Nubar ~ Purple Beach

Nubar ~ Purple Beach

A purple/green duochrome

I must admit that I was a bit sceptical before applying this nail polish. This is my second attempt at a duochrome, and I was hugely disappointed with the first one, Color Club’s “Alias” – see review here.

So, I was prepared to be disappointed again, and ready to just wipe the nail polish off, should the desired effect not materialize.

I held my breath while I applied the first coat. I twisted my fingers a bit to see if the effect was coming out, and it was! It materialized right before my very eyes. First it was purple, a soft, almost greyish purple, and then, with a twist of the fingers, it was suddenly ashy green. I was stunned.

A second coat only enhanced the effect. I’m so pleased it worked, and worked so well!

Applying it was easy, this is perhaps one of the easiest formulas I’ve ever worked with. No streaks or bald spots, and it was opaque in two coats. If this is the standard quality for Nubar, I’m certainly looking forward to trying the others of this brand that I’ve got.  

The reason for the relatively low score in “colour, prettiness” is because these particular ashy shades of purple and green are not colours I’d usually go for, cool though the effect is. Next time I’ll try to find a duochrome with stronger or brighter colours, if that’s chromatically possible.

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 5/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 6.75/10
Buy again: No

A couple of newbies

Hi again!

I just wanted to show you the result of spending an hour in a Swedish mall. It must have been *the* most boring mall I've ever seen, but they did have a huge Hennes & Mauritz store in there, and I was very lucky that they actually had nail polish on special. O Happy Day!! :D

Here's what I bought:

 

 Three of H&M's own brand. 

From left to right: 

Black: "Manhunter", Blue: "Moody Model" and Magenta: "Soaked in Purple". 

All cremes, and nice looking colours, too. I've been reading lots of good stuff about H&M's own brand in nail polish, so I'm looking very much forward to trying these on.

 

  From left to right: 

Hello Kitty: "Pink Summer", H&M: "Sea Pearl" and Daisy Duck: "Daisy".

I'm not really into white or greyish colours, so I'll be using those two for frankening, which will be fun! 

Nice little stash, right? :)

China Glaze ~ Ruby Pumps

China Glaze ~ Ruby Pumps

A red jelly base with bright shimmery red glitter

This has turned out to be my favourite China Glaze nail polish so far. It looks very pretty in the bottle, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed with how it looks on my nails.

I ‘ve seen lots of photos of “Ruby Pumps” and read lots of positive reviews about it, but I wasn’t aware that the glittery colour has a rich complexity that just doesn’t translate well into photographs. Yes, it looks very pretty in the pictures, but it’s absolutely nothing compared to how fab it looks in real life!

It reminds me somewhat of Color Club’s “Ruby Slippers” (which is my favourite of all), but it’s not quite as glittery as that.

The picture shows 2 coats and a layer of Seche Vite top coat. If you wear three coats of polish, you’ll certainly add some extra depth to your colour.

If you like red and shimmer, you should really buy yourself a bottle of this gorgeous colour.

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8.25/10
Buy again: Yes

Color Club ~ Wish Upon a Rock Star

Color Club ~ Wish upon a rock star
Multicoloured glitter

This polish is from the brand new Backstage Pass collection, of which I have bought four out of six. I’ll be reviewing the other three as I get to try them on. I have very high expectations of them all!

I thought this polish would be opaque enough to be on its own, but when I saw the first layer, I immediately changed my mind, and decided that the polish needed a base colour. I removed the glitter from the one finger I’d put in on, and started over again with a coloured base coat.

I chose to use a green one from NYX, namely Boho, which is a pale shimmery emerald green, that I would never wear on its own. But it’s cool for nail art or as a base for something like this.

So I gave it two layers of that, before applying the “real deal”: The glitter. Just a tip: If you want to use NYX Boho on its own, I’d suggest at least three coats, as it’s pretty sheer in itself. But anyway – back to what this post is really about.

I applied two layers of “Wish upon a rock star”, and wow! The glitter is simply amazing! It’s a rainbow of colours with larger pink hex glitters. It looks as if someone had a party on my nails, leaving confetti everywhere. And it’s amazingly shiny too! It’s so shiny that when I’m in direct sunlight it looks as

though it’s made of foil.

It’ll be fun to see if it looks just as good with a different colour as a base. I imagine black, purple and pink would look fantastic too.

Opacity: 3/10
Colour, prettiness: 6/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: No

You might wonder why I have decided that this is a “not buy again”-polish, when I’m so positive in my review. It’s because the colours are a bit “too much” – there is just a bit too much going on all at the same time. But it’s really a cool lacquer!

Lamis ~ Glitter

Hey there girls :)

This post is just to show you how a cheap bottle of nail polish glitter can make a cool nail polish even cooler. I bought this Lamis Glitter online a long while ago. I don't remember exactly what I paid for it, but I do remember it was very cheap. 

It's basically glitter in a clear base. The glitter is multicoloured and comes in various sizes and hexagons. 

I applied it over China Glaze's "Flying Dragon" (see previous post), and it's definitely not the last time I've done that. Take a look and judge for yourself! 

What do you think? Cool, right? :)

China Glaze ~ Flying Dragon

China Glaze ~ Flying Dragon
Deep Purple with blue and red micro glitter

This polish is from the the China Glaze 2008 INK collection. Not one of the new kids on the block, but all China Glazes are new to me, so that’s not holding me back. I don’t mind if it’s from a previous years’ collection, just as long as the colour is pretty.

I fell for both the colour and for the name, and was very excited to try it on. I loved the vibrant deep purple, and all the blue glitter, that was visible in the bottle.

I hadn’t read any reviews about this polish, so I was surprised to see how matte the finish was, even after the first layer. It was a bit on the tricky side to apply, but I managed. I gave it a second layer, and after that, a third layer. It could possibly have done with only two layers, but some colours just deserve that little extra that another coat adds. It dried very fast, so even though I’m not the most patient person in the world, it wasn’t really an issue to wait for the third layer to dry. 

The picture shows three layers of Flying Dragon on each finger, with the left finger having an additional coat of Seche Vite, which I hope also shows off the matte finish, kinda ‘before and after’.

I have read that it’s the neon in combination with the glitter that gives the rough finish. Two generous coats of Seche Vite Top Coat solves that problem though. People who like matte nail polishes could easily do without any top coat at all.

It’s a cool colour, but I must admit that looks cooler in the bottle than it does on the nails. The glitter is quite a lot less visible on the nails than you’d expect and that’s the downside for me. It’s still a pretty colour though, just not quite as expected.  So – slightly disappointed with the effect but nonetheless pleased with the colour. :)

Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

Orly ~ Star Spangled

Orly ~ Star Spangled
A red jelly with red microglitter

This is from Orly’s “In The Navy Collection” from summer 2010.

I actually have only good things to say about this nail polish. It has just about everything I like: A pretty colour and a nice glitter, which both combine to make a polish with depths that are almost indescribable.

It’s also very easy it is to apply, which in itself is a very good thing.

I applied two coats and was very happy with that, until I saw the photos I took for this blog. Then I realized that it could have used a third coat. :| 
But never mind. Next time I think I’ll try and use a red as a base coat to see if it makes the colour look even more vibrant. I hope so. :)

 

The photo shows two coats and a layer of Seche Vite top coat.

I actually bought two of these by accident. I had forgotten that I’d already ordered it, and while the first stash was on its way, I re-found it, thought it was a very pretty colour, and ordered it again! So it’s a very good thing that I’m so happy with it!



Opacity: 5/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: Yes

Color Club ~ Alias

Color Club ~ Alias
A purple/green duochrome

Alias is from the Color Club Spring 2011 “Alter Ego” collection. I’m a huge Color Club fan, and I am sorry to say that this is the first time I feel that Color Club has let me down. 

I only applied two layers of Alias, and perhaps that is part of the thing that went wrong, because I didn’t see any duochrome effect whatsoever. It was a very sparkly purple, perhaps the sparkliest I’ve ever seen, but no matter how much I twisted and turned my fingers, I didn’t see any green at all. That was very disappointing. I took a picture of the bottle, where the greenish colour actually does show itself, but there is simply no green visible on my nails.

Another thing that surprised me was the formula. The polish was kind of runny and sheerer than any other Color Club I’ve got. So perhaps I should have gone for 3 or maybe even 4 layers. I’ll try that next time and will report back here. 

 

The last bad thing I’ll mention is about the formula also. This took much longer to dry than I’m used to, and it didn’t last as long as the other colours I’ve got either. I must admit, I’m not particularly happy with this product.

The most positive thing I can say about this polish is that it has a nice colour. The purple is really pretty, and as mentioned before, very shiny and shimmery. But, that’s not what I was looking for. I have shiny and shimmery already, you know?

Next duochrome up is from Nubar. I hope I have more luck with that.



Opacity: 5/10
Colour, prettiness: 6/10
Durability: 3/10
Value for money: 4/10
Overall: 4.5/10
Buy again: No

OPI ~ Red Shatter

OPI ~ Red Shatter
A red shatter creme

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll realize that I love glitter. But after only a day or two with Color Club’s Magic Attraction, I found myself thinking that it wasn’t dark enough for me. Please don’t get me wrong – I think the glitter was really stunningly pretty, but for some reason I just got bored with it after a couple of days. So I decided to try and spice it up with OPI’s red shatter.

And WOW, that was just an amazing effect. The red itself would have been very ordinary (and thus kind of boring by itself), but with the sparkly glitter underneath, it was simply stunning! 

 

I gave it a nice thick layer of Seche Vite Top Coat, and was very happy with that. - At least for a day. The day after, it decided to chip. And not just small chips, but big chips, a quarter of the fingernail sized chips! Not at all acceptable, and so that joy didn’t last very long. But yes, it was fantastic and very pretty indeed, for a whole day. :)


Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 2/10
Value for money: 5/10
Overall: 6/10
Buy again: No.

Color Club ~ Magic Attraction

Color Club ~ Magic Attraction
Holographic glitter

There’s no reason for trying to hide it: I am a glitter girl. The more glittery, the better. So it was like a dream coming true when I saw this pretty glitter from Color Club. I mean – glitter is one thing, but holographic glitter is just amazing!

I was very excited and eager to try it on. Would it be difficult to apply nicely? Would it need a coloured basecoat to show opaque? Would it be able to live up to my expectations? There was only one way to find out: Paint it on.

After applying just the first coat I was already stunned! It covered perfectly, no bald spots whatsoever and the glitter was just beautiful. I gave it a second coat, and it was perfect. It lived up to all my expectations, and then some! I felt like I had little disco balls on my nails! :D

The first layer of Seche Vite Top Coat soaked right in, but the second layer left the surface wonderfully smooth and very shiny. Perfect.

The only drawback about this nail polish is that it’s damn hard to remove. Harder than any other glitter polish I’ve ever owned. But without a doubt it’s totally worth it!

If you love glitter as much as I do, this is a must have!!


Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 9/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall: 9.25/10
Buy again: Yes