Nubar Wildlife & Stargazer 234: Green and Pink in Las Vegas

Στα Ελληνικά

I haven't been using my duochrome/multichrome polishes much lately. They'd be wasted in such overcast weather as you really need natural light to appreciate their colour shifts. I was a bit tired of creme finish polishes though, which is why I decided to use a polish with a strong shift. Nubar - Wildlife is the polish I chose and it did not disappoint-quite the contrary. I decided to go all out and stamp it with Stargazer 234 (pink chrome) using a design from Konad plate m83.

This design somehow makes me think it belongs on the walls of a 70s hotel in Las Vegas where they would play Tom Jones-type songs. 

Take care!

xx

Edit: I had to add a video in the end. The post felt empty without it!

Korres Nail Colour in 92 Vert Amande and Yamapi

Αυτή η ανάρτηση στα ελληνικά 

Today I received the most amazing packet from my wonderful friends full of presents that made my heart flutter like a five-year old's on Christmas day. It took me about an hour and a half to go through them all. Am I the only one that prefers a million little things instead of a big present?! The Yamashita Tomohisa fan in the picture below was in today's parcel and deserves a spot here. Yamapi(山下智久)is a Japanese pop star/actor and, thought I am not a crazy/omgodIhavetowatcheverydramaheisin fan I find his diary entries very amusing as it's like reading a kid's diary; they are almost always about him being hungry, what he ate, how he worked out and -of course- the weather report. He makes me laugh. My friends know me so well that some of the things they sent me are cosmetics and they will be featured here! 

My mani with a Yamapi fan that was also in the packet.
My friends are crazy and funny.

The first of these things is a Korres nail polish! I didn't even know that Korres had a nail polish line till a friend told me about them and then she sent me this one, isn't she great? I've not found them in their on-line shop so I'm not sure where you'd get them from at the minute. Korres polishes go beyond 3-free; they are 7-free as they have no silicones, acetone, phthalate, formaldehyde, camphor, toluene and xylene. Now if only they were a certified cruelty-free company, too, that would make them fantastic! I don't know why they haven't made a move towards that, but it's a shame as they are great in all other respects.

The colour I received is Vert Amande (92), a beautiful minty green cream. I've not checked out all the colours, but I am sure that this would be the first colour I would want to try. Even though it's a cream it has depth; it feels a bit like a jelly, but still manages to be opaque in two coats. I really love it! It's also not too pastel or stark and it doesn't give me lobster hands. The application was very smooth as you can see from the pictures. The brush is a normal round brush, not flat like I am used to and it'd be nice to see this improve in future versions. Normally I make a good mess of my cuticles when I am handling a round brush, but look at the pictures: no mess even though I've not done a clean-up! It applies like a dream, smooth and perfect with no issues of bubbling. I don't know how long it would take for it to dry as I applied a fast-dry top coat.

One coat (artificial light) Check out how smooth it goes on!

Two coats (natural light-cloudy)

Of course, I had to do a bit of stamping. I used SpaRitual's gorgeous dark bronze colour Running with wolves and Bundle Monster plate BM214 (from the second collection of plates). 

Thank you my dear friends! You bring so much light in my life!

PS- Excuse the slightly blurry pictures. My camera broke down, I have a new one and I'm still getting the hang of it.  

Comparison: W7 Metallic Mars, Nubar Iris Dust and Moon Eclipse (Moon Shadow)

Some time ago I found this pretty little multichrome, W7 - Metallic Mars. Lulled away by the beautiful colours I could see in the bottle, I took it to the counter straight away and failed to notice how similar it is to Nubar - Iris Dust. My dislike of having similar colours was not as fast as my 'pretty colours-must have' impulse, which was also assisted by the minimal price of £2. All that is of course to your benefit since I get to do this comparison so you don't have to be fall into the same trap I did. I added Moon Eclipse (former Moon Shadow) in the comparison just for reference. 

Open the pictures as a new tab if you want a closer look, all the pictures are taken under natural light. Let the madness begin! 

The verdict

Nubar Moon Eclipse is different enough, so I am going to focus on the other two. Consistency-wise Metallic Mars requires 3 layers while Iris Dust 4-5 for full opacity. Both colours have the same type of tiny shimmer particles I spoke about here, however, W7 Metallic Mars'base is a warmer tone than Nubar Iris Dust. When they are showing the pinkish colour, Iris Dust looks a tiny bit cooler than MM and when they are showing the golden colour, Metallic Mars looks bronzier. Frankly, even side by side you can see the differences are minimal, they are close enough to be considered dupes and I don't think you need both.

Have a nice day!

Nubar Duochromes Swatches Galore (picture heavy)

By now it is a well established fact: we all love the Duochrome colours by Nubar. They are beautiful and if anything, describing them as 'duochromes' undermines their beauty as there are more than two colours that they shift to and from. 

What I noticed when I saw them all together was how similar they all looked in their bottles. It was hard to tell them apart which was rather odd given that they look very different on the nail. Upon swatching them I realised why; most of them have the same multi-chrome shimmer in them that shifts from a light green to a bright pink and the only reason they look different on the nail is because they have a different base colour!

That of course is not true of all the duochromes, but of the ones I have the ones that have this green-yellow-pink shimmer are Indigo Illusion, Purple Beach, Moon Eclipse (new name for Moonshadow), Iris Dust and Wildlife. The only one that has a different kind of shimmer is Gold Leaf which has a kind of shimmer that doesn't shift so much but goes from gold to bronze.

I have swatched them on white paper first to make the difference of the base colours more apparent. It also lets the shimmer separate a bit from the base colour and it shows through a bit better that it does on the nail. After the paper swatches I swatched them on my nails. I thought it would be useful to anyone who might want to see them compared all together. It was a bit hard to make all five catch the light in the same way and therefore show a similar colour shift, but I made an honest effort! Also, I haven't included Gold Leaf in most of them since it is quite different. 

And now, the pictures! As always, the pictures are larger if you download them

The colours are:

Nubar - Gold Leaf (GL) 

Nubar - Moon Eclipse (Moon Shadow's new name) (ME) 

Nubar - Indigo Illusion (II) 

Nubar - Purple Beach (PB)

Nubar Iris Dust (ID)

Nubar - Wildlife (W)

The base colours (artificial light)

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For the nail swatches, I did 3 coats of all of them apart from Iris Dust that needed 5 coats. 

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