Zoya Rebel

Man, I haven't posted about a Zoya polish in for-ev-er! Craziness. Zoya Rebel is a polish from Zoya's spring collection, Awaken. They had a St. Patrick's Day sale were you could get a free green polish with the order of any two other polishes from the site, so I used it as an opportunity to get all the shimmers from the Awaken collection, which were the only only polishes in the collection I was really interested in. I know everyone has seen these swatches by now, sorry! They were sitting on my shelf for a bit, but I had a craving to wear a blue polish and so I grabbed Rebel. Zoya describes this as a "full coverage blue sky metallic with a silver shimmer." The only quibble I have is that Zoya rates this as a 5 (out of 5) on their opacity scale, which to my mind means it should be a one coat polish. I used two coats here (at least, I'm pretty sure... again, no notes) and two coats gave good coverage. You could use a third coat to really make the color pop and I seem to recall that I wish I had used a third coat because I had some thin spots on my nails-- just something to keep in mind!

In any case, I think this is a lovely polish and nicely bridges the winter/spring divide. The blue is a bit bright, but the silver shimmer gives it a slight iciness that is evocative of winter. Very pretty! 

Artificial light (flash):

One thing I do remember about this was that I had major shrinkage the day after applying this!! I use the Essie Good to Go top coat and typically do not have any problems with it, but for some reason, combined with Rebel, the polish shrank! Honestly, this is the first time I've had this problem. Very strange-- I'm not sure if anyone else has had this problem with this particular polish, but for whatever reason I did experience some problems.

Cult Nails Lethal

Today I have another polish from the Cult Nails Passionate Dreams collection-- Lethal! Lethal is a silver foil polish, though when it dries it has a matte chrome like finish. This will be brief, because I don't really take notes anymore when I "swatch" so I'm going from memory here. To the best of my recollection, this is two coats of Lethal and I no issues applying the polish at all.

Artificial light:

Natural light:

For some weird reason, even though I wear a lot of silver jewelry in my day to day life, I find myself more attracted to gold polish instead of silver. I'm not really sure why that is, but it was a thought that crossed my mind the other day. But when I wear a silver polish, I'm like a magpie and incredibly attracted to how shiny it is, and Lethal is no exception to that. This is a great silver polish if you're in the market for one! Which color metallic polish do you like wearing the most?

May The Fourth Be With You!

Better late than never, right? Most of you will probably see this on May 5th, but whatever. If you are a Star Wars fan, May 4th has become something of a holiday in the fandom-- also known as Star Wars Day. Like most things, I had grand plans for a May the Fourth manicure, but real life (mainly, twin babies) gets in the way. So I took the easy route and used one of my May the Fourth Be With You trio polishes-- Rebel Alliance by Liquid Sky Lacquer. I saw this trio advertised on Instagram and knew I had to have because I'm a huge Star Wars fan and I love polishes based on the movies.

Rebel Alliance is my first Liquid Sky Lacquer and the creator, Carolyn, does a lot of thermal polishes (this is also my first thermal polish as well)! While not a new thing, there seems to be a trend in indies to make thermal polishes and there are a lot of gorgeous ones out there. As the name implies, a thermal polish changes color based on temperature. In this case, Rebel Alliance, changes from a cool gold when warm to a vibrant green when cold. Due to the color changing pigment (I assume), the gold does have a slight green tinge to it, especially at angles. This applies fairly easily, though with the color change (it started changing on my nail) I found it difficult to accurately assess if I had any thin/bald patches. It was a little on the sheer side, so I used three coats here, plus a top coat.

Warm:

Cold:

The green is actually a lot more vibrant in person-- the flash is washing it out, which sucks. It's so so so SO pretty in person. The color change is also pretty quick-- almost as soon as you dunk your hand (or nails) in cold water, green appears. But the change back is also quick; you can see in my photos that the color is already transitioning from green to gold on some nails.

In any case, as my introduction to thermal polishes, I love this one and have been trying to find excuses to dip my hands in cool water just to see the color change. I do wish I hadn't trimmed my nails earlier in the day before apply this, because if I had a little more free edge there might be more green on the tips. Oh well, next time!

What's your verdict on thermal polishes? Yay or nay? I haven't gone out of my way to get anyway, but now that I own one I'm definitely curious to try a few more!

L'Oreal I Like It Chunky

Ok, first of all... WTH is up with the nail of this polish?! Are they referring to peanut butter? Because that's the only thing I prefer chunky. Even though the name is terrible, this is such a pretty polish. I Like It Chunky is a another textured polish from L'Oreal-- now part of their permanent collection. It's an orange texture with gold and pink glitter.

Like The Statement Piece, this polish was extremely easy to apply. The brush was a touch stiff, but not difficult to work with. Here I have used two coats and that gave nice opaque coverage.

Artificial light:

Natural light:

I really like this. On the nail, this polish isn't super orange; it has a strong brown tone to it. It's a pumpkin orange. In my opinion, this color is pretty unique for textured polishes-- I don't think there's another company that has a textured polish this color. I could definitely see myself wearing this during the fall-- this polish definitely has an autumnal feeling to me.