Zoya Swatch SPAM

Hello Everyone!

I must apologize for my absence. As you know I am in the process of packing and moving which has forced me to be a bit thin in my posts. But today may make up for it. I have swatched ALL of my Zoya nail polish to help guide you in your choices if you are doing the polish swap for Earth Day.

I started working on swatching all of them a while ago when Zoya had a promo to get two free polishes with any order over $10. How nice is that!? Well, they frequently do nice things like that and when they do, it prompts us (myself included) to scramble to find swatches so we can get ideas of what to order. And now with the exchange in full swing it is happening again! Well, I decided to give you a place to find a truckload of swatches of Zoya shades. Right here! I have included swatches of Zoya nail polish, from shimmers and glitters to mattes and cremes, in red and pink to blue and green and white and purple and everything in between! Here you are, my friends:

Astra - One of my most favorite shades ever. Pink and red glitter in a pink base. This is 3 coats.

Astra Close Up

Nova - Pink glitter in a magenta base. This is three coats.

Nova Close Up

Luna - Silver glitter in a shimmery silver base. This is three coats.

Luna Close Up

Savita - Matte purple that glows! This is 2 coats

Posh - Another fave. This is beautiful and this swatch is ONE COAT. matte shade

Dovima - 2 coats. matte shade

Loredana - This is 2 coats. matte shade

Eva - bright coralish pink. 2 coats

Dita - Punchy bright pink red creme. Dupey to China Glaze - Heli-Yum

Isla - Gorgeous blackened red shimmer. Must have. 2 coats

Moxie - Magenta creme. Very pretty. 2 coats

Jacy - Dark red-purple, magenta with hidden purple shimmer. This is 3 coats

Fergie - Purplish pink, or pinkish purple? Don't know but I love it. This is 2 coats

Malia - Hot. This may have been 3 coats, but I am not totally sure! No, I think its two but I though about doing 3 and decided not to

Pinta - This is one or two coats. I can't remember for sure but it is very rich and pigmented and can get on in one coat. Not only is it gorgeous alone, but it makes a great base to layer over; more interesting than a black creme, in my opinion.

Ki - Purple silver green duochrome - 2 coats

Adina - Wow. This turned out to be so much prettier than I thought it would be. I was afraid it'd be frosty and unflattering. I was wrong! This is 2 coats.

Kotori - Holy Moly! Get this!

Tallulah - Very bright blue shimmer. This is 2 coats

Jo - Periwinkle shimmer. I love this. Some nails have 2 coats and some have 3 to touch up and bald spots.

Envy - Super dark green. Looks black in most lights. This is 2 coats.

Midori - Light green with lots of green shimmer. Apparently close to a discontinued favorite from China Glaze: Moonpool

Goldie - Very yellow, very bold and bright, gold. 2 coats

Richelle - Copperish gold shimmer. 2 coats

Sienna - Wow. This is 3 coats

Maria - 2 coats

Gaia - This is 4 coats and still streaky but I have seen others rock it well at three. It may just have been me this day. I love it though any way and plan to layer it over white next time.

Ginessa - Shimmery white metallic. This is 2 coats

Gabrielle - This is three coats. Soooo shimmery! I has a bit of VNL after three coats but it still looks good. Can always layer it. This will be awesome for summer.

Happy Earth Day. Zoya Helps You Do Green

Happy Earth Day everyone! I am very pleased today. I am a professional in the energy field so Earth Day is exciting in that respect, but you know what is exciting me even more? One of our favorite brands, Zoya, announced they will indeed by doing the Zoya Nail Polish Exchange for Earth Day just like last year! If you aren't familiar, this means that you can send in your old, crusty bottles of nail polish to Zoya and they will send you back a brand new bottle of Zoya nail polish for each bottle you send them! Here is the deets straight from Zoya:

Zoya Nail Polish Exchange*

Keep the planet a little bit greener one bottle of nail polish at a time!

Announcing the 2010 Zoya Nail Polish Exchange. For a limited time, kicking off on Earth Day (April 22, 2010 - 12 PM EST), Zoya Nail Polish will exchange your old, out-of-style, unwanted nail color and replenish your nail polish supply with fresh Zoya fashion colors. Simply send in six or more bottles of old polish - any brand other than Zoya, Qtica or Nocti, new or used - and we'll send you the new Zoya colors of your choice in a bottle-for-bottle exchange.

That's right - no exceptions, no questions. All you pay is $3.50 per bottle to cover shipping and processing. Choose from over 300 formaldehyde, toluene, camphor and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) free, long-lasting, award winning, healthy colors to replace your old color! Zoya will properly dispose of your old polish according to EPA guidelines.

* Any brand other than Zoya, Qtica or Nocti. New or used, empty or full. Minimum of six bottles. Send with the required shipping, processing fees and documentation to have the old color disposed of according to EPA guidelines and to qualify for NEW Zoya Nail Polish at no charge. Shipping and processing fees required for exchange. Restrictions apply. Available in continental US only. Limited time offer. Exchange ends June 30th, 2010.

From what I understand mini bottles and nail polish pens like Nic Stics are okay to exchange too. And you pick the shades you want!

Zoya will be announcing more here: http://www.zoya.com/content/category/Nail_Polish_Exchange.html

at 12pm EST/11am CST today! Start picking out your new Zoya shades!

PS - I have been working on swatching ALL of my Zoya NPs over the last few weeks and I am almost done. I will post them ASAP as a tool to help you pick shades!

:c)

Spinoff: Flakies Made Matte

Hi! I can't let go of my crazy flakie manicure. So to freshen it up I added a matte topcoat to it. I just adore matte flakies. If you think flakies are cool alone, matte top coat takes it up a huge notch. It's so fascinating how even though you are taking away shine, the flakies seem to shine more. It is just wonderful. There is no glare to take away from them. Every little flake and every little detail shows and glows.

So to recap, here is what my mani looked like yesterday:


And here is what it looks like now:

It's like opalescent, crushed, stained glass. It's so cool!!

Have a great day!
-Elaine
:c)

Holy Layering!

Happy Monday! How's the start to your week? Mine isn't the best, I have to admit, but I am smiling thanks to the mani I have on!

I have a wild and awesome mani for you today. I did it over the weekend and am stunned at it's depth. It has it all: it's blurple, it's flakie and it's shining every color possible at me. Why do I need to wear anything but this? :cP

I started with a coat of Essie - Mesmerize. Then I added Nfu-Oh - #51. The sheer purple of #51 over the bold blue of Mesmerize created an electric blurple that is just perfect for this insane mani.

Then I threw on a great flakie I received from a sweet lady in Holland called "Rainbow" and it is from a line called "GOSH". I know GOSH is well known to my international readers but us fanatics in the US don't have access to it. The flakies in it are just like Nfu-Oh - #51 but the base is clear, making their "flakie-ness" shine a bit more than #51's.

Then the kicker. I added Nfu-Oh - #40 on top which I showed you over black here. #40 is one of my favorite polishes ever. Alone it isn't that exciting, but layered... oh. How it kills layered. #40 is what really makes this creation because although the flakes in #51 and Rainbow are well, rainbow, you get the different colors when you move your nails and look at them from different angles. So straight on they show mostly red and orange, but straight on #40 looks blue, green and aquamarine, so you all colors at once without twisting your hands around. It's rather intense!

Let's give a round of applause to the crew that made this possible! Woo! Mesmerize, #51, Rainbow, #40.

Also if you didn't know, fabuloustreet.com (where I get my Nfu-Oh polishes from) is having a sale this month:
All Polishes are priced at discounted prices. We are clearing our inventory on the Discontinued Paint Series (No. 133-282) They are marked 30% off. All other polishes are marked on 10-20% off. OFFER Valid from 04/01/2010 until 04/30/2010

Something to consider if you are in the market for some Nfu-Oh polishes!

What do you think? Do you rock layered looks?
:c)

Tutti Fruitti

Happy Sunday! I have to get the heck outta here but I couldn't help but upload a pic of a pedi I couldn't help doing! It's super cute:

I don't know... I just had an urge to put fruit on my feet! For the base I used Sinful Colors - Easy Going, then I used the Konad fruit plate (M55) to stamp on my big toes.

Left foot:

Orange: L'Oreal - Sizzling Tangerine

Watermelon: China Glaze - Sugar High and Konad polish in green

Right foot:

Grapes: Konad polish in green and China Glaze - Grape Pop

Strawberries: China Glaze - Sugar High and Konad polish in green and red

Have a great Sunday!

Blue Planet

Morning! Thank you all so much for all the well wishes for my Blogoversary! You all are the best!!!!

So remember when I showed you a couple of LA Splash swatches back here, and I mentioned frankening with Sparkling Ocean Spray because I wasn't a fan of the empty space between the glitter? Can you guess where I am going with this? :c)

I decided to mix it with Wet n Wild - Nocturnal which must be a great polish to franken with because it is not the first time I have mixed with it and with this post I used it all. Anyway, I am madly, wildly, crazy in love with what I created.

I am calling this "Blue Planet". That would have been the name of my Illamasqua create your own polish entry had I gotten it in on time. So if the shade Illamasqua makes isn't as cool as this, then we'll know I would have won if I wasn't a procrastinator! :cD

Check this out! This is a dark blue jelly base with teal glitter. AHH! I love this!!! The base and glitter are matchy, but not the same and that gives it so much character.

To make it I poured out a little less than half of Sparkling Ocean Spray and filled back up most of that space with Nocturnal. Pretty easy!

What do you think?!
-Elaine
:c)

Happy Anniversary!

...To Lacquer Laine! Today my blog turns 1 year old! Can you believe it!?

I wanted to do a few things for my blog for it's anniversary. The first is that I wanted to finally show my face. I didn't upload a picture of myself to my profile when I started and after a little while I realized I like the faceless attribute of my blog. The anonymity was... nice. You guys were reading for the nails! Not my face. I really like this especially since I am typically the type to be in front of a camera as well as behind it and post tons of pictures of myself on other internet media outlets. I don't always look "nice" in my pictures... I actually look like a goofball most of the time. But either way, I love pictures and always have and I have thousands from every year since I was in middle school. Thank goodness for the digital age! Now they are all stored on my external drive. Saves space! Anyway, I love to take pics and have taken a few photography classes. I am always the unofficial photographer for gatherings and parties. I don't even go anywhere without a camera. Ever.

The second thing I wanted to do for today was feature a particular nail polish, which I am wearing, because I credit it with leading me to blogging. It's NYC - Chinatown from the In a New York Minute line. It may seem like an odd choice. It may seem more likely that I'd wear one of my top 20 shades, or something really fabulous like a Lippmann glitter, or something high end like RBL, but no. My $2 drugstore polish is my anniversary shade.

I have always had a thing for my nails. And I have loved to do them. And I have also always loved bizarre shades. I just always had a very controlled, small sized stash with interesting shades. Well about Thanksgiving/Christmastime 2008 I started picking more and more shades, and when I graduated and realized I would have full time work, I let the buying go completely full on and kept picking up more and more shades with no cap on what I bought. And I was happy about it! I did not know about nails blogs, or Makeup Alley, or discount NP e-tailers. I was just browsing in stores and ebay.

Well one day in the early spring last year we had an unusually warm day so I rode my bike to an out of the way Target. I spotted the whole new line of NYC polishes and immediately picked the must unique, interesting shade. This ended up being Chinatown. The story doesn't end here, though. There was only one bottle left, and the brush was broken off. I kept looking for it in drugstores and other Targets to no avail. Finally I turned to the internet to help. Well what are you going to find if you search "NYC Chinatown"?! The wrong Chinatown, that's for sure. After some manipulating with the words "NYC", "Chinatown", "nail polish" and whatever else I did, I had a match. It led me to Steph's Closet. A beauty blog. And mostly devoted to NP. And guess what? She had swatches of all the shades! This opened the door. Nail blogs? I surfed and surfed finding more and more nail blogs. This upped my hunting game drastically. I had so many new things to look for! And now I knew about e-tailers like TransDesign and Head2ToeBeauty. Whoa boy! Then I got a Konad set. Then I learned how to water marble. My head was spinning. My collection was growing. And one day I realized that I had so much I could share, I thought it would be awesome to start my own blog. That was one year ago.

Thanks Chinatown. :c)

Now back to the other piece of business. My face. I wanted to find a good pic that I looked "normal" in and that I took fairly recently to give you the best representation of me. Not that there is much variation in how I have looked over the past decade. I still have my picture on my license that I took when I was 16 and now I am 24 and look exactly the same!!!! I say "normal" because when I take pictures it is rare for me to just look straight at the camera, and smile nice and say "cheese". I am usually making some sort of face, or dancing or I look like I have had one too many cocktails (not that I had too many cocktails....haha). I would have loved to had a photo shoot with myself yesterday and take some pics but I have a ginormous pimple on my chin. Gross. So I found some other nice recent ones. Are you ready?!

This picture I actually took last week at the White Sox opener. A beer or two in, but I look alright!

The other shots I have are from February at the Chicago Auto Show. Yes February. March only has "maniac Elaine" in its pictures.

Me in something... maybe a Honda?

I NEED THIS NOW!!! Oh the giant wheels! Dream car...

Me and Mustang GT 500. OOooohh

Okay. Do you want a maniac picture? I am sure you are curious. I would be! I'll give you one of me from Madi Gras... with my face painted...





READY?

......................................






I told you! This is what I look like in most pictures. A lush. A doofus lush. HAHA! On the left is my friend Kate. I would have "smiley faced" her, but the mask she did on herself looked so cool I had to share!

Thank you so much for reading and supporting Lacquer Laine the blog and Laine the person for the past year. It means so much to me that my little blog has just kept growing and growing thanks to my readers. I really wanted to do a giveaway for my anniversary too, but I have so much going on with the move I really couldn't add one more thing to my to-do list. I'll do one soon, I promise!

Have a wonderful weekend!