OPI swatches

I don't own a single one of these polishes. My husband and I are house/dog sitting for his parents this week, so I decided to go looking through her polish stash. She has about 15 polishes and they're all OPI except for 3 Isadora. I swatched the Isadora, so I'll show those to you later this week. Today I have most of her OPIs. I didn't swatch a few -- she has some of the Muppets collection, but I have them all, so I didn't bother, and I wore Friar Friar Pants on Fire last time we house sat, so I didn't swatch it, either. If you want to see it, let me know in the next couple days and I'll get some pictures of it!

So after the break, enjoy 7 random OPIs!

My Nail Journey: From nail biter to nail blogger

I was going through all of my pictures of my nails this morning and decided I want to share this with you. As bloggers, we are all obsessed with perfection; where I see nails that aren't shaped quite evenly and cuticles that need moisturizing, others leave comments that say, "Your nails look like they could be in a magazine!" Getting that comment just completely made my day, and I have to say that 9 months ago, my nails could not have been further from that.

You may want to have a seat and prepare yourself for this next image. I am going to show you what my nails looked like before I got into nail polish. This picture was taken in April of 2011.

Sadly, this was after a couple weeks of trying to take care of my nails.

Pink Wednesdays

It's my first official Pink Wednesday!

I remembered a couple days ago that there was a Target gift card that had been hanging out in my wallet for a couple years! So I took advantage of that and bought a couple bottles of polish! Yay! They still have the entire Come to Poppy & Pirates of the Caribbean collections, which seems strange, but since I never picked any of them up, I'm more than ok with that. I got Skull & Glossbones and Play the Peonies. I figured as a pianist, Play the Peonies should be in my stash!!

These photos are 2 coats, no top coat, no cleanup, in diffused light. This is a lovely, soft shade that just feels utterly ladylike. It's the tiniest bit brush-strokey, but not enough to bother me.
I'll probably be bored with it by tomorrow, but it's a gorgeous palate cleanser that would have been absolutely perfect for a piano concert. I'll probably come back to this in the spring!

OPI Manicurist of Seville

Here's a color I've worn at least 3 times in the last 5 months, which is pretty frequent for me. The first time was late last summer. The week I got back from our honeymoon, I jumped right into rehearsal for an opera scenes production. I wore for closing night; I figured if we're doing opera, then a polish named after an opera would be only appropriate!

Here is OPI Manicurist of Seville, as I photographed her in August:

Direct sunlight. Pretty color accurate.

Inside shade. Also color accurate for the lighting.

Then as I photographed her last week; these are all 2 coats, no topcoat, & in indirect sun.

I can't ever leave anything alone if it's on my nails for longer than a day or two, so I layered CND Sheer 24K Sparkle over it, and the result was seriously beautiful.

I wore this for 5 days and had minimal tip wear for me (as a pianist, I have a lot more tipwear than the average person!) and only got one tiny chip on day 5. Considering 9 months ago when I started wearing polish I HAD to repolish every day or two, that feels like a huge victory.

I also wore MoS in mid-December with a glitter gradient of Essie's A Cut Above, but my nails had a rough couple months between the two wearings pictured above, so I don't really want to subject you to pictures of it!

I know MoS is by now considered a pretty boring color, but I still love it.

Nail Mail! Zoya Mira + Danii

My zoya promo finally got here! Yaay, nail mail! I've been on a serious no-buy due to a severe lack of budget in our household this month, so this is my first new polish since Christmas. I'm sure you all understand how freaking excited I am!

 As always with Zoya, the box came with swatches of their recent collections. This time, the True + Fleck collections & the Feel collection as well.

This is the first time I've gotten a box this size. My first order from them I got two of the 6-pack box (yep, I bought a lot!), and the second order they just wrapped them up in soft packing stuff.

And the pretties!! Mira & Danii.

Mira could be a one coater if you're really good at polishing your nails; I had a couple bald, draggy spots from where I was being impatient and not quite careful enough. But here she is at two, with no top coat: utter glossy perfection.

I want to enjoy Mira in all of her beauty, but I also didn't want Danii to feel left out, so I did an accent gradient with her. These two look really lovely together!

No top coat

OPI Natural nail top coat

And finally! Since we all know what Zoya Mira/OPI Funkey Dunkey looks like, I figured she's a good judge against what the purples in the True collection are like for those of us who aren't fortunate to own them already. As you can see, the True purples' bases are much warmer & grayer.

Mira is my first purple cream and I think I officially need to get myself more purples!

OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui + nail art

Here is another polish I bought before I knew anything about polish: OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui.
I only wore this polish for a day -- weird for me lately -- and I put it on & took pictures about 5 minutes before leaving for work, so please excuse the lack of cleanup.
These are all sans top coat, so you can see how shiny it is all on its own!

This is pretty close to color accurate.

Direct sunight; this is brighter than IRL.

I know this is an older polish, but I still love it. It has a special place in my heart for being one that I bought so long ago. Plus, I'm a sucker for blues. I normally pass this up for Ogre the Top Blue, as they're right next to each other in my stash, but this felt a little more cold weather appropriate.

Then the next day I decided to try my hand at needle marbling. It went... ok. I didn't really like the results all that much, so I ended up taking it all off and repainting right away. I have to say, it's a good thing my husband & I work opposite shifts, because otherwise he would get even more tired of my polish than he already is.

The two nails with just Suzi Says are on day 2 of wear with no top coat, fyi. The other two are needle marbled with China Glaze For Audrey.

Tomorrow: nail mail! My Zoya promo order is FINALLY going to arrive!!!

OPI DS Extravagance

I've been sporting OPI DS Extravagance for the last few days. As I'm sure everyone knows, she is BEAUTIFUL.
I wore her with underwear, so here is a quick shot of Essie Sole Mate. Sole Mate was actually one of my very first polishes, from long before I was into polish. It's a really nice color, though! Two coats on index, and just one on the others. It's a really nice vampy color.

And here is the eye candy!

First, sunlight:

Now flash:

Indirect light:

In the sunlight, Extravagance is just gorgeous scattered holo amazingness. In the shade it's still sparkly and beautiful. It's just such a gorgeous, deep, rich color. "Extravagance" is definitely the word to describe this!

She is my only DS, so right now I can say she's my favorite (until I get my hands on Glamour!). Which DS do you  love most?

Zoya Faye

Continuing the Zoya streak. I swear I own other polish brands! I need to make myself wear something else when I take this off...

Zoya calls Faye "a bronzed mauve with purple and brown undertones flooded with bright gold sparkle.  A unique gilded shade that will work in any season," and they classify it as a purple. I'm definitely going to agree with "purple undertones" and "flooded with bright gold sparkle," but I don't think I would call it a purple at all! I asked my husband what color he thought it was and he said, "Pink? Gold?" and that's pretty much how I feel about it!

Here are a LOT of pictures; I wanted to try to show you all of her faces. All 2 coats. And, as always, clickable to view much larger.

Here's Faye in front front of my window; natural, indirect light.

Here she is in direct sunlight. This is the only time you can see that she isn't as opaque as a cream would be.

This pretty much the ONLY picture I took that showed her as purple!

Indirect sunlight,

direct sunlight,

and shade. She is a mostly-pink with gold shimmer in sunlight, but she is pretty much pure gold in any other light.

I wore her matte last spring, and this is what she looked like then. Beautiful, and much more purple than she is shiny!

Finally, here she is in action. This is while I was a work yesterday. She really comes across as a rose-y, golden foil more than she does a "bronzed mauve with purple undertones."

Do you have Faye? What do you think of her?

Zoya Neeka

I am definitely in a Zoya mood right now. I'm SO excited about the True collection -- not that I'll be able to afford it this month! -- and I ordered Mira & Danii in their promo last week. My collection of polishes is really small in the purple area. To get myself psyched about the polishes coming in the mail, and to try to quench my lust for the purple shimmers in the True collection, I reached for one of the few purples I already have: Zoya Neeka.

 And now, for one million pictures!

Shade

Shade again

Direct sunlight

Indirect sunlight

In my car

One day in with tipwear.
At my work, in gross florescent lighting.
Still pretty!

The shimmer in this is just absolutely gorgeous. And I don't know why I don't own purples, because I think they're lovely!

Last night I was watching the game with my husband's boss's brother, whose wife complimented me on my nails. "What brand is that," she said, "OPI?"
I tried to tell her it's Zoya, a brand that isn't available in this area (we don't have an Ulta or any other store that sells it!) and she seemed really confused. But at least she thought it was pretty! :)