China Glaze Luna

China Glaze Luna is the second of the China Glaze glitters - and this one is crazy! Lunatic! Mad! I guess that the silvery blue base is shimmery - and it is packed with silver microglitter plus two sizes of holographic glitter. Two coats cover the nails perfectly and the result is sparkly like the Liberace sequin coat. Definitely one of my manicures for holiday season.

The surface is bumpy - but in this case I think that it actually does not matter. The sparkling really distracts the eye, and I just don't notice the lumpiness at all. Annoying to remove... ...but that's really not a surprise.

Sorry about my messy thumb and stained fingers, cleaned it up after the photoshoot...

Nubar Orange Crème

Orange Crème is definitely the brightest of the Nubar pastel colors I own. In some lights there is even a flash of neon type glow in it. But don't be fooled by this image, this color has the chalky pastel side, too. Neat and quite unusual color.

Application is three coats, beginning with terrible streaks and improving gradually. This polish dried crazy fast, I almost felt that there was no need for Seche (but I used it still).

Nubar Baby Blue

This is Nubar Baby Blue, two coats (actually some nails in my other hand have up to five coats, but I just messed up my manicure). I photographed this in late evening light to emphasize the weird, glowing shade of pale blue. This shade really pops even the slightest tan and looks very clean and sober in a futuristic way... ...a great summer shade!

The application was not nice, the consistency was very runny and the first coat really streaky. Somehow the second coat attaches really well on top of the first one and at least the color gets even relatively easy. But cleaning the cuticles was a huge job, the thin polish just runs around the whole rim of the nail bed. I'm definitely getting some vaseline just for protecting the cuticles.

*****

Nubar Cuticle Oil is excellent stuff! It smoothed my dried out cuticles after this pastel bleed project in a snap. Sweet Almond scent is quite bad though, pick one of the fruity ones instead.

NYX Hawaii & Seche Vite in test

There are some polishes those I wished they would work - but they just don't. One of them is NYX Hawaii, a beautiful pale blue that leans slightly to aqua. I'm a bit confused about the finishes, in the past I would have definitely called this kind of color pearl, but I see that many brands call them frost.


I like pastels in general and this particular shade of blue always catches my eye. The problem with this polish is that it is awfully sheer. With one coat I get a subtle layer of shimmer that looks almost white. I could use this as part of funky french manicure, I think that the effect might be quite cool.

Streakiness is typical for this kind of colors and this is not an exception. I'm not skilled enough to avoid it totally, but very thin, carefully applied coats keeps the streaking in acceptable levels...


Second coat starts to build the color a bit, but this is still far from the bottle color. This is probably the ugliest phase, the application looks very uneven and the pale blue is not particularly flattering in semi sheer.


Third coat helps a lot, but it is not opaque enough to my taste. This is usually my breaking point, manis over three coats are just too much for me plus the strenuous application off this particular color really turns me off. But because I wanted to test Seche Vite in real action I still added one thin coat more - and the fifth thicker coat to my thumbnail just for curiosity.


This is the result with four coats and one thick coat of Seche Vite. This polish has good shiny surface by itself, but clear and very shiny coat of Seche still adds some dimensionality to the finish. It is extremely difficult to capture that in the images, though.


Seche did excellent job with four thin coats of this polish. I got one bubble to one nail, but I had just carried the bottle in my purse and there were some bubbles in the top coat, this one I noticed too late to brush it away. Ten minutes from the application of Seche the nails were ready for light work.

On thumbnail the five coats were too much for Seche. The dryer penetrated only the top layer of polish and dried that in a snap - but now I had a dry layer of polish over completely wet layer; extremely vulnerable for dents. I added one more ample coat of Seche and witnessed a curious phenomena: the whole polish layer wrinkled to funny, organic looking micro folds. But the wrinkles started to disappear while Seche dried, and to my surprise I got almost perfect finish to my thumb, too (minus the dent, I tested the dryness too vigorously).

So Seche Vite is good stuff in my books. Of course I have to test it with other brands, too.

About Hawaii, I would love to love it.


I mean what isn't there to love in these glowing, cyborg-chic tippies? It's the application, that is just too much for me...

OPI Hey Get In Lime

I think that this color has nothing to do with lime... ...but I still love it! It's not the palest and shyest mint green, it has some depth. And there is a slight edgy gray tinge in it - the result is color that is both flattering and unusual. This is three coats, but I'm afraid that with longer nails the tip line would still be visible. Application was easy and drying time reasonable, I definitely will keep this. Mint nails will probably be huge in the autumn, especially if Chanel releases a mint green polish as speculated. Not that I would be too much concerned about being seen in the "it" colors, though =)


See more Chanel RTW detail images at Style.com.

Got to confess that colors like this make me toy with the idea of my own nail polish brand, very centered in color design. It would be fabulous to produce very well thought palette instead of endless arrays of reds and nudes. I guess that Rescue Beauty Lounge is doing this, kind of, but their prices are far off from that price range I usually pay from polish.

Going bananas with Nubar Lemon Sorbet

Aww, cute! Oh, edgy! That is my first impression of Nubar Lemon Sorbet. Color is more banana ice cream than lemon sorbet to me, but whatever, I'm liking it (almost licking it)! Probably not the best color for my winter skin, but now when I have slight tan it looks actually quite delicious. Don't mind about the skincolor in this picture, I had to adjust the colors a bit to give a truthful impression of the polish color (and was too lazy to protect the other parts of the image).

Surprisingly nice application and 3 layers were enough for perfect cover. Some bubbling issues that might be due of uncompatible top coat (Trind Quick Dry) or my hasty manicure style. Bubbles appeared surprisingly late, in the image the surface is almost perfectly smooth.

A perfect pearl: Mavala Infinity

Mavala Infinity is a pearl finish light gray polish with a slight tinge of lavender in it and I really like it - I can't say that from many pastel pearl polishes. You see two layers here with no base or topcoat, but you can't see a single stripe or pearly blob, bubble or other imperfection so typical to pearl finish. The color is from spring 2009 Harmony collection, a small but nice range of slightly unconventional pastels. This color is quite bland in the bottle, but surprisingly nice and crisp on the nail.

Mavala has small 5 ml bottles, perfect for adventurous finger painter. I have somewhat mixed experiences about the quality, it ranges from excellent to quite hard to work with. But the basic collection and seasonal shades are readily available in virtually all local supermarkets and the nail care product range is good.

Zoya Lulu - that summer peach

I have some recent manicures photographed and ready to publish, so I will purge those pics here eventually.

This is Zoya Luly, a lovely, slightly jellylike peach + Mavala Mavadry topcoat. That jelliness makes a difference to the usual, chalky outlook of most pastel polishes and really sets this color apart in my records. I can totally see myself wearing this a lot in the next summer, it will probably be even more flattering when I get a hint of color to my skin.

Usually four coats is too much for my patience, but this particular color really needs them, and it really got prettier and prettier with each application. One coat made my nails look just stained. There definitely is a yellowish tone in this color - so there is no use for it in sheer manis unless you have a purpose to look like a chain smoker.

Otherwise this polish was nice to work with. The consistency is little bit in a thin side as with my other Zoya polishes, and it dries pretty fast. Except that four coats of polish never dries particularly fast...