sunny days, sweeping the clouds away

Base: 2 coats of Zoya Breezi
Design: Konad plate m79 in White Konad polish
Glitter: 2 coats of China Glaze Fairy Dust.

In the first photo, the shade of Breezi is more true to real life. In the second photo, you'd see an excellent close-up of the holographic glitter of Fairy Dust.

I was trying to grab the chance before my internship started to do something funky with my nails and was playing with Konad one day while watching Pride & Prejudice (not the heinous Keira Knightley version, the awesome BBC 1995 one). By the way, one tip for Konad: DO NOT ATTEMPT IT WITH ANY SORT OF WIND OR FAN BLOWING. I was foolish enough to try to do it under a rather large and strong fan, and experienced several failed attempts before it finally struck me to switch off the fan, which worked like a charm but left me sweating buckets.

In any case, I bought m79 mainly because I wanted to try out the clouds print on it. I was somewhat pleased with the end-result. It looked like a happy starry sky when you take a closer look at it, but the only downside to it is that from afar, it rather looks like cow-spots, or fluffy flowers. D: Not exactly the intended effect, but cute enough, I guess.

I really like how Fairy Dust is your usual fine holographic glitter for layering but there's a certain depth to it that I've never seen before in layering polishes of its type. Usually the cheap-ish layering glitter polishes we see around layer on rather flatly and could even dry rough and chunky. Not so for fairy dust. It's almost as if the glitter particles are suspended in a layer of clear polish, giving it a very 3D effect. It's not quite so visible in the photo or even in the close-up.

Because I took such a long time trying to get the Konad to work, I got frustrated and lazy after doing 4 fingers, so for the rest of the 6 fingers, I opted for the easier option of normal painting. I tried to do something a bit still in theme with the whole sky thing so here it is:



1 coat of Zoya Marley with 1 coat of Nubar 2010.

All right, all right, so it takes a stretch of imagination to see how this fits in with the sky theme, but I intended this to be a sunset scene, where the sky is a lavender hue and the flakes are rays of sunshine as it sets. Yes, I'm very imaginative.

Anyhow, this photo does no justice at all to the opalescence of Nubar 2010. In the photo, it looks rather flat and uninteresting but in real life, it looks a whole lot more orange/green then in the photo (thereby giving it a sunset feel, heh). Nubar 2010 was a good buy, indeed.

Nubar 2010 comparison: Glitters

As promised, I'm going to try layering Nubar 2010 over a range of glitter nail polish to see if it works, and what would work.

BEFORE



Index: Zoya Charla
Middle: Orly Royal Velvet
Ring: Zoya Faye
Pinkie: China Glaze Ahoy!

I know Royal Velvet doesn't seem so much like the glitter polish, nor maybe Ahoy! but I wanted to add in something very obviously shimmery and duochrome (in Royal Velvet's case).

AFTER



I painted only 1 coat of Nubar 2010 over each finger.

Index: Zoya Charla
It didn't show up very well in the photo but Nubar 2010 showed up pretty well over Charla, despite the bling-ness. I picked Charla because seeing as it's a sea, ocean blue-green, it might go well with the orange-green flakes of Nubar 2010. I guess it worked, but the flakes seem to be competing with the bling of Charla for attention, which slightly downplays Charla's characteristic mermaid sheen and doesn't give Nubar 2010's opalescence its due either. It's a workable combination, though.

Middle: Orly Royal Velvet
I suppose the shimmer in Royal Velvet lost out in a large way to the flakes in Nubar 2010, because it'd submissively slink back into the background as a dark purple-blue base for the flakes to really shine. You can see that the flakes are at its most obvious here with Royal Velvet just functioning as a backing. Wearable combination, would definitely try it since I don't like black, and I'm not keen on seeing orange-green flakes on navy blue either.

Ring: Zoya Faye
Faye wins. Sorry, Nubar, pretty much can't see you at all.

Pinkie: China Glaze Ahoy!
Being a strong, bright hot pink, Ahoy! pretty much drowned out Nubar as well. You can more of see the shapes of the flakes, which show up as dark spots on the polish, rather than its actual orange-green opalescence. Not really recommended.

I'll be trying it out with some Cremes next, so stay tuned!

Nubar 2010

As their special 10th anniversary celebration in 2010, Nubar celebrated by releasing a special, limited edition opal flake polish, Nubar 2010. I've finally got my hands on it!

I don't see much flakies around, so Nubar 2010 was a great addition to my collection. In the photo above, I painted 2 coats of OPI Black Onyx (still some VNL -__-), and 2 coats of Nubar 2010 (1 coat would've been enough but I really wanted an in-your-face bling effect). As you can tell, Nubar 2010 is a sheer base with large opal flakes that reflect orange and green at different angles.

I had actually expected the opalescent effect of the flakes to cover more but it only seems to comprise orange and green, which is still cool, but then you'd have to be careful about what sort of polish you layer it over. Orange and green seem to be pretty warm colours, so layering them over something cool may or may not work. I personally love flakes after seeing this in action, but choosing the right colour to really complement the flakes can be a problem. Black is always a safe bet, but as I don't like to wear my nails in black almost ever (why do I own a black polish then? Beats me), I'd have to find an alternative to wear Nubar 2010 over.

I'd be doing some layering posts with Nubar 2010 coming up, one with Glitters and one with Cremes. Stay tuned!