Zoya – Cheryl, Charla, & Phoebe Reviews

Hey everyone!

Today I’ve got the swatches for three more polishes from my Zoya Earth Day Nail Polish Exchange haul. We’ll be looking at Cheryl, Charla, and Phoebe. I’m sorry it took me a little longer than anticipated to get this post done. I work midnight shift and started editing photos after I got home yesterday morning. After a few hours I just could not keep my eyes open any longer and sleep deprivation got the best of me. Ah well, better late than never! I’m currently borrowing my boyfriends camera while mine is being repaired and it’s been a little difficult getting used to all the new camera settings. After quite a few less than stellar shots of Charla I happened to find the “SuperMacro” feature. Mind. Blown. My faith in the ‘Little Canon That Could’ was renewed. ^_^

Charla

I think you could describe Charla as a sparkling metallic blue. To me it looks like the rippling surface of water on a tropical beach. Charla was originally released as part of Zoya’s Sparkle Collection for Summer 2010. The microglitter looked much more duochromatic in the bottle than it did on my nails.

Charla has a fairly good formula, although it was a little thinner than what I’m used to from Zoya. After 2 coats I was still not able to reach full opacity, but the VNL (visible nail line) is not quite as obvious when you’re not standing in direct sunlight.

My only gripe about Charla is the staining, even while wearing a basecoat! When I removed this polish my nails and my fingers had turned a wonderful sickly green color. After a lot of soap and a little scrubbing I was able to get rid of most of the discoloration. Keep in mind I was only wearing the polish for 30 minutes at the most for the swatches. So I can only imagine what it would do if you wore this color for several days. -_-

Dupes:

There are quite a few dupes for Charla that are available right now. The main two being Catch Me In Your Net by OPI and Halley’s Comet by Orly. I don’t own either of those polishes but All You Desire did a really good comparison post on her blog, you can view it here.

Cheryl

On the Zoya website they describe Cheryl as “A smoky brown base completely packed with metallic copper, gold and mahogany metallic microglitter”. I’d have to say that they were spot on with this description!

Cheryl is originally from the Wicked Collection that released for Fall 2010. Here I used 2 coats and the application was incredibly easy. I really love the way the Zoya brush just glides across your nail.

I wanted to provide a close up (heck yeah, SuperMacro function!) so you could see just how jam-packed this polish is with copper and gold flecks. It is simply amazing.

Phoebe

Phoebe is an electric blue polish with violet shimmer that dries with a soft matte finish. It was released as part of the Mod Mattes collection for Summer 2011. I don’t have a lot of experience with matte polishes but this one was quite easy to apply. There was no streaking and even after 3 coats Phoebe dried lightening fast! I think that this was my favorite out of the six polishes I ordered because it feels like you get two polishes in one. You’ll see what I mean in a second.

This is what Phoebe looks like after I applied a top coat. It really brings out the shimmer and brings this color to life! I did have a small amount of staining when removing this color but it was nowhere near as bad as Charla.

Here you can really see how wonderful the shimmer in this polish is. Phoebe is definitely unique to my collection and it makes me want to try more matte finish polishes by Zoya.

Final Thoughts:

Once again I am happy with the colors I have chosen from Zoya. I’m willing to keep Charla in my rotation even though it stains. I’m sure that I can make the nail discoloration minimal if I find the right basecoat. Cheryl is a great fall color and I know I’ll get a lot of use out of it when the leaves start to change later this year. And Phoebe is definitely going to get a lot of nail time from me. I have a feeling it’s going to become part of my heavy rotation crew. ^_^

Purchase Info:

You can buy all of these Zoya nail lacquers from their website for $8 each.