Zoya Blu swatch

Zoya Blu is a pastel powder blue creme that's lighter and more purple than the other light blues I own (Hard Candy Sky, OPI What's With the Catitude). It is also a PERFECT TWO COATS. TWO COATS!!!!! If you love pastels, I can't recommend it enough! I'm only providing one photo because it looked too cyan in the others I took.

China Glaze Spring in My Step swatch

GASP! A CHIP!

Neighbor's magnolia

It's a color match, right?

China Glaze Spring in My Step --from the spring 2014 City Flourish collection-- is a light peachy pink creme that probably looks better on me than any other light pink I own. I really, really like it. After 3 coats, I believe it had some patchiness, but it doesn't look like it appeared in on camera. I topped it with Essie Kisses and Bises, which adds a pink shimmer, but the camera doesn't capture that. When I first bought Spring in My Step, my sister, who is obsessed with anything with an essence of Japanese antiquity, declared that it should be worn during cherry blossom season. Even compared to my other light pinks, she cried that THIS was the one that matched.

Well, cherry blossom peak season at the Tidal Blossom was terrifying, even more so than usual. My group high-tailed it to Hains Point and ended up walking 7 or 8 miles overall.

My Favorite Zoyas

It's that time of the year: the Zoya Earth Day Exchange. This year Lent-ish no-buy has given me the strength not to partake in it; either that or the face that I've pretty much cleared out much of their catalogue already during past sales. Since I'm not purchasing, I'll instead help YOU, dear reader, by listing my most recommended polishes.

My favorite item on zoya.com is in fact their nail polish remover, but we'll ignore that.

America, a classic red creme, ranks as one of my top polishes of theirs. No other does it for me like that, not even Sooki. America is an easy 2 coats, pure opacity, while Sooki always ends with me using 3 out of frustration.

Two of the first Zoyas I ever got were Katy (my namesake!) and Gilda, and two other beloved pinks are Dita and Ali. Ali, Dita, and Katy are super easy to use and are go-tos for me, and Gilda takes a bunch of coats, but it's gorgeous. Lola is also really nice, and Kennedy with its purple undertones is my go-to nude. I have a million other pinks from Zoya in shades of light, medium, and neon, but I haven't tried them all, and some of them I have used have difficult formulas I haven't swatched it, but if you want a true Barbie pink (literally; it matches the Pantone), try Tobey.

Dree and Shawn! I resisted getting Dree because I thought I didn't need it, but I love it. I think it's a little darker than its bottle color. It's a perfect army green.

If you need a yellow, Pippa and Darcy are great choices.

Zoya has a reputation of having great purples, and I have a LOT of purples, but my favorites of theirs are Jem, Caitlin, and Marley. Throw in Pinta depending on your definition. Blues? The very best is Robyn, and my sister loves Ibiza. I recently swatched Blu for the first time, and it is 2 coats! For a pastel blue! I couldn't believe it. Highly recommended!

 Maybe another favorite? Channing. I'll give it another go this fall along with another rusty shimmer, Salma, and see.

I have a LOT of Zoyas that are still untried, so who knows. The sales over the years have led to me amassing a huge collection.

Why haven't I been uploading swatches the past week, you may ask? j/k I know like one person is reading this. But anyway I've been trying to cram in reading books every night, so uploading on the blog would be like procrastination, and those library due dates sneak up, you know. Oh, I have all the photos dutifully taken, but briefly writing some text about it takes soooo much effort. So much hard work. Can you feel my pain?

Urban Outfitters Gotta Have It and China Glaze Fairy Dust swatch

Urban Outfitters Gotta Have It  is a bright pastel green, so bright that it borders on neon. It's amazing and super-awesome and fabulous. Surprisingly only two coats were needed on all nails but one. I'm not sure how to describe the shade of green. Is it pistachio? Mint? It's much lighter than China Glaze Highlight of My Summer, which I picked up Gotta Have It as a dupe for. China Glaze Grass is Lime Greener is much more yellow.

China Glaze Fairy Dust is of course a holo silver glitter that all of you should own by now (or own an approximate).

OPI Eurso Euro swatch

Sorry for the gross messy bits

Hanging with Handsome Jesus

OPI Eurso Euro is a dark navy-ish, maybe royal-ish blue. It leans purple enough that at least one person thought I was wearing a purple, but I think it's pretty dang blue. It wasn't as bright and vivid as I expected, like Orly Royal Navy. It's very dark, and for the first two days I wore it I thought it was too dark, especially under indoor lighting. (It usually looked more like the third photo with Jesus rather than the color in the first two.) It grew on me a lot more on the third day, after it finally looked cleaned up (but got chippy). It kind of looks like it should be a jelly, iykwim, but it didn't dry shiny. The formula is fine, but messy for me to apply using OPI's wide brush.

It's such a popular color, but it wasn't an instant-love for me like China Glaze First Mate, an awesome true navy creme. And if I want a "blurple"/indigo, I'd use Zoya Pinta. I'm considering selling it, but I want to give it another try when I'm in a nautical mood.

In other polish news, I broke my unofficial Lent no-buy! It only needed to last 2 weeks, and I think it lasted 3. I went into Sally's look for the new Sally Girl milky glitters that I saw on NoveauCheap, but not expecting to see them so soon. I came in thinking of getting Petal Pusher, but got Mulberry Affair (how "Water Lilies"-esque!) and Fresh as a Daisy instead. So I ended my no-buy with a purchase of $2! I did worse damage to it today by buying a bottle of Motherboy from Happy Hands, which is closing up shop. I believe today was her last stock refill.

China Glaze Lotus Begin and Zoya Monet swatch

China Glaze Lotus Begin is a pretty, pretty light purple that leans pink as opposed to some pretty, pretty light purples like Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac, which leans blue. Unlike my many other lilac polishes, Lotus Begins is borderline neon. It dries to a satin finish, which on its own looks pretty cool and a little edgy. It's a light purple that is definitely appropriate for summer! I'm in love.

Zoya Monet contains large iridescent-ish glitter in a variety of spring-appropriate shades (pink, yellow, blue? idk) in a very thick base. The base is tinted pink, but that's practically clear. The base is also so thick, it's unpleasant to use. It makes a gross bodily function sound when you take the brush out of the bottle, which amuses me.

I loved this combo when I wore it on my toes earlier, but Monet almost ruined it for me as a manicure. There were bubbles and unevenness in how the base of Monet applied, because you have to glob it on.