a hoarder's blog

This is a follow-up post on my Essie Luxeffects haul here. Doing a little comparison with two other similar flakies polishes that I have in my stash currently: nubar 2010 and inglot 202.

This is just one coat of Essie Luxeffects Shine Of The Times. It is just so dense and beautiful, won't you agree?

Comparison with Nubar 2010

One coat of Nubar 2010 doesn't produce as much flakies as one coat of essie Shine Of The Times.

At two coats, it is looking slightly better but I say no prize for guessing which one is a winner here.

Comparison with Inglot 202

Almost similar there. The density is on par with Shine Of The Times.

If I were to rank them, Shine Of The Times would win hands down, followed by Inglot 202 and lastly Nubar 2010

I finally have the Essie Luxeffects collection in my hands and after swatching them, I am really happy to have them all.

All swatches below are on a black polish base. All swatches are also just one coat.

Left to right: Set In Stones, A Cut Above, Pure Pearlfection, As Gold As It Get, Shine Of The Times

Set In Stones and A Cut Above are similar, except that one is silver and the other is pink. They both consist of small and medium glitters as well chunky hex glitters in a clear base. One coat was enough to produce an even and rather dense layer of glitter. There was no need to do a second coat (unless your intention is to completely fill the surface of your nail with glitter) or put in effort to "place" the glitter evenly.

Set In Stones

A Cut Above

Pure Pearlfection and As Gold As It Gets are silver and gold respectively with a similar kind of effect on the nails. I think these look really chic.

Pure Pearlfection is made up of fine shimmer with hints of turquoise, pink and silver. These colours sparkle in certain lighting conditions but generally, it looks like a layer of white/silver shimmer.

As Gold As It Gets, which I thought was also made up of fine shimmer, actually contains small pieces of gold flakes. There is however no colour change when seen from different angles like in the case of regular flakies polish.

Pure Pearlfection

As Gold As It Gets

Shine Of The Times

One word: Flakies!!!

Does this remind you of another polish?...Click here for a comparison post on similar flakies polish.

As said previously, all of the swatches are just one coat. Can I just say amazing formula? I am simply wow-ed.

Nails Inc in collaboration with Gossip Girl has released three nail polish sets consisting of a dark nail polish and an overglaze polish. The overglaze is basically a top coat which contains "hand cut iridescent particles to give nails a futuristic finish".

The duos are based on three characters in the show:

• Serena - patent black nail polish with It Girl electric blue overglaze
• Blair - teal black nail polish with Privileged blue/green overglaze
• Lily - plum black nail polish with High Society red/green overglaze

You can check out the rest of the shades from www.nailsinc.com

These have also been released on sephora.com with different names: The Old Vic collection (Serena), The Wyndham collection (Blair) and The Donmar Collection (Lily). Hope I didn't get mixed up. Anyway, I bought this from ASOS and it is rather expensive at £20 a set. Nails Inc polishes normally range from £11-13 per bottle, which seems slightly lower than Illamasqua at £13.50, but not if you do your makeup math, because Nails Inc bottles contain only 10ml versus Illamasqua which are 15ml. Also, sephora.com are selling Nails Inc for $9.50 per bottle for a normal polish (fancy stuff like magnetic polish are more expensive) and $20 per duo, which makes them so much cheaper.

OK back to my haul. I have heard of Gossip Girl, but believe it or not, I have never watched it. What attracted me to this polish set is the top coat polish because it looked just like flakies. I love flakies and would have considered buying all three, if not for the price. And so, I chose Lily.

This is my second time trying on a Nails Inc polish. The first was a glitter polish (I should do a post on that soon), so I couldn't get a feel of the quality of their creme polish if you know what I mean. It is after all pretty expensive and for that kinda price, I'd say it had better be good.

The verdict for my first time: amazing! The formula was rich, creamy and so smooth. Opaque in one coat, although I did 2 coats just to cover up some parts on the side of my nails that I missed. It looks very normal actually, it looks like a seen-too-many-times-before dark vampy colour. But it is nonetheless very gorgeous.

Next is the topcoat. I'm not sure why the description calls it red/green because I didn't see any red in it, it was more gold/green. This is one coat. The flakies were irregular shaped, some big, some small, suspended in a clear base. Putting on a second coat only made the layer on my nail thicker and didn't do much more than that. Or perhaps I was impatient and didn't let my first coat dry properly first. Whatever it is, I still prefer my Inglot flakies. They are much denser and their effect are much more obvious. Putting on more coats didn't make it look thicker, but merely made the flakies look more intense. You can see swatches of Inglot flakies here.

I would like to try more Nails Inc. polishes. They are expensive and hard to get over here, but I love how they name their polishes after streets names and landmarks in London and UK (like Big Ben, Victoria, Camden, Porchester Square). Very posh and very, erm, British!

Just a mini comparison between nubar 2010 and the Inglot flakies.

Nubar 2010

Inglot 202, 203 and 205

This is a light swatch of each polish over Illamasqua Force. At one coat each for the Inglot, you can see that the flakes are much denser in comparison to nubar 2010.

Individual swatches:

Inglot 202

Inglot 203

Inglot 205

Nubar 2010

This is the last entry on my Inglot flake polishes. These are from the Dream Collection (as per Inglot USA website). They are tiny 8ml bottles and cost USD10 each. In this post are swatches of Inglot #205.

The iridescence of the flakes in the light:

I swatched all the flake polishes over a black base so that the colours would look more vibrant and pop out.

I must admit that #205 is my least favourite of the three. It is mainly green/yellow and although pretty, there are no nuances of colours to look forward to.

Over a lighter base (OPI Mermaid's Tears)

See swatches of #202 here.

See swatches of #203 here.

Tell me what you think! :)

This is a continuation of my previous post regarding my Inglot polish haul courtesy of Sophia. These are from the Dream Collection (as per Inglot USA website). They are tiny 8ml bottles and cost USD10 each. In this post are swatches of Inglot #203.

The iridescence of the flakes in the light:

I swatched all the flake polishes over a black base so that the colours would look more vibrant and pop out.

#203 is generally a green/blue flake polish with flashes of teal and turquoise depending on the lighting.

Picture spam alert! :) Enjoy the swatches!

See swatches of #202 here.

See swatches of #205 here.

Tell me what you think! :)

When I knew that Sophia of the make-up blogette would be visiting Inglot while vacationing in Las Vegas, I decided not to give her a list of eyeshadows to CP (too many!), but a list of polishes instead. I had come across swatches of these flakies polishes while browsing some other blogs and thought that it would be a great opportunity to get my hands on them. And so, I unabashedly put these on my CP list and Sophia was ever so kind to get them for me (THANK YOU AGAIN!).

These are from the Dream Collection (as per Inglot USA website). They are tiny 8ml bottles and cost USD10 each. A bit pricey for the amount, but worth it if you are a flakies lover. I got them in #202, #203 and #205, and I finally got around to swatching them.

I took so many pictures of each polish that I think I will be posting most of them on my blog. If not, it would be just a waste. Haha! So I'm sorry for the photo spam, a lot might look the same after a while, but I just love the way they look.

The iridescence of the flakes in the light:

I swatched all the flake polishes over a black base so that the colours would look more vibrant and pop out.

This is #202. I think it's my favourite. It predominantly flashes orange, gold and green, kinda like Nubar 2010 which you can see here, but the flakes are much denser and look bigger too.

Enjoy the swatches!

Over another base, an army green from Holika Holika.

Tell me what you think! :)

See swatches of #203 here.

See swatches of #205 here.

Kim has already posted her NOTD using Nubar 2010, but I just have to post mine too...You can't say no to more swatches right? I love swatch posts.

Here's Nubar 2010 (similar to Sally Hansen's Hidden Treasure) layered over Misa It's You. It's like fire on your fingertips. You have to see it in the sunlight to admire it in full glory.

Thank you Kim for the CP!!!