Comparison: Nubar Innocent Whispers & OPI Give Me the Moon

Last month I showed you Nubar Innocent Whispers, a pretty grey/pink duochrome. I mentioned that it reminded me a bit of OPI Give Me the Moon, so here is the proper comparison between them!

In the bottle, these two polishes are clearly very different. The Nubar looks lilac with a blue shimmer, while the OPI just looks...grey. But as we all know, what a polish looks like in the bottle very often doesn't translate onto the nails, so here's what they look like on me:

From left to right:
Nubar Innocent Whispers (two coats)
OPI Give Me the Moon (two coats)
Nubar Innocent Whispers (four coats)
OPI Give Me the Moon (four coats)

Hmmm, they're still not as similar as I thought they'd be! The Nubar is much pinker - and sheerer. The OPI is paler and more opaque, and it doesn't shift colour the way Innocent Whispers does. What is similar, however, is the blue shimmer apparent in both these colours. Oh well, at least we know now that they're not even remotely dupes!

P.S. Apologies for the horrendous state of my hands! The freakily warm weather in March has played havoc with my skin, and even my beloved E45 cream has been powerless against it.

OPI I Don't Give a Rotterdam

Here's the final polish I bought from OPI's spring collection. This is I Don't Give a Rotterdam. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I love how much attention OPI give to their polish. It's so much more interesting than just naming it after the colour. (Models Own Beetlejuice Autumn 2011 collection, I'm looking at you!) This name is one of my favourites! As for the polish itself, it's a dusty periwinkle blue with gold and silver shimmer. It's more cool-toned than the other blue from this collection, I Have a Herring Problem, and a bit more of a true blue. I think I like it more as a result.

My photos are three coats as it was a tad sheer. The formula itself was fantastic and I didn't have any application issues whatsoever.

Models Own Beetlejuice Spring/Summer 2012 - Summary

In the previous three posts I've reviewed the new colours from the Models Own Beetlejuice Collection Spring/Summer 2012. I thought it might be helpful to put all three together in one post, so here they are again (this time with minimal commentary).

Copper Pot

A copper/bronze duochrome. Three coats. Not my cup of tea.

Tropical Sun

A pink/peach duochrome. Three coats. Me likey.

Indian Ocean

A blue/pink duochrome. Extremely sheer; this is five coats. My favourite of the three by far!

To be honest, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the new collection overall. The promo pictures looked incredible, but I should have known they wouldn't be reliable - we've been burned before. They're nice colours, just not quite as cool as the promo pics made them look. I don't think much of Copper Pot, especially as a duochrome, but I like Island Sun and I really like Indian Ocean. The formula is much improved on last autumn's collection, and for a fiver they're pretty good value for money. I'm not going to tell you to run to the shops and buy them immediately...more to go there at a leisurely stroll if you like the look of any of them.

Models Own Beetlejuice S/S 2012: Indian Ocean

Here is the final polish from the new Models Own Beetlejuice Collection, Indian Ocean. According to the press release it's an "iridescent blue with soft pink undertones", which is bang on the money. It's basically a pale blue with a pink shimmer running through it. As the name suggests, it reminds me of a tropical ocean with a pink sunset reflecting in the water.

Before I show you the photos I have a warning about this polish, dear readers: it was incredibly sheer. If you wear it I highly recommend you layer it over a complementary blue. I knew just from looking at the bottle that it was going to be sheer, but I decided to wear it on its own to better show you what it looks like au naturel. I was determined to see if I could get it opaque, but I gave up at five - yes, five! - coats. Anyway, onto the pictures:

The final photo was taken indoors, and it really illustrates just how pink Indian Ocean looks in some lights. Despite how sheer this polish is, it's definitely my favourite of the collection. It has the strongest duochrome effect of the three, for one thing, and for another - well, you probably know by now how I feel about blue polishes!

Models Own Beetlejuice S/S 2012: Tropical Sun

Here's the second of the new Models Own Beetlejuice Collection, Tropical Sun. The PR release describes it as a "glistening sunset", and this is pretty much accurate! While it's not as orange as the promo pictures would have you believe, it does still resemble a glorious tropical sunset. In the bottle it looks very peachy (in fact, when I first unwrapped it I initially thought they had sent me Golden Peach, another Models Own shade, by mistake!), but on the nail it takes on more of a salmon pink colour that shifts to a glowing peach. It also has sparse, itty bitty silver glitter in it. It was incredibly sheer. I did three thick coats on my nails but it could have done with a fourth - although the VNL was more obvious in real life than in my photos.

I also took a couple of photos indoors, which really brings out the peach colour:

Hmmm, I don't have an awful lot more to say about this polish, except that I rather like it. Definitely more than I like Tropical Sun, anyway. I think it's because it genuinely does look like a sunset. It's pretty cool.

Models Own Beetlejuice S/S 2012: Copper Pot

Last week I showed you some quick swatches of the new Models Own Beetlejuice Collection for Spring/Summer 2012 on a nail wheel. Well, for the next three days I will be showing you proper swatches of them on my nails, starting with Copper Pot!

Copper Pot is the least duochrome of the three polishes, shifting from a copper colour (duh) to bronze/yellowy gold. The PR release calls it "a deep olive tan". I prefer the formula on this to what some of last autumn's Beetlejuice polishes had - it didn't pooling at my cuticles, but it did bubble a little (despite waiting a good five minutes between each coat. Boo). I used three coats for my photos, which gave it full opacity.

See what I mean? It looks glow-y rather than duochrome-y. I don't actually like it very much. I'm just not a huge fan of polishes with a yellow or orange tone to them. Meh.

Lilacquer Kitsune

Today I'm showing you my third and final indie polish from Lilacquer. You can see my swatches of Selkie and Lycanthrope by clicking the links. This colour continues the mythology theme with the name Kitsune.

From Wikipedia: Kitsune is the Japanese word for fox. Foxes are a common subject of Japanese folklore; in English, kitsune refers to them in this context. Stories depict them as intelligent beings and as possessing magical abilities that increase with their age and wisdom. Foremost among these is the ability to assume human form. While some folktales speak of kitsune employing this ability to trick others, other stories portray them as faithful guardians, friends, lovers, and wives.

Like the other two Lilacquer polishes I've shown you, it's a duochrome shimmer top coat - this is a green/red one. This was definitely the thickest formula of the three polishes, so I put a few drops of thinner in it first. As with Lycanthrope I started with two coats of Nails Inc Black Taxi, followed by two coats of Kitsune. I was very lucky again to have some lovely sun for these photos, so you can see Kitsune at its sparkliest.

It's very pretty, but it's actually my least favourite of the three. I have no idea why. The red/gold makes me feel that this polish is quite autumnal, so maybe I'll like it more later this year?!

Lilacquer Kitsune retails for $6 (about £3.80) for 5ml. It's not an Etsy shop; to order you email the creater directly and pay by PayPal. International shipping is available at a very reasonable price, and delivery is quite fast - it took 10 days to reach me in the UK from the States. I'm really pleased with my three Lilacquer polishes. They're so beautiful and can be layered over whatever polish takes your fancy to create something truly unique. I hope you've enjoyed looking at them as much as I've enjoyed wearing them!