Top 15 of 2015

I wanted to share my top 15 polishes of 2015.  I had this post planned for New Year's Eve, but then my hubby and I both got really sick and were down for days.  Then it was back to work and life was crazy.  Sorry that this is a little late.

It was so hard to narrow my picks down to 15.  I ultimately only chose polishes that I purchased in 2015 (though a few were released earlier) and tried to choose the polishes I wore the most.

Here they are in rainbow order:

Zoya Perrie

Perrie is a gorgeous orchid cream.  It is smooth and buttery-opaque in 2 coats.  In the spring I went for nearly 3 weeks wearing this.  I'd take it off and then immediately reapply it.

Whim In Love With Love

I found this gem in the clearance bin at Ulta.  Whim's formulas are hit or miss, but ILWL's formula is a grand slam.  It's nearly a 1-coater rose polish and is super holographic in the sunlight.  Indoors, it looks like it has a subtle silver shimmer.

Orly Fireball

This summer I wasn't crazy about the neons, except with Orly's Fireball.  It's a neon red with a subtle pinkish shimmer.  It's a hot and wild color, but is stunning both indoors and out.

OPI Go With the Lava Flow

I was pretty disappointed in OPI's Hawaii collection.  All the colors seemed too pastel to represent the tropical islands.  However, I did fall in love with Go With the Lava Flow.  It is a reddish coral color with subtle gold shimmer.  It is so pretty.

Hare Polish Flesh World

I tried to limit my Hare Polish choices, but still 3 made it on this list.  I love Flesh World from the original Twin Peaks collection.  It's a yellow-toned nude crelly with peach, gold, and black glitters.  Definitely the oddest and most unique polish in my collection.  The combo seems so weird, but the result works so well.

Superchic Lacquer Figmint of My Imagination

Figmint of My Imagination is a minty green shimmer with a violet flash.  It is so pretty and the flash adds a lot of interest to it.  It is very thin though-requires 3-4 coats.

Zoya Cecilia

I probably could've listed the entire Island Fun collection on this list.  Cecilia is probably my favorite from the collection though.  It is a gorgeous 1-coat green-leaning teal.  I love how bright and vibrant it is, but it has a slight dusty quality that keeps the color from being obnoxious.

Butter London Stag Do

Stag Do was a major lemming of mine that I stumbled upon in TJ Maxx.  I couldn't believe that I found it there.  It's a very dark teal with a super subtle green shimmer.  In nearly every lighting, it looks like a cream, but in direct sunlight, the shimmer peeks through.  It's dark and vampy, yet doesn't look black in any lighting.

KBShimmer Carpe Denim

I feel a little bit like a cheater by putting this on my yearly favorites list.  I received Carpe Denim as a Christmas present and have only worn it once.  But once is all it took-I couldn't get this polish out of my mind.  It's a dark navy blue jelly that's packed with holographic silver glitter.  It's almost a night sky polish except the glitter is super holographic in all lighting.

Zoya Serenity

Serenity is my other pick from the Island Fun collection.  It's a medium-hued dusty purple.  Just like Cecilia, it is simultaneously bright and subdued.  It has fantastic formula too, nearly a 1-coater.

Hare Polish Regency Miss

The base of Regency miss is the same dusty purple color as Serenity.  It also has pink circle glitters and square copper glitters and copper shimmer in it.  Another of Hare's unexpectedly stunning glitter mixes.

OPI Cosmo With a Twist

This was my go to polish color for the holiday season.  I wore it 3 times in the month of December.  It's a dark purple jelly with purple and blue glass fleck in it.

Zoya Caitlin

Caitlin is a lavender-grey polish.  It's super chic and classy.

 Hare Polish Lost on Abalone Shores

LOAS was from June's A Box Indied.  It's a taupe-grey with green holographic flakies and pink shimmer.  This is so pretty and is probably my favorite polish of the entire year.

Crows Toes Even Sugar Melts in the Devil's Mouth 

My final favorite is from February's A Box Indied.  ESMITDM has a black jelly base with silver flakies and red shimmer.  It looks really edgy and the red shimmer makes it a bit vampy too.

So those are my favorite polishes from last year!  What are yours?  I'm so excited to see what 2016 brings to the polish world.  The spring collections look like they are going to be great.

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.

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.

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?