Zoya Lovely Collex Swatch-A-Thon - Gei Gei, Piaf, Julie

Hey hey peeps! I mentioned on my last post that I won one of Love for Lacquer's blog giveaways. Prizes being 3 bottles from the Zoya Lovely collection. You can check out Jess's review on the full collection here. You should follow her blog while you're at it, she always posts awesome swatches and hosts sweet giveaways. I used the 3 bottles I won to swatch AGO Lacey for my last review, you can check that out here if you're interested in seeing some awesome indies. Anywho, I'm relieved  I swatched these before breaking not one, but 3 of my nails a couple days ago. I call that a friggin nailtastrophe! It's totally ridiculous, I ripped the nail off my bird finger on my swatch hand all the way down to the skin. Still hurts too, and I'm very pissy about the whole ordeal so the hubs took me shopping. I bought a bunch of new nail care crap. Hopefully I won't be rocking these nasty little nubbins too long. When I publish my next review, you'll notice I was cursed with crazy short nail beds, hence one reason I got so pissed about ripping my middle fingernail down to the skin. I'm OCDish about my nails, they have to all be the same length or I can't stand it, so I had to butcher ALL of them down to the nubs. Yep, I'm not a very happy polishaholic at the moment although it was pretty cool of the hubs to take me on a mini shopping spree. He even grabbed me 2 of the Sinful Colors Sugar Rush Collection polishes that I didn't have while I was busy shoving my sad excuse for nails in my Walgreens Lady's face. Gotta love a dude that goes out of his way to buy some polish for his chick, especially when she's being such a spaz. Wait a minute...Me thinks me gets it now... He buys me polish, I quit bitching. I'm all "Ooooh, new pretties!" and forget what I was originally pissed about. Well played Mr Willis, well played...Anywho, enough about my stupid tiny nubbins, lets get on with the review shall we?


My first swatch is Zoya Gei Gei. It's a delicate, pastel pink packed with shimmer. I'll be totally honest with you guys, cause I feel like I can without you judging me. Or maybe you will, I don't care - to each his own! Until November 2012 I didn't own a pink nail polish other than a couple bottles of neon pink nail art paint. It's just never been one of my favorite colors. I have several bottles of glitter polish, some of those contain pink glitter I just didn't care for any pink solids I've seen. I've started to change my mind recently though, and I was stoked to add Gei Gei to my ever-growing polish stash. Check it out to see why...

It's so delicate looking, surprisingly I love it though! Pastels were not my thing for the longest time. I always went for darker colors before, but this is so friggin pretty! I've been really into nudes and pastels lately. I love Zoya's formula too. As I expected, application and dry time were awesome. I used 2 coats OPI Ridge Filler as a base and one coat Out The Door top coat for each swatch of this post. I think it sounds better for me to give you all this info from the beginning rather than repeating it with every swatch description like I've done on past reviews :) See? Told ya my blogging would improve with time. The new camera is a nice improvement too, don't you think? I've still got a lot to learn about it, but I've managed to go from taking 20-80 shots trying to get the best swatch photos to just taking 10-20 to get blog-worthy swatch pics. I'm really happy about that! Anywho, back to the review...


Zoya Piaf is the second polish I'm reviewing from Zoya's Spring 2013 Lovely Collection. If you've read any past reviews of mine, you'll know yellow is not my color at all. Most gold shades look icky on me too. I suppose I could change that with a tan but I'm not fond of wrinkles or skin cancer. Besides that, I have lots and lots of tattoos. Tons of uv exposure isn't great for the pigments. So, if yellow-intolerance is the price I have to pay to be wrinkle-free, skin cancer-free, and have bright ass tattoos then so be it. Anywho, Piaf is the one shade from this collection I figured would set in one of my polish drawers forever, never being used. In my opinion, yellows are gorgeous, just not on me...

I was pleasantly surprised by Piaf. Although I'm sure it would look better on someone that wasn't basically transparent, I didn't think Piaf looked that bad on me. I totally rocked it when I layered AGO Lacey over it! Piaf is another delicate pastel packed with metallic shimmer. Very light and creamy looking, for lack of a better description. Here's Piaf described by Zoya (insert from Zoya.com)... 

Zoya Nail Polish in Piaf can be best described as a full-coverage, fresh forsythia yellow metallic. A light, cheerful yellow that's soft and easy to wear thanks to the subtle shimmer finish. Originally created as a custom runway shade for fashion designer Zang Toi.

As expected, Piaf has an awesome formula. It's opaque after 2 coats, I added a third for just to touch up. Dry time was great, a big plus when you drink as much coffee and soda as I do. Yeah, I'm a huge health nut if you haven't noticed (I'm extremely sarcastic too). I'll probably be using Piaf to swatch with glitters quite a bit this spring/summer, I'm thrilled to finally have a yellow polish that doesn't look totally awful on me! Because of Piaf the hubs decided to grab Unicorn from SC Sugar Rush collection yesterday. I haven't swatched it yet. I have my doubts since it's a cream. I think Piaf's metallic finish definitely aids in the wear-ability for me. Oh well, soon we shall see. You know what comes next right? If you've ever read a PDALT review you know I like to save my favorite swatch for last. So, without further ado feast your eyeballs on Zoya Julie...

 I love this one! Purple is my favorite color, although lately I've been branching out and trying to acquire other shades. I actually think green is becoming my new favorite, but damn I love the way Julie looks! I really want to try it as a stamping polish, I think it's the perfect formula for it. Speaking of stamping, am I the only person to acquire one of those Salon Express stamping kits and NOT be able to get the damn image to transfer? I've tried stamping polish, regular polish, wtf am I doing wrong here? Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated btw! Ok, sorry I keep bouncing off subject. Too much coffee, Woooo! As with every bottle of Zoya I've ever had, the formula of Julie is nothing short of awesome sauce. The lilac shimmer is so pretty. I'm fairly certain I'll end up ordering the other 3 from this collection during Zoya's next promo. I still surprise myself at my sudden fondness for pastel shades. Like Gei Gei and Piaf, Julie is also totally passable with 2 coats. The coverage is awesome, I chose to use 3 to touch up any light spots. Quick dry time is one of my favorite things about the Zoya polishes I have tried. They definitely rank up there with Sation as one of my favorite mainstream polish brands. Come to think of it, I don't recall EVER trying any of their glitter polish, only their creams and shimmers. Oh no! I need to change that! I'm beginning to think I might like the Pixie Dust collection, still not 100% sold on them yet though. Anywho, because I'm so thoughtful, I've included the direct link to Zoya's site listing for the Lovely Collection  here. You can pick 'em up for $8 each, awesome quality for the price peeps. BUT - before you make a purchase I do recommend creating an account via the link I provided above. You will automatically be enrolled in their reward program to earn points for Zoya freebies. To get you started, Zoya will immediately add a coupon code for one FREE bottle of polish to your account! Sweet deal right? Remember, you must sign up using the link above to take advantage of this promo! It will help me out too. I'll get 100 reward points after your first purchase goes through. SCORE!

So, what do you guys think? Which swatch is your favorite? Let me know in the comment section, I like comments :) Be honest, I'd like to know...how many bottles of Zoya nail polish do you own? Are there any of them you don't like? Any lemmings? Don't forget, I'm trying to get up to 300 Facebook likes so I'm doing a vote-like-share contest. I was pretty broke at the time I started it, so the original deal was to like and share, leave a comment telling me which polish prize you want to win, then I was going to use the other polish for a future Twitter giveaway. Tell ya what. This contest has being going for quite a while and I'm stalled at 180 likes. I'm thinking about switching things up a bit and ending the contest early so I can get started on my next giveaway, which will be happening some time in April. I'm trying to get it worked out now, hopefully there will be some sweet indies included :) I'll also do what I can to make this one open internationally. Just bare with me folks, I'll keep you updated! Be sure to like Polished Dreams and Life Things on Facebook here to stay up-to-date on contest info and stuff! Until next time Peeps...