cozy, like I want to burn a candle and snuggle in a blanket LOL. Spencer is a great neutral and could be someone's perfect nude, depending on skin tone. It's a lovely choice for a work-friendly fall (or anytime) mani.

Zoya Chanelle is a medium milk chocolate brown creme. Zoya describes it as "toasted almond"! I love that description, it sounds delicious. It's a bit more neutral in tone than my first picture suggests (it looks too warm there). The second two pictures are better. In direct sunlight, it kept photographing kinda orange-y and it really is nice and neutral-toned.

Zoya Emilia is a dark, cooler brown creme that Zoya tastily describes as "dark chocolate" (with these descriptions, I need to go eat dessert after this post!). Emilia is a gorgeous dark color for fall, I love it. This is probably my second favorite of the collection. It's very rich and sophisticated looking by itself, but I can also see it being an amazing base color for some gold glitter (I'm thinking Zoya Maria-Luisa!).

I did three coats of Emilia in these pictures. It's fairly well pigmented, but I found the formula to be thinner than the others and it seemed to want to flood my cuticles. In order to prevent the polish from pooling in my cuticles, I did thinner coats. You may find that this is a two-coater for you with no troubles though, as I said, it is still nicely pigmented.

 *Sent for review*

I enjoyed the first Zoya Naturel collection, but I think I love this second collection even more! The darker shades are more my style and I do love purples and chocolates in the fall and winter. My favorites are Aubrey, Emilia and Marney, but I like the other three a lot as well. They all look amazing next to each other and I can't wait to do some nail art with them!

The Zoya Naturel Deux collection is available now at Zoya.com and Ulta.