Friday 31 August 2018

Zoya Kieko and Rea

Todays nails are purples, the lovely Kieko and Rea.

Kieko is a gorgeous dark orchid pink toned purple, perfect formula, opaque in 2 coats. The bottle shot is showing the colour a bit brighter than it should be, the swatch picture is a truer colour.

Rea is a metallic purple with huge silver shimmer, the base colour is a lilac plum, this was also a perfect formula and opaque in 2 coats.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Kieko
Year - 2011
Number - ZP555
Coats - 2
Finish - Creme
Collection - Summertime
Colour - Purple
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Rea
Year - 2007
Number - ZP418
Coats - 2
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Downtown
Colour - Purple

Topcoat - None




Thursday 30 August 2018

Zoya Blair & Colbie

Todays ladies are the stunning Blair and Colbie

I managed to find a few more early Zoya from here

https://www.backstagericcione.it/zoya/

This is an Italian site which ships to the UK, so I got the ones below. They are from left to right

Diem, Portia, Lindsay, Katy, Harlow, Kate, Colbie, Jasmine, Aria, Lordana.





A Zoya a Day
Name - Blair
Year - 2008
Number - ZP458
Coats - 1
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Pulse
Colour - Red
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Colbie
Year - 2008
Number - ZP459
Coats - 2
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Pulse
Colour - Red
Topcoat - None


These two are from the same collection,  the Pulse and Vibe collections where from fall 2008, these two are from the Pulse side, Blair is a deep vampy red with purple undertones, opaque in one glorious coat, perfect formula no running or pooling.  Colbie is also a red but with a lush deep brown undertone giving it an almost copper feel, this took two coats but the formula was perfect just a bit sheer.




Blair in the shade and sun.


Colbie in the shade and sun.



Below in the sun, Colbie to the left and Blair to the right.


















Monday 27 August 2018

Broken nails and shorties!

Well that was an exciting return to F1 then, Spa is always crazy and yesterday was no exception! We have Fernando Alonso's car flying over Charles Leclerc's car at the very first corner, thankfully due to the halo no-one was hurt!

Now on the sad tail of my nails. So below you can see the two broken nails on my left hand, I did have silk wrap and nail glue used to hold the breaks, unfortunately they weren't holding and I've had to cut everything back.

The bottom picture is what I was left with, and yes my nails are stained, they stain very easily and I wear double basecoat as a matter of course.  You can see on the side by side that my right ring finger looks whiter than the others, this one also was wearing a silk wrap patch for quite a while.



Friday 24 August 2018

Zoya Breezi and Tart

Ah Friday and F1 is back from its summer break, we're at my favourite circuit the amazing Spa Francorchamps :)

Today I have 2 super pretty blues.

Breezi is a very unusual colour its a muted almost airforce blue with a green undertone, I did 2 coats the formula was great just a tiny bit sheer on that first coat, I think when I use this again I could get it to be a one coater. The pictures in the shade are more colour accurate, its a tricky colour to photograph.

Tart is an electric blue metallic, almost chrome like, I did three coats of this as it was sheer, but the formula was good. I was going to leave it at 2 coats but I felt it wasnt quite the same as the bottle colour.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Breezi
Year - 2011
Number - ZP557
Coats - 2
Finish - Creme
Collection - Summertime
Colour - Blue
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Tart

Year - 2007
Number - ZP402
Coats - 3
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Candy
Colour - Blue
Topcoat - None









Thursday 23 August 2018

Zoya Meg and Shawn

Evening all

today I have a pair of lush greens for you, both of these were amazing one coaters and they both stamped too, I do love a multi-purpose polish.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Meg

Year - 2012
Number - ZP624
Coats - 1
Finish - Shimmer/Metallic
Collection - Surf
Colour - Green
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Shawn

Year - 2010
Number - ZP524
Coats - 1
Finish - Creme
Collection - Wonderful
Colour - Green
Topcoat - None


I then used each to stamp on the other and it turned out quite pretty. 

Below you can see where I had to fix my index nail on my left hand, broken when I was changing the bedding.  I've also had to fix my middle finger nail on the same hand.  Silk wrap is amazing with nail glue and very strong, I'm going to have this on quite a while as the break is very low.  Although I could change my mind and snipe them all and go nubbins again.








Monday 20 August 2018

Zoya Kaufda & Kym

Sorry for the lack of posts been struggling with the migraines the past week.

Anywho on to the polish!

Today I have the lovely Kaufda  and Kym, both of those ladies are deep oranges, with Kym being the slightly darker one.

Kaufda is a gorgeous almost chrome like dark orange with shimmer.

Kym is a very dark red toned orange with much bigger shimmer particles.

They were both beautifully opaque in two coats, perfect formula.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Kaufda

Year - 1990
Number - ZP195
Coats - 2
Finish - Shimmer/Metallic
Collection - Classic
Colour -Orange
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Kym

Year - 2010
Number - ZP530
Coats - 2
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Wicked
Colour - ORange
Topcoat - None















Saturday 11 August 2018

Marble Nails

Today on the blog I decided to try out marble nails.

I used the following

Zoya - Anchor, Saint, Ziv and Guilty 18k real gold topcoat.

Virago Varnish - Grunge and Not A Happy Camper

Clear Jelly Stamper - Big Bling Stamper

POP Polish - Liquid Glass topcoat.

Fab Ur Nails - Plate Fun 21

I started with my usual 2 coats of Anchor basecoat, then I did 2 coats of Saint, then it was time to stamp :)

The plate has several marble stamps and I used two, one a vein like one and the other more mosaic like.

I started with the mosaic image using Ziv which is a gold sparkle polish,  then the veined image and the first polish was Not a Happy Camper which is the light blue I then used the veined image again but with Grunge the purple, I then topped everything with Liquid Glass and cleaned up, my last step was to put one coat of Guilty over the marble for a little extra bling.

I am very pleased with how these turned out.







Friday 10 August 2018

Zoya Sailor and Feifei

Todays Zoya ladies are Sailor and Feifei

Zoya uses girls names for their naming convention.

A Zoya a Day
Name - Sailor

Year - 2012
Number - ZP696
Coats - 1
Finish - Creme
Collection - Cashmere
Colour - Navy
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Feifei

Year - 2013
Number - ZP636
Coats - 3
Finish - Metallic
Collection - Diva
Colour - Blue
Topcoat - None


Sailor is a perfect one coat wonder, a lovely deep French navy, the perfect formula and super shiny no topcoat needed unless you want to wear it longer than I do. It looks dusty on the swatch stick because of the surface of the stick on the nail its shiny.





Miss Feifei is a blue/gold metallic with lighter blue flecks in a smokey grey base, this is not a glitter so it wont be a pain to take off its more like their scattered holos.



I also compared Feifei with Crystal and Hazel below, as you can see while they are similar they are all different enough to have all three. You can see Crystal and Hazel look the most similar but Crystal has much bigger golden flecks than Hazel while Feifei is much more smoky blue.





In the mani I also put one coat of Feifei over Sailer on my middle nails and it looks great as a topper too :) 















Thursday 9 August 2018

Zoya Anthea and Kamilah

Todays stunning Zoya ladies are both red shimmer beauties!

Kamilah and Anthea

A Zoya a Day
Name - Kamilah

Year - 2007
Number - ZP430
Coats - 3
Finish - Shimmer
Collection - Utopia
Colour - Red
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Anthea

Year - 2000
Number - ZP238
Coats - 3
Finish - Red
Collection - Clasic
Colour - Red
Topcoat - None


Kamilah is from one of my favourite collections from Zoya and I own all of them, this is them below and from left to right they are 

Akyra
Irene
Juno
Austine
Kamilah
Tama


These were both 3 coats but purely because they need to be sheer so you can see the shimmer in them. Kamilah is a very strong pure red which will be fantastic for Christmas manicures as its that ribbon type shine.

The lovely Anthea is from Zoya's original classic collection and is a very pink toned red with a golden shimmer.

I have to say I am enjoying putting red polish on, not sure why as I wasnt really a red person before but I'm coming round to it as there are so many different shades :) 

Todays book is Bloody Bones by Laurell K Hamilton who writes the Anita Blake vampire series of books, I dived into these as I was looking for a good long series to get my teeth into and this is fitting the bill brilliantly :) check out my instagram for more random pics



On my left hand I wore Kamilah and on my right I wore Anthea :) 








Cutting the nails

I love long nails, however, as soon as I get longer nails I usually end up snagging and breaking one right down to the quick.

I was very surprised I managed to grow them as long as I did without braking one, then it became impossible to type on my phone or laptop so I had to trim them down before I broke one.

A before pic :)


The after pic, I'd still call these long on me.


Tuesday 7 August 2018

Zoya Lara and Jewel

What a horrible week I have had, hubs took last week off so we could go do some day trips to interesting places, I was only well enough on one day and managed to go to Chatsworth House, Chatsworth is amazing but bring a torch! they keep the light limited to protect all the art work etc.

I also didnt manage to change my nails for a whole week which felt very odd!

Today I have the lovely Lara and Jewel, these two look very similar indeed but there is a tiny difference promise! If you have one you wont need the other unless you are obsessed and a collector liked me :)

A Zoya a Day
Name - Lara

Year - 2012
Number - ZP615
Coats - 2
Finish - Creme
Collection - Beach
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None

A Zoya a Day
Name - Jewel

Year - 2000
Number - ZP225
Coats - 2
Finish - Creme
Collection - Clasic
Colour - Pink
Topcoat - None


The last picture shows Jewel has a violet pink shimmer, this sadly does not show up on the nail.

I'm sure if you can tell but when I wear two polishes at a time I paint the middle 2 fingers one colour and the rest of the fingers the second colour and reverse this order on the other hand. Like the below pic.

These 2 pinks were very close indeed, Lara has a hint more blue tone to it but I'd say it was only one shade more blue and quite difficult to pick out.