L.A. Girl Amethyst

I love purple shimmers and L.A. Girl Amethyst is no exception! Slightly reddish purple jelly loaded with turquoise and hot pink shimmer. 3 coats.


Thanks for reading!
April

BB Couture Butt-Naked Bronze

This is 3 coats of BB Couture Butt-Naked Bronze, a caramel colored shimmer polish. Nice color and great formula as expected from BB Couture. The boyfriend and I really hated this one on me! It looks good in the pictures though and would look lovely on dark skin tones!


Thanks for reading!
April

A Few Zoya Reds From Wicked & Wonderful Fall Collections & Nail Art

Zoya Kym is a lovely rusty red with glass-flecked, gold shimmer. This is 2 easily applied coats. Not my favorite with my skintone but a great color for fall nonetheless.


Next up we have Zoya Stacy. I think this one is gorgeous! This is 2 coats. I tried a french manicure with Zoya Cheryl.



Zoya Kristi is my new favorite red! Flawless, 2 coat application. Perfect red creme, neither to cool or too warm, just perfect! I used Zoya Kelly and my smARTnails stickers too for this manicure.


Here are my overall thoughts on both of Zoya's fall collections, Wicked & Wonderful.

Thanks for reading!
April

All opinions are my own & were not influenced by Zoya! For more information you can read my disclosure policy.

Zoya Edyta

Zoya Edyta immediately jumped right into my top five favorites! It's a dark pine green loaded with glass-flecked, gold and green shimmer. Super sexy and gorgeous and I only needed ONE, easily applied coat! The formula was superb and a little strange. I felt like I was applying liquid crushed velvet to my nails! The first three pictures were taken in full sunlight and the last two in the shade. This is a must have in my opinion!!!!

Here are my overall thoughts on both of Zoya's fall collections, Wicked & Wonderful.

Thanks for reading!
April

All opinions are my own & were not influenced by Zoya! For more information you can read my disclosure policy.

Zoya Cheryl

This is 2 coats of Zoya Cheryl from their Wicked Collection for fall. I almost got away with just one coat and the formula is truly spectacular. I can't describe this color any better than Zoya does on their own website,

A smoky brown base completely packed with metallic copper, gold and mahogany metallic microglitter.

Here are my overall thoughts on both of Zoya's fall collections. I'll be posting more swatches soon.

Thanks for reading!
April

All opinions are my own & were not influenced by Zoya! For more information you can read my disclosure policy.

Wet N Wild Eggplant Frost

Wet N Wild Eggplant Frost is yet another Wet N Wild that looks amazing in the sunshine! It's a gorgeous plum with shimmer that sometimes looks silver and sometimes blue. It's a fabulous polish for your money if you like dark polishes. I'm not a big fan of polishes that look black most the time indoors though and this one falls into this category. Thanks to Beautopia for sending me this one when I won a giveaway a while back!

Thanks for reading!
April

Wet N Wild Blue Moon

This is 3 coats of easily applied Wet N Wild Blue Moon. I won this one from Beautopia a while back. It's lovely in the sun but just looks black most of the time. I'm still looking for a great navy polish that looks navy most of the time if anyone has any suggestions.


Thanks for reading!
April

World Cup 2010 Ghana

Ghana was one of my favorite teams last World Cup and they are this time as well. I used China Glaze Solar Power, a Tic Tac red, & BB Couture Poison Ivy for the Ghana Flag. I painted my nail yellow and then the next morning, I used a strip of blue painter's tape to make the green and red stripes. I used my smARTnails sticker stencils for the star. One coat of one of my favorites, Sinful Secret Admirer for the rest of my nails.

World Cup fever is real and I have it! It's safe to say that the World Cup has taken over my life. I've watched all but one game! I'm way behind on the blog! I was supposed to start my blog anniversary giveaway on the 17th but I STILL haven't had a chance to get to it. I promise I will soon.

I wanted to post this yesterday, but no time! So yesterday's World Cup hottie of the day is the entire team of Ghana! Especially Ayew & Gyan!

Thanks for reading!
April

Isadora Sapphire & Layering With Sinful Hottie

This is 2 coats of Isadora Sapphire. It looks very pretty in the bottle but it just ended up looking like a black creme on my nails most of the time. Nice application but this one isn't making it into my polish rotation.

I put one coat of Sinful Hottie over this manicure and it looks gorgeous! If you like glitter, you must get Sinful Hottie! You can see it layered over China Glaze Adore here.

You can still enter my handmade clothing and accessories giveaway from UPC Fashion. Hurry Ends tonight! Enter here!


Thanks for reading!
April

Zoya Underrated Beauties Giveaway! Ends 6/1. (Closed)

I asked Zoya if their staff had any favorite polishes that often get overlooked. They have over 300 colors and I felt sure that there were some gorgeous colors that hadn't gotten much attention. They sent me six colors to show you & I'm also including Pasha and Gaia which I purchased myself. So here we go, eight lovely Zoyas that you don't see very often. Lots of pictures!

First we have Zoya Bailey, shown here with four coats, but it would have been fine with three.

Zoya describes this color perfectly.

Light neutral pink sheer base with cool pink duochrome shimmer and sparkling silver microglitter.

The silver microglitter reminds me of lightly sprinkled sugar. This one looked pretty sheer, so I asked my sister Alisa to swatch it too, since my nails are lightly stained. Here's her photo. Thanks Alisa! Alisa used just two coats.

I ended up liking Zoya Bailey a lot more than I thought I would. It's a nice color, not really my style, but it works GREAT as a layering polish! I'll show it over Zoya Coco later in this post and will show it over other colors soon.


Next up is Zoya Brizia, shown with three coats. I love this one!


Zoya Brizia is a taupey lavender metallic with a silvery blue duochrome effect! I've never seen anything else quite like it and it goes with nicely with most of my wardrobe.


Zoya Coco is one of those colors I would never pick up, since I'm not really drawn to anything in the red family but I ended up really liking this one.

It's a dusty burgundy creme that looks like a dusty reddish brown in low lights. Beautiful color and easy application. This is two coats. Here's Zoya and my dog Wally with some very silly looking fur. What happened that day Wally?


Zoya Flowie is my least favorite because I don't find it very flattering with my skin tone. This is 3 coats.

I would call this a light, peachy brown creme. Easy application. This will probably look great on ladies with much paler or much darker skin tones than mine.


From my least favorite we go to my all time favorite, #1 nail polish, Zoya Gaia! You can read my full post on this beauty here. This is the polish I would keep if I could only have one for the rest of time. Soft white with gold microshimer. This is 4 coats and yes it's totally worth it!


Zoya Pasha is another favorite. You can read my full post about it here. This is 2 coats. I think it looks like iced coffee.


Zoya Raine is another sheer that works as an AMAZING layering polish. This is 4 coats.

This is another one that I thought might be too sheer for my nails. Here it is on my sister Alisa with just 2 coats. Thanks again Alisa!

Zoya Raine is a pink/purple duochrome. You can see Raine layered over Coco later in this post. I tried it later in the week over a green creme and it looked INCREDIBLE!


Last but certainly not least, we have Zoya Sasha. This is another color that I would never pick up but I love it!

Zoya Sasha is a cool toned, blood red creme.

This is 3 coats. I tried it with 4 coats but couldn't tell a difference.


Golly, that was a lot of pictures. This is the longest post I've ever done! Here's a couple of bonus pictures.
This is Brizia with a little Konad. I used Zoya Coco on my pinky and middle fingers and Zoya Sasha on my ring and pointer.


And this is Zoya Coco with one coat of Zoya Raine on the left & one coat of Zoya Bailey on the right. So cool!!! You can really see how lovely both Raine and Bailey are once they are layered over other colors! I'll be showing them over more colors in the next couple of weeks. See what I mean about Bailey's lightly sprinkled sugar effect?


So we have eight lovely, underrated beauties from Zoya! Zoya has kindly offered one lucky winner their choice of any three of these polishes!! You have Bailey, Brizia, Coco, Flowie, Gaia, Pasha, Raine & Sasha to choose from. This prize can only be shipped within the continental US shipping, no P.O. boxes.

RULES:
PLEASE READ ALL OF THE RULES BEFORE ENTERING.

• You must be a follower of our Concrete and Nail Polish blog. If you have a question on how to become a follower contact April at lirpaskoorb@gmail.com.
• This prize can only be shipped within the continental US shipping, no P.O. boxes.
• This giveaway starts today, May 16th, and will end Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 11:59PM Central Time.
• We'll select the winner with random.org's random number generator and notify the winner by email on Wednesday, June 2nd.
• The winner will have 24 hours to respond. If the winner doesn't reply within 24 hours, that winner will forfeit the prize and an alternate winner will be selected via random.org.

HOW TO ENTER:
Each person is allowed to enter up to three (3) times as follows:

• Be a follower of our blog and tell me which of the underrated Zoya polishes you would like to win. No entries will count unless this first entry is completed.
• You can earn an optional second entry by posting about this giveaway on your blog. You can do this in a post (it doesn't have to be it's own separate post) or by posting in your sidebar. Just make sure you leave the link in your entry.
• You can earn an optional second entry by tweeting about this giveaway. Leave the link to your twitter status update in your entry.
• You only need to fill out the form once. This works MUCH better than comments, so I've turned them off for this post to avoid confusion.

I received six polishes from Zoya that I reviewed above. Gaia & Pasha were purchased by me at an earlier date. All opinions are my own & were not influenced by Zoya! For more information you can read my disclosure policy.

Thanks for reading!
April

Ulta Sunny Romance of St Tropez

Yikes! Not a fan of this one! Three coats. I tried three layers over white on my pinky but it was still streaky. Does anybody else have this one?

Essence Go Wild

This is one of the polishes I won from the charming R3 Daily! Lovely pinkish purple with silver microshimmer. This is 3 coats with no application issues.

I've been going through a series of nail art fails lately! Nothing seems to quite work. I never do swatches, just full manicures, unless the color is truly awful on me. I wear them plain for a day or two and then try to do some nail art. This means that there will be lots of fairly boring posts in the near future since nothing I've tried has worked recently. I'll keep trying though!

Tuesday is Star Wars Day! From Wikipedia,

May 4 is called Star Wars Day because of a pun on the similarity between "May the 4th be with you" and "May the Force be with you", a phrase often spoken in the Star Wars movies.

I challenge any of you sci-fi lovers to do some Star Wars Themed nail art!!!

I'll be announcing a fashion giveaway in the next few days that will be open internationally. I think you guys are going to love this one!

You can enter my current giveaway here!

Dark Divine Nail Polish

I won this bottle from the lovely Andrea of So Many Books, So Little Time. I have always been a voracious reader. I've worked in bookstores and libraries and I rarely leave the house without a book. You never know when things might get boring. Thanks again Andrea for your contribution to the book blogger world!

I'm not a pink kind of girl in general. The closest thing I have to pink in my polish collection right now is Sinful Dream On & Sinful Vacation Time. I suppose Dark Divine isn't really that pink either. More of a pinkish-purple? I LOVE this color on me! Too bad this is a mini bottle that was made to promote a young adult novel. Can't buy it anywhere!
It turns out this polish is just a shade brighter than some of the packaging of a very popular nail polish remover. Here's a picture for comparison.

Does anyone know of a good dupe for this? I would love to have one!