Zoya Summertime Collection Summer 2011 Swatches and Review

Here's part two of the big Zoya summer collection. It's called Summertime and it's six creme shades.


Areej. This one's a deep pink / fuchsia creme. Very smooth and creamy looking, slight muted quality to it.


Breezi. A teal-blue shade. More blue than teal, but has a definite teal tone to it on the nails. My picture makes it seem brighter than it is; in real life it has a soft dustiness/murkiness to it that just doesn't come across in my picture.


Kieko. A red-purple creme. Much more red toned in real life, more of a berry than a true purple. Think Jessica Feather Boa from the Burlesque collection to give you an idea of the shade, it's similar to that but with a little more blue to it.


Mira. A medium purple creme. Again, my picture makes this purple pull too blue toned, it's much more red toned in real life. It's actually really similar to those China Glaze Grape Pop / Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas type purple cremes that came out in the past few years. It's just a touch lighter and warmer toned, but still very similar.



Sooki. Bright cherry red creme. This is my favorite of the collection. It is loud and obnoxious and AWESOME. It's one of those flashy bright reds that you can see from a mile away. It seems to have a less dense creme finish, like it's almost a jelly, but not quite squishy enough looking. Very hot.


Tamsen. My second favorite in the collection! Can you believe it? A collection with two purples and a blue and my favorite colors are the red cremes... But I'm totally serious. This is a great red. I took two pictures to try to convey the warm orange tone that's in this compared to the coolness of Sooki. This is like a brick red, or even a red-orange. It's muted and a bit dusty looking like some of the other shades in this set. This one changes in different lighting, too... In artificial light it looks more pure red to me, but in sunlight it looks almost entirely orange. Really like the warmth and softness of this particular red.

The formula on these was great. Smooth and consistent, not too thick or thin and no difference in formula across the whole set. Opacity was great, too. They only needed two coats, but I did three just to see how it looked. These do not suffer from the extremely long dry time that the Sunshine shades have, these have a normal/average dry time.

Overall, I can't say I think this is a super exciting collection. I do like the shades, but I feel like I've seen them all too many times before- medium pink creme, purple-berry, dusty teal, medium warm purple, red creme... Nothing really unique or new. Sooki and Tamsen really stand out to me. The vivid brightness of Sooki and the warm rustiness of Tamsen make them very visually appealing compared to the muted pinks and purples in this set. Breezi is a really nice interesting shade, too, but it doesn't excite me the way Tamsen and Sooki do.

Nice formula, though!

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Ulta Exclusives Holiday 2010

Every year around Christmas, OPI does a set of three holiday-themed polishes exclusively for Ulta. Last year's collection raised the bar so high, that I was super excited to see what they did this year.... But I was sadly disappointed, after hearing from a very reliable source, that no one knew anything about them and there probably wouldn't be any this year.

Then, imagine my surprise, when everyone on Twitter was, well, atwitter with excitement over this new OPI Ulta exclusive gold glitter polish. I immediately drove to Ulta and returned home with these safely in tow.




All The Berry Best. A medium berry toned red shimmer. It's rather washed out here because of the lighting; it's a couple shades darker in real life. Regardless, it's my least favorite of the collection. It has some really great gold duochrome in the bottle, but on the nail it's just an average looking red shimmer. It does have a really nice velvety looking finish, though.



Gift of Gold. Now THIS is a glitter. Amazing. It's so ridiculously sparkly. It's a lighter gold mixed with some darker gold and even a bit of what looks like copper or bronze glitter. It's very opaque, too, needing only one to two coats depending on how thick or even you do your coats. It's still rough and hard to remove like other glitters, but it's just soooooo pretty. The best one in the collection for sure. OPI really knows how to do glitter and I'm really glad they've been doing a lot of it lately.


Plum Full Of Cheer. The flash picture shows the base color of the polish and also shows the pretty multi-colored shimmer, but in real life it looks more like the top picture. This is not a bad color at all, it's extremely pretty, one of my favorite types of purples, but it's just so common lately that it doesn't feel special to me. Shimmery, glowy, red-based dark purples are great, I think I'm just a little burned out on them. I had hoped for something really special like last year's Visions of Sugarplum.

Wait a minute... Wasn't last year's Ulta Exclusive holiday collection a gold, a berry-red and a dark purple? What was the year before that? I only remember the gorgeous pink microglitter one.

The formula was good, so no complaints there. The Gift of Gold shade was really thick, but that's part of what makes it so opaque and dense. I only needed two coats of each color (and that's what I'm wearing in these pictures) and the drying time was very good. They were a little dull without topcoat, so I am also wearing topcoat for these pictures.

They're nice, and Gift of Gold is very nice, but they didn't knock me over with awesome like last year's set. Maybe they'll do something more unique this year!

More random Zoya swatches- Sheers, nudes, reds/berries

Uma

Rose (this has green duochrome shimmer!)

Riley

Racquel

Quinn

Portia

Parker

Mia

Kat

Jaime

Isabel

Heather

Diana (jelly finish!)

Dharma

Celeste

Angel

Jessica Paint The Town Collection 2010

I love nail polish with a gimmick. These Jessicas come in little paint cans! How cute is that? They also have some that come in teddy bear shaped bottles like the old Fing'rs polishes (I'll post those soon too).

Though, unlike most products that have a gimmick, the colors/product are actually quite nice.


Funkytown. I know that there are a lot of these types of glitters- the blue/pink/purple glitter in a clear base combination. This one, though, is the prettiest of them all. I don't know why but this one sparkles way more than the others I have like this. Maybe they use a special kind of glitter, I don't know, all I know is that this one is blindingly sparkly and I love it.


Girls Night Out. My least favorite of the bunch but still not bad. Much nicer in real life. It's a cranberry red shimmer. It has more depth of finish and color but I couldn't seem to capture it. This shade of berry red does weird things to my camera.



Pajama Party. Awesome color. Hard to photograph. Let me describe. It's a dark blue-based purple base with strong blue shimmer. It sits on the color like a flash or duochrome but it doesn't really shift with the angle. It's more like a blue overlay. It reminds me a lot of the old Jane polish Gem X if you remember that one.


Scene Stealer. A nice teal shimmer. Color is more accurate in the indoor picture. Sunlight picture shows the reflective metallic qualities of the finish.


Shake Your Booty. I love this name. It makes me want to wear it just because of the silly name. Besides, how many polishes do you know of with the word 'booty' in the name? Ignore the fact that I can't stand the word booty unless it is referring to something a pirate obtains. Anyway... pretty standard medium blue shimmer with green accents. Seems like I see this color a lot. Not a bad shade, just a little common.


Shopping Spree. THIS is my favorite of the collection. It looks like velvet on the nails. It's a shimmering red-based purple and it has so much depth. Reminds me of China Glaze Cowgirl Up. It's so pretty.

Formula on these is okay, a little bit runny and sheer on some shades. I did three coats of all and all of them needed the third. Application is a little tricky because the brush doesn't like to conform to my nails or flex as easily as I think it should. Drying time is long.

Love the paint can bottles. We need more cute shaped bottles. I want someone to make some old retro looking bottles with the fancy elongated handles and really intricate designs on the glass, maybe like an Anna Sui or KO bottle.

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Swiss Collection Fall 2010 Swatches

Let's just jump right into swatches, shall we?

A recap of the indoor skittle swatches:



And the individuals (in sunlight):

Color So Hot It Berns. Bright clean red creme. A little Christmassy looking. I like these types of reds. Bright and crisp. Very simple and classic. Not much else to say about it!

Cuckoo For This Color. Sparkly medium blue-green shimmer. It's darker than it looks in this picture but I think this picture shows the sparkliness really well. It is similar to China Glaze Emerald Fitzgerald, but Cuckoo seems more blue to me. Almost a teal.

Diva Of Geneva. So pretty. In my top five for this collection. Medium shimmering gilded plum. It's like a really red-based purple (mixture of purple and red-plum colored pearl) and lots of gold pearl, almost like a duochrome, you get glimmers of purple and gold depending on the angle. I had originally thought that LA Colors Pink Sizzle was a match for this color, but it turns out they're not really as close as I thought:

They looked really similar in the bottle to me, but as you can see LA Color Pink Sizzle is much lighter and pinker.


From A To Zurich. Dark rose berry. Not really my thing.

Glitzerland. LOVE this. It's almost a champagne version of Dazzled By Gold, but not quite as sparkly. Still majorly sparkly, though! It's practically a foil it's so sparkly. You can see each individual shimmer particle, makes me think of champagne bubbles.


I'm Suzi & I'm A Chocoholic. This is not really the color I think of when I hear chocolate! It's more red than brown, much more of a dark brick or maroon color than a chocolate color. Not particularly flattering on me but still nicer than Color Club Charity Ball.

Just A Little Rösti At This. My favorite of the least-favorites, haha! Another deep wine berry shade. Sorry about the clouds. I know this picture is pretty bad :(

Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous! Marvelous, indeed. A smoky dark silver/grey foil. Near-foil really. Foils tend to blend into one sparkly sheet of color with hints of particles, but this one behaves more like a glitter showing every individual shimmer particle. Shimmer-glitter-foil! Similar to China Glaze Jitterbug.


Ski Teal We Drop. Oooh! A dark teal creme! We don't see these too often, especially not from OPI! I like. I like a LOT. Awesome color for fall. Makes me want to wear plaid.


The Color To Watch. Sheer light purple shimmer with strong blue pearl and microglitter. This is a pretty complex shade, lots of different colors mixed in. It looks like a duochrome but it doesn't seem to shift colors like one. I see all the colors at once. Blue pearl on top of lavender shimmer with silvery microglitter. This is the most sheer of all the colors- I used four coats.

William Tell Me About OPI. Deep, dark, luxurious, sexy vampy eggplant. Very nice. Very dramatic. I can see this one becoming the new Lincoln Park After Dark. In fact, I like this color better. This looks like it could have been in the Chicago collection!


Yodel Me On My Cell. This is my favorite of the whole collection. It's an aqua blue with lots of shimmer. It has small fine shimmer like a regular shimmer polish and then it has flecks of larger, more iridescent shimmer. Double shimmer! It makes me think of Catch Me In Your Net without the glitter. Has a kinda jelly-ish deep look. OPI does really good blues when they decide to do them!


The formula on these was nice and consistent. It wasn't too thick, too runny, it wasn't streaky or anything like that. The formula was consistent between shades as well. Nice to see some consistency in formula as they tend to be all over the place lately. The opacity was good- I did two coats of all but The Color To Watch, which needed 3-4 coats. I used topcoat on most of these because a few seemed to dry less than shiny. Good dry time, yet slightly longer than I'm used to from OPI. Overall strong formula, good brushes, I have no complaints.

I think I say this about every OPI location themed collection, but I'm not sure if these colors are really Swiss or not! Any residents of Switzerland want to comment? I think of red for Swiss Army knives (lol), brown for chocolate, white for snow-capped mountains, green for Tyrolean hats which are probably not Swiss but make me think of the Alps... That sort of thing. So perhaps these colors really are appropriate!

Not a bad collection at all! I love Yodel Me On My Cell, Diva of Geneva, Glitzerland, Ski Teal We Drop, William Tell Me About OPI, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous and Cuckoo For This Color the most. I don't particularly care for the berry-type shades, but that's usually a given for me. I wish there was a snowy glitter or a true brown in this collection, though!

I believe the release date is August 4, so next week we should be seeing these in stores.

(These were sent to me for review)