Zoya Flash and Sparkle Collections Summer 2010

Well well well what have we here!? Another double collection from Zoya, which to me seems like bright cremes for summer days and shimmery jellies for summer nights. Hot, just like the season! I like that they went with deeper colors for the season, not light shades or pastels. By making the Flash brights, they keep the summer feeling for the cremes, and by making the Sparkle shimmery they catch a "night out on the town" summery feeling. Hot days, hot nights, hot nails.

Let's start with the cremes - the Flash collection. These remind me of the OPIs of last year which were inspired by those dumb tight pants which make everyone look fat except supermodels and wimpy boys. The Zoya creme formula is nice, maybe a touch thick, thin it with Zoya Renew or another thinner like my favorite, Poshe Polish Reviver, which is like 2 bucks or something for a pretty big bottle.

The sky blue, Zoya Robyn, is very close to OPI No Room for the Blues and Creative Hot Pop Blue (which was my better/cheaper alternative to OPI No Room for the Blues), but it is actually a shade darker.


Zoya Jancyn is a smooth citrus orange, I like it even though I don't, as a rule, like orange. I know OPI had In My Back Pocket - very similar though I believe that was a shade darker than Jancyn.


Zoya Perrie is a medium purple with some red in it, so it isn't much like Zoya Malia or OPI A Grape Fit. It's like a lighter Creative Studio 54 or MAC For Fun.


Zoya Jolene is a pretty standard candy pink. Very very close to China Glaze summer offering, Sugar High, which is much cheaper. It's a lot like Black Phoenix Croquet also, but hotter pink.


Zoya Maura is your standard hot red. I actually kinda like it, even though it's not my style, and is that kind of red I always shreik at when I see it on people's lips. It's a tad bluer than Zoya America, but not so different I see the point, really.


Zoya Dana: fuchsia pink. What's more to say? Cute. It's the same fuchsia pink we see everywhere but it's mercifully free of the omnipresent blurple shimmer, which makes this a kind of relief.


Onto Sparkle Collection - the SHIMMERS!!! The size and style of shimmer reminds me very much of OPI's Winter 2009 Collection I loved so much. These are nice, easily applied shimmery jellies (except for Zoya Nidhi, which is a creme). DELUMPCIOUS!!! They loosely follow the color array of the Flash Collection, with a couple replacements, but in a darker shade. Love!

Zoya Gilda is probably Dana's match, and even though it adds that tired blurple back to the fuchsia, it manages, with the jelly and the shimmer grain size, to be fresh and yummy. I guess it could be Jolene's match if Zoya Alegra is Dana's match, but Gilda matches Dana better than Jolene (see below).


Zoya Mimi is a deep royal purple shimmer jelly. Sweet.


Zoya Alegra, Dana's match? Who knows. Anyway this is a magenta with blurple shimmer. I like it.


Zoya Charla is, in my opinion, the masterpiece. It's like looking at tropical waters. It's an absolutely stunning teal my camera could not do justice. I just stared and stared at this, it is so beautiful. It absolutely glows on the nail, with an almost metallic shine. An instant addition to my top 10 polishes of all time.


Zoya Ivanka is, thankfully, NOT dark green. I am fucking sick of dark greens. I don't think it's the greatest green ever, but it's nice, shimmery, and I love the jelly!


Last but not least Zoya Nidhi is a cream with large blue shimmer. I wish the shimmer showed up more because this counterpart to Zoya Maura is an absolute STUNNER because of the blue shimmer in it. It's hot and original and a must have. LOVE.


Enjoy them, you shouldn't be disappointed with any of them unless you already have a close dupe. But BUY CHARLA!!

BleachBlack Dick Weed

Got hipped to this by a friend, dude. http://needsupply.com/womens/brands/bleachblack/dick-weed.html

It looks jawdropping in the advertising picture doesn't it???? I thought it would be like wearing the carapace of a beetle or a bluebottle fly.

It's pretty but it's basically shimmer in a smoky jelly base. It needed to be a fully pigmented color and have more metallic to it.

BleachBlack Dick Weed:


Looks like a not so shiny Zoya Akyra.


Color Club Emerald Depths is better too. Both are cheaper.

Zoya Reverie Spring 2010 Collection

I love pink/green duochrome shimmer. I LOVE it. And every single color in Zoya's Reverie Collection for Spring 2010 has it. Oh sigh. It's so fucking purty.

This is a kind of "Valentine's Day" collection, made up of two pinks, two red/oranges, a purple and a silver all in incredibly thick rainbow microshimmer, so thick it's nearly a frost in application. You might see streaks when you put it on, but let it settle and it goes back to a sleek coat. Just try to be a bit even in your application and you should be okay. It's a good formula, Zoya pretty much always is, so it applies nicely and two coats did me for a nice opaque polish job. This absolutely needs topcoat though, for you non-topcoat wearers, as I found it dried a bit dull, but you should wear topcoat anyway. It brings out the full beauty of a nail polish (except a matte, of course).

You can't always see the duochrome effect in my pics, I think the purple, Adina, shows it well, and I think Reece shows the pink aspect okay. Just know it has it.

Zoya Happi, the light pink:


Zoya Reece, the dark pink:


Zoya Gwin, the orangier red/orange:


Zoya Lana, the redder red/orange:


Zoya Adina, the purple:


Zoya Laney, the silver:

OPI DS Mystery and DS Glow, Where I Have Been and My Nails

SO! Where have I been? Well, I did say I'd be gone most of December. The Winter Holidays are a time of much celebration and stuff to do in my life. Then on December 31, I had some surgery. I recovered just in time to start school, then get sick. Eyeroll and sigh. I am all better now, for the most part. But since I started clinicals in Nursing, I will be much busier. I have also run out of stuff to do daily polish posts about. I'll be posting stuff I buy, and most new collections, but I probably won't be posting daily any more. To top it all off, I have to keep my nails 1/8th inch from now on, so pretty much everything you are going to see from now on is fake nails. Eh, no biggie. I have one more collection to post, possibly tomorrow, then get ready for the POLISH MAYHEM 2009 POLISH COLLECTION AWARDS. My Top 5 Favorite and Least favorite Polish Collections of 2009!!!

So anyway on to OPI DS Mystery and DS Glow. I've been waiting for these a while, and I am sure most other blogs swatched these ahead of me. I like these. Same great DS formula, so very easy to use and so pigment rich. The shimmer in these is intense, pinpoint, and packs a nice punch. Your typical OPI DS. Great quality.

DS Mystery is a nearly black deep royal purple jelly with a bronze/old gold shimmer. Really nice. I expected a lighter shade, but this is lovely.


DS Glow is the same bronze/old gold shimmer as in DS Mystery, but that is all there is to this. I really love this. So many golds are frosts, or cremes with a lot of shimmer in them. This is slightly sheer, and is gonna look INCREDIBLE in the summer, next to a good tan. Wearing this is going to make you look like a summer goddess, trust me. Believe me you will be seeing it on my hands!


Nice. OPI DS polishes seem to disappoint me very seldom.

Island Girl Nail Polish

I dunno who makes this polish, Island Girl, but it has a VERY familiar sort of daisy shape on the top of the cap (no not Color Club). But it is sold at these stores in the mall called "ABC", which are the kind of convenience store that preys on hungry/needy shoppers and tourists and sells them massively overpriced items. I always ignore it until one day the corner of my eye caught a big nail polish display! These are only $2.99 and they have a large array of colors, but they are mostly very bright and/or glittery. So if you like that search them out.

I bought four but one ran away. I have no idea where it is, I mean it.

Island Girl Island Color is tiny pink and silver glitter, very opaque with a few coats.


Island Girl Island Volcanic is not volcanic, but it is a very nice blue semi-metallic. It has this neat grainy quality I really like. Reminds me very much of NDB Midnight. Easy to apply, and one coat perfect.


Island Girl Mahalo Dream - Very sheer orangy-pink jelly with rainbow glitter.

FingerPaints Holiday Collection

I like FingerPaints. They have a good formula, easy to apply, looks great. Their holiday collection is six shimmers. I did not get the medium red with very fine subtle gold shimmer (Snowman's Scarf), it just looked like a ton of other stuff to me. Also I did not get Sparkling Snow, which is your standard silver shimmer. IMO if you have one you have them all.

The other four are pretty nice, though! the shimmer in most of these is large grain, almost like clear sheets. It's neat. It manages to be subtle and yet impactful. If glitter is a rhinestone covered dress, and shimmer is a sequinned dress, this is a satin dress. If you get me. It shines yet it is not on your face. If you can wear these color shades to work, you won't be worried they'll be too bling and get you a raised eyebrow. I think they're sophisticated.

FingerPaints Candy Cane Shimmer is a medium red with smaller shimmer than the other polishes. The thing about this is it really does kind of have a satin sheen, rather than any shimmer. And the genius of this polish is that it looks EXACTLY like the red ribbon you buy at the store to wrap presents with. Not the new prismatic or mylar ones, the old style. Go check it out and see! I think it's so cool.


FingerPaints Decked With Dazzle is my least favorite. It's a reddish purple, kinda a red grape look. It has very nice chunky shimmer, but it's very sheer. It's pretty but I am not wowed. But you may be and the quality is nice, just the sheerness was unwelcome.


Gorgeous deep purple with the same chunky shimmer, FingerPaints Icy Iris is absolutely taking a place in my "keep" pile.


The clear queen of the bunch is FingerPaints Evergreen Dreams. Wow, a green not named after Envy. Imagine that! It's a gorgeous emerald green shimmer. One incredibly cool thing about it is when you apply a matte topcoat, it looks EXACTLY like Zoya Veruschka, which I will be demonstrating in the next couple of days when I review the Zoya Matte collection which came out a while ago, which I somehow neglected to be sent review copies of. :disgruntled and horrified face: Grin. Anyway this is a winner.


Here's FingerPaints Evergreen Dream first topped with Hard Candy Break Up, then FingerPaints Evergreen Dream topped with Hard Candy Break Up and Essie Matte About You topcoat! What I won't do for fun, eh?

Black Phoenix Claw Polish

I was the very lucky recipient of some of the illustrious Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's nail polish, which they call Claw Polish (love it)! BPAL doesn't just make hundreds of incredible artisan perfume oils in "magickal, pagan and mythological blends, Renaissance, Medieval and Victorian formulas, and horror / Gothic-themed scents", they do jewelry, Tshirts and assorted neat stuff which fortunately includes a growing offering of nail polishes (under the Black Phoenix Trading Post arm of the site). Mostly now it is blacks and browns, deep reds and a few pinks, and one glow in the dark. I hope to see them branch out! They certainly have enough inspiration.

First thing that is notable is the formula was quite surprising. It was terrific. A polish line in which the CREMES are more manageable than the jellies??? Wow. Dries fast, hard and just like glass. It's incredibly shiny stuff. I would use topcoat for protection but it is in no way needed for a glossy finish. It's kickass. The brush may be a bit stubby for you long brush lovers, but otherwise is standard. Anyway all due accolades to the talented people at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Thank you!!

I tried a different style photograph for these polishes, inspired by the "Claw Polish" name. Yes, Napoleon, I have large talons. If you hate it feel free to call me an asswipe.

You're going to have to take my word for it that Destroying Angel is not black. it's a dark chocolate, but it's browner than the picture. I am sure I will try again at some point.


Smokestack is actually a very dark blurple jelly with a ton of very fine subtle shimmer. It packs far more punch than you think it will. Very nice.


Croquet they call a flamingo pink, I think it's a bit softer and a great deal prettier than flamingo. Bet the Sissies will love this one!


Malediction is simply black, with that stunning super-gloss that China Glaze Patent Leather has. This is a jelly, not a creme.


Sed Non Satiata is a smooth, sleek berry.


Robotic Scarab is a gleaming bronze shimmer. I drool on this.


Bordello is a beautiful lightly metallic raspberry shimmer. Suckable!

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - Orly Golden Jubilee

How about a nice warm harvesty golden color for Turkey Day?

Orly Golden Jubilee:

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - NYX Las Vegas Green and Nyx Las Vegas Purple

Two great colors I couldn't live without. Nyx Las Vegas Green is less sheer than it looks. It's a brilliant dark emerald with dark blue shimmer. It is a lot like a greener version of Nubar Earth. I love it.


Nyx Las Vegas Purple is a deep purple shimmer with plenty of rainbow glitter. This

Pretty sure this is still available, but be sure to specify Green or Purple when you order, or contact the seller first, as both are just called "Las Vegas".

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - Chanel Metal Garnet

I have loved Chanel Metal Garnet since high school. I think it's better than a naked male model. Lasts longer, too!

Chanel Metal Garnet:

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - Nubar Moodies #M138

Nubar Moodies don't work. Pretty much a given. But this one KINDA works. As you can see the tip is a nice warm bronze and the top half of the nail is a beautiful gilded orange falling leaf color. It kind of gives you a fall leaf manicure all on its own.

Nubar Moodies #M138:

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - Maybelline Denim Inspired Polishes

I go crazy over denim inspired polishes. I have no idea why, I am not crazy over blue jeans, even though I wear them a lot like most people. But denim type nail polish makes me nuts. Go figure.

Maybelline Jean Jacket. Shimmer soaked. Has a great purple shine, kinda like OPI Ink. Really reminds me of new unwashed denim.


Maybelline Button Fly is a creme, love this so very much.


I don't think Maybelline Blue Chill is denim inspired, but it still reminds me of very old, very faded denim. Great grey/blue with blue shimmer.


I've posted Zoya Jo before but it also reminds me of denim.


Any other denim polishes you know of you can hip me to, dude, I'd love it.

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - China Glaze Wagon Trail

So I finally got China Glaze Wagon Trail! So let's compare it to MAC Seriously Hip and OPI At Your Quebec & Call, shall we? I will probably do an on-finger comparison too, later, but for now we can compare photos.

China Glaze Wagon Trail, olive brown shimmer with pinpoint rainbow shimmer:

MAC Seriously Hip is a black jelly, though, with olive shimmer, whereas Wagon's has a brown tone added. So similar, but not exact:

OPI At Your Quebec & Call - much lighter, but same color as Seriously Hip, if you get me. Has the pinpoint rainbow shimmer, maybe not as much as China Glaze Wagon trail?


All in all my fave is still OPI At Your Quebec & Call.