Zoya Gaia

Yeah more Zoya! Totally my favorite brand. Even though I love many of the 3 free designer brands, I can't help but feel like these are better for me. And without fruther ado, on to the polish!

**EDIT**
This hasn't even posted and I am editing it and doing more photos. For two reasons.
1. The sun came out.
2. I repainted my nails.  Sorry poor finger with a sad nail, but I think this will make up for it.
*End Edit*


Zoya Gaia is a semi sheer milky white with a gold and bit of pink shimmer to it. The first pics below were on cloudy day, the application sort of sucked, which is unusual with Zoya in my experience. It was streaky, then I used a slow drying top coat and when I went to bed the blankets ate my mani. Plus I have the hands I am nursing back to health after some serious bleaching of a kitchen to sanitize it. So even though I didn't want to repaint the nails for that reason, I had to. Because a good manicure is just so pretty. So old pics below.

 Old pics were 3 coats. Blankets killed it. Cloudy pics meant it showed up more as white and you couldn't see the warm pink and gold shimmer in the polish. But I assure you, its there.

New Pic one layer. Very sheer. Good for am I did my nails but I want the natural look.

New Pic 2 layers. Notice a wee bit of streaky on the pointer. That is because I accidentally had a blob and had a hard time cleaning it up. It evened out wth a 3rd layer and honestly the polish settled on its own before I even added the third, you can just see the 3rd layer in the top photo. This was fresh and wet polish pics.

No time for top coat pics though as my 'lovely' toddler 'explored' a huge file cabinet of sheet music and its ALL MIXED TOGETHER. Sorting out sheet music is not my idea of fun.

Zoya retails for $8 for 0.5 ounces. Zoya is a 5 free formula and cruelty free. I bought this polish myself and all opinions are mine. You can read more about Zoya on  their website. https://www.artofbeauty.com/rd/0149D8BD
*If you sign up for an account through my link I will receive points to use towards future purchases for discounted price, free shipping, etc.*

Zoya Barbie

Zoya is my current favorite polish. It makes me feel good that its 5 free, plus there are so many unique colors. But not this one. If you search for dupes for this color there are some very close versions from other companies.

And the photos looked good on the camera but once cropped they aren't as crisp as I would like.

This is a very basic pink cream. Makes me think of classic Malibu Barbie. I wore it with a super conservative suit jacket and it went well. This is also a bit thicker or more opaque than some of the other Zoya colors. I usually use 3 coats for full coverage, I only needed 2 for this.

These photos are two full days into the manicure and there is a small chip on the middle fingernail. But nothing too bad. I did have a toddler 'painting' I scrubbed up by hand on day one and that is when the chip happened. This is with Zoya Armor top coat. It wasn't quite strong enough to withstand the scrubbing, but much better than other top coats I have used. **As a note for the top coat, if you don't use enough on the brush it will pull the color on the nail. I learned that on my other hand. So a thick coat is better.**

The two pics are indirect natural light. My direct light photo didn't come out.

So there you go. Zoya is 5 free nail polish. Its free of the Big 3 (Formaldehye, dibutyl Phthalate (DBP) and Toluene and also free of Formaldehye resin and camphor. The retail price for this polish is $8, but you can often watch for special sales. If you don't have a Zoya account, you can sign up for one here and they give out occasional promo codes to people with accounts.

https://www.artofbeauty.com/rd/0148DB36

*This is a share the love link. I can receive free polish and/or points to use for future purchases of either $ off or free shipping if you sign up through my link.*

Turned my back for 5 minutes

And this is what I found. Soldiers assemble! Someone took upon themselves to make sure my bottles were all turned and got busted as soon as I was out of the potty.

Sorry for the less than clean floor, luckily the pink isn't nail polish, its just a stain. Clearly we need to upgrade polish storage security. And shampoo the carpets. *sigh*

How do you store your polish?

Revlon Whimsical

A blog post a day? Ha, that won't happen until I don't have kids at home every day and/or no one is sick. But, I digress.

I am still learning how to take close up shots of nail polish. I am not very good at the photo aspect, and it makes me not want to post. But I decided I will post anyway, and eventually better photos will start happening.

This is Revlon Whimsical. I bought it in a blog sale. Its a blue tinted jelly with various sizes of small and micro glitters. The smallest glitter seems to be a holo shifting between blue and purple.

Indirect sun (shade)

Direct sun

Application was rather easy. This is 3 thin coats with a top coat. As you can see its very sheer. I wished I had used a solid base coat after the 3rd coat and how sheer it stayed. All in all, it was pretty and easy to use. Not really my color. It sort of makes my finger tips look slightly dead because of the color base tint. It makes me think emergency CPR is needed fingernails. So next time, I will layer it over a solid colored base, either a pink or blue since the larger glitters are pink and blue.

OPI The Color of Minnie

I saw this 30 day challenge on a few nail blogs I follow and I want to be part of the team. Only not really since I am a nail blog newbie. I paint my nails as a way to rejuvenate myself after a long day. I don't do it every day, but I have started taking pride in my nails...and amassing quite the nail polish collection.

Also, my photos are newbie. I took 10 of them and most of them I didn't get a good focus or the reflection off the polish was bad, etc. So these are the best 2, and they are actually 2 of the first pics so the hand angle isn't very good as it was a lighting shot not a nail shot. So apologies all around.

Without further ado, the polish of the day.

Day 1 is Red. This is OPI's The Color of Minnie.

This is only 2 coats. You ca n sort of see a nail line at certain angles, but it isn't enough to bother me. Base coat is Color Club Vita base, top coat is OPI's top coat (not my favorite op coat at all, but dang if i won't use it all). I would normally want to show my right hand as I am a lefty, but the top coat got in the way. Painted my nails 2 hours before bed and still got covers creases from the top coat. :(

The color has a little bit of shimmer but wasn't very streaky. I think its a rather true red, but the shimmer will change the warm or cool of the color. When wearing a blue shirt the nails appeared more blue based, in a coral/orange shirt it was more orange red