Nubar Fire Sparkle

Red week continues (albeit a little late today) with Nubar Fire Sparkle.

I've had this polish for a while.  It's amazingly sparkly, which as any blogger would know, is incredibly hard to capture in photos.  These Nubar Sparkles have so much glitter in them that you can almost get away with one coat!  This was two coats, with a very generous layer of Seche Vite (to start with).

The above picture was taken indoors, next to the window with natural light.  Below taken in the sun.

I have read on someone else's blog,  where they called these Nubar sparkles, 'thirsty' polishes.  I think that is such a great description for them.  

The above photos were all taken very soon after applying my thick layer of Seche Vite, and as you can see below, that top coat is drying fast and being drunk up by the polish.  These polishes end up looking rough very quickly. 

I tried and tried to get a finished glassy top coat look, I think I ended up with 7 layers of top coat!  It just kept soaking it up.  It's really weird.  I've never experienced this with another glitter polish.  

I bought these after seeing amazing swatches and reviews on Scrangie's blog, but I'm sure she must photograph some things while they are still wet.  Without that glassy finish they look kinda matte, which is weird too.  The sparkle in these is awesome, but like all glitters, a biotch to remove.

Do you have any of the Nubar sparkle polishes?  Are yours thirsty too?

Plucking chickens

Today I'm sharing with you OPI Meet & Jingle with Nubar 2010 layered on top.  This did look very pretty, but I'm afraid I have a problem with red polish, and it goes back to my Granddad.

My Nana (my Mums Mum) who passed away more than 20 years ago, had beautiful nails.  My mum always comments how I inherited her nails.  Nana loved to paint her nails, and unfortunately I never got to share that experience with her. But one thing I do remember is what my Granddad used to say to her when she had red nail polish on.  So what was it?  "You've been plucking chickens again".  Isn't that just awful!

So now, whenever I wear red polish, it kind of jumps out at me and I always think of that phrase. So I'm just not sure that I like it on me.

Anyway, here are a couple of up close pictures to show the beautiful flakies in Nubar 2010.

I'm looking forward to applying 2010 over some other dark colours, probably blue tones though.

Nail blogger lingo

When I started reading nail polish blogs about a year and a half ago, I discovered a whole new vocabulary.  Lets have a quick chat about a few of them today.

Lemming - Ok, so my first thoughts when I saw 'lemming' was a small furry-footed rodent.  But the context of "I'm really lemming this" just didn't work.  My next thought was the lovable green haired characters in the Lemmings game.  Do you remember these little guys?  What a fun mindless game of the 90's.  I finally worked out that a lemming was neither of these, but in fact a longing, yearing, wish, desire etc. 

But now I'm beginning to wonder about the connection between lemmings (the game character) and lemmings (our polish desires).  I mean we get lemmings (polish desires) from seeing awesome polishes on other peoples blogs, and then getting the uncontrollable desire to have that same polish.  It seems that we are maybe a little like those lemmings (games characters) in following what we see other people do.  Umm food for thought.

Stash - So we all know what this one is, and no its not the same one as used during Movember when we say to our mates "Nice stash bro"... (Aussie gals will know what I'm talking about). I just love the way nail polish bloggers use this term.  Instead of having a nail polish collections, we have stashes.  And I just love seeing peoples pictures of the stashes, and how they store and organise them.

Haul - Another word that I just love how nail polish bloggers use.  When we get nail polish in the mail, its not just a delivery, its a haul.  "Look what I just hauled in", like you've just been fishing and you caught a fish 'this big'.

Shrinkage - Alright, when I first saw someone writing on their blog about shrinkage, I had a little giggle like a school girl, just like Homer Simpson when he says 'titmouse' tee hee hee.  Seriously now, last time I heard the word shrinkage was from my husband after jumping into our pool and finding it A LOT colder than expected. But now I understand, in the nail polish world this means where the polish dries and pulled back from the edge of the nail, thus shrinking as it dries.

Konad - Another word that when I first saw it, I was like "what, are you serious, you named your product Konad".  When I told my husband I bought some Konad plates online, he did a double take and said "you bought what...", "Konad" I said, "not Gonad".  Google it if you don't know what I mean.

And now, because this is a nail polish blog, here are some pretty sparkly nails.
This is Nubar Violet Sparkle, three coats with base and top coat. Very beautiful, bitch to remove.

I've learnt so much from nail polish blogs, where would I be without you.

Nubar - Wildlife

This is the second polish I bought from the Nubar Going Green Collection.  This is Wildlife and it's such an amazing duo chrome polish.  I really love it.

These pictures really show the colour changing.  The base colour is a warm bronzy brown shimmer. Above colour taken inside.  Below in full sun.

When you move your fingers you start to see the mossy green gold duo chrome.

And even stronger gold, leaning to yellow shimmer.  NICE!

This would have to be the strongest duo chrome polish I have. The colour shift in this is amazing.  And the colours in this are really 'me' colours.  Whats your favourite duo chrome (or multi chrome) polish?

Nubar reclaim

I was going through my swatches the other day and discovered that I hadn't yet photographed Nubar Reclaim. Green Holo, very cool.  I bought two of the polishes from the Going Green collection, way back in about May last year - so I'm well over due in posting them here now.

What a beautiful polish.  This was two coats, with no top coat.  I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it had a decent glossy finish, unlike the Nfu Oh holographic polishes.  I also found that the application on this was much easier than the other holographic polishes I have (Nfu Oh and China Glaze OMG and Kaleidoscope collections).  I didn't get bald patches if I went over the same spot.

Not a crazy in your face holo finish, but it's very pretty and it gives the polish that something special. 

Nubar Prisms

I only have three of the eight polishes in the Nubar Prisms collection.  None of the other colours really grabbed me enough to order from overseas.  But I love gold, brown and neutral tones so I got Jewel, Gem and Spark.

Nubar Jewel - This is a brown base with a stack of holographic glitter.  This polish was actually very gritty and I was a little disappointed how it looked on the nail.  In the bottle it looks amazing.  It really needs a couple of coats of a good top coat, which I didn't do for this swatch.  This holographic polish isn't like any of the other holographic polishes I have (CG OMG and Kaleidoscopes) which have a totally smooth finish, with the holographic particles forming part of the polish.  This is really just a brown shimmer with lots of holo glitter.  I still really like it, and will wear it quite a lot, but just not what I was expecting.  This was three coats.

Nubar Gem - Is a pinky taupe version of Jewel.  It too was gritty cause of the holographic glitter.  It's basically a shimmer polish with glitter added.  Still a lovely polish. 3 coats.

Nubar Spark - A neutral flesh coloured holo polish.  Really blends with my skin tones, and inside it looks quite flat and natural.  Outside the holo shows through.  This polish is totally different from Gem and Jewel.  It's much more like CG OMG Collection (although not as strong a holographic effect) because it has a totally smooth finish and the holographic particles are part of the polish, not just holo glitter. 

This was my first try of Nubar polishes and I'm pretty happy with them.  These holographic polishes seem to last longer on my nails than CG OMG and Kaleidoscopes collections do.  Application was easy and I'm very happy I got these from overseas to add to my collection.