Nubar Purple Rain Glitter

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I have to take a total change in direction for the week! I forgot I started a poll on a message board asking if we wanted a theme week, and glitter/holo won. I can hardly start the poll and not participate! So today, I broke out Nubar Purple Rain Glitter.

This one is a glitter that doesn't get enough love. It's opaque, even and *smooth* in two coats, purple, holo-y, and just perfect. And I get to wear it today! Here it is in the early morning sun with a top coat.

I found a few more untried Nubar glitters from way back, my first order with them, when I hunted this one down. I'm going to use them all this week! So my untried high-end polishes will simply have to wait another week...

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

Yves Saint Laurent Stormy Grey

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

I went out and about for a while, then came home and my raggedy tips did get the best of me. It was time to pull out another high-end pretty I've had my eye on, YSL Stormy Grey. This one appealed to me because it appeared, in promo pics, to be a slightly bluer grey than most, and it is. The bigger surprise is that it's full of mica shimmer, that really subtle shimmer that often doesn't show up on the nail, but Stormy Grey is so packed with it that it does indeed show up.

The down side I discovered applying it is that it's a three-coater to be totally even and opaque. Here it is with a base and top. I'm starting to see a theme to the high-end polishes already: look at the size of the YSL bottle! It's huge, too! A standard one is 0.5 oz, this is less than that (somewhere between 0.3-0.4, I don't have it handy), but the bottle is enormous! Maybe the polish would cost less if they didn't make the bottles so friggin' gargantuan...

This morning, I showed you a mani using the splatter-paint pattern from Konad plate M70. I've been really wary of that pattern, sure I'd never use it, but I absolutely loved it when I wore it, and it got compliments while I was out. I tend to prefer more linear, clean lines, so I was really surprised to like it. Stormy Grey looked like it could use a little something, so I used the very same pattern, this time in Blue Konad Special Nail Polish. I don't know that I have ever used the same pattern for two manicures in a row, but I'm really smitten with this one!

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

Estee Lauder Black Amethyst & Konad M70

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I decided this week, I'll go with high end polishes, since I have a few I want to use. I'll start with my first Estee Lauder, Black Amethyst.

Here it is, two coats, with a base and top. Look at the size of the bottle though! That's .3 oz. It's huge!

To it, I added Silver Konad Special Nail Polish using M70.

It's a little raggedy at the tips, so I'll likely go change.

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

An Interview with Nubar's Color Man

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

I was going to save this for tomorrow, but you know how excited I get. I just got finished doing a telephone interview with Noubar Abrahamian, the Vice President of Operations at Nubar. He's the one who makes Nubar's colors. As regulars know, over the course of the past year, I've become a huge fan of Nubar for both quality and color, so I was really excited about this opportunity. I also got some pictures of Mr. Abrahamian from his assistant. Honestly, until seeing pictures, I'd always assumed he was about 60, but I was wrong - he's young and hot. And single, I found out!

Here he is, and the main part of our call follows. I recorded it, but am leaving out the intros, goodbyes, and some stupid questions.

Siobhan: Mr. Abrahamian, you personally create Nubar’s colors, correct?

Mr. Abrahamian: Yes, I do.

Siobhan: Where do you get your inspiration? Nubar’s collections seem to always have some colors with an unusual twist, and I first became familiar with Nubar for your duochromes. How do your really over the top shades come about?

Mr. Abrahamian: I’m always inspired by nature and influenced by coming trends, but one thing that sets Nubar apart is that my experience with color started in another field. Years ago, I learned about color making paint for cars, and I think that shows in many of my creations. My duochromes, strong glitters, and riskier colors Nubar is known for producing reflect that early experience.

Siobhan: That makes sense! I can see it when you point that out. I know another challenge you deal with is your Big 3 Free formula – I’ve often said when reviewing your collections and when reviewing some of your larger competitors’ collections that Nubar could give lessons in the 3-Free formula. Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share on Big 3 Free, and can you explain why there are so many “issues” with the 3 Free formulas in the industry overall?

Mr. Abrahamian: The 3 Free formula costs roughly five times more to produce than the old, standard formula, so many of the larger companies chose to produce that standard formula, risking their customers’ health for greater profits, until about five years ago when DBP, toluene, and formaldehyde were completely banned in Europe. With the industry wide change being recent, many of the larger companies are still working on perfecting their 3 Free formulas, so consistency is not there yet. Since Nubar has been producing the same, refines and perfected 3 Free formula since 2000, our products are consistent. Nubar has always been committed to our customers’ health and safety over profit margin, so we were able to settle on a great formula and stay with it.

Siobhan: Thanks, that clears up quite a bit. I had a question along the lines of consistency of your formula for you. In recent months, I received notification of your affiliation with PETA, and have noticed their logo on your newer releases. Did your products change at all for that?

Mr. Abrahamian: No, not at all. All of our products have always been vegan and cruelty free, but it was only recently that we received the PETA certification for that.

Siobhan: I see. Mr. Abrahamian, I’ll go back to the colors, if you don’t mind. Your Going Green Collection has received a great deal of notoriety, I’ve seen less press about your Modern Matte Collection, and now you have the Royal Gems coming out. Did the Modern Matte Collection get lost in a shuffle of mattes coming out? What do you think?

Mr. Abrahamian: No, not at all. In fact, The Modern Matte Collection is as big as Going Green abroad, and will be featured in the Style section of The London Times this weekend.

Siobhan: Impressive! I guess I was way off on that one, I apologize. I know your time is short, so I’ll just ask you one last question I get a lot: what about Nubar in brick and mortar stores (real, physical stores)? I’ve never seen your line at a shop in person, do you sell them anywhere that my readers and I can go take a look?

Mr. Abrahamian: We are in several exclusive salons, such as Sherman Oaks’ The Painted Nail and Las Vegas’s Bellaggio, as well as many other salons. If you can’t find Nubar at your local salon or beauty supply, ask them for Nubar, and in the meantime you can find us at our online store.

Siobhan: Will do, Mr. Abrahamian. Thanks so much for sharing your time with me and my readers, and take care.

That was my surprise for you, my first interview with a nail polish company executive. It's the only interview I've ever done (probably painfully obviously!) other than employment interviews to hire IT guys, and that's totally different (I wasn't trying to scare Mr. Abrahamian!). In retrospect, there are some employment questions I should have used ("Where do you see yourself in five years?"), but overall, I don't think I did too bad for my first time at it. I'll know better for next time...

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

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!