Glitter Nails

I feel like I should change this blog name to “The Nail Polish Gal”. I’m constantly posting about polish. I’ve been doing that lots recently. I promise, I do have several makeup related posts brewing in my brain right now. They just need some time.

Earlier this month I mentioned that Zoya, my favorite brand of polish was having a Color Your World promo for the New Year. They offered 3 polishes for free, and asked that you pay $10 for shipping and handling. It was a fantastic deal since each polish is normally $8 each. I just checked, and after receiving the 3 I got with the promo, I now have 52 shades of Zoya polish. A little over board maybe, but I love everything about this polish line.

1. They are vegan
2. They are 5 Free , they don’t use toluene, camphor, formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin and DBP (dibutyl phthalate)
3. They offer color spoons (check out the video)
4. They have amazing promos regularly (like the one that got me 3 amazing polishes for $10 shipping)
5. They have over 300 colors to choose from
6. They have amazing customer service

Here’s one amazing color I got during the promo called Aurora. 

I was debating if I needed another purple, but look at that! It’s amazing. Oh, and I loved the glitter. I find that I love glitter polishes more than I thought I ever would. After deciding to wear it the other day, I wanted to pair it with something else. So I pulled out several other colors. I had to swatch them all to see what would look the best with it.

Starting on the left, every other swatch is Aurora. The first non-Aurora swatch is Zoya Katherine. It’s a jelly in 2 layers. It might have looked better in 3 layers. Next is Zoya Toni. Then China Glaze Glistening Snow, China Glaze Champagne Kisses and Color Club Put a Pin In It (Birchbox Exclusive).  I even asked my husband’s advice, but didn’t take it. He was leaning towards China Glaze Glistening Snow, but Champagne Kisses works better with my skin tone.

If you haven’t had the chance to try Zoya polish yet, you can in a extremely easy way. If you click this link, you can receive a free bottle of polish with your first order.

Here’s what the Zoya website says about the “Share the Love” link.

“When someone clicks on your personal link and sets up an online account, a coupon for a FREE Bottle of Zoya Nail Polish will automatically be placed in their account and can be used immediately on their current order. TIP: If you use this coupon and add 2 more polishes to your order, you get free shipping too! The coupon will appear in the “My Coupons/ Promos” section of their “My Account” Page.”

So try Zoya and get a free bottle of polish. If nothing else, set up an account now for the times they do amazing promos. If you follow them on Facebook or Twitter you’ll hear about them there. I also love their Pinterest account. I love looking at amazing pictures of nails. Especially if they are lacquered up in my favorite polish.

I Have How Many Top Coats: Top Coat Challenge

I finally decided to do it, a top coat challenge. After months of being on a search for a Seche Vite replacement, I realized I had 8 top coats and one arriving any day in the mail. It was definitely time to find out how they performed against each other.

I won’t lie, I love Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. I love that I can put it on, and my nails will be dry in a matter of minutes with a glassy shine. I’ve always joke that it’s cancer in a bottle. That’s even before I read the warning on the bottle. The warning says it contains ingredients known by the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. My husband and I called it quits in the baby department 3 years ago when our youngest was born, so I’m not worried about the “birth defects” part, but I suppose just knowing it’s got bad stuff in it makes me wary.

I started this top coat challenge 4 days ago on Thursday, January 17, 2013. I wanted to make sure I didn’t give any of the top coats any unfair advantage, so I didn’t use a base coat or color by any of the nail companies featured in my challenge. I assumed top coats would work better with color and base coats from the same line. For a base coat, I used Orly’s Bonder.

My main goal was to see who had the best wear, and overall shine and texture. I realized after the fact that I should have picked a cream color for this post. I was thinking about which polish I could manage to wear for 4 or 5 days straight instead of which polish would photograph the best for my purposes. For selfish purposes, I chose OPI’s The World Is Not Enough from the Skyfall Collection.

Base Coat – Orly Bonder
OPI – The World Is Not Enough

On my left hand starting on my thumb to my pinkie:

CND  Air Dry Fast Set Top Coat
China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat
Zoya Armor Top Coat UV Block
Qtica Extending Top Coat
Essie Good Top Go

On my Right hand starting on my thumb to my pinkie:

Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat
Sally Hansen Mega Shine Extended Wear Top Coat
Sally Hansen Nail Shine Miracle Top Coat
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat
no cop coat just the OPI color

I polished my fingers starting with the Orly Bonder base coat, then three thin coats of OPI’s The World Is Not Enough, and each finger got one coat of the appointed top coat. I started at 8 pm, and was done by 8:50 pm. I started checking to see how fast the nails dried. Here’s the order they dried.

• 9pm – Seche Vite
• 9:05 CND Air Dry
• 9:06 China Glaze Fast Forward
• 9:08 Sally Hansen Insta-Dri
• 9:08 Essie Good to Go
• 9:09 Qtica Extending Top Coat
• 9:35 Zoya Armor
• 9:45 Sally Hansen Mega Shine
• Went to bed at 11:45 and Sally Hansen Nail Shine Miracle was still tacky. I woke up with sheet prints and fuzz stuck to it

I found that Seche Vite and Sally Hansen (SH) Insta-Dri had the thickest formulas. The thinnest formulas were China Glaze, SH Nail Shine Miracle and Qtica.  It was hard to evaluate shine because of the micro glitter in this OPI polish, but I liked Seche Vite, CND, Qtica and SH Insta-Dri the best for shine.

I found that I had the least tip wear with Qtica, Essie, SH Insta-Dri.

All my pictures were taken at the end of a 24 hour period. These were 24 hours after I first painted my nails.

Day 1 – After the first 24 hours

Day 1 – Tip wear, and chip – index finger, left hand – China Glaze Fast Forward

Day 2 – 48 hours after application

CND on the left verses Seche Vite on the right. More tip wear visible on right.

Day 3 – 72 hours after application. I was losing large sections of polish. The first section to come off was from the left hand’s index finger. The one coated in China Glaze’s Fast Forward. A few hours later, SH’s Mega Shine also had a huge chip taken out of it. By the end of the day, I was also sporting a noticeable chip out of my right Seche Vite thumb.

Major chipping along with tip wear. Day 3

Day 4 – 96 hours later.

Losing large chunks of polish. I was aiming for 5 or more days, but I can’t stand it anymore.

I was intending to go for at least 5 days with this top coat challenge, but I just couldn’t. Finding both my index fingers in such a terrible state was heart driving me crazy. I also lost significant parts of my right thumb and middle finger. Both pinkie fingers had small chips on them, but something I could have over looked for a few more days. Six of my ten fingers chipped.

The top coats that didn’t chip were:

• CND Air Dry
• Zoya Armor
• Qtica Extending Top coat
• SH Insta-Dri

I had more visible tip wear with Zoya and CND. I was surprised that SH Insta-Dri performed so well. I wasn’t expecting something so great from a drug store brand, I’ll definitely be getting more of this. I was amazed at Qtica Extending Top Coat. It was my first time using it, so I’ll have to use it again before passing judgement, but so far so good. It had the least visible tip wear of any of the top coats, and had lots of shine. I didn’t see any shrinkage, and it didn’t take forever to dry.

If I had to rank these 9 top coats here’s best to worst based on the last 4 days.

1. Qtica Extending Top Coat
2. SH Insta-Dri
3. CND Air Dry
4. Zoya Armor
5. Essie Good To Go
6. Seche Vite
7. China Glaze Fast Forward
8. SH Mega Shine

I won’t even score the SH Nail Shine Miracle because it never really dried. That stuff is going straight in the trash. If it won’t dry 3 hours after the fact, it doesn’t deserve to stick around! Do I still love my Seche Vite? YES! I just picked up another bottle while this top coat challenge was going on. It’s for the nights I do a 10:45 manicure and still want to get to bed before 11:30. Seche Vite saves me from sheet prints.

Since I also change my polish every other day, I rarely run into the problem of them chipping. I don’t go for long wear, I go for fast drying and shine.

Do you have a favorite Top Coat? How long do you wear your polish in between changes? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just let me know in the comments below.

Zoya’s New Year Promo

You may have picked up I’m a Zoya Nail Polish devotee. I love their range of colors, how the polish wears, and I think the formula is great. If you’ve never tried their polish before, now is the time to. They always have amazing promotions, and this new years promotion is fantastic.

I got Aurora, Flowie and Breezi. I already have 48 Zoya colors, so I was making sure I was choosing colors to fill a few holes in my nail polish color spectrum. This makes nearly half my collection Zoya polish. I suppose that says a lot about how much I love their polish. I also decided to pick up their Anchor Base Coat and Armor Top Coat. I also got Qutica Extending Top Coat to try. I’ve been trying to find a replacement for Seche Vite. I know there really isn’t a replacement for it, but I’m still searching.

I payed $28 dollars for 3 polishes, one base coat and 2 top coats and shipping. Normally during a non promotion time, this would have cost me $50 for the products and $6.95 for shipping. I love that I got it all for $28 dollars. The fine print for the promotions says if you spend more than $25 with this promotion, you get free shipping. So I got products I’d been wanting to try for a long time, but always got distracted by the pretty nail color. This time I get nail color, and the base and top coats.

Give it a try, you might find you like Zoya. If nothing else, just for their promotions!

P.S. I LOVE their nail polish remover. I don’t use anything else. I swear by it!

Sparkles and Plum Tones

I made my first stop ever at an Ulta store last week and felt like I had died and gone to nail polish heaven. I know they have many other amazing products and lines that they carry, but I only had eyes for the lacquer!

I picked up 4 new Zoya colors from the fall Designer and Diva collections, and a nude shade from OPI’s Germany collection.

I’m not a huge fan of shimmer or glitter, but after seeing the Diva collection, I just had to have Daul. It’s got gold micro glitter in it, giving it the most beautiful shimmer. I also love that it’s so smooth when it dries, not rough at all. It’s also super easy to remove. (not something I expect with a glitter polish.)

I also like that it has a red tone to the purple. This is just a fun and pretty polish to wear. I also picked up the other micro glitter polish called FeiFei. It’s a steel blue with gold, pink, and blue glitter. It’s on my toes, and it looks so sophisticated.

Yes, this is a Zoya love-fest. If you haven’t tried the brand out yet, pick a color you like and give it a go. They’re only $8 a bottle. The new fall colors are amazing!

Out of my Comfort Zone and Loving it

I’m out of my comfort zone and loving it. I’ve never worn blue nail polish before. I’m a huge fan of red, raspberry, burgundy, coral, pale pink, and sandy nudes. Last year I started wearing grey polish. It was a great nude tone that wasn’t beige. A wonderful color for fall and winter. Now that spring is coming, I’m starting to look for pretty spring colors. I quickly fell in love with this blue from Zoya. It’s called Skylar. I wasn’t sure it was going to look good on me, but after getting a nail plate with the entire True nail color collection on it, I fell in love.

I realize that the more and more I try different colors, the more and more daring I become. Before you know it, I’ll be sporting some amazing nail art. I’m not sure it’s for me in the long run, but it sure is fun right now. If you like to polish your own nails, and need a little inspirations, check out this blog I stumbled upon the other day. You’ll love it! PolishYouPretty.com

Try something new. You might be surprised by what you like. I know I am.

Rebecca