Eew. Blue raspberry FAIL.

I was up for something summery, so I tried the blue Laffy Taffy polish from my Five Below haul. In a word: gross.

See the streaks and bald spots? And would you believe this is after 4 coats?! Blech. I didn't even waste the topcoat on this. It definitely did not smell like blue raspberry, either- maybe a rotting cotton candy? Just not right.
On the bright side, I can donate this to next year's Zoya Earth Day polish exchange. A few words on that:
You send in your old, dried up, lumpy, streaky, and disgusting polish to be safely recycled by Zoya, and they send you an equivalent number of their polishes at half price! (Details from this year's exchange here.) At some point I can do a post on the polishes I received from them- I still haven't tried them all yet! 

Lesson of the day: don't be sucked in by packaging :(.

Two for one- it's not easy being green.

The latest installment in polish finishes comes to you straight out of 2009. This season's hyped-up polish finish is the crackle- in 2009, it was the matte. One of my favorite brands, Zoya, released a winter collection called Matte Velvet (available here). The matte finish was not something I was really into- I like my polish shiny. But, I couldn't pass up a deal from Zoya- buy 3 of their polishes, and receive their 6 green polishes for free-since this was in 2009, they now have more than 6 green polishes, but at the time they were one of the few brands to come out with "oddball" colors like green and grey. The 3 polishes were $7.00 each, plus $6.95 shipping, for a total of $27.95. Divided by 9 polishes, this comes out to a grand total of $3.11 per polish. Not bad, not bad!

Here is one of my "free" greens, Zoya Veruschka:

 Isn't the frosted bottle pretty? The mattes also have a rubberized cap, which makes handling them easier but as you can see, unfortunately, attracts dust.

And, here is the matte finish. It does look a bit like velvet- smooth yet textured. But it's not shiny! I felt kind of like my nails were covered in moss, so this picture is without cleanup, since I knew I'd be slapping some shiny topcoat on it.

Oooh. Much better. See how it has small glittery flecks in it and almost seems to shimmer? Well, shocker, this would be a shimmer finish. Look at that, two for one! And, my little nubbed index finger is almost grown out to the point where I can file it. Yay!

How do you feel about the matte finish? Do you like the traditional finish better, like I do?