Zoya - Blaze (swatches and review)

     Hey guys, I have a nail polish swatch for you today. This is Zoya's Blaze from the 2012 Ornate Collection. I thought the way to spell the name was "Blaise", because of the similarly named Harry Potter character, but the variation does make sense. I think that if you have the balls to name your kid Blaze, you're either a pretty awesome parent or you were trashed at the time of the naming process and your child will hate you for the rest of her life. Either way, it's a cool name.

     Out of all the polishes I bought out of this collection, I was probably the least excited for this one. Although this is a great color on it's own and Zoya hasn't yet disappointed me with regards to formula/texture, I have a veritable ton of polishes in the red color family and this one didn't pop out at me as anything special. It was, however, a holo finish, which I do like so I picked it up. It certainly looked nice in the bottle.

Zoya - Logan (swatches and review)

     Hey guys, I have a nail polish swatch for you today. This is Zoya's Logan from the Ornate Collection. Because of Storm, the first thing I thought of when I saw the name of this polish was Wolverine. I thought it strange since Zoya polishes were only named after girls. Of course, Logan is one of those gender neutral names that fits either way so it really doesn't matter. But, it did give me pause for a few moments there.

    How cool would it be if there was an entire line of polishes dedicated to the X-men, though? I would buy them all, even if they were horrendous quality. Seriously, I'm that obsessed. Anyone out there excited for Days of Future's Past? I know I am.

     Anywho, I was as excited for this polish as I was for Ziv. Dark green foils are right up my alley and the press photos/swatches were all gorgeous. Even in the store, I was aching to put this on my nails to see how it would look because it looked damn good in the bottle.

Zoya - Storm (swatches and review)

     Hey guys, I have a nail polish swatch for you today. This is Zoya's Storm from the winter Ornate Collection. Just the name made me want this one. It also helps that the polish itself was pleasing to look at, but one of my favorite superheroes as a child was Storm. Never mind that we were technically suppose to identify with Jubilee (and she was also Asian too) but I never liked Mary Sues and that's what she came off to me as. Storm on the other hand, she was cool. Calling up lighting at will, creating hurricanes, etc. During the winter, when I didn't want to go to school, I didn't pray to God for snow. I prayed to Storm. I don't know why I thought that made sense, since I was fully aware that she was a fictional character, but it somehow worked in my mind at the time.

     Anywho, with that background, I was definitely going to pick this polish up whether it was a dud or not. It looked pretty awesome on the press release and looked even better on the swatches floating around online. I coveted this one almost as much as I did Ziv, and I'm so glad I was able to get it.

Zoya - Ziv (swatches and review)

     Hey guys, since the day is over and the world has not ended, I have a nail polish swatch for you today. This is Zoya's Ziv from the 2012 Ornate Collection. Out of all this year's holiday collection from Zoya I was probably most excited for this one. I know that golds are a dime a dozen lately, but this one looked absolutely gorgeous in the bottle and on other people's fingers so I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Foil is only second to jelly finishes in my favorites and this one had what appeared to be a seamless finish, if other people's swatches were anything to go by.

     It actually took me a while to find this, for whatever reason. I'm not a big fan of ordering nail polish online blind without at least seeing what the polish looks like in real life first. Online photos are notorious for being different than the real product, especially if the monitor settings are off, so I was reluctant to get this blind from an online retailer. The only place I knew near me that sold Zoya polishes is ulta and I hadn't seen them there all season. I had all but given up on finding it when lo an behold, I see the display on the salon counter last week and I descended upon those racks like a starving predator.

Back to the Basics with Urban Decay

     Hey guys, I have something a little different for you guys today. I'm really excited to have gotten my hands on this here little gem. The new Naked Basics palette from Urban Decay.I'm a huge fan of the Urban Decay brand in general and especially their Naked line of eyeshadows. I own both the original and the Naked 2 palette and they get a lot of love from me.

     When they announced a new mostly matte Naked palette, I was pretty much on board from the concept alone. And now that I have my hands on the product, I can say that I'll get a lot of use out of this one too. If there had been one complaint that I had with the first two palettes, it would be that there isn't enough matte shades. Out of 24 shades, there is a total of 5 matte shades combined, which doesn't quite make sense for something that is supposed to be "naked".

Nail Art - Snowflakes and a Tree Are All You'll Neeed

     Hey guys, I have a nail art design for you guys today. I came up with this design is for the Born Pretty Store Christmas Contest. We'll see how my luck goes.

     Of all the things that come out of the holiday season, I think the flood of nail designs based on the holiday theme is most amusing. There is so much glitter. It's so sparkly and gaudy and over the top and I love it. Even though I'm not a big fan of glitter nail polish, this time of year does something to my brain and for about six weeks, I can't stop coveting all the glitters. Although to be honest, most of my attention goes to the foil branch of glitter polishes, I still spare a glance for those horrendously chunky glitters too. They're always a pain to remove, but man, do they shine.

You can watch the video tutorial here:

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