4 More Hare Polishes

And the Hare Polish swatchfest continues with 3 more Hares that I wore recently.  I wish I could say that this would be it, but I haven't even swatched a fraction of what I snagged in destashes, so you'll be seeing a lot more Hare Polish.

First is Anemone Gardens.

Anemone Gardens is a purple jelly base with large metallic pink hex glitters and tiny olive square glitters.  It's a really odd combination in the bottle but looks super unique on the nail.  My swatch stick took 3 coats to be opaque, but the large glitters made it super lumpy.  I chose to layer this on my nails to avoid the lumpy mess.  I layered over Zoya Serenity which was a pretty close match to the base color, but I think it darkened up the polish a bit.  Honestly, it reminded me of something I would've worn in middle school-ultra girly (pink and purple) with large loud glitters.  But I teach at a middle school, so it was all good (and yes, my students loved it).  I don't foresee me wearing this to work frequently because of how loud it is, but I can see myself loving it on my toes or in the summer.

Next up is Star Tropics.

Star Tropics is a thin navy jelly with large white square and tiny silver circle glitters.  It's a spin on the night sky polishes that I am so hooked on.  This one is very thin and doesn't get opaque so I layered 2 coats over OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue.  YGTB, is one of my favorite layering polishes because it has that metallic glow from within look which transfers over to whatever is layered on top.  It also is a 1-coater which makes it ideal for layering.  I loved this mani and wore it for several days.  The glitters in Star Tropics both floated and sank in the jelly base which gave it a lot of depth on my nails.  Absolutely lovely.

Third is Dancing Bird of Paradise.

Dancing Bird of Paradise is a red jelly base with matte pink and metallic gold glitters.  The base is fairly thin, so I layered this over Zoya Yana.  Yana's a bit too pink-toned and so I feel that the pink glitters disappeared on my nails.  The gold glitters in the red jelly were stunning though.  I want to try layering this over a true red or over a red-orange to see if the pink glitters would show up more.

Lastly is my Easter manicure, King of Carat Flowers paired with Pure Ice Tales Untold and Girly Bits Pirate's Booty.

I tried some basic nail art.  This mani is based on one by Shelby Lou Nails on Instagram seen HERE. (If you don't follow her, you should!  She has fantastic mani pics and does simple yet stunning nail art.)  Tales Untold is a lavender with a gold shimmer.  It has a great formula for a pastel and extra great for a cheap drugstore polish.  It's a nice 2-coater.  Pirate's Booty is a gold glitter bomb.  It is packed with all sizes of gold holographic glitter and opaque in 2-3 coats.  King of Carat Flowers is a light gray crelly base with gold hexes, lavender squares, and cream square glitters.  It is very delicate and spring-like.

Zoya Robyn Review

After a couple weeks of all indies, all glitter, I needed a clean cream manicure.  I chose Zoya's Robyn because I've been pining for spring and blue skies (which are here-yay!).

Robyn is a nice 2 coater sky blue cream polish.  The pigment is very vibrant, and I was worried about staining.  I didn't have any, but I did double up the base coat just in case.  I really liked this simple manicure and wore it for 5 days.

Shimmer Polish Vivian Review

I stumbled upon a blog sale that had a bunch of Shimmer Polishes for only $2.  I've always wanted to try the brand, but couldn't justify the $12 price tag.  So I bought a bunch to try out.  The first one that I tried was Vivian.  Vivian has rose gold, pink, gold and holographic glitters in a slightly gray-tinted base.  I wore it over Zoya's Rue which I reviewed HERE.

The base of Vivian darkened Rue so it looked like a light taupe.  I loved this combo.  It was as if these two polishes were made for each other.  It was shimmery, subtle, and delicate-everything I love about polish.  It was a glitter that I would have no hesitation wearing to work (which I did).

Zoya Sailor Review

I made the mistake of wearing a frosty baby pink last week.  Ick!  The color washed me out bad.  I was so disappointed in the color that I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it for a review.  To top it off, the frosty shimmer would not come off of my nails!  So I chose a really dark color to cover it.

Zoya's Sailor is a dusty navy cream that borders on being a blurple.  It's really dark, but is obviously blue in all lighting.  I love that about this polish.  I really hate colors that aren't black, but look like it anywhere except in direct sun.  Sailor had a great formula.  It could probably be a 1-coater, but since I was covering some lumpy shimmer, it took two.

I've been trying to find a perfect navy cream, and I think that Sailor might be it.  It's purple-toned enough that it doesn't wash me out and has a nice dusty quality to the color.

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.

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?