Nubar ~ Absolute

Nubar ~ Absolute

A pale blue with fine rainbow holographic glitter

 
It's always interesting to buy nail polish in colours you wouldn't normally bother with. Nubar's Absolute is such a colour. Under normal circumstances I would find it too pale, but since this is a holographic, I decided to give it a try anyway.

Applying it was easy - the biggest problem with this polish is that it's so darn sheer. I applied layer after layer, and was only just satisfied after coat number four.

Four coats is more than I'm usually prepared to work with, but this polish dried relatively quickly between each layer, so it wasn't as big a pain as I expected it to be.

The colour is, as I expected, way too pale for me.

The holographic effect is kind of vague. Perhaps it's because there's no sunshine here at the moment. But seriously - I wasn't impressed with it at all.

It isn't that it's not pretty. It's just not striking, the holo effect is bland at best, and it's not me, if you know what I mean.


Opacity: 5/10

Colour, prettiness: 5/10

Durability: 5/10

Value for money: 5/10
Overall: 5/10
Buy again: No

China Glaze ~ Ring in the Red

China Glaze ~ Ring in the Red

A Christmas red with micro and medium sized red glitter

“Ring in the Red” is from China Glaze’s 2011 “Let it Snow” holiday collection. And let me say it right away: If there is such a thing as a true Christmas glitter polish, this is it! It’s beautiful, shiny, attention drawing!

Applying it was easy, no streaks or spots whatsoever, and the glitter was easy to brush on evenly. The only bad thing I have to say about this polish is that it’s a pain cleaning up the cuticles! The glitter is sooo hard to get rid of, so I can’t even imagine what it will be like to remove it again. I already consider using the foil method.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s glory. Three coats of Red in the Ring, with no top coat.

 

I stamped on the nails shortly after. This is a design from Bundle Monster’s BM02. I am definitely not a stamping “professional” – meaning I’m fairly new at stamping. But seriously – I was surprised over just how big a difference there is between the Konad and Bundle Monster products. I found it quite hard to make the Bundle Monster stamps crisp and clear, compared to Konad’s plates. Bundle Monster smudged, even when I tried to limit the amount of polish on the plate. Definitely a lesser product, in my opinion.

Anyway, I stamped with black and white Konad polish, and here it is, with a coat of KleanColor 230 Chunky Holo Fuschia over it, and the KleanColor certainly improved the look.

I quite like it. Especially the thumbs with two different coloured lip prints.

China Glaze ~ Ring in the Red

Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 9/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes

China Glaze ~ Urban Nights

China Glaze ~ Urban Nights
A dark eggplant purple, créme


This is a follow-up to the post I made yesterday, in which I tried China Glaze's "CG in the city". I wasn't impressed with that, not because the glitter wasn't pretty, but because the colour was a little bit "meh"... 

Today I wanted to try the same polish, but with a darker colour underneath, to see if that changed my opinion about it. I chose another China Glaze polish, namely "Urban Nights" - both polishes are from the "Uptown Collection". 

"Urban Nights" is a dark eggplant purple with a cream finish and I found it very difficult to work with. The formula was on the runny side, and it was hard to apply an even layer. 

The colour itself is nice, although I prefer wilder colours, so this is bought with glitter and/or stamping in mind. Since I know from yesterday that the glitter in "CG in the City" is relatively intense, I only applied one layer of Urban Nights. 

After waiting for a bit, I applied the glitter. Two generous coats, and then a layer of Seche Vite top coat. It looked like this: 

It's somewhat better than yesterday, but seriously: I'm still not impressed. I'm going to play around a bit with various colours underneath the glitter and see what we get.

And if everything else fails, I'll be using them both for Frankenpolishes! :D

The verdict:

Urban Nights:

Opacity: 6/10
Colour, prettiness: 6/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 6/10
Overall: 6/10
Buy again: No

CG in the City: 

Opacity: 6/10
Colour, prettiness: 5/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 5/10
Overall: 6/10
Buy again: No

China Glaze ~ CG in the city

China Glaze ~ CG in the city

A clear base, with fine black, pale purple, and coppery gold glitters

This is a nail polish I've been so much looking forward to trying. It looked sooo cool in the bottle with the purple glitter. I was very excited!

The first layer went on, and I was "Hmmmfr!", disappointed. It was so sheer that I actually considered whether I had to give it a darker colour underneath. I decided to give it another layer, and that left me like "meh...". Still way too sheer for my liking. So I went for the third layer, and then it was actually OK. Take a look: 

That's three coats and a layer of Seche Vite.

Not as bad as I feared it would be, but seriously, this is so not living up to what it looks like in the bottle. I like the glitter, it's sparkly and shiny as it should be, but the colour is really not me, to be honest. I'm not quite sure what's wrong with it, but I'm definitely not happy with it. I think it's too nondescript, not a definite enough shade, if that makes sense.

So I'm going to take it all off tomorrow and try it with a dark base coat underneath it. I do think it's a pretty glitter, it just needs the right conditions to work properly. I already have another CG in mind as the base.

Watch this space... :D


The temporary result:
Opacity: 4/10
Colour, prettiness: 4/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: N/A
Overall: 5/10
Buy again: We'll see...

Color Club ~ Wild at heart

Color Club ~ Wild at heart

A deep purple base with pink and silver holo.

I think this must be the first purple holographic I’ve ever seen, so I just knew I had to buy it. And Color Club is one of my favourite brands, so that’s a double win, really.

Applying it was very easy, and I could have got away with putting on one coat only, it's *very* opaque.  But I gave it two coats anyway, just for the heck of it! :) The picture shows two coats and a layer of Seche Vite top coat.

I must admit that I haven’t seen much of the holographic effect yet. It’s very subtle. Perhaps it’ll show itself more in the sunlight, although it's the wrong kind of season for that here now. So perhaps I need to wait until next spring for that extra glow....

It’s very pretty anyway, I love the deep purple. I guess purple is one of my favourite colours when it comes to nail polish. Hmmm. Perhaps I should spice it up with a glittery top coat… ;)

Color Club ~ Wild at heart

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8.5/10
Buy again: Yes

I'm a winner!

Hi girls. 

There are lots of girls out there who run giveaway competitions. If the prize is something I'm interested in, of course I enter. I don't really expect to win anything - but hey - if I don't enter, I'm definitely not going to win. 

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had actually won Finger's '200 followers giveaway'! I seriously thought I was going to swoon! :D

I got the prize in the mail yesterday. It's always fun to get mail from overseas - look at this pretty postage sticker:

First thing I saw when I opened the parcel was a hand written note of thanks and congratulations. That's so cool, and made the prize even better. 

Neatly wrapped inside the box was a set of three bottles - a nail prep, a base coat and a top coat, all "Rescue Beauty Lounge" products. I'm not familiar with the brand, but I love trying new stuff, and I'm totally thrilled that I actually won!

Orly ~ Hawaiian Punch

Orly ~ Hawaiian Punch

A Bright Pink with a subtle blue shine to it

I really like Orly's nail polishes, and Hawaiian Punch is no exception. It's bright pink, almost magenta, and the blue-ish shimmer makes it interesting, in my opinion. The formula is a bit to the runny side, but it's very easy to apply anyway. I had no streaks or bald spots whatsoever. 

It took longer for the first coat to dry than I expected, and the second coat dried rather quickly. That's unusual. I would have expected it to be the other way around. Anyway - I forgot to take a picture before I went on to the stamping... it's because I was watching a movie while the polish was drying. :)

Anyway - I stamped on little pussycats from Konad's M83. I used a very dark burgundy stamping polish, also from Konad. That turned out almost black, for some reason. Here it is with a layer of Seche Vite.

After that I decided to try and add some shine and holo effect to it, so I applied a coat of KleanColor number 230, "Chunky Holo Fuschia" over it. It's a sheer pink base with holographic glitter added to it. You can pretty much add it to whatever colour you want, because the base is so sheer.

As you can see the cats are still visible, but the nail polish has a beautiful holographic shine to it. Really nice.

KleanColor doesn't work as a top coat for me though. It stays "sticky" for a very long time, as if it wouldn't dry properly. I gave it a  generous coat of Seche Vite to solve that little problem. An hour later when I moved some heavy stuff in the basement the nail polish got all wrinkly and ugly, apparently because the polish wasn't dry after all. Big thumbs down for that!

Orly ~ Hawaiian Punch
Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Buy again: No

Nfu Oh 51

Nfu Oh 51

A dark purple jelly base with lots of shimmer and duochrome flakies

So, here's one of my beautiful Nfu Oh bottles. I absolutely love the shape of the bottle, it is sooo pretty! It was not easy choosing which colours I wanted out of the Nfu Oh collection, but when I saw this one, I knew it was a must have!

I must admit that I quietly admired it in the bottle for a while before applying it. I know it's silly, but when you finally get something that you've been wanting for a while, you enjoy it all the more. Impulse shopping is cool, but having something on the wishlist for a long time, and then suddenly getting it - that's just perfect.

So anyway - moving on!

I applied it, and it was relatively easy to get it to look good. I had a bit of a struggle with some of the flakies that simply wouldn't "lay down" on the nail, creating a lump instead. But a bit of maneuvering around with the brush soon solved that little challenge.

I ended up applying three coats because I wanted it to look its best. Two layers would probably have been OK too, but hey... :)


Here it is, three coats and a generous coat of Seche Vite top coat to even the surface out.

I have seen so many beautiful swatches of this nail polish, so I was a bit nervous that maybe I was putting my hopes up too high. But 51 fully lived up to all my expectations, and more!

It's hard to capture how beautiful it is in real life, but believe me, it's simply delicious and I've been staring at my nails for two days now! :D

The verdict is: 

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 9/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 8.75/10
Buy again: Yes

China Glaze ~ Atlantis

China Glaze ~ Atlantis

A teal jelly base with teal and multi-colored holographic glitter

China Glaze's Atlantis was first released back in 2009 with the "Specialty Collection" Glitters. It's the only polish I have got from that collection, simply because it was the only one that had my name on it. :)

Applying was easy. No brush strokes or bald spots whatsoever, and after two coats it looked great. I decided to add a third layer because the colour is so pretty that I thought it deserved to be able to show itself from its prettiest side. 

And wow! I absolutely love this colour. It's sparkly, glittery, and so beautiful that I just can't stop looking at my nails. And it's even better when the sun shines on them, even though that doesn't happen very often at this time of year. 

The picture shows three coats and a layer of Poshe top coat. This glitter wasn't as hungry as some other glitters sometimes are, so one layer of top coat was enough.

This is definitely one of my favourite polishes!♥

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 9.5/10
Buy again: Yes!!

Orly ~ Out of this World

ORLY ~ Out of this World

A deep purple base with shimmer flecks of violet purple and green gold

&

China Glaze ~ Snow Globe

a clear base with hegaxonal small, and medium holographic glitter chunks

“Out of this World” is from the Cosmic FX Collection from Autumn 2010. It’s the only one I’ve got from the collection of six. I wanted to buy “It’s not rocket science” (which is green), “Galaxy Girl” (which is purple with red undertones), and “Lunar Eclipse” (which is indigo blue with flashes of violet and other tones of blue). They all look so pretty in pictures. But they were all out of stock, so I had to settle with just this one.

I’m usually happy with Orly’s formula. This one is on the thin side though, so I gave it three coats before I was fully satisfied. 

After having admired my nails for a little while, seeing the pretty flecks shimmering and sparkling, I decided that it needed something extra. I didn’t quite see the effect I was after – you know, the feeling of gazing up into a starry, starry night?

Fortunately I’ve got lots of different glitters to choose between, so I was sure that the little challenge was relatively easy solved. I decided to give China Glaze’s “Snow Globe” a chance, and applied a single coat over the purple. And wow! That gave exactly the effect I was after: A deep purple background with a lot of depth in it, and hundreds of sparkly stars and comets. I was amazed.

I applied a single coat of Orly’s top coat Polishield, and I was ready to go out and have fun!

Orly ~ Out of this World
Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: No

China Glaze ~ Snow Globe

Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes