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!!

Gettin' Warm! China Glaze Poolside Collection for Summer 2010!

They're bright, tight and dy-no-mite! Well, I love neons, so of course I am going to say that. These are probably not colors you don't already have something similar to, though maybe not exact. But they are a great, manageable formula, very bright, and semi- to fully-opaque. These are all three coats, a thin bottom coat, and two relatively thick coats, with, of course, a topcoat, as they dry matte. They dry pretty quickly, so they are easy to apply, and they are inexpensive, one of the reasons (with the fact their colors can't be beat and their whoppingly magnificent glass fleck) they are my favorite brand. I like this collection but I would added a purple to make a full rainbow!

China Glaze Pool Party is the bright hot pink. My favorite of the group. This is actually a bit different than most of the hot pink neons I have. I'm keeping it.


China Glaze Sun Worshipper is a great neon orange. A calmer neon orange than some, kinda like a neon clementine fruit. I was surprised to find the only neon orange I had other than this is Orly Orange Punch, and this is nothing like it. It's a true orange, not reddish orange.



China Glaze Yellow Polka Dot Bikini is greener than shown here, but is still too much like China Glaze Celtic Sun in color to be worth it - but - this is far more opaque than Celtic Sun, though it is not fully opaque. It may be worth it to spend the few bucks on this and throw away Celtic Sun.


China Glaze Kiwi Cool-Ada is a grassy green neon. And while I like it a lot, it is far overshadowed by China Glaze In the Limelight, which is far more opaque. But still what's not to like about this (providing you like neon, and if you don't you have probably already stopped reading)!


China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy is that pink with a hint of orange my camera can NEVER capture, so sorry for the picture, but you can get a hint of the color. It's juicy and very bright. At first I thought I had a dupe for this - Essie Punchy Pink, but that is actually darker and pinker, this has a lot of orange in it, and nothing I have is a dupe for it. Claire's Fabulous is the closest I have, and that too is pinker.


China Glaze Towel Boy Toy is a summer sky blue with the lovely blue shimmer that my beloved Color Club Electro Candy neons of last year had. And in fact Color Club Pure Energy is an almost spot on exact dupe, but the Color Club has more shimmer in it.



Are you ready for summer yet? You better start!!

Diamond Cosmetics - $2 Polish and Not Bad At All!

Rebecca kindly sent me a metric fuckton of nail polish the other day, because she's kind and generous like that. She found Diamond Cosmetics, and decided she'd add some stuff for me onto her order. She also, dear Polish Monkeys, bought YOU a gift, which I will post about next.

Diamond has a pretty decent formula! It's more on the runny side, only one creme did I find thick (Oh, Tiff!). All had good coverage with two coats except the Glow in the Darks, which are very sheer. Some cremes could probably even be one coaters, if you put on a thick enough coat, but I prefer two coats in most circumstances to prevent sheer spots.

Diamond has some July Specials, which I will start with first. The first special is six "neons" plus a topcoat and a white, for $15.00. I do not as a rule use whites for base coats, as Diamond suggests, I find that rather than provide a bright base for colors, they wash them out. But that's just my opinion, you may like them very much that way. All these swatches are without white as a basecoat, but, as they are neons and many neons dry matte, I used a topcoat.

Diamond Froggy:


Diamond Beware:


Diamond Danger Zone:


Diamond White:


Diamond Safety Zone:


Diamond Hot Summer Pink, fuchsia pink neon with purple shimmer and an INSTANT all-time favorite of mine:


Diamond Wow, just the bottle and washed out at that, could NOT photograph this bright hot pink correctly, but it's very, very like Essie Punchy Pink:


The second July Special is the "Summer Special" - six red/pinks and two blues, and a topcoat for $12.00. These are two coats with no topcoat.

Diamond Oh, Tiff! - with which I will be doing a comparison against other Tiffany blues later:


Diamond Pink Passion:


Diamond Fiery Coral, which I say is red:


Diamond Don't Teal My Heart Away, a very nice dark teal creme:


This collection also contains Hot Summer Pink, already pictured, and a soft pink called Cotton Candy, which Rebecca kept. The next are not on "Special", but are only $2.00 each, and they are Glow In the Dark, so damn straight I love them. Sorry I did not test out the GITD ability it was daytime and I had a lot of swatchin' to do. :( This is four coats and topcoat. To make up for needing so many coats, they dried quickly!

Diamond Tangeglo:


Diamond Gloworm Green:


Diamond Blue Moonglo:


Diamond Pink Flaminglo:


I have some others, but I am gonna hold them back as I see "A Daily Diamond" daily polish review in the future. :D

Butter London - I'd Rather Have Sour Cream.

I got gifted the Butter London Fashionista's Favourites Spring/Summer 2009 Collection, thanks to the lovely Rebecca. She did it not as a favor, rather as a punishment. I shan't be telling you what she called them.



This collection, five polishes, one ashy bronze shimmer, four cremes in lilac, red, sun yellow, and sky blue, is within the boundaries of recent color trends, the blue resembles somewhat Essie's Shelter Island, the lilac Zoya's Malia, the bronze MAC's Mercenary. So while I am not gushing over the colors, they are pretty if not mind-grabbing. The blue is pretty but has been done before, the red is banal, the bronze is nice but not great, and the lilac is lovely but been done also. I think the standout is the nice yellow, Cheeky Chops. It's a sun yellow, not a mustard, not a neon, not a butter. It's not even lemon. It's different and therefore pleasing.

The BIG problem with these is the DISGUSTING FORMULA. Hot ass and Cheetos this formula is awful!!! Okay the shimmer is fine, if a bit watery, Just be careful with it and you should be able to control it okay. But the cremes! Take them from my sight and let them be lashed with thistles and cast into darkness (Sorry, reading the Bible for a class and I feel a bit unctuous). This is like half dried white glue. Copious amounts of polish thinner did little other than make it spread more like fresher glue. Only the red, after I added 25 drops of thinner to a brand new bottle, spread decently. I would not buy this polish, especially at its price, if this is what I got. Only a color that was absolutely stunning would get my cash. Oh and a final insult - the top is hard to put back on.

One positive note - this polish set quickly. After applying my second coat of red, the doorbell rang, and after getting my keys, a package, and inadvertently getting my fingers in a cat's face, my nails only had one tiny blemish. Nice!

And just an opinion, forget about runway trends in your nail polish collections, companies. Give us good colors, set your own trends. The fashion world and its bizarrities and seasons should not affect you. Let them come to you for inspiration, not the other way around. I'll still be using your best colors long after this season's hottest purse is on eBay because someone grabbed it then used it twice.

Butter London Artful Dodger:


Butter London The Old Bill:


Butter London Blowing Raspberries:


Butter London Cheeky Chops:


Butter London Muggins:



Tyler Durden's opinion of Butter London Spring/Summer 2009 Collection:
Bob had bitch tits.

Month of Zoyas! - Zoya Evangeline

Yummy reddish-pink goodness with a sweet gold shimmer to it. Reminds me of raspberry popsicles. Delicious!! Sexy and summery!

Zoya Evangeline:

China Glaze Summer Days Collection

Not long after I got interested in nail polish, the China Glaze Summer Days Collection came out. I saw the pictures of the bottles and the ad before I saw swatches of the polish on someone's nails, and I was not impressed. The colors looked very average and the ad was just awful that weird looking lady with her finger in her mouth and her cheeks all sucked in, and those chalky looking raspberries on her fingers? Ewww.

Anyway, I did see pictures after a bit on my friend Carla, and I was knocked out. The colors were so fruity and vibrant, and SO shiny! So I got a few of them and thus started my passion for China Glaze's glass fleck polishes. I just love everything about them. They sort of glow. The glass fleck really works with light to make these polishes vibrant and incredibly shiny. I adore glass fleck and must own them all!

These polishes are a good thickness, and not runny. They apply smoothly, and while you get plenty of coverage in two coats, some are very "jelly" translucent and you may still see your nail underneath. This does not bother me, I think it enhances their glow. If it does bother you, you may wish to stick with Strawberry Fields, Watermelon Rind and Grape Juice, as these are the most opaque, SF being entirely opaque.

Strawberry Fields, a deep opaque pink with gold glass fleck:


Raspberry Festival, a juicy red jelly with glass fleck:


Watermelon Rind, a bluish green jelly with glass fleck:


Cherry Pie, a hot orange/red jelly, and my favorite:


Orange Marmalade. Yeah, it's orange:


Grape Juice, a sort of Koolaid idea of what grape juice looks like, but still pretty:


Tyler Durden's Review of the Summer Days Collection:
Self Improvement is masturbation.