#TheBeautyBuffs – Zoya Radiant Orchid

You may have heard that I’m part of a beauty blogger group called the Beauty Buffs.  This week we’re all talking about the Pantone color of the year- Radiant Orchid.

zoya perrie

The orchid shade that I’m highlighting is Zoya Perrie.  I’m shocked at how opaque this color is!  The above swatch is one base coat and one coat of Perrie (no topcoat).  I also wanted to do some floral nail art to tie into the orchid theme.  I tried out my first attempt at one-stroke painting.  Nope, you will not be seeing the results!  It was less than stellar.  I need some practice, for sure.  So instead, I grabbed a bunch of Zoya colors and went for an abstract floral orchid design.  I enjoy doing nail art like this.  It’s not too planned out and I just let my creativity do the work.

orchid nail art

Perrie – used as my base color and a few dots here and there

Ginessa – sponged onto my tips for some subtle shimmer

Belinda – for the dark purple petals

Pippa – as the yellow accents

zoya orchid nails

I hafta admit- I borrowed Zoya Perrie from my mom! 😉 She has good taste in nail polish.  I’m just realizing that this shade of orchid looks great on me though!  I was never really attracted to these pinky-purpley colors before.  I always preferred purples that leans more towards blue than pink.  But now that my eyes are opened, and considering it’s the color of 2014, I really need to grab some shades like this!

thebeautybuffs

What radiant orchid shades do you have?

Here’s what the other Beauty Buffs are wearing….

Flakie fun with my new Zoyas!

I was tipped off to a hot Zoya BOGO sale by Flight of Whimsy.  Thanks Eva for posting about it!!  I went to town on this sale and bought ten Zoyas for a total of $40 and free shipping!!   I picked up three creams for my mom which she loves (Wednesday, Arizona and Perrie) and she texted me last nite to ask if the sale was over.  Sorry mom, it’s over.  So if anyone hears of a new sale please let me know!  Cuz we need MORE!  (Have you seen that cute AT&T commercial with kids in it?  ‘You really like it, you want MORE!’ LOL)  Here’s a shot of my 7 new zoyas….

zoya

5 out of the 7 are shimmery so I thought it would be fun to test out those 5.  I made sure to pick ones that were opaque.  Zoya’s website rates the opacity of each polish on a scale of 1 to 5 so I picked colors that were highest on the opacity meter.  I was surprised to find that all needed at least two coats and the light shades needed three.  Here’s what they look like:

no-flakies-copy

My favorite one is probably Mimi- that purple is so lush!!  Ivanka the dark green stands out too- it’s super glitzy and I’m sure I’ll be using that during the holiday season!!  My only other comment is about Emme, the light pink.  I heard it was infamously brush strokey, and I have confirmed that!  You can see all the strokes in my pics.  I didn’t love the formula either- it was thick and almost rubbery while drying.  I dinged it up real bad and had to re-do it.  That was annoying.

Now for the fun part!  I’ve had a bottle of Zoya Chloe flakies for a while now and it was calling to me.  Please pair me with your new zoyas!

flakies-copy

Here’s the shimmers with Zoya Chloe on top!  I think it definitely has the strongest effect over the darker polishes.  Now I’m wondering if flakies ALWAYS look better over dark polishes?  What is your experience with flakies?  Do they ever stand out over light colors?  I can barely notice Chloe over top of my silvery white Ginessa!  Hmmmm…