Tag Archives: textured

A Few Words on … Antici

Posted in A Few Words, Zoya by

…pation!

So my nails had gotten to the point where they were just hanging on by a wing and a prayer.  Remember the just hang in there posters with the kitten on a clothesline?  That was  my nails.  Except more like this.

Two of my nails got caught on something and got torn off backwards right down to the quick within three days of each other.  One of them even involved bleeding, both involved swearing.  That’s when I decided they’d gone past the point of saving.  So I pulled a Snake Plissken and hit reset on everything.  That’s right, they all got cut off and filed down!  You know how whenever you see (accidentally, of course) a picture of a celebrity without makeup and your involuntary reaction is always ‘Yikes!’?  Well, here’s a look at the current state of my nails in all their naked, unvarnished glory:

WARNING:  The following material may disturb more sensitive viewers.  Viewer discretion is advised.

 

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Yikes!

 

Two days later, this appeared in my mailbox:

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Yes, that’s right.  The new Zoya Magical Pixie Dust Collection for Summer!  Want a closer look at these beauties?  Of course you do!

 

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Ordering to delivery time?  Slightly less than a week.  And yet somehow within that time frame I managed to completely forget that I ordered them and hacked off all the nails.  I couldn’t wait two days so that I could at least just swatch them on my remaining good nails?  Apparently not.  I blame a fit of momentary madness.  Like when you reach that point where you just can’t take it anymore and your hair must be cut NOW!  So you hack it off with some scissors/a butcher knife/whatever’s on hand with the thought of ‘whatever, it’ll grow back’.

So whatever, they’ll grow back.  But I want to see what my new polish looks like NOW!  And on my actual nails, not on my swatch sticks.  NOW!

Remember that Bette Midler song “From a Distance”?  I remember reading (in a book about pianos) that Julie Gold wrote that song one night when her piano had just been delivered and all she could do was look at it.  I can’t remember whether it was a new piano or a new place and her piano had just arrived.  Either way, when a piano has been moved you have to wait until it settles and adjusts to the temperature and humidity of its new environment before you can play it.  So she spent the night just looking across the room at her piano and not being able to touch it.

So that’s me and my Magical Pixie Dusts right now.  Did I happen to mention that the new OPI Coca-Cola Collection is currently winging its way towards me as well?  Whatever, delayed gratification builds character.  Or, as that noted philosopher Kanye Clarkson Nietzsche once observed, that which doesn’t kill me can only serve to make me stronger.  Yeah!

So what does this all mean in the bigger picture?  It means that after I finish off the reviews I have in the queue that it’s going to be time to roll out all the nudes and neutrals while waiting for nature to take its course.  For even more entertainment, I suggest starting a drinking game that involves taking a shot every time I manage to come up with yet another way to describe beige…

 

 

ZOYA – Stevie

Posted in Zoya by

There’s always some “new and exciting” trend in nail polishes. For the last year or so, it’s been textured polish.  I personally don’t care for them for a few reasons.  First and foremost, I like my nails to be shiny and glossy with a glass-like appearance.  I live for top coating!  Matte, crackle, textured…I just don’t go for the no topcoat required stuff.  But it’s not just the look that gives me trouble.  I’m a picker.  If there’s the least little bump or snag, I’ll pick at it constantly.  Not only is picking at stuff rather unseemly, it does a number on the nail/s doing the picking.

But they say there’s an exception for every rule and this is mine.  Zoya Pixiedust.    I love Zoya polishes, which is the only reason I even paid any attention to them, and the collections they come out with have some really gorgeous colors.  Not only were they gorgeous, they have mad sparkle without having separate bits of glitter added to them!  Pixiedust is aptly named.  They remind me of the coloured sugar that you use to decorate Christmas cookies.

Another plus is that, among all the textured polishes, I think Pixiedust is probably the smoothest.  Not too lumpy or rough, kind of like granulated sugar.  So, no topcoat be damned, I toss on a couple layers of Seche Vite on the top of it and, while not perfectly smooth and glassy, it’s enough so that I’m not tempted to pick.

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I love pretty much any and every shade of purple and this is a wonderful lavender or lilac colour.  Not too light, but not so dark that it borders on a straight purple.  I haven’t tried any other brand’s textured lines, so I have nothing to compare it with, but it goes on like a dream.  Although it’s not as smooth as a normal polish, of course, it just glides right on with no lumps and globs.  I can get a really thin coat on with no problems at all.  It will still be pretty sheer at two coats since it’s a pretty light colour and I think this was four coats, but it dries super fast so it’s no big deal.

I hate that my crap pictures aren’t showing the crazy sparkle on this one.  All of my camera software is on my laptop and my screen went out a few weeks ago.  So I’ve just been making do with my iPad.  With no flash, some pictures come out pretty good and some…not so much.  I’m thinking about making a good light box and hope that does the trick, because it really is so fast and easy to upload them right from the iPad camera app.