New Zoya holos

Right around Christmas Zoya ran a promo for a set of holo polishes - one of them was Brighton, which isn't new, but the other two were new pinks, so I couldn't resist ordering them.

They came in one of those nice gift boxes with the magnetic closure:

(Everybody but me may be accustomed to seeing these by now. But I hardly ever order sets, and the only other one of these I remember getting was a black one from the Matte Velvets, like five years ago.)

I got this a month ago - at which time I was too obsessed with picking yearly favorites to be methodical about documenting my Zoya purchases - so I'm not sure but I have a full-size bottle of Remove which I think came with this promo. I think I paid full price for the three polishes and the Remove was free with that purchase.

Anyway, here are the three polishes:

Here's Brighton - which had been previously released with the Bridal Bliss collection last spring:

I've seen it called beige, but it seems to me to be a little grayed out - so, I dunno, maybe we call it a greige? It's so pale we may never be sure. Honestly, I'm not sure why I thought I wanted this - it's not at all my color. (Maybe I can try it with a jelly on top, or something.)

Everly is sort of an almost-red, but I don't think it quite gets there:

It's sort of a strawberry color, I guess - I can't think of a better name for it. I'm looking forward to trying this one out shortly. (I'm not making much comment on the holo part of these because it's a holo like pretty much every other Zoya holo - a lovely scattered holo. If you haven't tried them you should!)

And then Cadence is more of a medium pink:

I go back and forth about whether I think Everly or Cadence is my favorite. I think I will have to wait until I've actually worn them to form a definite opinion on that point.

Dollar Store polishes

My husband likes to wander into the Dollar Tree occasionally, and several times lately I've ended up with little gifts he's bought there, which is fine with me! (I have nothing against the Dollar Tree but for some reason I hardly ever go there.)

Anyway, for Christmas I got a few. This one is a brand called Sassy + Chic which I had never heard of. It doesn't seem to have a name other than the number, so as you can see this is 903:

This is a really pretty color, though!

I'll have to remember to report back on the wear for this.

Then I got some Wet n Wilds - for one thing, he forgot that he had already bought me Red Red and bought it again, this time packaged with a red lipstick. Now it's only a dollar so it's not a big deal, but I said, let's make a new rule - don't buy me any more reds. Because he's bought me like four or five red nail polishes over the years and I usually wear them once so he can see I'm wearing them, and then I don't ever wear them again. So it's a waste, although I didn't say it that way to him! But anyway, then he also got a set that had these two, Tickled...

...and Sparked:

I tried it by itself (that's the lower one on the wheel), and I tried it over the baby pink - I liked that one better.

Last favorites installment

I've dragged out the favorites re-swatch long enough, so here are all the ones I hadn't already posted. Here is ILNP Black Orchid:

You can see from the bottle that it's full of holo stuff. It's very pretty in this darker base.

Essence Space Glam:

I've mostly worn this with something underneath. It looks pretty on the wheel but it's bound to have visible nail-line issues no matter how many coats you do, I'm guessing.

Smith & Cult Bitter Buddhist is the rare cream that makes my favorites:

I like it cause it's different. It's green, which I reliably love, but it's a different green. Much more subdued than what I usually wear. (Also S&C comes up with great names.)

I've talked about Cigars On Ice pretty recently - I think it was from the November Polish Pickup.

It's really beautiful. I thought about putting it in the top three, actually.

And I think I've covered everything now except the two Grinch polishes, which I've also talked about pretty recently, but I bothered to do new swatches so I feel like I have to show them. this is You're A Mean One:

It's kind of in that shifty unicorn-pee-like territory along with those OPIs like Turn On The Northern Lights, which is something I always like.

And then Grinchworthy, which is another one that I liked a whole lot:

It's various green microglitters in a clear base. It's awesome. (Wonder what it would be like layered with Always Be A Dragon??)

Spellfrost

I just realized that I never put up the swatch for my one Polish Pickup polish from December, Spellfrost from Ethereal Lacquer:

The pale swatch is Spellfrost on its own, and the one below that is over black. Here's Ethereal's description: "Spellfrost is a sheer periwinkle jelly base loaded with iridescent flakes that shift red, copper, pink and purple to green, violet blue and aqua with a strong violet shimmer and a bit of holographic sparks."

There are swatches here. (There are a lot of swatches in that entry, but they're alphabetical by brand, so it's reasonably easy to find.) And here's where I put Spellfrost on top of Zoya Gardner, just lately.

Assorted dark reds

I tend to get in red, pink, and wine-colored mode around Valentine's Day. (And I always waffle around about how soon to start that - it's still feeling like a bit soon but that time is coming, anyway.) This is a nice dark red, Colorstay (the non-gel version) Bold Sangria:

Nothing fancy, just a nice wine-red. But as I'm sure I've said before, I always liked this version of Colorstay.

This is Petites Blackberry:

This is a really lovely dark red - but not as dark or as berry-leaning as you might expect from the name!. (Do they still make Petites? I've only ever seen it at RiteAid and I haven't been anywhere where there's a RiteAid in several years, so I'm not sure. But I googled and couldn't find any current-seeming pictures, so I'm guessing the line may be discontinued.)

This is Pahlish Blood of the Mountain:

It's very, well, blood-colored. It looks less ominous with a good top-coat, though.

Shooting Star/Mini Mani wrap-up

Here is Ciate Shooting Star, the only full-size polish from Mini Mani Month:

It was the Christmas Eve polish, Day 24. I think the general consensus from the people that bought this set is that this was not a great choice. I wouldn't have minded having it as one of the minis but I know from experience that I will never ever use up a full bottle of this. It is rather pretty - the stars and the glitter are both holo-ish, but it's quite sparse. I looked up a bunch of reviews of this set in the last couple of months, and almost every review said this same thing - they liked most of the minis, but this polish was at best underwhelming.

I also have a picture of the 18 minis I ended up with (after giving two of the most neutral ones away):

I arranged this loosely by finish - the bottom row and a couple on the middle row are cremes, most of the top row is things that are definitely top-coats or seemed to me could be used as top-coats, at least, and the rest of the middle row is shimmery or metallic. It's a pretty good mix, really - a little heavy on the cremes, but then I know most people are bigger fans of cremes than I am.

The final tally for the 24 days was the one full-size polish above, 20 minis, one mini top-coat, one mini cuticle oil (they call it "jelly oil"), and one set of nail stickers. Totally worth the $59, I think, although I have to admit that I'm not entirely sure if I'll buy another one - partly because I saw pictures of some past versions and it had some of the same colors that this did. (Really, I will probably look at next year's set and see how many of those are colors I already have and decide then whether I think another one will be worth doing!)

Here's a list of my previous posts with the swatches and other pictures, for reference. (I also made a Ciate tag, and since these are the only Ciates I have, that tag should carry you right to all these entries.)
Overview
Days 1-2
Days 3-7
Days 8-9, 13-14
Days 10-12, 15-16
Days 17-23

NOTD: Fuchsia Metallic

This is a terrible picture, but you can at least see the color of this - Kleancolor Fuchsia Metallic:

I wouldn't really call this fuchsia, myself, but that's what it's named. It's more of a berry color, I guess - a red-violet. To me fuchsia is more pink-leaning than this. But anyway, it's quite a lovely color, whatever you call it - very striking. And I was kind of worried about the wear on this, but it lasted better than I expected.

(I finally found my missing wheel where I had swatched this - it wasn't under the couch at all, instead it apparently bounced up and leaped into a bin of polishes - so I will have the swatches for all of these at some point soon!)

2018 favorites: top-coats

I thought I'd put the two top-coats from my favorites wheel together. (I'm trying not to still be talking about favorites in February, so that means I can't go one at a time or I'll never make it!) This is Live Love Polish Basilisk:

I really have liked this a lot when I've worn it, but that's only been once or twice. I swatched it with two coats so you can see it better (when I swatched it before it didn't really show up well).

And then I also re-swatched KBShimmer You Dew You, which is a "unicorn pee" top-coat:

So Unicorn Pee is really shifty and beautiful, in general, but I don't think this swatch shows you much, really. The swatch I did before shows more, in this case. (I'm also making a tag called "unicorn pee(ish)" which is kind of a goofy name but there's so many unicorn-pee and unicorn-pee-like polishes around these days that I decided a tag of some sort was warranted!)

I really need to stop buying top-coats for a while - I love them but I don't wear them all that much and I have a ton of them. I really could have put more of these in the top 20 - I also bought a couple of Starrily ones that I really like. So that's four within the past year or so. I need to not buy them and I need to wear the ones I have a lot. Now I could use somebody to remind me of that periodically - it's the kind of thing I say and then forget about completely.

2018 favorites: Night Owl

I only own two polishes from Night Owl, and both of them are in my top 20 of 2018, which I guess tells you that the early returns on this brand are highly favorable! One of those was a Polish Pickup choice from early in the year, which means I put it in the Honorable Mention category since it's no longer available. The other one is a flakie top-coat.

This is the top-coat, Rustling Leaves (over WnW Black Creme):

It's flakies in various fall colors. I've tried this over several different colors, and it always looks beautiful, although it shows up better over some colors than others. It is still available but I would grab it fast if you're interested, because who knows how long it's going to be there.

And then the other one is the Polish Pickup selection, and they are always limited edition. That's Tastes Like Purple:

You can see that it looks a little like a lighter version of Purple Monkey Dishwasher, above it on the wheel. They actually have very different formulas, though. PMD is a microglitter, while Tastes Like Purple is full of flakies and holo glitter. Here's my original entry about this polish.

Somebody on YouTube did a quick swatch video for this (less than a minute long):

2018 favorites: Princess Penny, Pisces

Here are two KL polishes that were in my top 20 for 2018, Princess Penny and Pisces:

Princess Penny is a copper pearl:

(Here's the original post, which was written during the 2017 baseball playoffs and stops in the middle to talk about the Astros.)

and then Pisces, from the LE Zodiac collection, is a water color, naturally:

It's a metallic aqua.

2018 favorites: Aggie (and new Zoya brushes!)

I already had a swatch picture of Zoya Aggie that I never had gotten around to posting, so here are two of them, the original one:

Zoya's description: "a gold holo flip liquid metal with bronze micro glitter."

...and the one from my 2018 favorites wheel:

They look somewhat different. I think I had just changed out the brush when I did the second one, so maybe that's why.

Which reminds me, I took a picture of the brushes, old on the left and new on the right:

Note that as of now, you still have to buy the wide ones separately. They are priced at $2 each but I have gotten them more than once for a dollar, so keep your eyes peeled for specials if you want them. The impression I got is that nail pros like the old brush because they're so used to using them. The rest of us all pretty much like the wider one, unless you have super-skinny nail beds, I think!

These are repeat photos but I thought I would put them here for reference:

2018 honorable mentions: Pretty Serious

I'm not going to say you'll never see Pretty Serious in my yearly favorites again, because I know I have at least one unworn polish that might conceivably turn up there in the future, but (unless some of my lost order* shows up on my doorstep someday, which I'm not holding my breath for) it's probably the last time you're going to see more than one of them. Pretty Serious is gone and they went down spectacularly enough that I can't imagine them coming back in anything like their past form. (And for that matter, I don't think they were really intending to anyway.)

*I have to say that I didn't lose any money on Pretty Serious' ugly ending, because I got my money back from Paypal, but I know other people did lose money, and if you're one of them, you're definitely entitled to be much more pissed off at them!

But anyway, in my year-end wrap-ups, I always take anything in the top 20 which is no longer available and lump those together as my Honorable Mentions category. That way the ones that I really feature are the ones that you can still actually buy. This year I had sixseven Honorable Mentions, which were half indies and half Pretty Serious (added: plus one stray Essence which I keep forgetting about!). So I decided to put the three PS ones in this one post.

The one that probably would have had a shot at the top 3 this year if Pretty Serious was still in business is My Immortal:

Honestly, say what you want about PS' recent business practices and I'm not going to argue too much. But you gotta admit that Kaz could come up with a good polish formula. This is freaking beautiful. Gorgeous blue with green or maybe just aqua shimmer, and I keep feeling like I see some purple shift in there too. I looked up other people's blog entries and apparently nobody but me is seeing that, so I don't know, maybe I'm just imagining it. (Also note that in fact, My Immortal was a 300-bottle LE in the first place, so it would have been in the HM category no matter what - short of me changing my own rules, anyway.)

Here's my post from when I first bought them, where I talk about both My Immortal and Generally Hazzardous (which I'll get to below). But first I want to cover the other polish that is in the same colorway, or at least it is if you assume I'm right about the purple shift. But anyway, this is Cybernetic:

(I was looking at Pointless Cafe's swatches and wondering why they look so different, but in fact if you read down she says she swatched it over black. Which would explain it, and I may have to try that, but I haven't, so far.) This is one of those polishes that's totally in my wheelhouse, because it's all cool colors mixed together - purple, blue, and green. This is a microglitter, so putting it over a black base actually makes sense. Note that it also means it may be a little difficult to take off, but my feeling is when you've got something this beautiful, I don't much care. (I also didn't realize that this is a polish that dates back to 2013 - which is when the blog-post linked above was written. I had some vague idea that this was a newer polish.)

She compares this to Purple Monkey Dishwasher, which (semi-) coincidentally I had already swatched on this wheel. I was intending to make a wheel with my 20 favorites, but (typically for me) I couldn't put my hands on all 20 of them, and I added a few runners-up instead of the missing ones. So that's why we have a fourth PS polish here.

Here's Purple Monkey Dishwasher:

It does kind of look like this is just the dark pieces from Cybernetic made into a polish. Which is fine. This isn't my very favorite PS purple (because Poltergeist Puddle exists) but I'm pretty sure it's #2.

Aaaand the only polish here that's not cool-toned gets pushed off to the bottom, even though I like this one a lot too - that's Generally Hazzardous:

It's orange with gold shimmer, and it's really beautiful too.

Here's the whole wheel:

NOTD: Gardner + Spellfrost

Here is Zoya Gardner, which I got from the Thanksgiving-weekend specials -- I've already forgotten if it was actually Black Friday or Cyber Monday or somewhere in between...

It's really beautiful. Zoya describes it as "a deep periwinkle with a vibrant magenta shimmer in a dense foil finish." It really would not have occurred to me to call this periwinkle, although I suppose it's perfectly apt - I would just have said "blue-violet" instead. But anyway, that's nitpicking.

Gardner was chipping a little at the tips, so I decided to layer with it, and I added the one polish I got from December Polish Pickup, which was Spellfrost from Ethereal Polish. Spellfrost is a flakie top-coat in sort of complementary colors - a periwinkle-ish base and mostly cool-toned flakies. This picture is out of focus but you can still get the general idea of the color:

It tones Gardner down a good bitl

In focus, but these two were taken after several days so the tip-wear is even more noticeable here:

2018 favorite: Always Be A Dragon

This is the polish I decided was my favorite of 2018, Lucky 13 Always Be A Dragon:

Lucky 13 calls it: "Emerald green linear holo with rose/copper/gold color-shifting shimmer." It's got a lot going on, with both the linear and the shift, I think that's what made me like it so much.

I'll repeat what I said before about the collection, which I think was released last summer.

This is part of a collection called "Always Be Yourself." It goes with that saying you see around on social media: "Always be yourself. Unless you can be a dragon, then be a dragon." I think I saw this first with "unicorn" instead of "dragon" - but there are many versions. Besides the dragon one, there are polishes for Always Be A Unicorn, Always Be A Princess, Always Be Batman, and also Fairy, Mermaid, Phoenix, and Angel, plus Always Be Yourself.

Many of these have disappeared so I'm guessing that this one may not last too much longer, either. (Actually I just checked and this and Always Be A Unicorn are all that's left. Maybe those two sold the best so she did another batch!)

My three favorites, Galaxy Gang, Always Be A Dragon, and Cassiopeia:

I did fill up the mostly-empty wheel above with more favorites so I will have a bunch more coming up.

2018 favorites: Galaxy Gang

Another one from my 2018 top 3: this is Starrily Galaxy Gang, which was a collab with YouTuber Kelli Marissa:

This is a nice blue-leaning purple, with some shifty stuff in it which reminded me of a couple of OPIs released in the last couple of years (like Turn On The Northern Lights and Feel The Chemis-tree). Note that this is three coats, and also that it dried down slightly matte. I put Seche Vite on the tip of all three of these nails so you could see what they'd look like with top-coat. This one is in the middle as far as degree of matte-ness - not as matte as Cassiopeia, below it, but more matte than Always Be A Dragon, the green polish above it.

Here's my original post with the two polishes I bought first. I ended up buying all three of the polishes in that collection, even though they're $15 each, more than I usually will pay for polish. In fact, this polish collaboration did so well that they have just released another set of six polishes to go with the original three. Here is Kelli's video announcing that, just a few days ago:

2018 favorites: Cassiopeia

I said I would post new swatches of my top 3 last week and I never got around to doing the pictures until this weekend. I doubt anybody was waiting breathlessly for that, but if you were, I apologize. Here is Cassiopeia and the other ones will be up later.

I was poking around in old posts and I noticed that back in November when I was talking about browns, I lumped Cassiopeia in with them even though Cassiopeia is not actually a brown, it's a gray (description on the website: "This divine dark gray polish features silvery multi-dimensional glitter for an eye-catching shade that's out of this world"). I think something about the way it interacts with the glitter makes me read it as a really dark brown when it's actually a really dark gray instead. Or maybe it's just that it's so dark you really can't tell what color is it! I don't know. Anyway, it's beautiful, in either case.

I noticed that all three of these polishes (my top 3) are not terribly shiny on their own, so I put Seche Vite over the tips so you could see what they looked like with and without top-coat. Cassiopeia is the least shiny on its own of the three. You definitely want top-coat with this because it brings out the glitter.

Here's a picture taken in shade from earlier this year:

Cassiopeia is sold out at the moment, by the way. Apparently - I only know this because somebody on YouTube mentioned it - KLP had a big sale right after Christmas. (Which is just as well, I keep buying more stuff than I can wear, anyway.) A lot of polishes are out of stock, presumably because of that sale, but usually everything does get restocked there eventually, as long as it's not LE, and Cassiopeia isn't. (It may kind of sound like a zodiac name, but it's not, it's just a run-of-the-mill constellation - it's part of a past winter collection, I believe. The Zodiac polishes will probably not be restocked because they are limited edition.)

Erin Condren goodies

I realized I never did post this - it's the stuff I bought from Erin Condren's Cyber Monday sale:

It's (1) a bound notebook (with a paisley cover which can also be swapped out to use as a planner cover), and (2) a bound book of stickers. Unlike most of EC's past sticker books, this one has 12 monthly pages. It has a lot of cute stuff, I like it. This cover is one I've had previously, but that was really early on and I pretty much tore the original one to pieces. I like the cover that came on my 2019 planner, but later in the year when I get tired of looking at that one, I'll be happy to have another non-seasonal alternative.

More Ciate minis

More days on the advent calendar. The descriptions in quotes come from the maker.

Day 17 - Pepperminty

Ciate just says "light green creme" but I think they put the better descriptor in the name - wouldn't most people call this mint green?

Day 18 - Tempest

"Blue-green shimmer" - guess you can't quibble with that. You can see from the picture that it's also extremely sheer.

Day 19 - Fly Away

"Purple creme" - I'd be inclined to say violet, instead, because of it being on the blue side, but I guess now we are just quibbling.

Day 20 - Cookies & Cream

"Cream nude creme" - even I won't quibble with that one. (I would note, though, that I gave this one to my sister, because I knew I was extremely unlikely to wear it.)

Day 21 - Paradise Lost

Before we had a rose-gold pearl, now we have a "rose gold shimmer." I'll have to do comparison pictures. They are noticeably different, for sure.

Day 22 - Red Hot Chili

Well, ok, it is indisputably a "red creme" - again, they left you another clue in the name, though. This is even more indisputably a chili pepper red, or to put it another way, an orange-leaning red.

Day 23 - Up In The Clouds

"Light pink pearl" - I think this is really pretty, although I haven't worn it yet.

And that only leaves day 24, which was the big day on which we got a full-size polish. I will tell you now, though, that it was a shaped glitter, and I was underwhelmed. But oh well, you can't have everything. (I will of course post that picture when I remember to take one!)