All Nail and Cosmetics: What I was and am wearing currently

Autumn is my absolute favorite season for nail polish. All the beautiful vampy shades come out along with the golds, oranges and reds that are tried and true favorites. This season has also brought a fairly new texture as well; matte. Now in all honesty I wasn't all too excited to look at mattes let alone wear them so I probably shouldn't have started with the color I did. You Don't Know Jacques? Matte by OPI is an ugly color in the bottle but thank goodness it looks better once it is against a skin tone. Like some other bloggers have mentioned OPI really made a mistake in naming their matte shades the same as their other polishes--adding "matte" to the end of the name implies that the colors are similar to their shiny counterparts--do not be fooled!

Instead of telling you all how annoying I find this naming concept I'd rather talk about wear, application and overall ease of use.

It is recommended that you do not use a base coat with this product although I gave it a try with a base coat. I used Nail Tek II (not foundation) and let it dry thoroughly and then I began applying the Matte polish. Be fore warned this formula starts to dry very quickly so be ready to move fast!

My first coat was nearly opaque and a little streaky to be honest but part of that may have been just getting used to how quickly it dried. My second coat was easier. I applied the second coat a bit thicker than the first. Once the formula was fully dry it was a bit streaky--maybe that's not the right word, it was more like you could seen the brush strokes. While that wasn't all too annoying it was a bit unexpected so keep that in mind. Here's some pictures of what 2 coats look like (in two different lights):

You don't know Jacques? Matte was a bit brown, a bit gray, and a tiny bit plum. Over all the color was surprisingly nice against my skin tone. In terms of wear I really did not have a issue with chipping instead the color just wore away a bit on the tips which always happens. I had two days of perfect wear followed by two days wear the texture changed from Matte to Satin which occurs when you apply lotion, do dishes or any other activity involving a lot of water or cream. Anyways, I will be purchasing a few more OPI Mattes based on this one.

Today I applied one of my new Zoya colors from them "Dare" collection called Envy. Envy is an amazing vampy deep green cream color that in some lights look black and some a jungle camo green. I have always been a fan of the green polishes. This truly made it feel like fall even though it still over 100 degrees outside. Two coats gave an opaque finish and wow! I can't wait to see what this looks like in direct sunlight! Here's some pics of Envy (keep in mind the color looks different in different lights):