Zoya Caitlin & Marley (Intimate, Spring 2011): a return to swatching

....and boy, if you don't use it, you lose it.

I haven't really swatched anything -- I've worn stuff but not swatched -- in months. And it shows.

Also, I forgot to use basecoat. Which I NEVER do. I always used basecoat when swatching.

Anyway, this was the wrong collection to re-start my swatching habit. The colors are so interesting and subtle... and I've become rather ham-handed with the camera during my swatching hiatus. :(

Zoya Marley

This was a surprising color to me: it looks like a greyed-out pale lilacky creme but it's actually full of pearly shimmer. Not at all obvious in the bottle but hard-not-to-notice in the sunlight and on the nail. Also, this got opaque fast for a pastel: the above is two coats. It applies a little thickly but I'm quite pleased with it.

Close-up of Marley

Lots and lots and lots of pearly shimmer. Not typically a fan but I like it in this one. :)

Zoya Caitlin

This is the MOST IMPOSSIBLE COLOR to capture. I had to fiddle around forever with the white balance settings on my camera to get anything that even remotely resembled the color of the polish. A lot of photos I've seen online make Caitlin look like a bright-ish (yet dusty) cornflower blue. On me, you can still see the cornflower but it's as if the blue was deeply desaturated; it's still closer to blue than it is the grey (I think the top photo is more accurate than the bottom) but it's a lot closer to grey than a lot of pics I've seen of it so far.