I was pretty excited when Zoya announced this promo. I really put a lot of thought into which colors I would choose. Primarily I wanted to choose colors that I personally liked but also had good application and weren’t very popular. I didn’t want to choose colors I know a lot of people already own since that would defeat the purpose of getting a free bottle of polish. So here they are:

Zoya Stephanie. Ok, I do love this color, but let’s face it, I’m biased because it’s my namesake. It’s a very chic almost white light pink. The downside is that the application can be troublesome. It’s a 4 coater if you want opacity. I apply it using Barielle Camo as a base, that fixed the streakiness issues for me.

Zoya Miley. Those of you who follow my blog know that lilac is one of my white whales, so I just had to include it in my mini-collection. Miley is also a 4 coater but the application is perfect even without Camo. It reminds me of my beloved Orly Bon bon, although I think Bon bon leans a bit more towards periwinkle. This picture shows Miley as being more bluish than it is in real life – sorry guys, I tried to get the color depiction as accurate as I could but it’s almost impossible to photograph purples accurately without sunlight.

Zoya Rea is just ridiculously gorgeous. Rea is metallic with a foil like finish. Perfect in two coats, smooth application, no visible brush strokes. It was my favorite color from the Downtown collection by far. (Sorry, Kotori and Suvi fans.) The color is hard to describe, Zoya says it’s sparkling metallic plum – I’d say pinkish-purple. Whatever, bottomline, I love it.

I realize my colors are a bit conservative so if you’re looking for something more exciting, check out Casual Lavish for a list of all the blogs participating in this promotion. There really is a mini-collection for everyone.

Zoya came up with a great promotional offer, a bunch of bloggers got to create little mini-collections for our readers to receive for free when ordering anything from Zoya.

I chose Stephanie (of course, ha ha, let’s just pretend it’s named after me), a very chic light pink, Miley, a lilac (I had to include a white whale), and Rea, an amethyst metallic, perfect for the coming return of that trend. Swatches and reviews of all these colors will be posted tomorrow. Check out http://www.zoya.com/polishaddict for the promo deets. My promo code is ADD3, the offer is good from now until the 18th. Scrangie is doing this too so check out her promo. I’ve actually been lemming the three colors she picked (Ki, Yasmeen, and Trixie, yes, I know it’s blasphemous that I don’t already own them) so now I have her promo code as an excuse to place an order for mooooaarrrr Remove+.

Free nail polish = <3

OPI Black Tie Optional, a deep purple beetle multichrome from the 2001 World Collection, is one of the classic hard-to-find polishes.

I lemminged this one forever until I finally decided to just splurge and get one on ebay. I’ve noticed that some bottles of OPI Black Tie Optional have more of the multichrome beetle effect than others. Mine is a dud *sigh*. The beetle effect is there but it’s very subtle so I couldn’t get a very good picture of it. The non-dud bottles flash gorgeous amber, green, and red.

A while back I wrote an article complaining about NARS Zulu and the insistence of the nail polish industry of discontinuing highly sought after colors. I understand that creating ‘limited edition’ nail polish inflates demand and creates profits for nail polish companies, but discontinuing really highly sought after colors doesn’t make any sense from a business stand point. NARS Zulu, for example, has been off the market for over a year and still consistently sells for $70+ on ebay. That’s profit that is going to scalpers when it could be going to the polish companies. It just seems like bad business sense to not re-release those colors.

In any case, I still don’t own Zulu. Whenever I’m near a balcony, I run out on to it à la A Streetcar Named Desire and scream , ” Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!! Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!” A long time ago I bought all the supplies to attempt to franken Zulu. I never did it because frankening Zulu was akin to accepting I would never own it. I’m starting to accept that, so I gave the franken a shot.

Here are some of the greens in my collection.

Unfortunately none of these are exact dupes of Zulu. Check out Blogdorf Goodman for swatches of Anna Sui #915 and Chelsea Psycho Green which are traditionally thought of as Zulu dupes and are, unfortunately, as difficult to find as Zulu. Chelsea Psycho Green, also pictured above, is very close but Zulu is a creme with a jelly finish and Psycho Green has very subtle shimmer visible only in the light, no jelly finish.

I bought Icing Envy and New York Summer Amaranth specifically for the purpose of trying to duplicate Zulu. I’ve seen an Amaranth based Zulu franken before, it was dead on. Amaranth has a jelly quality that is similar to Zulu so it’s a perfect base green for Zulu frankens, just add black. The only problem was that I loved Amaranth so much I didn’t want to use it for a franken. I decided to try it out only with Icing’s Envy (which I also love but happen to have two bottles). I’ll order a second bottle of Amaranth to franken with and post my results later, I promise.

I mixed roughly half a mini bottle of Icing Envy with the rest being 1/4 OPI Black Onyx and 1/4 OPI Top Coat. This is what I ended up with:

And this is Ponchy’s picture of Zulu:

As you can see, I failed, while I like the color I ended up with, my franken looks nothing like Zulu.

Zulu escapes me again.

*sobs quietly*

Special thanks to my love Ponchy for allowing me to use her image in this post. : )

Every once in a while I’ll see a color on someone else that will stir the addict inside me. Essie Barbuda Banana wasn’t that polish – it was actually Maybelline Banana Puddin’. I searched everywhere for it to no avail. Scalpers aren’t big on carrying discontinued drug store brand polishes, so it’s really tough to find these colors once they are off the initial market. I decided to settle for a dupe instead – that’s when I heard about Essie Barbuda Banana which also happens to be discontinued and hard-to-find, of course. I knew I would have more luck searching for this one since it’s a higher-end brand, and so I renewed my search for a pastel yellow.

Essie actually makes finding discontinueds fairly easy because they sell them on their website under Bye Buy Colors. You just have to let them know what you’re looking for and they’ll message you back if they have it. The catch, and of course – there is *always* a catch, is that Essie ups the retail price from $8 to $10 and charges you an arm for the shipping. Dejected, I turned to evilbay (from hereon – “the place that shall not be named”) where I found Essie Barbuda Banana for about 15 bucks shipped. Normally, I wouldn’t pay that much for a discontinued but I was really jonesing this color. The day after the auction ended someone put up an auction for Maybelline Banana Puddin’ at $3. D’oh.

Do I regret the purchase? No. The application, to put it plainly, sucks, this swatch is 4 hard-as-hell-to-apply coats. But what I can say, I love the color. I hear that Maybelline Banana Puddin’ has equally crappy application so it might just be a function of pastel yellow. This picture isn’t a very accurate depiction of the color, both Banana Puddin’ and Barbuda Banana are a slightly brighter, yet still pastel, yellow. If you don’t want to shell out the mad cash and you just can’t find Banana Puddin’ the easiest way to go about sticking it to the man is frankening your own. This is a really easy franken, you just need a yellow, take your pick there’s about 80 on the market right now (Color Club Yell-oh, Essie Shorty Pants, Zoya Creamy, Misa Hangin’ With the Girls, OPI the ‘It’ Color, OPI Need Sun Glasses, China Glaze Solar Power, Rescue Beauty Lounge Yellow Fever, NYC Taxi Cab and on and on and on) and a white (I would choose one from whatever brand your yellow of choice comes from.) You need roughly 2 parts yellow, 1 part white to end up a pastel yellow.

All next week is Hard-to-Find Week on the MUA nail board. In preparation for the festivities the girls, myself included, have been rummaging through stashes in order to find those elusive polishes we all love so much. So I decided that I’m going to dedicate the next few posts to my favorite hard-to-finds. To kick things off, I present to you, a flash back to the year 2000 – Cover Girl Crackle Lacquer.

These two are Halloween themed, Boo Hou and Jack-o-Lantern, but if my memory serves me, there was a full line of these. I think I remember owning a white one that I used to layer over black nail polish. Oh ho, my teenage self was *so* edgy. If I had it now, I would use it over gold polish to rip off the MAC Antiquitease mani.

Crackle actually has an interesting back story (here’s the original press release), apparently the person who invented it did so by accident while trying to invent something else- then tweaked the formula to be marketed as cracking nail polish. The patent is held under the title “Nail Enamel Composition Having Decorative Appearance”, which I find highly amusing.

This bottle of Crackle was given to me by MUA’s lovely lindyspendy. I almost died when I got it since I’d been hunting Crackles unsuccessfully for a long time. Seriously, opening that package was like opening Tutankhamun’s tomb. The formula has thinned out over the years. This bottle may very well be over 8 years old. You can’t really do multiple layers with Crackle so there’s no way to curb the thinness of the formula – but – I actually think it actually looks cool over black. The thinness gives it an eerie faded quality.

This bottle of Crackle is from evilbay. It was a bit pricey but not horrible, totally worth it. This bottle’s formula was too thick, also probably from age. However, it dried with excellent cracks, so I won’t complain. You guys will notice I only swatched 2 nails for each color whereas I usually do a full hand. That’s how special this polish is too me, I feel bad putting it on just to take it off!

Scrangie, who’s been kicking my butt in the swatching department lately : P, shows us the brand spanking new Essie Fall 2008 collection. *sees wallet shriveling up and dying…*

Steph’s Closet compares swatches of recent yellows (China Glaze Solar Power, Rescue Beauty Lounge Yellow Fever, and Mac Phosphor) and reviews Sally Hansen’s recent metallic collection.

Blogdorf Goodman takes the plunge into nail art (watermelon… mmm cuteness) and discusses top coats and base coats.

Casual Lavish uses konad to create a really great independence day mani and gives us an easy to do nail art water-coloring tutorial.

The next stop on my eternal search for the perfect off-white is Color Club Coastal Creme. It leans towards pink, but isn’t pink by any stretch. ‘Creme’ is actually the perfect word to describe this color. I couldn’t be any happier with the color, very flattering, but I did have a little trouble with the application the first time I wore it. The formula was a bit thick so I added 2 drops of Seche Vite Restore to the bottle, it made the application perfect. I’m finally, but slowly, getting over my fear of using nail polish thinner. Coastal Creme is a part of the Yacht Club Collection, which includes one of my favorite polishes of all time Color Club Sexsea (swatches of the whole collection coming soon).

As a side note: This is the last image of my long nails. *sobs quietly*

This is my attempt at a patriotic mani for the 4th of July. I used the following: OPI The Thrill of Brazil (and believe me, the irony is not lost on me), Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm, Art Club by Color Club White and Silver Glitter, both of which are available individually or in the Art Club Bridal Kit.

I was torn over whether to use Silver Glitter or the tiny little silver crystals that come in the Bridal Kit. I ultimately decided to just wing it with the glitter. I’m a major newb at nail art so I have to say – for a first attempt, I’m really pleased with the results.

First let me say, I am so sorry about the sub-par application and lighting, again. I’ll be back to my usual application and lighting soon, I promise I’ll get it together. Second, OPI The Thrill of Brazil is one of my favorite reds, EVER. It applies like butter. Opaque in one coat, perfect in two – this red shines like there is no tomorrow. Simply, gorgeous. For the blue, I used Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm. It was great for this mani because it, too, is opaque in one coat. I was able to use just one brush stroke for the blue behind the stars. Click here for a swatch of Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm.

Finally, Art Club by Color Club – amazing. I’ve had the Bridal Kit and the Carnaval Kit for a while now but I’ve been stuck in professional-mani purgatory since the beginning of the summer so I haven’t been able to try them out until today. And WOW, I love these nail art polishes. The super long ultra fine brush is incredibly easy to use. The kits in general are pretty great. They come with 4 or so nail art polishes in assorted colors or glitters, decals, beads, stones, and other cute little accents.

To celebrate my nail freedom in exactly one month, I’m planning on breaking out all my accumulated nail art products. Seriously, I’ve been stock piling nail art supplies for a few months now in anticipation of a ridiculously elaborate nail art week on The Polish Addict, so if you’re secretly into the kitsch, like me, stay tuned.

This message is, of course, not targeted to my loyal readers. But in the past week, I’ve had my images used on ebay twice. In response to these recent events I’ve put up a Licensing Agreement that governs the content of the Polish Addict as well as a page for my Contact Information.

And to my loyal readers, you guys have been really great about alerting me to content and image theft. I want to give you guys my sincerest thanks for that. Please continue keep an eye out for me. I really appreciate the effort on my behalf.

(Apparently the other blog’s use of my image without my permission was accidental and a misunderstanding. I should have found out all the facts before getting so angry and aggressive towards another blogger. I apologize. Everything is all worked out now and I want to thank Vania of Comme il Faut for being so considerate of my wishes and linking back to me. And again, other bloggers have permission to use my work as long as I get credited for it via a link.)

So I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone that the new big thing in nail polish is going to be the resurgence of metallics, golds, and silvers. For those of us who are prudent spenders and didn’t miss the trend the first time around, it might just mean digging a little deeper into our stashes. For the rest of us addicts, it probably means a lot of splurging next season. At least I know my own low-buy/no-buy tanked hardcore when I had a major lapse in judgment that resulted in the purchase Chanel Kaleidoscope (swatches soon to come). I rarely buy big ticket polishes. In fact, I only buy expensive polishes if the color is really really really really I-can’t-get-it-any-where-else-on-earth unique. To me, Chanel Kaleidoscope was unique enough to be worth 20 bucks.

Chanel Gold Fiction, however, not so much. Seriously – it’s just gold nail polish. Every single brand of nail polish on earth carries several gold polishes. Of course, I’m saying this without having seen it on my own nails, but based on the pictures I’ve seen and the limited flirting I did with it at the Chanel counter, I fail to see the justification for the exorbitant 30 bone price tag. I feel like Chanel is probably just testing the waters for the marketability of merchandise with artificially inflated prices. After all, Chanel is already notorious for creating artificial demand by making just about all their polishes limited edition.

In any case, I’m definitely not telling anyone not to buy it. Sometimes when you really want a polish, you just need to buckle and get it because there is danger in trying to find duplicates of expensive colors. It’s possible that ultimately you might end up spending more money trying to find the perfect cheap dupe than you would have spent had you just purchased the expensive polish you wanted to begin with. It’s a double edged sword, ladies, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

*But* in order to humor myself, here is my attempt to stick it to the man: my favorite golds from OPI’s Christmas past. These probably aren’t the best alternatives because both of these are discontinued but it is still possible to pick these up for reasonable prices, definitely a lot more reasonable than thirty dollars.

OPI I Get a Kick Out of Gold is just stunning, period. It has a foil-like quality to it with no visible brush strokes. I’d say it’s a bit more muted than a true gold. This swatch is 2 coats. If you can’t find this polish, try Lippmann Nefertiti.

This swatch is also 2 coats. I don’t have a side by side comparison but OPI Symphony in Gold looks pretty darn close to Chanel Gold Fiction, definitely 20 dollar price tag difference close. This is more of a yellow gold than a true gold but the brush strokes are nearly invisible. It’s also pretty darn stunning.