Comparison: Nubar Greener vs. H&M Envy me

Hey everybody! It has been a while, I know. About a week ago I got a lovely surprise in my mailbox - a request from one of my readers for a comparison. Which is exactly the nudge i need to get myself to pick up the camera and work with it, as lately I did not have time for that. And I really am a fan of requests like these, they give me an idea for posts and additional motivation to actually post them.

To get to the comparison. As it happens, these two are amongst my favourite nail polishes in my stash. Absolutely adore the rich green shimmer. And yes, they are quite close, but are they dupes? Let's find out. 

Index finger: HM Envy me,

Middle finger: Nubar Greener

Ring finger: HM Envy me

Little finger: Nubar Greener

No topcoat on the photos. 

The bottles emphasise the fact that Envy me is in fact bluer than Greener. But on the nail that difference is not as obvious. After wearing them both at the same time for 5 days now, here are my observations:

- H&M Envy me has a bluer, hence colder undertone, while Greener is a slightly warmer green, even though they are both definitively on a colder side of green shimmers.

- Nubar Greener is a richer shimmer, which creates more depth in the colour.

- In most of the lights they look almost the same, but if you look at the nails up close you notice the difference between the undertones.

- After five days Envy me is chipped on half of the nails, Nubar remains only with a slight tipwear (I put topcoat on after I took photos).

Both brushes are excellent, although I am a firm fan of Nubar brush, it is my winner. Although H&M Envy me has more coverage with just one stroke, both can be two-coaters (and both get more depth with a third one). 

There you have it. I cannot pick a winner, I love them both, both are nail polish of excellent quality and I wouldn't switch one for the other, as I do find them different enough to own both. However, if you are not too picky about your undertone and all you need is a very rich dark green shimmer, you can easily pick either of them.

If you have any other comparison questions, let me know via email or comments. I hope this was helpful!

Have a lovely weekend!

~ Ulmiel

The winner of the giveaway and a panda mani!

Hello darlings! I have returned with my winner Rafflecopter kindly picked up at random from all your entries. She also already replied to my email, so she is confirmed winner. :) Congratulations, Amanda, for winning the $20 voucher at Born Pretty Store! I am sure you will have a blast, picking all the goodies for that money! And thanks again to Born Pretty Store for sponsoring the giveaway. :)

BTW; it was great fun reading your comments and I truly appreciate you all who read and comment my little blog, it is basically the biggest reason why I still go on with blogging, despite my not so regular postings, as my schedule gets fuller and fuller. So, in short, you are the best! :) I hope I will host another giveaway soon! 

In light of this being a Born Pretty Store giveaway, I am showing a mani I did in the beginning of the week with their water decals I received for reviewing purposes. You all don't know this about me, but I am a bear fan. I think they are among the cutest animals on the planet. And of course I love the fuzzy cute panda bear! So when I saw these water decals of pandas, I did not hesitate for one bit. :)

Gosh, aren't they adorable!? The item itself is called 1Sheet Cute Panda Pussy Vivid Feather Pattern Design Nail Art Water Decals Transfers Sticker, item ID #12302 (and the main reason why I always write this down is that I find the names of most of their items incredibly amusing). As you can see, you can pick three different images, the pandas, the peacock feathers and a kitty cat called Marie, I think this is from a cartoon of some sort. 

Naturally I picked pandas, since I think bears are adorable and these are really well made, and did this mani with it:

I did the pattern a bit differently on my right hand, that's why I am showing it as well. Isn't it adorable?? I love it! I used Kiko 296 for this one, with H&M White on my ring fingers. 

Water decals themselves are incredibly easy to use, that is also the reason why I am becoming a rather frequent user of water decals. They spice up my mani, it looks like I can do nail art (which I can't, not really) and they take no time whatsoever. You cut the patterns off the sheet, take the protective layer off, dunk everything in water for approx. 10 seconds, take it out and put it on your nails, tap it a bit, so you also remove the water and it is done. Lovely. Plus, they are really cheep. ATM the panda bear water decals (and peacocok feathers and the Marie kitty cat) cost only $1,86. They are on sale from a regular price of $2,86, which is already seriously cheap, with the price on sale they are almost giving them away. Perfect chance for you to get them.

I really loved this mani, I wore it until the nail polish started to chip. Panda bears are adorable!

As always, use my 10% discount code when shopping at Born Pretty Store! Did I ever mention they have worldwide free shipping? Well, they do! And who knows, maybe you will use it again so many times we will have another giveaway soon. :)

What do you think, like it? Are you a fan of water decals? :)

Thank you all for reading and commenting, have a wonderful start of new week tomorrow!

*Product sent for reviewing purposes, you can read my disclosure here.  

H&M ~ Moonlight

Heya people! As promised, swatches of the nail polish I purchased here in Blava. First I shall post Moonlight, because I am wearing it ATM. I am not particularly happy with the way pictures turned out, because I couldn't capture the amazing shimmer it has, but I do not think my camera is capable of doing that anyway. 

 You can kind of see the blue and green particles of the shimmer on my ring finger here. :)

Natural light. 

So Moonlight has this amazing mixture of blue and green shimmer, I love it, it looks amazing on the nails. The blue prevails most of the time, but every once in a while the green pops out too, and looks amazing. The brush is good as well, but the colour is sheer. Most bloggers layer it, and after trying to wear it alone, I can see why. It needs 4 coats for complete coverage. Too much. Next time I will layer it as well. Anyway. Gorgeous colour. :) 

Do you have Moonlight? Any H&M colours you think are a must and I should get it? :)

Thank you for reading, have a nice day!

Essence Open Water Dive or "Challenge accepted!"

Hey everybody! How are you doing? I'm having my cup of tea that I spoke of yesterday so I decided this is the perfect excuse to write little something here too. :) A week or two ago I wore this mani with Essence Open Water Dive and as it rekindled my obsession with the 'completely the same mani as it is in my head', I have to give it the special attention.

The thing is, in the beginning of my nail polish discovering I had so much energy, patience (and time, as it seems), that I was able to do infinite amount of coats for a mani I wanted, or even change one polish up to three times a day, because I got fed up with the colour I was wearing. Naturally, that didn't happen often, but it did happen. It seems so weird now, hehe. The phase luckily passed and I enjoy polish on a normal scale now. ;) Thus enters Open Water Dive. This is an oldie, Essence Into the Ocean LE came out in 2009 and I got it from a friend,  not even trying it on. It was always on my 'give away' pile and few weeks ago, when I did a large selection of polish in my stash, this little thing got the number again. As I watched the swatches though, Nail Junkie had such an amazing swatch of it, I decided to put it on. I love it over black polish but I really wanted to have its real bottle colour on my nails. Knowing Open Water Dive is sheer as hell (you can see that just by turning the bottle in your hand) I prepared for massive coat number, but Lyra's beautiful swatch convinced me it could be done. 

After putting 4 coats on my nails and still having very clear VNL on my short nails, I went back to the post and actually read it. Of course Lyra layered it over white and wrote that that clearly too. Facepalm for Ulmiel, yes. But here's when I got stubborn. I wanted the mani to look like that on my nails too! So I removed the 4 effing coats, put 2 coats of H&M White and two coats of Essence Open Water Dive and was a happy hobbit. 

Naturally it was a bitch to photograph. It is in fact a very complex shimmer, creating this soft minty-seafoamy colour, appearing to have only silver particles, but contains also green and purple specks of glassflecks, that are acutally visible to the naked eye, especially in the artificial light. And I needed all together 56 pictures taken, before I could semi-capture that on the 50th picture. Ho-ly crap! So here it is, set of my best pictures, plus a video to show how sparkly this is.

 This is direct sunlight, my camera barley handled all the sparkle.

The only picture where I actually captured the colours of sparkles. You may need to enlarge it. The artificial light makes my skin really yellow, but it's the best one to show all the sparkles.

Naturally I loved the result. It's an amazing shade, I love it. White with a twist, I guess (or, as my BF calls them, water-pipes-in-hospitals colour), I really like the greenish hue it has. And the glassflecks really make a difference. So yes, worth the troubles, at least for me. It also stayed on my nails for quite a few days. Next layering will be over dark blue, I think, Biba's mani looks amazing!

What is your 'Challenge Accepted' varnish/finish/colour? :)

Thank you for reading!

H&M - Envy Me

Good evening from incredibly cold Ljubljana! Holy cow, the wind is running around, beating people up, I always come to college with tears running down my face, it's impossible to keep your eyes open without crying. I liked the mild winter we had. The lady started to show her claws now. And I forgot my gloves today at home. Can I get a high five? On the head? With a hammer?

I want to show you an older one today. You know, back when my nails were superlong still. I'm really pampering them now, with all the cold and everything, and I think (hope) they're getting better a bit. Anyway, this polish is from my swap with lovely Vettelicious, and I adored it so freakishly much. It's deep green shimmer, what did you expect? 

Two coats, although it's pigmented enough to be a one coater. I couldn't do it in one coat because the handle is just unbelievably wonky, I have the hardest time, polishing my nails with this giant square in my hands. Oh well. The colour is well worth it. It's such a rich shimmer, yummy! Hope H&M comes out with more shades like this! And brings them to Slovenia too! :P I'm not too happy about the pictures here, only these three were good enough to post, all others were blurry. :S Go figure. And even here there is too much reflection ... sorry about that.

What do you think? 

Thank you for reading!

Khaki/cool military green comparison: 4

Hey everyone! How are you doing? I'm headachy, again and I'm craving something sweet, ghah! I have a requested comparison for you today. I felt like doing it and then posting it right away, so here it is. KarenD (I love her nail wheel posts, I always go through them like a madman, nail per nail and her display pics, so I can see what's going on in USAs drugstores) asked me in the Enter The Undergrowth post to compare the Catrice with Models Own and Essie. I then added a few pictures with H&M too. 

• Index: Essie - Sew Psyched
• Middle: Catrice - Enter The Undergrowth
• Ring: Models Own - Grace Green
• Little: Catrice Enter The Undergrowth

I tried to take pictures in many lightnings, sadly there was no sun today in Ljubljana. Then I removed Grace Green, since it's the most off of them all and put on H&M Hunt Me Down.

Flash, to make the differences more obvoious.

They are all two coaters, all dry extremly fast and are very easy to work with, I'm quite impressed! Even Hunt Me Down behaved extremely nicely today, unlike the first time I wore it. 

Aside from the application, which was, again, very nice on all four, the colour differences are obvious from the pictures, but lets write it down anyway.

Grace green from Models Own is the lightest green of them all. Gorgeous, I can't wait to wear it as a full mani, and the most different of them all, it's less "military" green, it has a more gentle feeling to it, if that makes sence.

Essie Sew Psyched is the darkest of them all, plus it's the only one that's not a creme, it has a very fine silver shimmer, that is visible only if you have some sort of lighting on your nails (like standing next to a window or something). So I would say it's different enough, a shade or two darker, bit more grey and with the shimmer, hardly visible, but still there.

The closest you get to Catrice Enter The Undergrowth is with H&M Hunt Me Down. You have to look really really close to see that H&M is a shade or two lighter than Catrice. It's also much more glossy. Still, I hate the H&M handle, it's really clumsy and I think Catrice has a totally winner of a brush, so it's my winner in this dual.

To a non-khaki green fan(atic) I think any of the trio Essie-Catrice-H&M would suffice. You just have your pick between darker, lighter and something in between. :) I'm glad to have all four of them. But if you don't count the silver shimmer in Essie, I think any of the three would be enough, quite honestly. If you're like me, and think Essie is different enough, you can pick between Catrice Enter The Undergrowth and H&M Hunt Me Down, they are really really close. 

What do you think? Close enough? Would you have all 4 of them? I don't mind, but then again, I'm a green freak. ;) 

Thank you for reading!

H&M - Hunt Me Down

I miss blogging so much I'm just going to post another one, and yes, I should be studying right now. But the storm is coming, I got lovely haircut today (finally healthy hair without split ends!) and lunch with Tevta, so I'm in a totally awesome mood. :)

Hunt me down was a love at first sight for me. I'm not sure on whose blog I saw it for the first time, but when I did, I just knew I have to have it. Kaneli was so incredibly nice that she sent it to me along with Depends, thank you, dear! :) You may have already noticed I'm not really big on high end brands like Chanel, Dior, Lancome and so on ... I think they're terribly overpriced and don't bring it for that kind of money - the colours don't seem unique enough for me to spend that kind amount of money for them, unlike some Deborah Lippman glitters, that I actually would spend major coins on them. That's only my honest opinion and I know there is a lot of you Chanel ladies out there and trust me, I love seeing your swatches of them. :) Maybe I'd change my mind on spending money on them if I actually could afford it. :) But anyway, where am I going with this is - Chanel Khaki Vert was probably the only Chanel I'd spend the full price on. It was beyond awesome. Luckily there are already dupes out there, and Hunt Me Down gets close enough to Khaki Vert IMO. Lets see the pictures. 

 See the little green flower reflection of our window in the handle? My little sister made it in school. :)

These are all natural light, the difference in the shades is due to the fact that some are taken out in the open and others inside our house. So this polish changes a bit the intensity of green colour, depending on the lightning. I adore it either way, so I don't mind that. :)

Aside from the really gorgeous colour this polish isn't really my favourite. This polish is a Diva with a big "D". Application was very Mint Candy Apple like, perhaps even worse, but luckily i managed to sort it out with a very thick second coat. Thank Lord it didn't bubble because of it. The first coat is an utter disaster. I was sure I'll need at least three coats. Maybe I just got lucky with two, mind you, the second one was thicker. Speed of drying repays for the weird formula though. It dried with the speed of Anchors Away Glazes, so this was actually without TC! Yes, this is how glossy it gets, I couldn't save the pictures to have less reflection in them, I'm sorry. 

Another thing that bothered me even more than the weird formula was the incredibly awkward shape of the handle. I can deal with many shapes of the handle and I'm not really picky about it, but this wide, flat square almost made me drop the handle a few times! There is no way you can change the position of the handle in your hand without putting it back in the polish, and the entire movement is very minimal, I moved mostly my fingers only. I have no idea what were they thinking with this design. I don't even think it's pretty (and if it's pretty, I forgive a lot of stuff about the polish bottle), it just looks huge and clumsy and cheap with the giant plastic cup. 

So yes ... gorgeous (!!) colour, weird formula, yet opaque in two coats and extremely glossy with a disasterous bottle shape. You figure it out. :D I have mixed feelings about the whole deal, but frankly, for a colour such as this one, I'll suffer through the rest for the end result! I hope the Chanel formula brings it much better for that amount of money! :D

What do you think about Hunt Me Down? Your thoughts about the formula and bottle design? 

Thank you for reading!