Zoya Fire and Ice Collection for Winter/Holiday 2010

I've been complaining that almost none of the recent collections have really excited me very much and saying how much I hope someone would release a collection that totally thrills me... I think this might be it! I've had these for a couple weeks now and I'm still giddy every time I look at them!


Now that it's fall my lighting situation has been less than ideal. I've had to re-do these twice and still I'm not happy with how they look. That warm autumn sunset light does not make for pretty pictures. I apologize in advance for the gross lighting but I've tried to take more pictures to make up for it.

Here we go. Fire and Ice.

Crystal. Light blue foil with gold foil flecks. I have heard that this is similar to OPI Reflecting Pool, but I don't have it to compare so I can't say for sure, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. This is a really gorgeous icy looking polish. Great winter shade. I love the way the gold sparkles against the blue.



Gloria. This one is a little more complex. It's rose based foil with warm pink and iridescent gold reflections. There's a lot of different tones in it so it has a nearly duochrome look when it's on the nails. Every time I look at it I see more colors sparkling at me. It's a pink I would actually wear, it's that beautiful.



Lisa. My pictures of this didn't come out so well despite me taking dozens of them, so I'm going to try to explain it the best I can to give you a better idea of how it looks in real life. It's red-based, a lighter shade than Sarah but with sort of a faint pink tone to it. The finish is extremely sparkly glass-fleck type glitter like the shades in the Sparkle collection. It's much more saturated in real life, not so faded looking like it looks in my pictures. Very, very sparkly.



Sara / Sarah. I don't know which it is- my bottle says "Sara" without the H, but the spoons say "Sarah". The color is really rich in this polish. It's so festive and pretty. It's a really great deeper shade of red, not quite the bright candy red of Lisa, more of a fruit punch type of red. Cool toned. Super mega sparkly. Same sparkle finish of Lisa, just a deeper, cooler red. The perfect Christmas red! My pictures don't capture how nice and colorful this is, if you're thinking of ordering spoons, take a look at this one!



Tiffany. A peach foil! I don't think I've seen many of those. It's a little coppery but on my nails it looks more peach and champagne with some soft gold and silver than reddish copper. I keep using the word 'sparkly' but that's really the best way to describe all these colors. They sparkle like crazy. It's like opening up a treasure chest full of gold and jewels. They need one of those chime sparkle sound effects to go with them when you wear them. Kinda like this:





Valerie. This is really an amazing color. I like all the colors in this collection but this one is just... wow... I mean, look at it! It's purple, it's sparkly, it has gold and pink duochrome... What's not to love? This may be my favorite Zoya color of all time. It takes all the elements I love from sparkly duochrome purples like Zoya Mimi, Claire's Magic, Milani Totally Cool, et cetera but it gets rid of the sheerness and darkens them into a dramatic, sparkling vampy purple that has my name written all over it. It's a red based purple with pink sparkle and depending on the light and angle at which you view it you'll see red and gold sparkle as well. You can see some of it stuck to the bottle. So gorgeous.

There are two distinct finishes in this collection: foil and sparkle.

The foils: Gloria, Crystal and Tiffany

These are the foil shades. If you're unfamiliar with a foil finish, a foil is made up of tiny smooth metallic particles and they combine on the nail to create a sparkly metal effect. They're reflective and smooth, they don't show brushstrokes and they look just fine without topcoat. The foils in Fire and Ice are all multi-tonal- you can see lots of iridescent color when you wear them. Top notch, very complex.

The sparkles: Lisa, Valerie, Sarah.

And these are the sparkles. If you have the Zoya Sparkle collection from this summer you'll be familiar with Zoya's sparkle finish. It's glittery, but not in a traditional glitter type of way. Traditional glitter is a very defined particle, usually round or hexagon shaped, made of plastic with shiny coating. They almost always have texture in a polish- think Zoya Roxy, OPI Absolutely Alice or China Glaze Atlantis. But the glitter in the sparkle finish polishes is a smooth shiny pearl particle- almost like tiny glass beads embedded in the polish. They don't have much of a texture and won't feel bumpy like a traditional glitter particle. I'm not sure what exactly they're made of but they make me think of glass or crystal.

The formula on these was great. The sparkle shades were nearly one-coaters, extremely opaque. The foil shades were more on the sheer side and needed two coats. I did two coats of everything. The sparkles dry to a dull finish so topcoat is a must (topcoat is a must regardless, though!). The foils dry glassy even without topcoat. Application is smooth and even. Drying time is good. Removal isn't difficult but you'll likely be left with some sparkly stuff on your fingers afterward.

Overall, this is a kick-ass collection. I crave sparkles. I love every single color and I'd wear them all. Obviously, Valerie is my favorite. These are nice winter shades, icy blue and festive red, but no reason at all you couldn't wear them year round. I think Tiffany is actually a nice beachy looking shade for summer. All the shades are packed with life and sparkle and magic and they make me want to stare at my fingertips all day. Distracting!

(These were sent to me for review.)

Barielle Holiday Hustle Collection for Winter/Holiday 2010

I was at Costco this week and noticed that they had already taken down the Halloween decoration aisle and put up the Christmas decoration aisle! It's September! I've never seen them do that before. I feel like I'm being rushed! Luckily that is not the case with Holiday polish collections... I'm the opposite with those- I want them in June! Ha!

Here's Barielle's Holiday offering:


Coaldest Day Of The Year. Yes, Coal-dest. I know. *groan* I think it wants to be OPI's Baby It's "Coal" Outside, from the looks of things. This is a black/charcoal with blue-toned silver large particle shimmer. It's not round shimmer, it's more like broken pieces of shimmer. Icy.



Elle's Spell. My favorite of the collection. This is a dark candy apple or light wine red sheer base with red/orange toned opal flakes, a la Nfu Oh. This is rather sheer and not quite as jelly like as I had thought from looking at it in the bottle so it may look better layered if you want a stronger flaky effect.


Get Me To The Party. A deep bronzy gold. Looks sort of duochrome, doesn't it? Has the lighter gold area in the center and the deeper more bronze color on the edges. A little frosty but more metallic than pure frost, but definitely not chrome.



Jess' Champagne Toast. This one is painful. Look how AMAZING it looks in the bottle! It's spectacular! I could barely believe what I was seeing when I held the bottle up in the sunlight. It's a periwinkle leaning toward light lilac frosty metallic base with lots of pink microglitter. Sadly, it doesn't translate on the nail. It looks lumpy and bubbly because the frost base is too, well, frosty? And the glitter is too delicate to be seen through the thick frost. It always makes me wonder when I see a polish like this.... Did they actually wear the color on the nail before they decided to release it? This totally could have been saved with a thinner, more sheer metallic base!


Snow Day. This one is more like a chrome. It's a super reflective metallic blue-toned silver. Very blue toned... Maybe it's actually a silvery blue! Ha! But yes, you will need to be careful with brushstrokes. Frosty.


Wrap Me In Ribbon. This does remind me of ribbon. Pretty. It's a mauve metallic frost, again not a plain frost but more of the China Glaze Romantique Chrome reflective type of frost. You can see how reflective it is in the picture but you can also see some brush strokes.

The formula on these was odd. Elle's Spell and Coaldest Day Of The Year were really thick and a little goopy but the rest of the colors were oddly... soft feeling? I can't even describe it. It's like they're oily or too soft or maybe airy? Know what I'm talking about? They feel strange going on. Maybe it's the too-soft brush. I'm really not digging Barielle's brush lately, it doesn't conform to my nail and I can never get a nice application with it. Drying time is long.


I don't know what to say about this collection. I like some of the colors like Elle's Spell and Get Me To The Party. It just seems like Barielle is making so many frosts lately. I miss the Barielle I fell in love with in 2008.

(These were sent to me for review.)

All MAC Browns

I don't normally go for browns on my eyes unless there's glitter involved, but thought I'd venture out of my comfort zone and do an all brown look...




This was:

MAC Paint Pot in Painterly
MAC Patina on lid
MAC Smut in crease
MAC Glitter Liner in Enbronze

I tried to get a blurry shot to show the glitter in Enbronze, but I could only get a few sparkles to show up:


See the sparkles? It's not really a very glittery glitter liner, but it does have some sparkle to it. It flakes if you apply too much, though. I prefer Too Faced's glitter liners over MAC, but sometimes MAC has really nice colors.

Patina is a really nice shade. It's a really soft light brown with some read pearl in it, sort of duochrome-ish, you get the brown/tan base and then at some angles you get the red pearl. Very soft color.

Zac Freeman's Amazing Portraits Made With The Stuff In Your Junk Drawer.

You know all that stuff you either toss away of throw in the kitchen 'junk' drawer? Buttons, old remote controls, pen caps, paper clips, Altoid tins, Lego Minifigs, wire, plastic bits and pieces from lord-knows-what? Well those are precisely what artist Zac Freeman uses in creating these one of a kind portraits.


above: portrait of Jerry and Jerry detail

Beginning in 1999, Zac began collecting junk, found objects, and general trash which he then glued to wooden substrate to form an image -- in these cases, faces of men and women. His assemblage artworks are made on a large scale (the pieces average about 28" by 35") and when viewed close up look like crap cobbled together with a hot glue gun, but when viewed from afar are impressive, compelling and simply beautiful portraits.


above: Zac Freeman's portrait of Garrett (detail) and mouth (close-up)

His finished works combine the best aesthetic qualities of Chuck Close and Bernard Pras and that's saying something.

Garrett:

Garrett (detail):

Holly:

Holly (detail):

Ryan:

Ryan (detail):

Courtney:

Courtney (detail):

Bryan:

Bryan (detail):

Vince:

Vince(detail):

The artist's self portrait:

detail:


David, below, is his recent addition to the Woolff Gallery:

Zac at work in his studio:


above two images courtesy of Woolff Gallery

In the artist's own words:
"I was interested in communicating through visual representation in apparent 2-dimensional space and through the actual objects used for the medium in 3-dimensional space. It is very important to me that I incorporate the actual objects into the art as opposed to a picture or rendition of it because it better expresses the intention of the artwork. I feel the junk is more powerful being present. It is an actual thing to be reckoned with that existed in this time and place and carries energy in and of itself."

all images courtesy of the artist
Zac Freeman Art

For commission requests or inquiries about Zac's work please contact Nick Woolff of the Woolff Gallery.