Comparisons: olive cremes and purple duochromes

Today, all I've got for you is a couple of comparisons - I'm still rocking my red Chinese fauxnadicure actually - I hope you'll find these somewhat helpful.

We're expecting a boom of olive shades this fall, with both Zoya and China Glaze putting out theirs to accompany the one from OPI that I already have and that is represented in the wheel below. As usual with the weird numbering that comes only with alizarine claws! Check out linked names for full manicure posts.

14. Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Trendy Creme
15. H&M Hunt Me Down
16. OPI Uh-uh Roll Down the Window
17. Viva La Diva mini polish #2
18. Illamasqua Hectic
1. Depend 172
2. Jessica Victorian Crush
3. Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War
4. Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Swamp Thing
5. Eyeko Military Polish
6. Kleancolor Fashionista

...and against a different colored background - lighter shades enhanced more:

I still find it somewhat intriguing how the backdrop you choose for your swatches affects the color representation. These photos are both shot with the same camera, in the same setting, in the same lighting conditions!

11 shades of olive represented, no dupes. How happy do you think that makes the alizarine? The Kleancolor is slightly misplaced out on the edge of this wheel, which is all due to a late addition, but it is in reality the closest to No More War - but a tad greener and less brown. The IsaDora is the one that doesn't really fit in this crowd, but I put it in there for reference, thought it might be interesting.

Next, I mentioned while answering the comments on my post about Hard Candy Groove, that I'd do a smaller comparison of purple duochromes (and multichromes!), since so many of you felt it was reminiscent of other lacquers. I thought this would be fun - not only do I lalalalove olive cremes, a good purple duochrome totally rocks my world as well!

From left to right, with some links to manicure posts:

1. Wet n Wild Gray's Anatomy
2. OPI Not Like the Movies
3. Hard Candy Groove
4. Nubar Purple Beach
5. Zoya Ki

And check out a bad photo of the duochrome properties:

Again, all different! This makes the alizarine a happy girl, once more!

A closer look at the two that are the most similar, Hard Candy Groove and Nubar Purple Beach:

Oooh, old style Hard Candy bottle! [insert big heart]

Another really bad photo, but you can tell they're different, right? I'd say the same duochrome pigment has been used in these two, but the Nubar is deeper, and overall a little less pink. Fingerprints and cat hair free of charge!

Okay, I had lots of fun with this post, hope you had at least a tenth as fun reading it! Despite the lack of oceans of bottle shots. I realize it would be a little more oohs and aahs ringing around here if I had managed some bottles, but I have to be honest with you: I don't really like doing bottle shots. It's terribly time consuming and also quite boring. Though, the end result is most of the time a whole lot better, so I do them anyway - but being both impulsive and a perfectionist sometimes clash...

Swedish word of the day:
armbandsur -noun wrist watch
For no particular reason, except I got a new one today - and it's greeeeen.

10

I was tagged by Polish Chest and necessary★nails for the Top 10 award, and thought it would be kind of fun to show you the top 10 beauty products I swear by, so here they are!


You may click to see details in the rather large photo here, but here's my list, in no particular order:

1. Nubar Foundation Base Coat
2. Nubar Diamont Seal & Shine Topcoat (the good formula, that is!)
3. Estée Lauder Double Wear Foundation (I use 1N1 Ecru)
4. The Body Shop Hemp Body Butter
5. Nuxe Aroma-Perfection face cream
6. Lush Soft Touch
7. Kanebo Sensai 38° mascara
8. Avon Length & Strength Complex
9. tweezers!
10. Too Faced Lip Injection

The Nubar nail products I always use. Always! (Until I run out of a good formula bottle of Diamont...)

The Estée Lauder Double Wear foundation I was once recommended by the girls on the MakeupAlley makeup board, as an answer to my desperate calls for a foundaton that would both cover and stick most of the day. It's utterly divine. Buildable, covers flaws well, and yes, it stays put even on oily skin!

The Hemp Body Butter from The Body Shop is very much a miracle in a jar. After 30, I started getting these weird dry patches here and there, that would stay for weeks, but applying this smelly stuff helps immediately. After one day, the dry patches are basically gone. Gone, I tell you. I also use this for my feet and sometimes hands. However, there is a whole line with specific products for both hands and feet, but the body butter contains a little less water than the hand cream, from what I can tell by the feel of it. Which is of course better for the overall results.

I have used Nuxe facial products for the last few years. I tend to want products that give me a natural feel, but some all natural products are just counterproductive, especially for someone with oily and acne-prone skin. Nuxe is the perfect blend between natural and laboratory science. I have a small range of their products permanently stashed on my bathroom shelves, as I find many of them great. For day wear and summer, I use Aroma-Perfection, during night I use their Crème Fraîche de Beauté - for summer the one for normal skin, during the harsh Swedish winter, the one for dry skin. They also have a great meakup removing toner. And sadly, they have discontinued my favourite one of them all: the Crème Étincelante resurfacing cream. This one worked miracles on my skin - now, no more.

The Lush Soft Touch solid hand and cuticle treatment is sadly discontinued. I went up in pieces after I heard, since this product has made a huge difference for my nails and cuticles. It's basically an oil, and its solid form makes it easy to rub off a fair amount of product and then let it melt all over the nails and cuticles - I often sleep the whole night just soaking in it. You can tell my piece is painfully small by now, and when it's all finished, I don't know what I'll do. Lush does have a new, similar product; Tiny Hands, that I haven't yet tried, but it does not contain some of the goodies Soft Touch does, renown for its great impact on nails, such as beeswax.

I have been a slave to the Kanebo mascaras for a few years now. They require some building, which suits me perfectly since that makes it possible to use the same mascara for everyday wear and a night out. And, it stays on without being waterproof! It's one of those tube mascaras, that comes of in chunks once you apply hot water - 38° C or warmer. Normal body temperature is of course 37° C, which makes these stay put for tears and what not.

The old style Avon Length & Strength Complex bottle was a product I initially received from Monica over at wixology. I had ruined my nails terribly with Nubar's (in)famous Nu Nail strengthener and just couldn't figure out a working way to save them. Monica sent me this one, and it worked! Since, I hunted down a large amount of these old bottles on ebay (I think I paid one dollar a bottle), that I have also shared with friends. It is still in the Avon range, but in a new bottle, and, I hope, with the same ingredients. Works for dry, brittle nails, and I use it wintertime - during summers my nails are too soft, and then it does very little good actually.

And tweezers... I can't live without them! Unfortunately I have misplaced my very trusty Vitry tweezers, which I loved, and the ones shown in the photo are not as good, but still does some of the job. Brows, random hair strands, picking cuticles... You name it. I think I use my tweezers almost every single day.

Too Faced's Lip Injection is the best working lip plumper I have come across. It itches like hell, but it works, and it makes my lips look yummy! I have gone through vast amounts of lip plumpers over the last few years, and beside polish, lipglosses and lipsticks are my secret thing. (And perfume.)

Wow, this post came out long, but hopefully you were able to skip through the parts that don't interest you!

If I had done this award thing properly I would also have included 10 bloggers to tag, but you know how I do these things. If you want to do this, just do it! Consider yourself tagged.

Swedish word of the day:
skönhet -noun beauty
Most of us are slaves in one way or another.

Back on square one...

I wanted to let you guys know that I this week received a bottle with the dud formula Diamont from Feelunique. I wouldn't call it safe to order from there if you're just as picky about the formulation as I am. This drags me all the way back to square one as of finding an online dealer in Europe who sells the flawless version. If you know of any such store, please leave a comment for those of us who need to know!

Swedish word of the night:
ruta -noun square
There aren't many in terms of Diamont, these days...

For the flaky manicure: flakies

Here's a bunch of Nfu Oh flakie manicures I've been gathering over ... the last year or so, perhaps. You know, sometimes you're in a flakie mood (or maybe even in a flaky mood), and dang those flakies on every manicure you manage for a couple of weeks or so, or, you just feel that this manicure is missing something - and that's when those trusty flakies are nice to have at hand.

Unfortunately, flakies are sometimes really, really difficult to render nice photos from, but these are pretty enough. Just picture them even prettier in reality.

Mmm. Purple shimmer with fire!

I wish I remembered what base this was, but I don't. All I know is the fire on top is my perhaps very favourite Nfu Oh flakie: number 60.

Green-aqua-blue flakies over green jelly. Jellies like these always come out wonky in photos, color wise, but trust me, this was good in person. Imagine the green jelly a bit deeper, and much less washed out. Generally, flakies over jellies are super cool, especially if the jelly is a glitter. It creates the most amazing effects!

The next manicure gets the honourary spot in this post, with three photos, because it's what I'm wearing today. It's a gazillion times better as I am looking down on my actual nails. And please ignore the shrinkage at the edges. It's been repaired with a light touch up since these photos were taken. Sorry about my sloppyness.



The differences in color is way more obvious in reality. The green is very green, and the blue is very blue, of an aquamarine type hue. The base, Nubar's Passionate Purple, is stunning on it's own, but very blurple. Blurple base, with both blue and pink shimmer and microglitter, but the blue is more prominent. However, you can tell the pink is there in the blurry parts of the sunny photo. Luscious.

Swedish word of the day:
isflak -noun ice floe
They're slowly disappearing...

A Treasure

I was sick for the eleventieth time, and I was bored, so despite lack of sunny weather, I took out a holo that had been waiting among the untrieds for a long time - Treasure from Nubar. Happily, my manicure was still nearly perfect the next day when the sun came out.




Three coats and still not gaining complete opacity - the base is really sheer - which is visible some of my free edges here. I ended up wearing it for nearly three days though, and also liking it a whole lot more than I expected to. Nubar polishes have great wear, and I had only one teeny tiny chip by the time I took it off, which is unusually great for me.

Swedish word of the day:
spektakulär -adjective spectacular
This is one of my favourite adjectives.

The iridescent silver glitter (?!) comparison

Didn't know what to call this comparison. How do you describe this kind of polish? Iridescent glitter in a silver glitter base? I keep buying these, thinking "this will be great for layering". Anyway, on to the comp:

1. Chg Nova, 2. Nubar silver sparkle, 3. Chg Shooting star, 4. Viva la diva 72, 5. OPI Disco Ball sparkle, 6. Orly Shine on you crazy diamond, 7. OPI Yule love this silver, 8. Chg Fairy Dust, 9. OPI Text me- Text you

As you can see, Nova has the biggest silver glitter pieces, Silver Sparkle and 72 are quite similar but Silver Sparkle is more dense. Shooting star and Disco Ball Sparkle has hexagon shaped glitter but Shooting star is much lighter than Disco Ball Sparkle.

Since number 6-9 has a clear base and are barely visible (intended for layering) so I layered them over black:

This would look so much better in the sun but I live in Sweden... Fairy Dust used to be my go-to layering polish, it looks great over almost everything. It's hard to tell the difference between Fairy Dust and Yule love this silver. Shine on you crazy diamond has extremely sparse glitter and Text me-Text You feels kind of pointless, I don't think I'll ever use these (I'll keep em though, just in case...)

Swedish word of the day
rea -noun sale
The only good thing about january!

The big purple and pink holo comparison

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! I'm sorry I've been absent, I've had a lot on my plate and as Feline wrote the other day I now have a bad, ugly nail break on my swatching hand. =(
While waiting for my nail to grow out a bit I thought I would show you some comparisons I didn't post during comparison week. You may need to click on the pictures to really see the holo effect. First up is my cool purple and pink Holos:

1. Color Club Wild at heart, 2. Chg Octagon wild, 3. OPI DS Original, 4. Chg IDK, 5. Chg Visit me in prism, 6. OPI DS Diamond, 7. Color Club Fashion Addict, 8. Nfu oh 63, 9. Nfu oh 64, 10. Nubar Brilliant, 11. Glitter Gal light pink, 12. Chg How about a tumble and the one without a number is OPI DS Signature (I got this after applying the others)

(DH is holding this one)

Moving on to my warm purple and pink Holos:

1. OPI DS Exclusive, 2. OPI DS Extravagance, 3. Chg Tickle my triangle, 4. Nubar Prize, 5. OPI DS Reflections, 6. Chg Don't be a Square, 7. Chg Rated Holographic, 8. Chg TTYL, 9. OPI DS Chiffon

The holo effect varies and some of these are more prismatic glitters than holos. Since I love holos and prismatic glitters I like most of these but I'm not very impressed by the effect on Color Club Wild at heart, Nubar Brilliant, Glitter Gal light pink and OPI DS Reflections. Which ones are your favorites?

Swedish word of the day:
baksmälla -noun hangover
Quite common on New Year's Day...

Hyacinth Sparkle vs Tru Passion

Another gloomy day in Sweden. Maybe some glitter can cheer up... This is Nubar Hyacinth Sparkle and Color Club Tru Passion.

Index and ring: Nubar hyacinth Sparkle, Middle and pinkie: Color Club Tru Passion

Nubar Hyacinth Sparkle to the left and Color Club Tru passion to the right. I think the color in the bottle picture is the most accurate. I found Hyacinth Sparkle to be a little runny, I should have waited longer before applying the second coat. Tru Passion is more dense and it also has sparse multicoloured glitter. You can see blue, pink and yellow glitter in the last picture if you look close.

Swedish word of the day
passion -noun passion
But I'm not very passionate about the removal of these two...

Tease-y Does It! vs Raspberry Truffle

When I spotted Tease-Y Does It! in the Burlesque collection it was love at first sight but was it really first sight or had I seen this before?

As you may know by now, I'm not the best photographer and if you want better swatches you can scroll down to Feline's pics of Tease-y Does It! but I think these pics below shows that I found a dupe in my collection.

I just realised I missed the "s" in Raspberry in the first two pictures... sigh... Anyway...

Bottle pic:

Ring and index: Nubar Raspberry Truffle, middle and pinkie: OPI Tease-y Does It!

Left: Nubar, right: OPI

You can click the pictures to see how much these are alike, I couldn't tell them apart IRL so in my opinion you don't need both. I did two coats, OPI was a little more opaque at the first coat.

Swedish word of the day:
tvillingar-noun twins
Because these polishes are.

Ombremania

Yes, I have it. In a desperate attempt to clean out my untrieds drawers, I have been digging out a rainbow of colors to combine to ombres. Here is one of my recent ombre manicures, a less colorful one.



From pinky to index: Nubar Barricade, Mavala Berlin, Mavala New-York, Mavala Minsk. Not showing in the photo is my thumb, which was done in OPI Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees. An overall very nice and wearable manicure.

Let's take a closer look at the Mavalas.



Perfectly corresponding grey cremes! I received them from my very dear friend Lina, the wise head behind the beauty blog I Karusellens Öga (In the Eye of the Carousel). Go check her out for vivid eye makeup and more!

Swedish word of the day:
skala -noun scale
Because this is one.

This mossy fall...

Here's another twist on Edyta.



Notice anything slightly off...?

Oh, two nails were redone.

This photo is clickable and huge, and shows Edyta next to Nubar Verde.

And if you need a couple of neutral nails to be sure...

Sorry about the lack of focus. I took new photos twice but my camera had a terrible time trying to find the right focus depth. However, I believe you get the picture.

Here is where I put in my brask note. I have been pondering, over and over, and again, if these are entirely identical or not. Even if the outcome is so similar there's no need to own both, there is some differences. I am positive the base color is the same, though, the Nubar is a tad more sheer, and will need one coat more than the Zoya. The shimmer... This is the hard part. It appears to be identical, but just as I'm about to conclude this, I fall back in doubt and think maybe, maybe, one is a little more copper-toned than the other. And here is where it becomes really weird. Just as I have concluded the Nubar has a more red leaning shimmer, I look at these in a different lighting and I start wondering if maybe the Zoya isn't the one with more reddish metallic shimmer. At this point, I'm lost. I'll leave it all up to you, dear and capable readers. Do you spot any differences?

Apart from this, I still concur you need only one of these. Just pick the brand you like the most.

Swedish word of the night:
mosse -noun bog, mire
Not the same as mossa!

A new base to conquer...

So, even if I had a long lasting color on my tips, did you really believe I could stay away from my classic lacquers?! Of course not. So I decided, since I had a dark blue base, I might just as well go through parts of my dark blue untrieds stash. Here are a couple of the bottles I had put on hold.




Barielle Blackened Bleu. From the collection Michelle Mismas of All Lacquered Up got to do. And I say: WOW. I love polishes like this one. That glitter... Large shimmer flecks that reflects like crazy, even though the polish is a dark one. The base is charcoal. Needless to say I loved this, and my bottle had a good formulation unlike some of the creme bases I've tried from the company in question. However, if you don't feel like splurging and pay the $8/£8 (sic!) they cost, feel free to go ahead and pick up Robotic from the new NYX Girls line, available at Cherry Culture. Pricetag is less than half at $3.

Last week when we went to Skansen, I got really inspired by this little guy:

Look at him. All cocky (pun definitely intended) and speading his tail. He was at the time stalking one of his hens like crazy, and I almost felt like grabbing her, run and bring her to a shelter for abused women. If I had an admirer like that little fella, all obsessed with his looks and so so vain, I'd run faster than a horse.



Well, he still made me feel like wearing Nubar Peacock Feathers, which I had stashed away for probably almost a year?! Incredible, since it is so awesome. In the sun my camera wouldn't pick up the duochrome, but in the shade it worked out for me. Look at the photo of my index finger. There you can see all the colors: the dark blue base, the pink shimmer that bends into green. It is so beautiful! I'm a huge fan of the Nubar polishes formula wise, and Peacock Feathers of course is no exception.

So, how did the Axxium work as a base for other polishes? Terrific, I'll tell you. It may be the part I loved the most: I could easily apply colors on top of it, it stayed put without any chipping a lot longer than my normal wear time, and when I wanted to get it off, it was super easy, almost slided off, and I was left with... Tadaa! Colored nails! I could easily see why you would for instance want to do a work safe Axxium soak off gel, and use it underneath your spare time color choices. When you go to work in the morning you could just wipe your green polish off and have a safe white or pink manicure that looks like new.

Swedish word of the day:
påfågel -noun peacock
Because.