Zoya Awaken and Monet Swatches and Review

*Press Sample*

Hey There Polished People!

Each season when the new nail polish collections come out, it seems they all have a few common threads. Fall brings vampy shades, oranges, some shimmer or metallics. Winter brings glitters, reds, and other holiday-appropriate shades. Spring brings us pastels and some medium-bright colors, and then summer usually brings neons and other bright shades. I think summer is usually my favorite because I like BRIGHT colors, but I also enjoy some lovely colorful cremes in the springtime. Well, here we are in the spring season and Zoya has brought us the Awaken and Monet collection. The collection itself is called Awaken and is made up of some pastels and a few shimmers (some would say they’re metallic). Monet is an addition to the collection and it is an iridescent glitter topper. Let’s have a look!

Dot

Dot is a super pale pink creme. The formula is really sheer so it took 4 coats for what you see here. I dislike VNL so I will likely not be using this again. The color is cute, but nothing special enough to warrant the trouble it takes to get this completely opaque. The accent nail in all of my pictures will be the featured color with 2 coats of Monet on top. I’ll address Monet’s formula at the end.

Cole

Cole is a soft orange creme and the formula was MUCH better than Dot. What you see is my standard three coats, but I’m sure you could get away with two. I like this polish a lot and although it’s not all that unique it’s nice and if you don’t have a similar color in your collection, I would recommend it. Also- it’s named Cole, which was my childhood nickname so of course, ya gotta love that! 😉

Hudson

Here is where we get into the shimmers/metallics. I don’t really know what makes one thing a shimmer and what makes another a metallic but in my own head polishes that look like the Essie Mirror Metallics with shimmer that matches the color of the base and makes it look like molten metal are metallics. Polishes with shimmer that is a different color than the base automatically qualify it as a shimmer but I’m no expert so if you know differently, please let me know. So, Hudson is a shimmery, cool pastel purple polish. It’s really pretty and has no problems getting opaque. Again, not the most unique shade, but very pretty.

Dillon

Dillon is a shimmery seafoam green polish. No problems with application and actually this was one of my favorites of the collection and probably one of my favorite bases for Monet. I thought Monet looked mermaid-esque over Dillon and Rebel, which is up next.

Rebel

Rebel is a shimmery Cinderella blue polish. This is the type of color that I’m never really drawn to, but that I think looks nice on me, especially in the summer when I’m tan. Formula was good, and like I mentioned above, I liked Monet with it.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is a soft gold metallic polish. It looks like plastic that is supposed to look like gold, and I am not a fan. The formula is brushstrokey, the color is gross in my opinion, I just don’t like it. And I HATE Monet over it. It made the polish look all sunken in and weird. Even my husband who couldn’t care less about nail polish was like, “That’s gross.” If you had the Midas touch, but instead of being King Midas you were, like, Dirty Derelict Drunken Bum Midas then this is what stuff would turn into when you touched it. I guess you could say this polish is not for me.

Monet

Monet is an iridescent glitter topper. I don’t think you could ever get this to be opaque, and what you see on each accent nail is two dabbed, swiped, fished-out coats. The base is SO thick that it’s really quite a miracle to get any glitter at the base of your nail, and once you’re done getting even a minimal amount of glitter on your nail your polish is so thick that it takes half a week for it to dry completely. I love this in the bottle, kinda hate it on the nail. Even when I added thinner it was still a chunkalunk.

Yes, Please! Or No, Thank You
This collection is hit and miss. I like Hudson, Cole, Dillon and Rebel but could go my whole life without seeing the other three and be quite happy. I would pick ‘n’ choose from this collection. These polishes can be found on Zoya.com and retailers that carry Zoya. Awaken retails for $9 each, Monet is $10.

Do you look forward to a particular season of nail polish collections? Do you have a favorite from this collection? Let me know what you think in the comments below. As always, thank you all so much for reading and commenting and till next time- Happy Polishing!!