purple sisters from two very different misters

okay, i only have two medium purples from zoya, so in my head the two morphed into dupes. which they obviously aren't. just look at those bottles. btw - caitlin looks super grey next to her more flashy sister, but she really is a true dusty lavender. 

so i thought i'd swatch one finger malia with my caitlin manicure tonight, just to laugh at how different they really are, despite my earlier lapse in memory. and i decided i liked an accent nail in malia. so i left it. hence my purple sisters from different misters mani. btw - myperfectpolish swatched malia  last week and though it looks more pink on her and much more blue on me (imho) it was utterly gorge on both of us, which is super fun if i want to activate lacquer twinsie powers one day! both covered sublimely, as most of zoya's cream's do, in my experience. oh, and i topped it all with a coat of zoya armor and then one quick swipe with SV. 

final note - judge me not on my wrecked cuticles. please? i spent most of my weekend in the garden and my hands are one huge collection of thorn scrapes, swollen knuckles and some seriously destroyed cuticles. you'll learn someday, oh single reader of my blog, that i do not do cuticles at home. so i can only promise to apply some cuticle oil and hopefully hit up my local manicurist this coming weekend for some damage control.

just a quick look at the bottles.

by the light of the lamp - and game of thrones

outside, on an overcast morning

Work Safe Wednesday - Amanda meets Entirely Unlike Tea

so Zoya Amanda is like my all time favorite neutral. and i am slightly sad to admit it took seeing it on Rachel Zoe at one of her fashion shows to see the potential in this gorgeous rosy nude. either way, it is my dearest love. i've worn it with a little silver sparkle and a matte top coat (i'll try to find pictures) and when i found NerdLacquer Entirely Unlike Tea (EUT), i thought they were a natural pair. Amanda is a dream going on, with a steady hand it is pretty perfect at one coat. i did two coats just to smooth out a few problem spots (watching Game of Thrones while i do nails is such a bad idea). my problem came with adding top coat to EUT. you can see on both pictures that i had issues with some wrinkling on my ring finger. now, being that i have so little time, it'll have to do. but it is still annoying as hell. i did a coat of Gelous and then SV on all of the nails. (btw, this totally cancelled out the shrinkage problem i normally have with Zoya + SV) the shine on the Amanda is GORGEOUS, but i am plagued by the desire to redo my ring finger...

i just know that EUT is stunning, i just have to figure out the right way to wear it.

natural light (even if it was cloudy outside)

by the light of my lamp (and tv)

now, i'm linking to MyPerfectPolish's Work Safe Wednesday, which i love the concept of. keep in mind however, that i wear all of these nails to work, wild colors/glitters included. *but* this one falls into the Work Safe category for most people...i think.

NerdLacquer Fun Week!

After Resolutionary, i decided to go ahead and play with all of my NerdLacquer haul :) i still have two more to go, but here are Hyperspace Bypass, Crunchy Frog and Cyance Friction.

So, i have had so many issues with Zoya Pippa. I love it in the bottle, LOVED it on a girlfriend of mine...but on me? not so much. once i get it past the streaky phase, it looked really odd on me. so it has just sat in my box staring at me wistfully... so i combined it with Hyperspace Bypass and then spent the next two days wiggling my fingers around just to catch glimpses of the silver hexes and black micro glitter. it went on super easy and the picture above is lamp light (sunlight was almost impossible to capture) with only two coats of Hyperspace Bypass. I do have to note, that i'm currently rereading the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe so the nerdgasm level on this right now is officially at SQUEE!!

This is two coats of Crunchy Frog over Zoya Dea. it dried super smooth, compared to my other NerdLacquer purchases, but i still did a coat of Gelous and one of SV over top. The name is super silly, but the combo is so unusual that i can't help but love it. The base on this somewhere between caramel and chocolate, so it made the Dea (which is totally milk chocolate) a little less meh for me.

MyPerfectPolish swatched this last week (find it here) and had a hard time getting those gorgeous champagne colored flecks off the sides of the bottle. my super technical fix for this was just to screw the top entirely back on between each nail, shift the bottle back and forth a bit and then lay the brush lengthwise down each nail (More Nail Polish did a really good video on the technique here, using The Glittering Crowd by Lynderella *LE DROOL*) . technique worked pretty well and this is only *one* coat of Cyance Friction. The base of the glitter was speckled with tiny coppery glitter so that mellowed out the Hard Candy Frenzy a ton. only issue, it totally gobbled my Gelous+SV combo which is annoying the hell out of me. i am a sucker for a glassy shine.