Nubar Parisian Collection Summer 2009

Nubar's new Parisian collection is a set of sheers, pinks and french manicure shades.


Champs-Elysees Pink. A warm, pale pink. This has a very soft peachy tone to it, I'd call this in between baby pink and pastel peach. This looks like a creme, but if you look really closely you'll see that it has a faint amount of soft shimmer. This is three coats.

Cineaqua Shimmer. A metallic coral-pink. This is a very shiny and reflective shade of warm pink. When applying this one you should be mindful of the frosty metallic formula to avoid brushstrokes as much as possible. The brushstrokes fade slightly when the polish is completely dried. Three coats.


Eiffel Tower Sparkle. Sheer crystalline pink shimmer. My favorite of the collection! It's so pretty and sparkly, it starts out sheer and builds opacity with each layer. This reminds me strongly of OPI Princess Rule!. Three coats.

Hotel Baby Pink. Pastel pink creme. This one is a very mod-60's looking pale pink creme. It really stands out despite being soft and pale. Three coats.

La Siene Shimmer. A sheer warm pink with strong blue flash. This is a really cool color. The blue flash is really nice and it's great for layering. It looks really nice over neon pink as well as on top of these sheers. I've been trying out a few different layering combinations for this one. Three coats.

Louvre Nude. Sheer nude-pink jelly creme. This really does have a jelly-like texture. It is transparent and milky. This can easily be worn with one or two coats because it's not the least bit streaky. This is four coats.

Notre Dame Nude. Milky nude-pink creme. This one is similar to Hôtel Baby Pink in finish but it's a slightly cooler shade of pink. Very hard to describe. It also has that 60's-retro look to it. Three coats.

Parc Floral Pink. Sheer petal pink creme. This one almost has a jelly finish to it, but it's a little more milky than Louvre Nude. This shade of pink is particularly delicate- almost white but pink enough to blend with your natural skintone. Another very sheer polish that isn't streaky. Four coats.

Since this is designed to be a french manicure collection, I did a little layering with the two shimmer shades to give some examples of what you can achieve with these shades.

The base for layering here is the Revlon Charlotte nail from the Naturally Chic line.

Eiffel Tower Sparkle (one coat) over a french manicure.

La Seine Shimmer (one coat) over a french manicure.

As you can see, these are all very soft, natural, feminine shades of pink and peach. They would make great colors for the traditional french manicure, or they can be worn alone either as sheers or with more coats for full coverage.

Siobhan at The Nailphile did a great post about this which includes some great pictures of La Seine Shimmer and Eiffel Tower Sparkle layered over the other shades in this collection

The formula on these was very good. Smooth and thin, non-streaky and quick drying. I had no issues applying them aside from the brushstrokes on Cineaqua Shimmer, but that's more due to the finish than the formula. I normally have a problem with sheers and milky pinks being extremely streaky, but these didn't have that problem. Very cool.

Not the most exciting collection I've ever seen, but if you're into sheers and pinks, you may really enjoy these, especially if you've had issues with streaky sheers in the past.

This collection is available now at ByNubar.com. As a bonus, until May 15th, Nubar is including their Foundation base coat and Diamont Shine topcoat free in every order of $50 or more. This entire collection is priced at $49.95 if you buy them all together, five cents short of the free gifts with purchase... Kind of odd, but maybe they'll include it anyway since it's so close.

Jessica Botanicals Collection Spring 2009

I think this may be the first time I've ever reviewed Jessica products on my blog! I don't have very much experience at all with this brand, but I've been doing a little more research and I found out some cool facts.

In 1969, the founder of Jessica Cosmetics, Jessica Vartoughian, opened a salon just for natural nails called Jessica Nail Clinic. The salon was the first of it's kind: the main focus of Jessica Nail Clinic is to care for and 'cultivate' the natural nail instead of covering them with enhancements. This is interesting because most nail salons don't seem to care about the health of the natural nail and almost all of their services involve applying or maintaining artificial nails.

Since I'm a natural nail girl myself, this seems like a brand that I can really get into.

Anyway, Jessica does a color line as well as natural nail treatments, and I've been playing with their beautiful spring collection, Botanicals.




Birds of Paradise. A pearly, glowy purple. This color was completely unexpected and it has me absolutely THRILLED. It's one of the most beautiful purples I've ever seen. It's bright and shimmery but it also has a soft, pearly, glowy quality that keeps it from being too loud. It looks less blue and more purple in real life.



Butterfly Kisses. A metallic blue. This is another unexpected color and also ridiculously cool! It's a foily metallic blue with lots of shimmery silver particles. It's not a shiny chrome finish metallic, more of a foil like Zoya Trixie, but blue.



Color Me Calla Lily. A soft pink-purple creme. My camera can't do this color justice. It's extremely soft and pretty like petals of a beautiful flower. It's more purple than pink like this picture shows and has a muted, dusty quality to it.



Coral Reef Daisies. A metallic coral. This is another foil metallic, but in a soft coral shade. Same texture as Butterfly Kisses.




Loving The Lilacs. Pale, shimmery lilac. Another muted lilac shade for spring. This one's not quite as colorful as the other shades in this collection. It has more of a dense shimmer finish as opposed to the foil metallic finish the other polishes in this collection have.





Rosy Romance. Rose pink metallic. This is another foil-finish metallic shade like the others. The color of this seems a lot more pale and dusty indoors, but in the sunlight it becomes a cleaner, brighter rose pink.


The formula on these polishes is great. I have not tried very many Jessica polishes so I'm not sure how they compare to each other, but based on these I'm quite impressed with the quality. The polish is on the thin side and very smooth. The drying time is average. The wear on these is really good- I wore a few of these before I photographed them and didn't experience any major tipwear and there was no chipping.


This collection was a surprise for me. For the most part, these shades all look pretty bland and uninteresting in the bottle, but when you apply them they come to life. Birds of Paradise is especially amazing, and I'd highly recommend it for purple lovers like me. The metallics are smooth and sparkly and the shades are not what you'd typically find when looking for metallic polishes. My least favorite shade is Loving The Lilacs- it seems lifeless to me compared to the other spring-like shades in the collection. Overall, a little mainstream but still a beautiful, enjoyable spring collection.

Jessica can be purchased directly from their website, but I have also seen a limited selection at Target.

A few polishes from the Orly Spring 2009 Prepster Collection

I have mixed feelings about this collection. I love the colors, but I hate the name! It brings me back to high school. I think I will always have a permanent distaste for anything labelled "preppy".... Maybe Orly should re-promote Goth, the beautiful black polish with silver glitter, and put it on it's own display and set it all by itself off to the side of the Prepster collection... Ha!

Okay, that was random. Sorry. Heh. Anyway, I only ended up with the colors from this collection that appealed to me, so this isn't a complete set of swatches. I just have no desire for another sheer pink or sheer frosty lavender. I don't like them, I don't wear them and I don't like swatching them.


Here are my favorites from this collection:




Cashmere Cardigan. From the promo pictures of this, I had expected it to be more purple, but it's really more blue. I'm not complaining- I love this color! It's soft and muted but since it's such an uncommon color it still has a bit of edge to it.





Country Club Khaki. I was hoping that this would be like a Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge with less red in it, and it was! It's one of those unusual dirty-but-super-cool colors that always catch my eye. Kinda like Grunge, yes, but also 'mushroomy' like Butter London Fash Pack or Zoya Pasha. I can't think of any dupes for this.




OMG! This polish is way better in real life. My picture does it no justice. It's an ultra bright but not neon pink/red/coral creme with a near-jelly texture. You have to see this one in person, it's really beautiful.


Tennis, Anyone? This wasn't the color I was expecting but it's not too bad. It's a sheer nude creme. It's kind of sheer and hard to apply- this is four coats and you can still see my nail through it.


The formula on these is spotty. Cashmere Cardigan and Country Club Khaki were smooth, thin and easy to apply- no issues at all. OMG! and Tennis, Anyone? were on the thick side and I found it a little difficult to build coverage without the polish on the nail becoming too thick and stringy. OMG! was nicer to apply than Tennis, Anyone? but still thicker than the other two colors I tried.

The drying time on this is pretty long. I have worn each of these colors at least once (twice for Cashmere Cardigan) and I used my usual combination of Qtica Natural Nail Growth Stimulator and Seche Vite with them but they were still dentable after 24 hours. I have also had drying time issues with a lot of my other Orly polishes, so I don't think it's unique to this collection. Some people don't have a problem with them taking too long to fully dry, I do, your mileage may vary.

The bottles and brushes are perfect. The bottle sturdy, that's for sure- I dropped one on my ceramic tile floor and it BOUNCED. Didn't break. The handle is really nice. It has a natural curve so it's comfortable to hold and it has a rubberized coating so you don't drop it. The brush itself is average- bristles are on the long side but no defects. No complaints about the bottle here.


Other than the thickness of certain shades and the long drying time, this is a pretty good collection. I really love three of the four colors I have and I at least like the fourth color. They are all much better in person- especially OMG!.

Piggy Polish Spring/Summer 2009 Collection

With the constant barrage of Spring and Summer collections being thrown at us, I think I've been swatching non-stop! Just a few more collections to go and I'll be able to rest for a little bit and get to all the requests and comparisons on my list.

Okay, here we go, one more Spring/Summer collection to drool over: Piggy Polish!



Azure Thing. A bright, frosty turquoise blue. This is a beautiful color but it's very sheer. I have on three coats and you can still see my nail through the polish. The sheerness makes it awesome for layering- the day I got these I layered them all over black and wow, startlingly awesome colors resulted.



Dog Daises Of Summer. A pearly metallic yellow. The name confuses me a little. I know it's supposed to be a play on "Dog Days Of Summer" but were they trying to go for Daisies? Typo? Am I just reading it wrong? Either way, this is a great summer color. The best part of this color? It's NOT STREAKY!!! It's basically a law of nail polish that yellows have to be streaky, but this one isn't. So, if you've been wanting to wear yellow but are too frustrated to deal with them, you might be pleased with this one.



Grin And Berry It. A bright, almost jelly-like coral-fuchsia creme. This is one eye-catching shade. It's not really what I think of when I hear the word 'berry'- it just doesn't look berry-like to me. To me, this is more of a very bright coral verging on fuchsia. Staple summer color, executed very well.


Lily's Pad. Pearly bright grass green. I know, I've posted this color before, but it's worth seeing again! It's fantastic.




Live With Purplish. A nearly-neon purple creme. I love these types of shades. It is an extremely bright purple/pink creme but it's not quite neon so it doesn't dry matte. There are never enough bright purples in the world.


The tagline states, "Goes on toes!" but there's no reason you can't wear these on your fingers. I do!

The formula is excellent. These polishes are quite sheer, I did three coats in these pictures, but the formula is so thin and smooth that doing three of more coats is easy. I'm pretty sure that these are big three free, but they don't feel like it. The formula is too smooth. These all dry quickly. No complaints.

I love all the colors. They're bright, flashy, adventurous, and best of all, not boring! I'm so sick of boring polish colors being released all the time and I don't think Piggy Polish even has a boring color in their line. I love them for that. They are willing to take a chance and release fun, cheerful shades instead of the depressing red cremes and sheer pinks that plague the polish racks.

Another thing I love about Piggy Polish is that they come with toe rings. I believe the flowers on the toe rings used to be porcelain roses, but now they are made of a much less fragile plastic polymer clay type substance. Each toe ring is coordinated to the color of the polish in the bottle. Genius!

Overall, Piggy Polish rocks and their polishes always excite me and rarely, if ever, disappoint me. Their line contains brights, blues, greens, purples, duochromes and the holo glitter that I can't live without- Sunshine On Snowflakes.

The only retail store I've ever seen selling Piggy Polish is Ulta, but I believe you can order directly from Piggy Polish as well.

OPI Fairytale Bride: Soft Shades 2009

OPI's soft shades for this year are actually quite interesting. Instead of being plain pale cremes, each color has a soft base color with a contrasting flash of another color. They're not true duochromes- the flash is strong enough to be noticed but not so strong that it overpowers the soft base color.

There are only four polishes in this year's collection. They are:




At First Sight. A very pale and soft nude/neutral base with gold flash.




I Pink I Love You. A soft baby pink with blue flash.



Isn't It Romantic? A very pale pink with green flash.




Otherwise Engaged. A pinkish-white with purple flash.


All pictures are three coats of polish. All of the colors are very sheer, as you can tell by the visible nail line even with three coats of polish. Four coats would make them almost entirely opaque. These can easily be worn with only one coat because they are not the least bit streaky and add an interesting shimmering pearl effect to the nails due to the colored flash in each shade.

The formula on these was fantastic. I had no application issues. They were neither runny nor thick like three-free polishes tend to be. The drying time on these was quite a bit longer than other OPI polishes. I'm not sure if it's because I did three coats or if it's the polish itself, but even with Seche Vite I could dent these up to two hours later.

Overall, they're not too bad for soft shades. They're not streaky! Not that I'm happy about more sheer pinks being released, but at least these have the fascinating colored pearl flash and there's only four of them instead of six.


I wish OPI's next Soft Shades collection would be a set of sheer crystal shimmers like Hollywood Blonde and Up Front And Personal, but in soft shades of blue, purple, gold, silver and green. That's my dream soft shades collection!

Essie 'Mystery' Collection -EDITED: Imaginary!!

NEW UPDATE: Essie has let me know that the images received below were an error and do NOT represent actual polishes! I think I may cry, I was really getting my hopes up for this collection! Sorry to say that the collection in this post does not actually exist.

EDIT: I'm still waiting for Essie to confirm or deny the existence of these colors, but I'll be sure to let you know the minute I hear something! This post is currently 100% speculation, so I wouldn't get too excited about this 'collection' just yet! I certainly hope these colors are real and not just a mistake sent in an email :)

I also received these images from Essie with no accompanying information. No names, no release date, no collection information...

My best guess is that this is the Summer 2009 full collection. You know how Essie sometimes releases a mini collection like the Neon Shorts or Cool Click and then does a full collection at the same time? This *might* be it, but I really don't know!

If I get any concrete information on this collection I'll be sure to post it. But, for now, CHECK THIS OUT!!!! IT'S FREAKING AMAZING!!





I can't believe my eyes. Essie... blue, green, yellow??? Maybe they saw how much of a success Mesmerize was and decided to branch out from the usual pale pinks?

I am excited!!!

Cute green alert! Piggy Polish Lily's Pad

Check out this awesome new green polish!

It's from Piggy Polish's spring 2009 collection and it's called Lily's Pad. You all know I'm always on the lookout for great green polishes, and this one really is pretty!



Piggy Polish Lily's Pad. A bright grass green shimmer that walks the line between frost/shimmer/metallic finish. It's a little bit sheer, but three coats takes care of the visible nail line. I think this would also look mesmerizing with a coat of Piggy Polish Sunshine On Snowflakes on top!

If you don't want to do three coats, you can use this polish over black. I tried one coat of Lily's Pad over my usual Wet N Wild Black and it was beautiful. It becomes a more rich, deep metallic green as opposed to the bright, crisp grass green when worn alone.

Isn't it lovely? And it comes with Piggy Polish's signature flower toe ring. I love toe rings, and Piggy Polish always makes sure to coordinate the color of the flower and beads with the color of the polish. Seriously, talk about adorable.

I have more Piggy Polish shades, both old and new, waiting to be reviewed. They're such a cute, fun and funky brand, I'm surprised I don't see more people raving about them. They always have greens and blues, duochromes and sometimes glitter, and the cute toe rings... I'd like to see them get more love :)

And despite the name, yes, you can use them on your fingers.

Quick post: Nicole by OPI Spring Shades

I'm still sick, but I ventured out of bed to do a little fishing on the Selbina boat... Unfortunately the Sea Horror had other ideas, so I figured I'd pop in with a little post while I'm waiting for it to leave.


I've had these swatched for a while now and have really just forgotten to post them, but better late than never I suppose.

These are new shades from Nicole by OPI. I don't know much about them other than that! I'm not really sure if Nicole does traditional 'collections' like OPI, but they usually have new colors a few times a year.




Do Good... Feel Good. A soft, delicate petal pink. Semi-sheer, an almost jelly-like texture.



Dream Maker. An opalescent pink with crystalline shimmer. Not quite iridescent, but flashes hints of white, silver and gold.



Find Your Passion. A hot pink jelly.



Imagine If... A sheer silver holographic polish. Almost too dense to be a topcoat, but sheer enough that it needs at least three coats for opacity. This is four coats.


It's Possible. Pretty, shiny bronzy metallic chrome. Dries without brushstrokes.




No Limits. Very dark, inky blue-purple creme. Not obviously blue unless you're in bright light.


Light A Candle. A silvery chrome with a purple tint. Almost gunmetal.





Play Fair. A soft lilac shimmer. It's not as warm as the first picture suggests- it's closest to the second picture.


Positive Energy. Bright, gleaming silver chrome.




Reach Out. A candy-like medium pink jelly. Almost seems to appear coral colored in certain lights.


You're A Star. A sparkly and surprisingly opaque shimmering white. This is only two coats! It's extremely sparkly and it has hints of silver and blue.

Also worth noting: The chromes in this 'collection' work extremely well with Konad! Here's a demonstration:


No Limits topped with Imagine If... and Positive Energy stamp.


The chromes make such a crisp, clear Konad design, it's like they were made for each other.

The formula on all of these was excellent. I have no complaints. The only potential issue is the sheerness of a couple shades- Imagine If... and Do Good... Feel Good were definite three coaters, but this isn't really too much of an issue because these Nicole shades dry very quickly even without a quick dry topcoat. They are also very shiny and durable without topcoat. I kept my Valentine's Day Nicole manicure on for at least four days with no topcoat and there was no tipwear or chipping by the time I removed it.


Pretty, springy, versatile. A little bit of everything in this collection- sheers, pastel, vampy blue, holo, chrome, brights... Very cool. Now all we need is some green and some glitter and we'll have something for everyone!