Polish Galore!

When I lived with my parents, my mom didn’t like me to paint my nails inside because the smell bothered her allergies. (I also wasn’t allowed to put perfume on inside)  Thus, I never painted my nails – partly out of laziness and partly because when I would get the urge to do it, the weather wouldn’t cooperate.

However, now that I’m living on my own and make my own rules, I paint my nails anytime I want.  And lately, that has been a lot.  It’s like I’m making up for lost time. With the exception of the past week or so, I always have some polish on and I’m usually changing it once a week.  It’s gotten to the point where the ladies at work anticipate what color I’m wearing on Mondays and will even notice if I don’t have any on.

It’s become a slight addiction.

And addictions are expensive.

Within a short time, probably since January, my nail polish collection has grown from a measly one or two colors that I liked to having so many bottles that I’m contemplating building a shelf to display them on (mostly because it would make it so much easier to get to them).

A lot of this has to do with my addiction to Zoya [1. Note: Zoya did not pay me to say this or give me anything to write this. They don’t even know I exist, with the exception of the fact they’ve shipped stuff to my house at least once or twice a month, probably more than I care to admit. Regardless, all of the opinions are my own and solely because I love them!] polishes. Seriously – Y’ALL – I love Zoya and that is evidenced by the fact that 99% of my polish collection are Zoya polishes. I think Anna was the one who turned me onto them when she blogged about a promotion they were running and from then on, it was all downhill from there.

Most of this is biased though – I’m sure there are good things about other brand names and nail polish is nail polish. But when I find something I like, I like it HARD for many many months before I realize that it might even be more awesome if I don’t pigeonhole myself into one brand. Regardless, I’ll probably stick with Zoya for the moment because they really can do no wrong in my eyes.

The formula on all of their polishes is amazing – every single one goes on smooth and you usually get coverage within one or two coats (this all depends on color, of course). It wears a long time – it’s at least a week and a half before I start to see chips. It’s vegan friendly, which isn’t a big deal to me because I am not and never will be, vegan. But it’s nice to know that it’s not awful in regards to that (it’s free of toluene, formaldehyde, DBP and camphor as well). And pretty much every single color I see is amazing – BEAUTIFUL! I’m not even kidding, I have a wishlist of polishes so that when it’s time to order I don’t spend three hours staring slack jawed at the screen trying to decide what color to get.

Here’s the other thing – their customer service and PR department is phenomenal! I’ve had two issues with them – one time, I was only sent half of my order and the other, a bottle was cracked. Both times, all I had to do was call customer service and they rectified both issues immediately with absolutely no hassle at all (by sending out new polishes). And they are consistently running promotions – usually buy one, get one free – which basically means I’ve never paid full price ($8) for a bottle of polish. They have a blog where they announce new collections (like the FEEL collection, which is coming out on November 15th and I CANNOT WAIT! MUST HAVE THEM ALL!) and show where their polish has been in the media. And they consistently update their Facebook and Twitter pages with news and promos – like on Halloween, they asked their followers to Trick or Treat them and see what they get then posted a BOGO promo later that afternoon as the “treat” that was only good for that day. They are one of the only products on Facebook whose posts I enjoy. And, you can order their color spoons to see what the polishes actually look like in real life and they will give you a credit of the amount you paid for the spoons towards your next purchase. So very awesome!

They key to ordering nail polish online, especially since their website only shows the bottle, is to search Google Images for the color I’m looking at – like “Zoya Charla” gives me tons of pictures of what the colors looks like painted. And the Zoya Facebook page is also a great resource too because a lot of the ladies post pictures of their colors (it’s also a really fun community if you like talking about nail polish! LOL)

Anywho, now that I’ve turned this into a Zoya post (again, as I said in the footnotes, Zoya didn’t pay me to say this or give me free product – everything I’m telling you about I paid for. I just love them that much!), I guess it’s time to get to the real point – pretty pictures of my collection, inspired by the post Sara did of hers – mine’s not as vast but it’s getting there, hopefully! Guess nail polish is a much cheaper addiction than say, Coach bags. :-/

But here goes, in no particular order:

See, I have a problem!

Overall though, I’d have to say painting my nails is one of my favorite things – I love seeing my nails as I type at work and it’s like a surprise every time I look down at my hands. It’s amazing how something so simple can be such a great pickup.

And here’s my question to you – if I were to explore other brands, do you have any colors you’d recommend? Ones that you LOVE or are your favorites? I’d love to see what everyone’s opinions are, especially if you’re an addict like me (seriously, sometimes I search nail polish on Pinterest and just pin the crap out of colors that I love).