Zoya Aspen

Ahhh, a new week and a fresh start after my month of Star Wars themed polishes. What better way to start than with the equivalent of a clean slate on my nails-- and to that end I have Zoya Aspen to share with you today. Originally released as part of the 2015 Holiday MatteVelvet collection, Aspen is a shimmery, snowy white. Or, as Zoya describes it, as a "sparkling arctic white with a micronized diamond pearl fleck in the traditional MatteVelvet finish." I personally find white nails to be really chic, but don't love a straight up white creme-- it's too reminiscent of painting white out on my nails in middle school. So I love how Aspen has a nice shimmer to it, which softens the look.

Aspen had an okay formula... not amazing but it certainly could have been worse. It was a bit thick and didn't really want to self level, but if you used a light touch it wasn't terrible to apply. It's pretty opaque, though there was definitely a bit of visible nail line with the first coat. After two coats, it was still a but uneven for my taste, so I used a third coat and felt that was perfect. If you are careful, you could probably get away with two!

I don't think Aspen could be more perfectly named. It's such a perfect snowy white and even though the formula isn't perfect, this is still looks wonderful on the nail. It looks really luminous here and I think it freaked out my camera a bit; I don't think it was quite this right in real life. Unfortunately, the matte finish, while it looks dry, does not dry completely through very quickly-- I ended up smudging a couple nails during an unfortunate late night diaper change and had to do a quick fill-in/repaint and then top coat to make sure it dried. It was pretty in the matte finish or with a top coat! I can't wait to try the others I have from this collection!