Nubar Royal Gems Collection

Good morning, Dear Reader!

Well, my surprise for you this morning got postponed a bit, so I'll have it for you tomorrow. In the meantime, I have something even more fabulous - Nubar's Royal Gems Collection showed up last night! I took pictures for you last night with artificial light since I won't have sun for a few days, and I'm not entirely thrilled with my pictures. Most of these are glitters, and the glitter shows up on the nail, but not very well in my pics! I may just redo the five glitters for you in the sun later, but I can at least show you the cool colors for now.

So, as a whole, this collection is all two-coaters (max). The folk at Nubar are not fearful of dumping a boatload of pigment into a polish! The way this collection was packaged, there are seven base colors and one glitter top coat (Tiara). Tiara is intended to be worn alone as well, but we know me and sheers, so I just used it as a GTC. These are also super-quick-dry, which was part of my picture problem. They were pretty dry by the time I was done taking pictures. I was told they're intended for use with Nubar base, top, and remover (which I'm a big fan of), likely because they're so pigmented. As a novel change of pace, I followed directions and had no troubles. On to the pics!

I don't know where to start, so it's alphabetical with a little exception I'm saving for last...

Amethyst is a royal, royal purple shimmer with tons of tiny glitter.

And here it is with a little Tiara placed upon its tiny head (that makes me laugh).

Emerald!!! Emerald is what I wanted China Glaze Emerald Sparkle to be. It's a deep greeen shimmer with tons of tiny green glitter.

With Tiara (after this one, I'll just give you both pics and you can assume it's the same base with the GTC).

Ruby is a cherry (or ruby!) red shimmer with a ton of little red glitter.

Sapphire is a royal blue shimmer, again with a ton of tiny glitter. It's like a more ladylike Dorothy Who?.

Tiger's Eye is the brown I've been waiting for. This one has no glitter, but a lot of shimmer, which I've thought was lacking from some recent browns. This one is all in on being a shimmer.

The last two blew me away. We know I love metallics, and these are two exceptional metallics. 24K has likely trumped Gold Fiction as my favorite gold. It's an intense gold shimmer, but also has some gold glitter in it. It's one serious gold!

Last is my other favorite, Platinum. It really looks like platinum. It's a white-silver shimmer with glitter in it. I have a ton of silvers, but none that really look like platinum, so I'm all excied about this one.

I love these. I'm really enjoying Nubar's releases in that they're good as collections, great individual colors, and completely what they are. You want gemstone colors? No wussy washed-out ones here. They are what they are. I like that!

So this is Nubar's Royal Gems. Not the best pictures of them, but here they are. I'll definitely be using these, so when I do, I'll take better pictures of the first five for you with top coat so you can see their glittery goodness the same way I did swatching them. In fact, I think I'll go put on Sapphire right now!

That's it for now, Dear Reader. Until next time, love and nail polish to you!

Essie Cuddle with Color Collection for Fall 2009

Good morning, Dear Reader!

This is turning into Swatch Week! Today I have Essie's Cuddle with Color Collection for Fall 2009 for you. They were all three-coaters for me, and went on well. The color can be divided into those you'd expect and those you wouldn't. I'll start with those you would.

Angora Cardi is a deep muted mauve creme.

Chinchilly is a somewhat grey, beige-y creme.

Mink Muffs is a muted brown creme.

Now for the surprises!

Bright Tights is a retina-searing orange neon creme.

Pink Parka is also a retina-searer, a pink neon creme.

Last, Midnight Cami is a dark navy shimmer.

Quite a collection for Fall, no? I'm a fan of all six shades, so I'm happy with them. Whether they hang together as a collection, well, I don't know if that matters to me here!

That's it for now, Dear Reader. Until next time, love and nail polish to you!

Color Club Wild at Heart & More!

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I had a whole tidy post written, but I'm on a borrowed computer that won't open the doc. Dangit!!!

The good news is, I still have pictures of lots of good things for you. A package came from Color Club yesterday, and in it was a whole bunch of cool things. I swatched some for you, and others, just took pictures of the sets. Unfortunately, I'm without the color names for the ones I did not swatch, but I trust you'll forgive that and enjoy pictures of sparkly things to come.

For Halloweem, Color Club has their Master of Disguise Collection, which as you can see, is a white creme, a black creme, a crazy cool tiny hex orange glitter, and a purple with pink and blue shimmer.



Color Club also jumped on the matte train with their Dark Romance matte collection, a black matte creme, a white matte creme, a silver matte shimmer, and a matte top coat.



Finally, for Holiday 2009, they have Wonderland for us, a white glitter, red glitter, and subtle green glitter.



You even get to see my neighbor's house in those! I live right by a school and was taking all of the pictures in this post at about 3:00-3:30 in the afternoon. Kids on bikes were riding by and staring, two neighbors looked at me oddly, this was a funny one to do!

So, I promised you swatches too, and those are of Color Club's Wild at Heart Collection for Fall 2009. They're all two coats, with the exception of one, with the pictures taken in the afternoon sun.

There are two holos in this collection, and Love 'Em, Leave 'Em is the first. It went on smoothly and was really good in two coats.




On the Wild Side had me a bit skeptical at first, it's so frosty, but once it dries a bit it's not too far off from my beloved SpaRitual Steel Magnolia. I like it!




Rule breaker is just a flat-out hot green shimmer.




With Abandon is a ton of tiny, flaky, brown glitter in a black base.




Wild at Heart is a fabulous purple holo. Look at all the colors in there!




Finally, Wild and Willing, the three coater, is a slightly duochrome glittery orange-ish nail polish. This one, I'd like to layer over black (but forgot to for these pics).




Overall, this is a great Fall collection - each shade is a good one for Fall, and there's not a loser in the bunch. I'm a fan!

The seventh bottle in the collection is Color Club's 0-60 Speedy Top Coat. I used it, and it did dry the top layers fast, but I still got dents after a while, so I'm not a convert.

That's the update for today, Dear Reader. Until tomorrow, love and nail polish to you!