Wet n Wild- Dancer is the best Reindeer

Hey all!

So sorry about my lack of posts but life and that bitch hurricane Sandy got in my way! I live on staten island so it's a bit of a disaster still over here, luckily the family I work for and me as well got out unscathed( except no hot water and electricity for a few days). We were pretty lucky, but we didn't have net for a bit and my network for my phone was pretty much a message saying Um no try again. They like to call it "searching" But I can not complain, I am alive and have a home.

 Any hoo, I feel awful for the lack of posts on this blog, Gotta get it back to everyday status like it was last year! but Ill shut up for now, and post my lastest manicure:

It's an Iphone pic sorry! I didn't have my camera card so I couldn't take an pics! But I got it back yesterday but this manicure looks like some crazy person chewed it off...:shifts and whistles:.
Sorry when I get nervous, I chew my nail polish off. Sexy, I know.

If you are wondering this is one of the new Wet N wilds called Dancer is the best Reindeer and underneath it  is Raven by Zoya. An awesome cream black that is opaque in two coats.

Here is an upclose macro shot of Dancer :

How amazing is that?

Keep it up WnW! 

Okay Back to work!

Zoya addiction...

Yes its true, I have an addiction to Zoya. I abstained from buying new zoyas for as long as I could, but I gave in and used my zoya love rewards and came away with Paloma, Fei Fei and Daul.  What can I say I am a lost cause!

Paloma is a gorgeous glossy burgandy color that I wore for about a day before I topped it off with Fei Fei. I can not even discribe how amazing this color is. Ive never seen another color like this, why cant other brands come out with shades like this? Chanel are you listening? What about you Mac?

I don't have the heart to trim the ring finger nail, it's the longest I have ever seen it grow!

I can't get over how amazing this color layering came out! I am so glad I got bored and did this, yay for boredom! But I must get going for now- dinner to cook!

Zoya Zuza

This my recent zoya polish, I actually got it through the Share the Love program that Zoya has introduced in March 2012. The name of the color is Zuza, and Zoya describes it as:

"Deep, saturated, oceanic turquoise with gold and silver metallic shimmer and a foil-like finish. A beachy, colorful, foil-like shade with the perfect balance between blue and green."

I couldn't agree more! It's such a stunning and perfect color for the summer! But I couldn't stop myself there, you guys know me, and you know that I always have to put something on top. And that I did! I topped it with Butter London's "Knackered" a gorgeous shimmery blue with hints of purple and green.

 Have I told you guys how much I love Zoya, well if I haven't.. I LOVE ZOYA! But I must go now, back to work!
If you guys still haven't entered, we have two giveaways going on!


http://apolishedlife.blogspot.com/2012/06/giveaway.html

and

http://allglitzedup.blogspot.com/2012/06/all-glitzed-up-100-follower-giveaway.html

Just playing around

Before I show my current manicure, I have to tell our readers that Renee is going through something extremely personal right now. She will be back soon posting as soon as she can, she would love a few hugs though!

I've been in a polish funk and with my best friend going through something painful it is hard to be creative and colorful, but this morning ( I woke up at 5am!!!) I decided to try something like this:
http://pinterest.com/pin/191684527859943684/

Of course it looked nothing like it! But hey it was super early, so give me a break, ha ha. But here are the results:

 

The base black color is Zoya Raven, which is the most opaque black I have ever used! One coat. Done! I will add the other colors, but mostly I used silver, pink glitter detailing polishes and Zoya Keiko. Over all, a fun look, just what I needed! Tata for now!

V-day, two looks. Love and Fun!

Okay, we either like valentines day or hate it. But why can't we just have fun with it? No hard feelings.. I decided to do two looks for vday, one for love and one for fun.

I liked Renee's idea of different looks using the same base color, shows how you can stretch out a bottle of polish if you have a smaller collection. It gave me the idea to do this:

For the love! I used to Fresh paint in Delicious, a gorgeous creme red that screams Valentine's day approved! And for the topcoat I used a super chunky silver glitter from Funky Fingers called Stage Dive. I like to call this one Red hearts and diamond bling (cheesy yes..Do I care.. no!)

Now for the fun, I have had this color from Zoya for a while, called Keiko . It's a creamy gorgeous medium creme purple. For the topcoat I used Luxe effects pure pearlfection by Essie. I love this topcoat! Not as much as fairy dust by China Glaze though, but close;) I just loved how this fun and simple V-day manicure came out, it's still girly but not the expected pink or red.

(thanks http://xxxbeautyredefinedxxx.blogspot.com for image link)

But that's it for now, I hope everyone had a wonderful chocolate filled Valentine's day! tata!

Maybe giving does reap reward?

As much as I love giveaways (and I do!) But sometimes it would be nice if I won one! Well on the day that I sent out my polishes, I jumped on twitter to see that Zoya was having flash promos! Of course the negative Nelly in me was like Ill never get one. But just as I was about to move on, a flash promo appeared! And I jumped on it. And won! What a rush! Well what did I win?

Look at that wrapping!

Oooo Shiny!

A Zoya Color Box!

Trixie, Raven and Luna!

It's actually a funny (kinda) story, I remember ordering two of the Luna's when Zoya released the Ultra glitter collection way back. One was for me(of course!) and one for Renee because right at the time her Maine coon, Luna, had just died and I wanted to cheer her up. Well only one came with a note saying that Luna was out of stock. So I kind of just forgot about getting Luna again, and I guess I'm glad I did!

The other two are Raven, which is a glossy black, gorgeous and should put Black Satin from Chanel to shame! Not that I wouldn't say no to Chanel, ha ha. And the other is Trixie, it's a crazy shimmering silver that is very opaque. At first I thought Celeb City by Sally Hansen was a great dupe, but actually Trixie is more silver and bright(does that make sense?)

So thank you twitter and thank you Zoya! You made a girl very happy:)

Tata for now!

Mischa by Zoya

I ordered this last year but it is the first time I am using it! Here is the information from zoya:

 

I did not realize that it was only a 2 on the intensity level, so you can guess how many coats it took to get to this:

 

Four Coats.

Yep, four coats. But it's so pretty so I forgive you Zoya! I also put a coat of Fairy Dust from China Glaze on top. I mean, I just had too. Mind the cuticles, I ran out of cuticle oil, and I'm really not a huge fan of trimming them (I'll let the professionals take care of that...)

It's a great color, but I think it would look amazing over white or black! If you have a ton of patience, which I do because I watch children everyday, then this would make a great addition to your nail polish collection! But okay, off to watch some TV (addict over here!)

Tata for now!

Erika

 

Zoya Kelly and an unexpected treasure!

So when the lovely Julie visited me a few weeks ago, she gave me a few awesome polishes, and I can't wait to try them all out!

The first one I tried was Zoya Kelly. With a name like that, you'd expect it to be some shade of green, but it's this beautiful dark gray with blue and purple undertones. I don't have any other color like this (I mostly have pinks, reds, blues, and glitters) so this was really awesome! It's such a pretty color, perfect for fall. It does dry darker than it looks in the bottle, which may be a problem for some people, but not at all for me. This time my photos suck more than usual (lol) but my camera is MIA at the moment. (Even when I have it I get terrible sunlight on my balcony for pictures..sigh) so I had to use my iPhone camera, which is usually good, but it doesn't photograph creams so well (it makes them look even streaker than they usually are) so bear with me here.

Here's the lovely Zoya Kelly!

Isn't it gorgeous!

So what is the unexpected treasure you may ask? Well, do you remember the gel look Beauty World polish sets I blogged about a whiiiile back? Well, they have ghetto fabulous copies of them in the Japanese version of dollar stores here. They are two bottles to the pack instead of three-well, what do you want for a buck?- and I never really thought they were very attractive colors (the one in the photo below has a clear yellowish base, and I didn't think yellow-looking nails would be attractive) but I gave it a shot, and was very pleasantly surprised! It's an awesome holo glitter, and looks great layered over a dark color like this. I guess the lesson here is don't judge a polish by it's bottle color!

(blurred to show holographic sparkle)

World Aids Day

Every December 1st, is World Aids day. I usually rock a red ribbon and try to buy at least 1 or two Red products. It also doesn't hurt that red is my favorite color dejour since I was born. (okay not exactly the day, but I'm sure I was pretty young!) So guys, please rock your ribbon or some red nails!

This past week I was in New Orleans for the Thanksgiving holiday, (I hope everyone had a great one! ) I visited my sister, her husband, and my niece Mariam.

I am not even remotely kidding, right after I took this shot, she erupted in tears..Someone doesn't like their picture being taken me thinks.

But okay back on subject! One of my favorite Zoya's is Sooki, it to me, is just the perfect cherry red with a jelly finish. I own a few red Zoya's, but this one just always grabs me. If you do not own it, get to it now. NOW.


I did this last night, but for the life of me can not find my memory card for my camera. So I had to use horrid lighting and my iPhone to capture the beauty. Of course I had to put some kind of art on my ring finger. It just felt naked! I thought a simple candy cane would be the perfect image for the first day of December.

It figures I have amazing painting skills and moisturized cuticles and my memory card is missing. Puh.

Okay, that's is it for now.

Erika

Zoya Izzy-Birchbox

Okay, seriously, who is loving Birch box? Okay for anyone who is into getting a great beauty deal for super cheap-o (coughme) Birchbox is a subscription service where you get a package every month for 10$, in this box you receive deluxe sized samples, jewelry, and other fun stuff! I can't believe I waited so long to join! But that is besides the point, in the BB for November, it came with a bottle of Zoya Izzy. Okay so it wasn't a full size, but it was Zoya! And bonus, it was a color from the new winter 2011 collection. Onto the pics!

I also added some white nail pen detailing, because as Ive said before Ive been spoiled with nail art, and a freshly painted nail is like a canvas to me. And I can't help myself! I just wanted a simple white design, something easy to remove. Because lets be real here, I love my glitter, but it's a bitch to remove.

I also did want to mention that the giveaway is coming to an end soon! I have lots of goodies, including some Japanese gems! I just want to get everything together, but I also want to leave some things a mystery;)

Okay ta ta for now!
Erika:)

Happy Halloween Ghouls and Gals!

Being a nanny I have to get in the Halloween spirit if I like it or not, even if my back has been a nightmare the past few days ( note to self: sleep on side, not on back). But it's also nice to have an excuse to dress up (the ever original witch costume) and bake cookies!

But to also do a Halloween inspired manicure! Now I have to confess I'm not a huge fan of candy corn, I'm actually more privy to the ones that have chocolate at the bottom, The Indian candy corn. ( Insert the tune of Moose and Zee's "But I don't like candy corn!")

Don't judge me.

But onto the manicure! I used Zoya Sooki to make the various shades of orange, because I don't own an actual orange nail polish. Shocking, I know. And for the yellow, I used this detailing yellow nail polish that Renee got for me as part of my b-day gifts when I visited her in Japan.

For the glitter I used.. those awesome glitters that I got from AC moore, that I keep talking about. I tried to make the tips more opaque (mostly because I was happy with the redish orange tips and too lazy to paint them white) But in real life, it is much more obvious that they are white and I don't look lazy (thank you very much flash for basically sucking up the white and ruining my reputation as someone who took the time as actually painted the tips white instead of just drenching them in white glitter)

I love how the thumb came out /modest.

The ever amazing ettisais topcoat!

Okay, well off for now, tata and Happy Halloween!

An Unlikely Last-Minute Unique Combo!!

I haven't been this excited about swatches in a while, hence my lack of posting lately. Boredom, and a bad manicure @ a salon today, and I was ready for something new. I decided to give one of my new Zoya swatches a shot today - Yara. It's a gorgeous color! A deep olive green with yellow sparkles in it. I love it but I still felt it was just a bit dull. Needs something brighter. I topped it off with a new NYX swatch I received from the Hautelook NYX sale a few weeks ago. It's a flakie polish called Pink Avenue - which isn't all that pink, actually. It's clear with gold/green/yellow flakes in it. I don't see pink, but maybe it might show up in the daylight.

It really made for a beautiful combination! I imagine this NYX color would light up just about any color. If you can get your hands on this (where do they sell NYX, anyway? I don't think I've ever seen it in stores) I definitely recommend grabbing a bottle.

Back on the subject of Hautelook...here is the set of 4 NYX polished I received. I am in love with them all! I'm quite impressed with the uniqueness of their colors.

Almost forgot about this!

Well today is Wednesday, and you know what that means...on this day, we wear pink! Polish that is!

It is one of my favorite zoya's from their Sparkle collection that came out last year, Alegra.

Although Zoya says it belongs in the purple family... it looks a lot more pink than purple! They even describe as fuschia. Oh Zoya..

Speaking of, I just added two more zoya's to my ever growing collection. When zoya had their promo for 2 free polishes, I jumped! I decided to get two colors from their new collections. One from their Touch collection, Pandora. I have been wanting a flesh colored nail polish that doesn't take 7 coats to actually get the color. (I'm looking at you, Essie Mademoiselle) I def. want to make this a french manicure color. I think it would also look amazing on toes! Ahh.. the possibilities.

And from their Smoke and Mirrors collection, Nimue.

 I shockingly do not own a purple like this! It is such a soft and calm purple. Most of my purples are either a light lilac, or a screaming glittery plum. I def. am making this my next manicure color.
☮+♥,