Nail of the Day - Nubar Lustful Red

One from the Nubar Risque Reds collection that was released recently, I really like it.  A blue-red creme it applies smoothly (if a little on the thick side, but nothing that can't be fixed with a couple of drops of thinner), and evenly. There is no shimmer, and no glitter I really like it for a dramatic old-school"Hollywood" nails look.  Pic above is two coats shown over an Orly basecoat, and without a topcoat. Okay, it's not very edgy, but it is classic and pretty, and I like it. You can buy Nubar polishes from Beautyshed, who are lovely people, they cost £8 each.

Speaking of "edgy" though, I was at Boots No7 Autumn/Winter trends preview last week, and they're releasing a matte topcoat for nails in August, and I managed to snag a bottle.  I was wondering what a classic glossy red nail would look like mattified and here it is:

I think I kind of prefer this shade matte, to be honest, it's more of a raspberry/cranberry colour once the gloss is removed,  what do you think?  No7 Stay Perfect Matte Topcoat will be available in Boots stores from August 11th, and will cost £7.25.  I've just doubled my varnish wardrobe!  Hmn ... wonder what matte toenails will look like?

The Fine Print: Both items featured in this post were provided by PR for review purposes. Opinions are all my own work, feel free to ignore them though, it's cool.

Nails of the Day - Nubar Risque Reds and Fortress Collections

Beauty Shed very kindly sent me samples of their new collections recently, so I drafted in a volunteer so I could swatch two colours for you this week!  First up, from the Risque Reds Collection, Torrid Red:

Lovely red jelly with a glorious gold shimmer shot through,  it's a little darker than it appears in these pics, and is all the nicer for it. Both pictures show two coats over a Mavala base, and with a Seche Vite topcoat.  I could actually have got away with one coat, but I wanted to apply two, just to see how the colour came out.  I'm glad I did.  Formulation is a bit on the thick side for Nubar, but it applied and dried very nicely.

Picture of the ring finger there is a fairly accurate representation of how the colour looks in normal light.  Just lovely!







And from the Fortress collection - which is a selection of all grey shades, which is fairly unusual in itself - I selected the one which looked most interesting, Silver Sword, which is a mid-grey metallic finish, and I got the lovely Kerry to be my hand-model for this one:

Above pic shows two coats with a top coat (think it's from No. 17) application was good, and this is a lovely finish which doesn't seem to be blighted with brush strokes.

Looking forward to trying this one myself, it looks lovely! I will bring you more shades from both of these collections next week.

Which do you prefer, the greys or the reds?

Nubar polishes are available from Beauty Shed, and cost £8 each.

The Small Print: I was sent this for review purposes, so I reviewed them.  I'm nice like that ;) All opinions are honest, regardless of the source.

Nail of the Day - Nubar Oh Baby Pink

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've already said that spring, to me, is all about the brights, right? That I'm not about the pastels?  Okay ... in brief, I love this polish ... but...

This is Oh Baby Pink and it's from the Nubar Hypnotic Valentine's collection (which is available from the lovely, lovely people at Beauty Shed) it's a pastel pink creme, that only took two coats to cover my nails in dense, pink colour.  It was a dream to apply, slightly streaky on the first coat, but fully opaque and shiny on the second. Nubars always wear pretty well, and I'm assuming this won't be an exception to that.

My photos wash the colour out a little here, making the shade a lot more pastel than it actually is.  In the flesh, this shade is more of a candy- than a baby-pink.  If Barbie OD'd on Tipp-Ex, then this is what she'd throw up. It's a real love-it or hate-it shade, this one. I think I'm on the wrong side of that particular choice! That said, I've been wearing the colour out and about the last day or two, and some people really, really love it.  I think it'd be a great shade for people with cool-toned pale skin, or very dark, or tanned skin.  I think on my pale (very pale) yellow-y skin that it just makes me look a bit jaundiced.

I took a picture in different light to see if I could capture the full effect of the colour, and these are the best I could do

In artificial light:

In natural daylight

If you  like soft, girly colours, then you will adore this polish. Nubar say it's a lovely romantic shade - I'm not entirely sold on that, being reminded faintly of Pepto-Bismol every time I look at it) but there's no doubting the quality of the polish itself.

This happened today though.  There may have been a couple of tears shed (ironically, it's also the picture closest to the real shade of the polish):

No flowers please, the ceremony will be a private, family-only affair.  MrLippie has been laughing about it ALL DAY.

Nails - my new obsession!

If you follow me on Twitter I think you'll have noticed that my latest obsession is my nails!  And, I'm also obsessed with nail varnish at the moment too ... but not just any polish, I'm mainly obsessed with holographic ones ...

This is the collection I have of them so far.  I blame Mizzworthy, if she hadn't tied me down and forced me to buy  introduced me to the OPI Designer Series Celebration polish (2nd from the left there) then I wouldn't have this lemming for holographic polishes, because I wouldn't have known they existed!

My nails are currently painted with OPI Extravagance (3rd from the right) which is a gorgeous purple with red, yellow, orange and green holographic glitter:

 

Love the depth of colour in this polish, and also love that it's quite subtle from a distance:

I've tried China Glaze and OPI holo's so far, but I'm REALLY looking forward to Nubar releasing their holo-polishes at the end of January ... they'll be available from Beauty Shed, and I'll be picking up at least a couple ...I found the swatches here, and I can't wait!