KBShimmer Make My Gray Review

For Christmas, I got some KBShimmer polishes.  One of them is Make My Gray.

Make My Gray is a light gray crelly with matte pink and baby blue, and metallic silver and turquoise glitters of a bunch of different sizes.  I really like the color combo in this crelly mix.  It's a two-coater and it is sure spunky once it's on the nails.  The base dries down which helps the glitter to stand out, but it does make the nails very lumpy.  It required 2-coats of basecoat to smooth out and really shine.

What I Wore 12/18-12/27

The week of Christmas was week of sparkly nails.  I started by wearing China Glaze I Soiree I Didn't Do It from the Cheers collection (this year's holiday collection).

I Soiree is the only polish from the Cheers collection that I picked up.  I might go back and get more because I really really really enjoyed this polish.  Nobody does microglitters like china glaze does.  This one had teal, blue, green, and holo glitters mixed together.  All the colors mixed makes a stunning green leaning teal that glistens so well.  It was also opaque in 2 coats which is awesome for a glitter.

After wearing I Soiree for 3 days, I chose to wear Dance Legend Sulley from the Chameleon collection.  I love duochromes and my favorite movie is Monster's Inc, so I couldn't resist.  I'm determined to own the entire collection (It'll be my only complete collection-I just love that the polishes are named after characters in the movie).  This is 2 coats over black:

Sulley is a mostly turquoise and purple (Sulley the monster's colors!) multichrome.  It also shifts easily to a rosy orange color.  Gold is visible at extreme angles and sometimes you can see a bright green flash as well.

Here is a picture of my nail underwater so you can see all the colors in Sulley:

It's got so many colors and is such a shifty multichrome.  I couldn't bring myself to take it off and wore it for 4 days until if finally chipped.

After that color explosion, I chose to wear a calmer polish-Butter London's Victoriana.  Victoriana is my favorite Butter London and one of my standard go-to colors.

Victoriana is a grayish-turquoise with a very strong silver shimmer running through it.  It is nearly a 1-coater!  It goes on so smoothly and looks good with any outfit.  I just love this one.  However, it chipped pretty badly within the first day.  I've never had that problem with this polish before.  I've recently switched base-coats, so that may be what caused the chipping.

Finally, my Christmas manicure was KBShimmer Carpe Denim from the recent fall collection.

Carpe Denium is a navy blue jelly loaded with small holographic silver glitters.  Although packed with glitter, they are spread apart on the nail, giving it a sparkly night sky effect.  This is gorgeous!  It's evident that it is blue in all lighting, yet it is super dark which sets apart the holo glitter well.  This is opaque in 2 coats.

And that's what I wore the week of Christmas.  What polish did you festively rock for the holidays?  I'd  love to hear.

Christmas Nail Art

I wore a very simple nail art design for the last week of teaching before the holiday break.

I used Zoya Ivanka, Zoya Sooki, and Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  Striping tape was used to make the candy cane nail.  It was super easy, but looked so festive.

Zoya Mimi Review

I've missed 2 weeks because I lost my nail photos.  Sigh...A lot of swatching wasted.  I have one picture that survived the past 2 weeks-Zoya's Mimi.

Mimi is a purple glass fleck from the Sparkle Collection.  I'm not sure why I waited so long to purchase any polishes from this collection-they are gorgeous!

Mimi is a vibrant grape purple glass fleck.  The golden flakie glitters in it take on a fucsha color in the polish.  It's so pretty.  It looks elegant from afar but is so complex up close.  I loved this color and wore it for 5 days, which is pretty unusual for me.  Unlike it's sister polish, Charla, Mimi did not stain at all (but I did double up on base coat).  This one is a must try!

What I Wore 11/16-11/20

I'm debating how I should continue these "What I Wore" posts.  I've been tempted to wear some of the previous polishes again, but don't want to have redundant posts.  Silly to even be tempted, I have over 150 polishes, so there's plenty of new material for the blog.  Still, I'm undecided if I'll keep describing what I wore or if I'll just switch to a polish review format.

I started the week wearing Butter London Dubs from the Brick Lane Collection.  I first saw Dubs in the holiday Steampunk collector set in my Ulta and it has been a lemming since.  I couldn't find it for sale individually and really thought that it was a set exclusive.  But then, two weekends ago, I found it in TJ Maxx.  It was even clearanced to only $2.99 instead of the usual $4.99.  Heck, I would've been willing to pay the normal Butter London $15 price tag for this one.

Dubs is a rosy nude textured polish with silver shimmer and larger blush hex glitters.  It is so pretty.  It's very subtle and office appropriate, but is still a fun sparkly texture.  I've heard lots of people say that textures are out right now, but I really don't care.  I love textured polish and will continue to rock it even if it's not in style right now.  Dubs had a slower dry time than the OPI liquid sands but dried faster than the Zoya Pixiedusts.  It wore really well and I had no chipping or tip wear, but I only wore it for 2 days.

Next, I wore Zoya's Charla from the Sparkle Collection.  I know that it is the classic Zoya color, but I didn't own it for the longest time.  After wearing and loving Gilda 2 weeks ago, I decided to order Charla, Mimi, and Ivanka.  I passed on Alegra because when I layered Gilda over a berry polish, it looked just like the pictures I've seen of Alegra.

Charla is a turquiose glass fleck packed full of gold flaky shimmer.  The gold shimmer is tinted by the blue polish and makes it look very green toned.  It is very pretty.  Every time I looked at my nails, I caught my breath.  It is that stunning!  It has one major problem though-it is a STAINER!  Not just any stainer, Charla might just be the worst staining polish that I've ever tried.  I had on 2 layers of basecoat and it still colored my nails greenish blue.  Seriously, I removed it 5 days ago and my nails are still stained.  It took 2 days of major scrubbing before my fingers weren't smurf-like, but the nails still are.  I'm pretty upset about it, when a polish stains badly, I rarely wear it again, but Charla is so pretty.  Anyone know how to avoid staining?

I had to choose a dark polish to hide the blue mess left from Charla, so I chose to wear another Zoya of mine, Yara.  Yara is an olive green with gold shimmer.  It's from the Mirrors Collection.  It is a 1-coater!  The shimmer is Yara stands out in the bottle, but is super subtle on the nail.  That normally wouldn't be a problem, but I needed some glittery bling to distract from the smurf hands.  (You hopefully can't see it in the picture-yes I used a photo editing program to make my hands flesh-toned again.)  So I layered Superchic Nail Laquer's You Don't Know Jack About My Beans on it.

YDKJAMB is from Superchic's Into the Wood's Collection.  It is an artichoke green with an ultra strong copper shimmer and a very subtle holo.  It is super sheer-it's still sheer at 4 coats, so I only wear this layered over another green.  1-coater Yara is the perfect layering polish to this.  YDKJAMB is very blingy and was perfect for distracting me from the blue cuticles.

What I Wore 11/09-11/13

I started this week with Hare Polish's Damn Fine Coffee from her original Twin Peaks Collection.  I ADORE Hare Polish so much.  It is by far my favorite indie brand.  The creator has been ill, so her store is out of stock right now, but she's working on a restock and a new release.  You can find information about her shop HERE.

I purchased DFC in the spring and have been eagerly waiting for fall to wear it.  It is a stunner!  My photo doesn't do it justice. It is a brown jelly base packed with copper and gold flaky and round glitters.  It also has a gorgeous gold shimmer and in strong lighting, there is a sprinkling of vibrant red glitters that look like sparks of fire in the polish.  I could not keep my eyes off of my nails while I was wearing this.  Most Hares are 3 coaters, but this one was an easy 2.  Removal is a pain though-I had to use the tinfoil method and even then it didn't get all the glitter off.

After 3 days of brown nails, I opted for some color.  My Ulta had a sale on Zoyas (buy 2 get 1 free) and I can never resist even though I have a ridiculously sized Zoya collection.  I picked up Zoya Talia from this year's Island Fun Collection.

Talia is a bright yet dusty turquoise.  It is nearly a one-coater, but two-coats were needed to even it out.  What I loved about this year's summer collections is that the colors are bright and bold, yet deep and slightly dusty which makes them very wearable in the fall as well as the spring or summer.  I thought this color was gorgeous, but it is a bit of a stainer and requires careful removal.  (All of Zoya's medium-dark blues seem to stain my nails.  None of their other colors do.)

At the end of the week, I wore another color that I was eagerly waiting for fall to wear-Zoya India.  India is from last year's Ignite Collection.  Just look at how gorgeous it is!

India is a deep burgandy base with gold flaky shimmer.  It is dark and vampy but the shimmer softens it and adds interest.  It definitely is a stunner for fall.

What I Wore 11/02-11/06

I started the week wearing Zoya Yves from this year's Matte Velvet Collection.  All the reviews I have read have raved about this one, but it seemed really flat while matte.  I don't really like flat matte nails, which is why the matte velvets appeal to me, They've got some shimmer/texture when matte.  Yves is not like that though.  I rarely wear the Matte Velvets matte though, I always topcoat to bring out that breathtaking shimmer.  Yves has it, but it's pretty hidden unless you are under strong lighting.

I am unsure how I feel about this one.  I'm disappointed in the look of it matte, and I wish the shimmer was more prominent.  It has a fantastic formula but stains really bad.  It looks very similar to OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue, but the OPI is metallic and this one looks like a navy cream unless the lighting shows the shimmer.  It might go in my destash pile, I haven't decided yet.

After being disappointed in Yves, I decided that I wanted to wear a truly sparkly Zoya.  I opted for Zoya's Gilda from the Sparkle Collection.

Gilda is a bright nearly hot pink jelly loaded with gold flaky glitter.  The glitter takes on some of the pink color making it look orange.  Gilda is very very sheer and when I put 3 coats on, you could still see the dark blue staining from Yves.  So I ended up wearing it over a berry cream color (Zoya's Areej).  Areej is a nice 2 coater cream which I topped with 2 coats of Gilda.  Gilda is the color of the bottle in the picture, my nails are cooler toned because of the berry base.  I ended up getting really busy and wore this for 4 or 5 days.

After bright pink, I wanted to wear a fall-esque color and chose OPI Green on the Runway from last year's Coca Cola Collection.  It is a emerald green/copper red duochrome.

Green on the Runway is a 2-3 coater with a fantastic color shift.  It's probably my favorite duochrome.  Although metallic, it doesn't leave obvious brushstrokes.  This was my favorite polish of the week.

Halloween Nails

I did some very simple nail art for Halloween-candy corn nails.  There are plenty of YouTube tutorials out there for these.

I used Wet'nWild Doh, Butter London Silly Billy, and Sinful Colors Snow Me White for the ring finger.  Zoya's Serenity is on the rest of my nails.

What I Wore This Week 10/18-10/24

I love reading nail blogs.  My very favorite are from small bloggers who just love nail polish like I do.  Their reviews are honest and the polish is usually easier to find than the bigger bloggers' polishes.

I decided to start my own nail blog.  Then I can keep track of my swatches and thoughts about my collection and maybe help someone else who's thinking about purchasing too.  I'm going to start just with sharing what I wore each week, and we'll see what happens from there.

On Sunday, I wore Cosmo With A Twist from the new OPI Starlight collection.  The day before, I stopped by Sally's to see if they had Starlight in yet.  (It's supposed to be in ULTA, my my ULTA never sticks to the correct schedule-they only put out the summer Zoya collection 3 weeks ago!)  Sally's only had 12 of the 18 colors, which was a bit of a let-down because I really wanted to see Ce-less-tial Is More and Let Your Love Shine, but they didn't have either.  Overall, the collection as a whole isn't really my thing.  It has 3 red creams (since OPI can't have a collection without ANOTHER red cream) and a bunch of those really weird, lumpy chrome glitters that they've had in their last 3 collections-Ick!  They have a gorgeous blue holo which looks like a dupe for Zoya's Dream, so I passed on it.  But I couldn't pass up Cosmo With a Twist-a stunning dark blue-purple glass fleck.

Indoors, Cosmo With a Twist looks like a murky dark purple with duochrome flakies (You can see the shift in the bottle), but in the sun, it reflects blue and looks like a navy (as you can see below).  The polish only required 2 coats, but I did have a little staining.

On Monday, I had a meeting to attend, so I opted for a neutral manicure.  I've been eager to try Zoya's Rue, and she doesn't disappoint!

Rue is a light, blush/mauve-toned nude.  It's not a mannequin hands color-it's obvious you are wearing polish, but it is subtle and classy.  A perfect office shade, and only 2 coats.  Rue's a good reminder why Zoya is my favorite brand by far.

It was a crazy week, and I wore Rue Monday-Thursday.  By Friday, I was dying for some color so I chose Butter London's Kerfluffle.  Not really a seasonally appropriate color, but I love peachy-pink any time of the year.

(Sorry for the blurry photo, I took about 5, but just couldn't seem to get a good shot of this.)  Kerfluffle suffers from the pastel polish syndrome-it's chalky and streaky and requires 3 coats.  At the same time, I love this color, and have tried several brands.  Butter London's Kerfluffle is better in formula than the others that I've tried.  It's near Essie's Van d'go, but not quite as pink.  But the formula is much more superior than the globby mess that Van d'go is.

I'm thinking I might try some nail art for Halloween.  I'm horrible at nail art though, so maybe I'll just rock lots of orange and purple this coming week.  What did you wear this week?