Zoya Fire and Ice Collection for Winter/Holiday 2010

I've been complaining that almost none of the recent collections have really excited me very much and saying how much I hope someone would release a collection that totally thrills me... I think this might be it! I've had these for a couple weeks now and I'm still giddy every time I look at them!


Now that it's fall my lighting situation has been less than ideal. I've had to re-do these twice and still I'm not happy with how they look. That warm autumn sunset light does not make for pretty pictures. I apologize in advance for the gross lighting but I've tried to take more pictures to make up for it.

Here we go. Fire and Ice.

Crystal. Light blue foil with gold foil flecks. I have heard that this is similar to OPI Reflecting Pool, but I don't have it to compare so I can't say for sure, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. This is a really gorgeous icy looking polish. Great winter shade. I love the way the gold sparkles against the blue.



Gloria. This one is a little more complex. It's rose based foil with warm pink and iridescent gold reflections. There's a lot of different tones in it so it has a nearly duochrome look when it's on the nails. Every time I look at it I see more colors sparkling at me. It's a pink I would actually wear, it's that beautiful.



Lisa. My pictures of this didn't come out so well despite me taking dozens of them, so I'm going to try to explain it the best I can to give you a better idea of how it looks in real life. It's red-based, a lighter shade than Sarah but with sort of a faint pink tone to it. The finish is extremely sparkly glass-fleck type glitter like the shades in the Sparkle collection. It's much more saturated in real life, not so faded looking like it looks in my pictures. Very, very sparkly.



Sara / Sarah. I don't know which it is- my bottle says "Sara" without the H, but the spoons say "Sarah". The color is really rich in this polish. It's so festive and pretty. It's a really great deeper shade of red, not quite the bright candy red of Lisa, more of a fruit punch type of red. Cool toned. Super mega sparkly. Same sparkle finish of Lisa, just a deeper, cooler red. The perfect Christmas red! My pictures don't capture how nice and colorful this is, if you're thinking of ordering spoons, take a look at this one!



Tiffany. A peach foil! I don't think I've seen many of those. It's a little coppery but on my nails it looks more peach and champagne with some soft gold and silver than reddish copper. I keep using the word 'sparkly' but that's really the best way to describe all these colors. They sparkle like crazy. It's like opening up a treasure chest full of gold and jewels. They need one of those chime sparkle sound effects to go with them when you wear them. Kinda like this:





Valerie. This is really an amazing color. I like all the colors in this collection but this one is just... wow... I mean, look at it! It's purple, it's sparkly, it has gold and pink duochrome... What's not to love? This may be my favorite Zoya color of all time. It takes all the elements I love from sparkly duochrome purples like Zoya Mimi, Claire's Magic, Milani Totally Cool, et cetera but it gets rid of the sheerness and darkens them into a dramatic, sparkling vampy purple that has my name written all over it. It's a red based purple with pink sparkle and depending on the light and angle at which you view it you'll see red and gold sparkle as well. You can see some of it stuck to the bottle. So gorgeous.

There are two distinct finishes in this collection: foil and sparkle.

The foils: Gloria, Crystal and Tiffany

These are the foil shades. If you're unfamiliar with a foil finish, a foil is made up of tiny smooth metallic particles and they combine on the nail to create a sparkly metal effect. They're reflective and smooth, they don't show brushstrokes and they look just fine without topcoat. The foils in Fire and Ice are all multi-tonal- you can see lots of iridescent color when you wear them. Top notch, very complex.

The sparkles: Lisa, Valerie, Sarah.

And these are the sparkles. If you have the Zoya Sparkle collection from this summer you'll be familiar with Zoya's sparkle finish. It's glittery, but not in a traditional glitter type of way. Traditional glitter is a very defined particle, usually round or hexagon shaped, made of plastic with shiny coating. They almost always have texture in a polish- think Zoya Roxy, OPI Absolutely Alice or China Glaze Atlantis. But the glitter in the sparkle finish polishes is a smooth shiny pearl particle- almost like tiny glass beads embedded in the polish. They don't have much of a texture and won't feel bumpy like a traditional glitter particle. I'm not sure what exactly they're made of but they make me think of glass or crystal.

The formula on these was great. The sparkle shades were nearly one-coaters, extremely opaque. The foil shades were more on the sheer side and needed two coats. I did two coats of everything. The sparkles dry to a dull finish so topcoat is a must (topcoat is a must regardless, though!). The foils dry glassy even without topcoat. Application is smooth and even. Drying time is good. Removal isn't difficult but you'll likely be left with some sparkly stuff on your fingers afterward.

Overall, this is a kick-ass collection. I crave sparkles. I love every single color and I'd wear them all. Obviously, Valerie is my favorite. These are nice winter shades, icy blue and festive red, but no reason at all you couldn't wear them year round. I think Tiffany is actually a nice beachy looking shade for summer. All the shades are packed with life and sparkle and magic and they make me want to stare at my fingertips all day. Distracting!

(These were sent to me for review.)

Barielle Holiday Hustle Collection for Winter/Holiday 2010

I was at Costco this week and noticed that they had already taken down the Halloween decoration aisle and put up the Christmas decoration aisle! It's September! I've never seen them do that before. I feel like I'm being rushed! Luckily that is not the case with Holiday polish collections... I'm the opposite with those- I want them in June! Ha!

Here's Barielle's Holiday offering:


Coaldest Day Of The Year. Yes, Coal-dest. I know. *groan* I think it wants to be OPI's Baby It's "Coal" Outside, from the looks of things. This is a black/charcoal with blue-toned silver large particle shimmer. It's not round shimmer, it's more like broken pieces of shimmer. Icy.



Elle's Spell. My favorite of the collection. This is a dark candy apple or light wine red sheer base with red/orange toned opal flakes, a la Nfu Oh. This is rather sheer and not quite as jelly like as I had thought from looking at it in the bottle so it may look better layered if you want a stronger flaky effect.


Get Me To The Party. A deep bronzy gold. Looks sort of duochrome, doesn't it? Has the lighter gold area in the center and the deeper more bronze color on the edges. A little frosty but more metallic than pure frost, but definitely not chrome.



Jess' Champagne Toast. This one is painful. Look how AMAZING it looks in the bottle! It's spectacular! I could barely believe what I was seeing when I held the bottle up in the sunlight. It's a periwinkle leaning toward light lilac frosty metallic base with lots of pink microglitter. Sadly, it doesn't translate on the nail. It looks lumpy and bubbly because the frost base is too, well, frosty? And the glitter is too delicate to be seen through the thick frost. It always makes me wonder when I see a polish like this.... Did they actually wear the color on the nail before they decided to release it? This totally could have been saved with a thinner, more sheer metallic base!


Snow Day. This one is more like a chrome. It's a super reflective metallic blue-toned silver. Very blue toned... Maybe it's actually a silvery blue! Ha! But yes, you will need to be careful with brushstrokes. Frosty.


Wrap Me In Ribbon. This does remind me of ribbon. Pretty. It's a mauve metallic frost, again not a plain frost but more of the China Glaze Romantique Chrome reflective type of frost. You can see how reflective it is in the picture but you can also see some brush strokes.

The formula on these was odd. Elle's Spell and Coaldest Day Of The Year were really thick and a little goopy but the rest of the colors were oddly... soft feeling? I can't even describe it. It's like they're oily or too soft or maybe airy? Know what I'm talking about? They feel strange going on. Maybe it's the too-soft brush. I'm really not digging Barielle's brush lately, it doesn't conform to my nail and I can never get a nice application with it. Drying time is long.


I don't know what to say about this collection. I like some of the colors like Elle's Spell and Get Me To The Party. It just seems like Barielle is making so many frosts lately. I miss the Barielle I fell in love with in 2008.

(These were sent to me for review.)

All MAC Browns

I don't normally go for browns on my eyes unless there's glitter involved, but thought I'd venture out of my comfort zone and do an all brown look...




This was:

MAC Paint Pot in Painterly
MAC Patina on lid
MAC Smut in crease
MAC Glitter Liner in Enbronze

I tried to get a blurry shot to show the glitter in Enbronze, but I could only get a few sparkles to show up:


See the sparkles? It's not really a very glittery glitter liner, but it does have some sparkle to it. It flakes if you apply too much, though. I prefer Too Faced's glitter liners over MAC, but sometimes MAC has really nice colors.

Patina is a really nice shade. It's a really soft light brown with some read pearl in it, sort of duochrome-ish, you get the brown/tan base and then at some angles you get the red pearl. Very soft color.

OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow Suede Fall 2010

OPI's converted another one of their shades into a matte-finish Suede polish. This time it's the dark blackened green from last Fall's Spain collection called Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow.


Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow Suede. Why do I always stick my finger in the polish and ruin it?! It seems like it always happens on the best colors, too. Sorry about the big lumpy smudge on my ring finger. Anyway, this is a rich emerald green matte that's jam-packed with tons of foily silver shimmer. As you can see, it looks absolutely nothing like the original Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow:

OPI Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow (La Coleccion de España, Fall 2009)

Seems to be a common theme among OPI's suede polishes- looking pretty much nothing like their namesake.

The finish is the full-on no shine chalky matte that I adore and it seems to stay matte much longer than I'm used to. Doesn't get shiny by the end of the day. It dries super fast. It does not wear as long as normal polish because it is a matte, but I got three days with no chips when I used this with Gelous basecoat.

If you thought it was beautiful with its natural matte finish, wait until you see this:

OPI Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow Suede with one coat of Seche Vite Topcoat. I can't handle all this awesome. Can you believe this?? It's the most ridiculously sparkly luminous evergreen shade ever when you add topcoat. It sparkles more than most glitter polishes and there's not even any glitter in this! Must be because of all those little foil particles that OPI uses in their suede polishes. It's good matte, but it's AMAZING with topcoat.

The formula was great. Totally smooth, not too thick, didn't dry too fast. Use enough polish on the brush when you apply and you won't have any problems. I did two coats here. Dry time is super fast. Wear isn't great, but it is good for a matte, I got three days before it chipped with the basecoat I used.

You know what I like about this color? It reminds me of these Christmas ornaments I have. They come in frosted forest green and deep burgundy red. I hung them from the chandelier last year instead of putting them on the tree and they looked really pretty. I love Christmas, so anything that reminds me of it becomes a favorite of mine. Hell, I love every holiday so anything that reminds me of any holiday gets high praise from me. Especially if it sparkles!

(This was sent to me for review.)

Finger Paints Breast Cancer Awareness Shades 2010

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Sally Beauty's Finger Paints brand has released two pink shades to help raise awareness:

I'm A Survivor. This is a deep candy pink with large silver shimmer flecks.

And...

I Pink I Can. This one is a pale baby pink with a very fine silvery shimmer.


None of the proceeds from the sale of the individual polishes will be donated, but Sally Beauty will be making a $65,000 donation to Cancer Support Community in October.

These will be available at Sally Beauty starting October 1st and they retail for $4.99 each.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Fyrinnae Purple, Green and Peach look

I haven't been taking any pictures of my makeup lately. Truth is, seeing all these macro pictures of my eyebrows made me a little neurotic, so I did something I know I should never, ever do... I sat down in front of the 16x magnifying mirror and over-tweezed my eyebrows. D'oh. So I've been growing them out again and they look really rough right now and I can't bear to look at them in macro.

But, I do have a lot of older pictures I haven't gotten around to posting. This one's from July and I really liked the peachy-gold and purple combination with my eye color:




This was (to the best of my memory):

Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Fyrinnae Rapunzel Had Extensions applied wet on lid
MAC Purple Shower in crease, topped with a little Fyrinnae Meerkat
Fyrinnae Dragon's Wing wet as liner
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Rapunzel Had Extensions is a Fyrinnae must have if you ask me. It's just so pretty and easy to wear. Peachy-pinky gold duochrome. Very lovely. Goes well with a lot of different colors.

I think I may have mentioned that I gave up on The Falsies mascara and I'm onto Revlon Grow Luscious now. There was nothing wrong with my beloved Lash Blast, but you know me... Always wanting to try something new even if the thing I currently have works just fine. But yeah, that Revlon Grow Luscious? AWESOME. I may even like it better than Lash Blast. It makes my lashes so... what's the word I'm looking for? Luxurious? Lush? Lush, that's it. Really full and lush looking. I'm glad I tried it. It was on sale at CVS and had a free eyeliner packaged with it so I had to get it. I like the eyeliner, too, it's a Color Stay black retractable eyeliner. Maybe I'll do a review. I want to, I get distracted easily so I always forget these things...

China Glaze Rodeo Diva Fall 2008 Revisited

This collection was released in 2008 but to this day, even after the dozens of new collections that have been released since then, China Glaze's Rodeo Diva remains one of my favorite collections of all time. This is what a fall collection should look like.

When I posted my swatches two years ago I was so excited about these colors that I rushed and posted pretty crappy pictures. I just couldn't wait, I was so thrilled that I had to post them immediately! But the lighting was bad, my application was shaky and I had some broken nails. So, I figured it was about time I try to do these amazing polishes justice.

Here they are once again, the incredible China Glaze Rodeo Diva polishes.


Branding Iron. A deep blackened red shimmer. One of my favorite kinds of colors! See how it looks dark on the edges and light in the middle? I can't get enough of those colors.



Cowgirl Up. Amazing red-purple shimmer. Possibly in frost territory? The shimmer is really fine like a frost but this is just too pretty and smooth to be a true streaky-silvery frost. This shade looks really amazing in the sunlight, it has hidden iridescent shimmer!



Golden Spurs. A warm light suede brown base with gold shimmer. This one doesn't look that great on me but I still love the color. So much pretty gold shimmer!



Gussied Up Green. I remember this being my favorite one when I first got this collection, but now I can't pick a favorite. This is a blackened blue-leaning green shimmer. Very dark but when the sunlight hits it it really sparkles.



Lasso My Heart. A mauve purple foil. Not as dense or silver-toned like most foils, this one is pure color and very smooth.


Midnight Ride. Extremely dark purple shimmer. Dark and dramatic. Looks mostly black indoors but in the sunlight you get glints of glorious purple.



Prize-Winning Mare. Similar to Golden Spurs in concept- a light brown base with gold shimmer. This one is much more shiny and metallic, though, and not as warm. The overall effect of this one is actually more of a bronze foil metallic look than just a plain shimmer.



Red Stallion. This color never photographs right for me! It's so metallic and shiny that my camera freaks out. It's a bright metallic red, very glowy, almost radioactive.


Rodeo Fanatic. Medium blue shimmer. Seems to be a tiny bit on the teal side- doesn't look like straight pure blue to me. Maybe there's a touch of green in the formula?



Side Saddle. The base of Side Saddle is a dark brown-toned plum shade. Raisin perhaps? Brown and purple, a bit like Lancome Lizzie Jagger. The shimmer in this is very shiny light gold.


Wagon Trail. What a cool color. It's a black base with gold shimmer but it combines on the nail to look like a olive green. Looks amazing in the sunlight.



Yee-Haw! Orangey, coral-ish pink and gold shimmer. Quite warm. Has an almost duochrome look to is because the pink-coral-peach base and the gold shimmer are each so strong that you see more gold where the light hits it and more pink where the light is indirect.


This was during the area where China Glaze's formula was on the iffy side. Runny, drippy yet thick. Remember those days? The formula on these was actually not bad, but not the easiest to control. I did three coats in all these pictures. Drying time is on the long side for some colors but not for all of them.

Still love this collection... Still get excited about it every time I see the colors. Not very many polish collections have that sort of effect on me!

I don't think any of these colors are particularly hard to find even though they're a few years old. I wonder if any of them have been made permanent? I'll have to find out!