NEON LOVE

I cannot contain the happiness that my nails today bring me.

If you don't yet know, I love orange. The color just makes me want to skip around singing about puppies and rainbows and butterflies.

Additionally, if you don't yet know, I love neon colors. Neons just make me want to run around screaming because that's how insanely wonderful I find them.

So, if you haven't yet figured it out yet, today's post is about a neon orange polish: Nina Orange Flame.

Nina Orange Flame

BAM! Orange Flame is so bright I want to die. Now, Orange Flame is a little sheer so I had to use a plain white creme underneath, but I've used Orange Flame before and it's equally bright without the white base.

I was so determined to fully capture the amazingness of this orange that I ran around everywhere in my house and on my street (yes...really) taking pictures to try to get the brightest picture possible.

Sooooo if we can please ignore the current ugly state of my hands and just marvel at the beautific color on my nails, that would be great.

Anyway, I was worried about this polish at first 'cause I'd never heard of the Nina brand before. She was a little streaky, but I find most neon polishes are streaky. One great thing about Orange Flame (and all neons, I guess) was how fast she dried...I could do my second coat immediately after I finished the first. (Pictures are of three coats.)

For someone obsessed with orange AND neon, this polish was a dream come true. What's your dream shade of nail polish? Is it too far past summer for neon nails? (No! Never!!)

Stay happy!

Zoya Song

Why, hello there!

I've got yet another Zoya blue today! It's Song from their Fall 2012 collection, Diva (the same one Zoya Elisa, my favorite red, comes from!).

Song is a dark royal blue (not quite navy, though) with this sparkly almost-metallic thing going on.

Zoya Song

I couldn't seem to get the sparkliness on camera, but believe me, it's there. Not full-on glitter sparkle status, but it's SO pretty. Not only is Song a beautiful color, but she has perfect formula - I almost could have gotten away with one coat if I'd been a little more careful.

If you're into blue, Song is perfect! Just be warned she's a little more challenging to remove than you'd expect - the particles of sparkliness (for lack of better word) like to hang on to the nails a little more than regular polish would. But other than that, Song was wonderful!

Stay happy!

Zoya Elodie

You can tell me it's "officially" fall all that you want. You can say that now the blackened colors are in season and I need to switch to the dark teals, maroons, and purples of autumn.

I will laugh at you and say no, silly, it's still neon time. It's always neon time. And if you can't find neons, at least the brightest colors you can possibly find.

Which is why I have for you today Zoya Elodie! She's a SUPER pretty coral almost-jelly.

Zoya Elodie

She's so nice and summery that I feel like it's still summer just looking at my nails! 

Elodie does like to play mind games though - sometimes she looks more orange, sometimes she's pinker. Either way, I love orange, pink, and every variation in between!

Like I said before, Elodie has an almost-jelly finish, which means she's not perfectly opaque, but you can get an almost "squishy" look from her. I did three coats in the pictures, but I definitely could have used one more.  Especially on my right hand...which came out looking a lot less nice. She doesn't self-even as well as the opaque Zoya creams do and there's definite streaking at two coats and a little bit at three...but I love the Elodie's color enough to make up for it.

Stay happy!

Zoya Natty Almost-French-Ish Nails

Key word: almost. Long story short, it's a bad nail day.

Have you ever tried to do your nails RIGHT when you wake up? If you have, you know your hands are kind of shaky and your brain still isn't willing to focus on anything...in other words, trying to do your nails is just a catastrophic event in general.

That was me this morning. I was SO excited to try out one of the new Zoya fall cremes, Natty, that I simply HAD to do my nails ASAP. In fact, I thought I'd even try to spice Natty up with another Zoya favorite, Kristen. 

Zoya Natty (dark blue) with Kristen (light blue)

It didn't start out too badly, see? Natty, the dark denim blue, has a PERFECT formula. She's on the thicker side, but REALLY easy to control and perfectly opaque in two coats. Kristen's a little trickier; she runs a little thin and streaky, but in two coats she's wonderful enough.

And then it got ugly. I thought to myself, Natalie, this nail polish almost has your name. You need to do something special with it. So this happened...

It looked a lot better in my head than on my hands. Maybe I'll try again some time I'm fully awake and my brain is prepared for the stress that French tips are to me...

After trying out Natty, I have to admit I'm really excited to do something with the other Zoya fall colors I got - hopefully their formulas will be just as good...and I'll be awake enough to make sure my nails end up looking good.

How do you like Natty and Kristen?

Stay happy!

Zoya Jelly Sandwich!

"Is that a band, song, place, or actual sandwich?"

Well, to my friend who actually asked me that and anybody else who may not know, a jelly sandwich is when you layer glitter nail polishes in between jelly polishes for a cool depth-y effect. I'm new to both jelly nail polishes and the whole concept of jelly sandwiches, too, so it took a little experimenting before I was ready for this post.

So now, with no further ado, is Zoya Frida with Zoya Maisie!

Zoya Frida (teal jelly) and Zoya Maisie (blue flakie)

I'm a major fan of any type of cool nail thing that doesn't require me to be artistically talented at all (which I'm definitely not). Hence my love for trippy topcoats...including flakies! Maisie is one of three flakie polishes Zoya released for spring of 2012, but I only got Maisie because she was the blue one...and most of my nail polishes are blue.

Jelly nail polishes are another cool effect kind of nail polish: they're EXTREMELY sheer (you can see through them), but when you build them up, you get a kind of squishy - "jelly" - look. They're also super shiny and perfect for layering!

For this manicure, I did 3 coats of Frida, 2 of Maisie, and then another coat of Frida.

You'll notice some tip wear...which was actually pretty minimal for my standards. These nails went through a whole day and a swim practice and they haven't even chipped yet!

I really liked how much the different tones of Maisie showed through the layer of Frida! Can you see how it's really green sometimes, and really blue in other lights? If Zoya Wednesday with nails inc. Electric Lane was my summer mermaid-y manicure, these are definitely my fall mermaid nails! (Because, yes...there should be mermaid nails for every season, no?) 

I enjoyed taking pictures of my nails and watching them change color so much that I started playing with the ways I held my bottle...how do you like them? 

Yeah...if you haven't picked up on it yet, I enjoy taking pictures of my nails a LOT. Almost as much as I love actually doing my nails...

If you're wondering, I don't think THAT many (six!) coats of nail polish total would have been necessary. My nails are HORRIBLY stained right now, and it was almost impossible to hide that with just a few coats of Frida. I'd say if your nails are normal-looking (as in not a plethora of different colors smashed together), you could probably do two coats of Frida, one of Maisie, and then one more Frida.

Any more ideas for jelly sandwiches? I've got Zoya Paloma, Frida's pink sister, sitting on my desk just waiting to be used!

Stay happy!

MORE Magnetic Magic??

Ohhhh yes. There's even more. Prepare yourself.

Sinful Colors Captivate Me

What?? Sinful Colors? As in that brand that's about two bucks a bottle at any drug store? How can you possibly be so mind blown about that? 

Ahh. I thought the same thing when I saw the new collection of Sinful Colors magnetic polishes at Target. I was SO skeptical that I bought a bottle, just so I could laugh at it. No, really...that's my life.

But anyway, I have to give Sinful Colors some credit. The bottle really caught my eye because there's - what's this?! - HOLOGRAPHIC GLITTER?! In the magnetic polish. Well, Natalie, I said to myself, even if the magnetic effect isn't any good at all, there's still holographic glitter. Get it. YOLO. 

Like the nails inc. magnetic polishes that I showed you earlier, Sinful Colors Captivate Me was very nice and fairly opaque in just one coat:

Even if it wasn't magnetic, Captivate Me would still make for a fairly nice purple-ish frost, no?

Before I tried the Sinful Colors magnet (I'm pretty skeptical of drugstore nail polishes in general) I thought I'd try it with the nails inc. magnets. Hold up - again, prepare yourself. 

WHAT?! Yes. It worked with the fishnet magnet. I couldn't get the fishnet magnet to work to save my own life with my nails inc. magnetics, but it worked wonderfully with Captivate Me. Captivated yet? (Hehe, see what I did there?)

And then, of course, was the nails inc. wave pattern magnet:

 Is that cool or what? Can you SEE how strong the magnet effect is here? 

Okay now...are you ready for this? I don't think you are. I wasn't. Here's Captivate Me with the magnet that it came with:

WHOAAAAA! Back up, back up. Is that a STAR pattern?!

Why, yes. Yes it is. Here are all three patterns together:

I promised you magic. And I think this is magic. But if you don't think you've seen magic yet, prepare yourself...

Do you see that holographic sparkle in the bottle? I know you can't tell from the picture, but it's there on my nails too. I promise.

The formula for Captivate Me was fairly good. It was easy to fix mistakes in just one coat, which was really nice. My only issues are that Captivate Me dried a little chunky because of the holographic glitter...and then that when I tried to smooth it out with topcoat, the pattern got dragged and smeared a little bit (all of the pictures above are without topcoat); however, with topcoat on, the holographic effect is even more pronounced!

One more thing. Prepare yourself. (Yet again; only now am I realizing how many times in this one post I've said "prepare yourself" and for that, I apologize. Just kidding. You deserve to be warned when you need to be prepared, right?)

CAPTIVATE ME WAS ONLY $4.99.

I kid you not. So if you were too turned off of nails inc. (or any other magnetic brand, for that matter) by the insane price ($16! That's an exclamation point, by the way, not a factorial symbol...I promise I wouldn't spend $2.092279E13 on a single nail polish) then by all means, go out and get this one. Or any of its probably equally-amazing siblings. There's a whole bunch in the new Sinful Colors magnetic collection!

Clearly I was a little flipped out by the amazingness that is Sinful Colors Captivate Me. Which pattern is your favorite?

Stay happy!

Zoya Elisa

Does it mess anybody else up when the weather decides to play mind games? Well this week, it was really just trying to poop on me. And it succeeded. To the max. What am I even supposed to do with myself when I wake up and come to the conclusion that I hibernated through the rest of summer and all of fall and woken up in winter, and then halfway through the day discover that it's actually really hot out?

Paint my nails fall colors.

That's about all I could think of to do for sure, considering I didn't know how to dress myself or if it was too early in the school year to sleep in class or not...

So here's my first fall color this year: Zoya Elisa!

Elisa is a BEAUTIFUL red metallic from the new Zoya 2012 Diva Collection.

Zoya Elisa

Don't be deceived by how normal Elisa looks in the bottle. I'm warning you.

Seriously. She glows. At least a little tiny bit. Elisa is actually a little darker in real life (as a side note, WOW...look how pale it makes my hands look here...), but it was pretty hard to capture her...wonderfulness...in artificial lighting.

I tried. I really did. But alas, I couldn't get Elisa to look right on my camera. She's darker in real life than she's showing up here, and the metallic-ness is more prominent. 

Anyway, Elisa's formula is perfect. Literally. Almost opaque in one coat, perfect in two. And don't even get me started on how easy the formula was to work with...just the exact thickness that it needed to be.

If you can't tell, I LOVE Elisa. Let me know if you do too!

Stay happy!