Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Oh Em Gee: Zoya Ivanka and Mimi

I've been a little bored with polish lately. Part of it is being very stressed out by school and my pressing academic obligations -- you will likely see a decline in my posting activity in the next ten to eleven weeks as I wrap up my second year of my PhD program -- part of it is just not feeling anywhere close to healthy. And part of it is feeling uninspired by the new polish releases.

But then I had a chance to swatch some of the new Zoya Sparkle polishes... and while I am still feeling a bit sick of polish at the moment, these just dazzzzzled me. :)

Zoya Ivanka


Let's do negatives first: it's sheer. This is three coats and it looks like it will need possibly even a fifth to get opaque. But who the heck cares when you have such gorgeous iridescent emerald microglitter suspended in that beauteous (...is that a word?) emerald jelly? The microglitter reflects gold and green and is simply alive. Super duper ultra pretty.

Zoya Mimi


Even more sheer than Ivanka but even prettier. First of all, it's a blurple jelly. Second, it's purple-pink microglitter that sparkles even more than the microglitter in Ivanka. The above is three coats and I'm positive it will need five to get rid of VNL completely. But it's incredibly beautiful and totally worth the trouble. The formula is pretty easy and thin so building it isn't bad at all.

I am beyond pleased at this purchase. I bought it when Zoya had their last sale because I wanted to try out Remove+, which they were giving out as GWP with some minimum purchase. It turns out that Remove+ is truly awesome (powerful remover that's not harshly drying) and to my utter surprise, the Zoya polishes were not impossible to apply (as has been my experience before). I have no idea of their wear time (my usual complaint with Zoya) but I shall try these out as NOTDs soon. I have a sad feeling that my Zoya embargo is now at an end...