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Zoya’s Colbie review

Posted on Tuesday, at • bought • 1574 views

  • Manufacturer: Zoya/Art of Beauty
  • Availability: originally released in July 2008 as part of Zoya's Pulse collection
  • Description: blackened metallic warm scarlet sparkle
  • Cost/Amount: USD$12.00 for 15 ml / .5 fl oz
  • Would you purchase again: yes
Zoya’s Colbie

There are colors that Zoya calls “metallic” that make me wonder how they define the term. This color actually does look like it's got a metallic finish, not just a “high gloss creme” (and definitely not a frost). I got this color because Zoya's blog mentioned how a fashion show nail artist added a coat of Blair over <a href=”/such/obsessive/addictions/zoyas_sasha/”>Sasha</a> to get a flashier red manicure, but after looking at swatches and reading descriptions on various other blogs, I decided to get both Blair and Colbie (since Blair is essentially a cool metallic blackened red, and Colbie is a warm version of the same color.)

Photos that show how the product actually performs...! See how I create my swatches

Close-up photo of the middle three fingernails of the left hand, showing the nail color applied. The left hand holding a bottle of nail polish and displaying all manicured fingernails, with 2 coats of Zoya's Colbie

The color applies smoothly, and it's not watery or sheer, but it takes two coats to get full opacity. You could probably do one coat and have a very interesting 80%-opacity manicure, but I personally had problems with uneven application - which may be due to my own relative inexperience, or may be due to my decaffeinated state which causes shakier hands. At any rate, two coats gave me even coverage, no brushstrokes (so the polish has good spreadability), and a rich, opaque vampy red manicure. A more sophisticated winter-holiday manicure color, or an interesting fall variant.

I wondered how this would look under a flaky polish - so I topped off the left-hand manicure with two coats of Hidden Treasure, and the righthand manicure with two coats of <a href=”/such/obsessive/addictions/zoyas_la_pop/”>LA Pop</a>. I'm actually thinking that two coats of Hidden Treasure is almost too much, especially when being used as a top coat on reds or oranges like Colbie. It overwhelms the color and you primarily see the flakies…which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just almost too much of a good thing. Zoya's own LA Pop That didn't work so well on this color. I don't know if it was the color match red-to-green, and LA Pop would look better atop cool colors; or if I just am still suffering from the letdown of LA Pop not being much like Hidden Treasure.

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