A vegan nail polish blog. A celebration of colour and light, as well as of justice for nonhuman animals.

Posts tagged ‘comparison’

Zoya Natalie and comparisons

Someone on Makeup Alley’s nail board was asking about dupes for Zoya Natalie so I did some comparisons. First, here’s Natalie.

Sun:

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Ott lite:

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Natural shade:

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Here are the bottles I compared:

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OPI Ginger Bells, Zoya Natalie, Kleancolor Brown, SpaRitual Clay.

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SpaRitual Quartz, Zoya Natalie, Joe Fresh Terracotta, OPI Schnapps Out of It.

First set under Ott lite:

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First set with flash:

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Second set under Ott lite:aviary-image-1521994660619.jpeg

Second set with flash:aviary-image-1521995671157.jpeg

No exact dupes but some similarities here!

Category:

Joe Fresh, Kleancolor, OPI, SpaRitual, Zoya

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A few older Zoya nudes

Here are a few Zoyas that I swatched recently!

Zoya Nevaeh, two coats.

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I was curious how this compared to the base shade of a couple of the Zoya satins. Comparison: Zoya Nevaeh, Zoya Ana (2 coats), Zoya Brittany (2 coats), Zoya Nevaeh.

 

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Left to right: Zoya Nevaeh, Zoya Ana (2 coats plus top coat), Zoya Brittany (2 coats plus top coat), Zoya Nevaeh, with flash.

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Zoya Clover, 3 coats. Some of the photos have top coat and some don’t. This yellow-beige toned off-white has a very subtle shimmer that only shows in bright light.

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And finally, one that is a very old Zoya: Phyllis. I have no idea when this actually came out; I can’t find any info online. I bought this online from Nail Polish Canada probably about 5 years ago when it must have been already discontinued for some time. Well, it’s not so old that it has the really old original Zoya logo on the bottle, but that’s about all I can say…

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Three coats of Phyllis shown here.

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It’s a sheer peachy shimmer with a slight pink-to-gold duochrome… pretty!

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Category:

Zoya

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Different Dimension Pluto is Still a Planet To Me, Pretty and Polished Weather the Storm, and a comparison

Different Dimension Pluto is Still a Planet to Me is a denim-blue polish with gold fleck shimmer. I used three coats plus top coat. 

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On my ring finger is Pretty and Polished Weather the Storm, a greyed blue dusty creme. Two coats plus top coat for this one. 

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I wanted to compare these two blues to Zoya Skylar. 

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Skylar is on my thumb below. Three coats plus top coat; the formula was a little thin. The photo is unfortunately a little overexposed. 

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As you can see the base of Skylar is similar to Weather the Storm but it’s  even more of a greyed, faded shade of blue. The shimmer particles are smaller glass fleck than those in Pluto, and are silvery/multicolour in tone. Pluto is the brightest blue of the three. 

Here is a photo of Skylar on my thumb, better showing the tiny multicoloured glass fleck. 

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Category:

Different Dimension, Pretty and Polished, Zoya

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Black Cat Lacquer Lotus Flower, Colour Alike 510, and comparison

I’ve got two swatches and a comparison to show you today! First up is Black Cat Lacquer Lotus Flower. 

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This is a nearly-neon bright pink with subtle holo and heavy gold glass fleck shimmer.  

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I love it so much! Two coats plus top coat, great formula. 

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In the shade:

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Here is the comparison, top to bottom: Lotus  Flower, Picture Polish Electric Dream, Colour Alike 510, ILNP Cutie Pop. 

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Electric Dream is the most similar to Lotus Flower, but it’s less bright/neon and has larger, scattered holo flake particles. Colour Alike 510 is quite a different shade of pink and doesn’t have gold glass fleck. Cutie Pop on the other hand is a lighter, softer pink and its holo is more prominent than its glass flecks, the opposite of the Black Cat Lacquer. I used two coats plus top coat for each of them. 

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Again, left to right: Black Cat Lacquer Lotus  Flower, Picture Polish Electric Dream, Colour Alike 510, ILNP Cutie Pop. 

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And finally, here are swatches of Colour Alike 510. This one is also really pretty!

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Two coats plus top coat, although it’s almost a one-coater. I’m going to try it for stamping as it seems like it might work well! In the shade:

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And a couple more in the sun:

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Category:

Black Cat Lacquer, Colour Alike, I Love Nail Polish (ILNP), Picture Polish, Uncategorized

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Zoya Rowan and Different Dimension Solar Flares

Zoya Rowan is a greyish taupe in Zoya’s satin matte finish. I used two coats without top coat here. 

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The formula was great, although the ridges in my nails tend to show through this finish!

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After the swatch I added a couple of accent nails in Different Dimension Solar Flares, a slightly browner taupe creme with colour-shifting magenta/pink to gold flakes. 

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I used three coats of Solar Flares, no top coat, for these photos. 

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I then added top coat to both polishes, using my new favourite top coat HK Girl by Glisten & Glow. Dries fast and works great over nail art, though it isn’t big-3 free for those who are concerned about that. 

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I also wanted to compare Rowan to Orly Faint of Heart. Here is the comparison – Zoya on my index finger, Orly on my middle finger. I used two coats plus top coat of Faint of Heart. 

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Faint of Heart is greyer, slightly darker, and when you look at it very close up, it has a ton of tiny specks of pigment in it, kind of like a much more subtle version of the Pretty and Polished Dusty Cremes finish. Again, left to right, Zoya Rowan and Orly Faint of Heart:

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Reverse order, left to right, Orly Faint of Heart and Zoya Rowan:

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Category:

Different Dimension, Orly, Zoya

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Nubar Affair and comparisons

Nubar Affair is a teal green jelly with lots of fine gold shimmer particles. I’d say this first (phone) photo is the most colour-accurate; the others seem slightly too blue. 

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I used three coats plus top coat; as you can see there’s still a little visible nail line in certain lights. 

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I did a comparison to two other similar polishes. Top to bottom in the photo below: Pretty Serious Khepri’s Amulet (two coats), Nubar Affair, NYX Jungle (four coats), Nubar Affair. 

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Khepri’s Amulet is slightly greener than Affair and is more brushstokey with its frostier metallic finish. NYX Jungle is more sheer than Affair, and on the nail its gold shimmer is more distinct from the base. 

Category:

Nubar, NYX, Pretty Serious

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Eat Sleep Polish Supernova, Jupiter Grapes, and Planet Pluto

Today I have three Eat Sleep Polish holos with colour-shifting glass flecks to show you. First, Supernova with an accent nail of Jupiter Grapes. Supernova is a fuchsia/plum sort of shade with blue-to-fuchsia glass flecks. Jupiter Grapes is a slightly blue-toned purple with similar blue-to-fuchsia glass flecks, although they don’t appear as prominent as in Supernova. Under Ott lite:

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With flash:

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In shade:

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On my right hand I did the opposite using Supernova as the accent and Jupiter Grapes for most of the nails. With flash:

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Shade:

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Later I decided to compare Jupiter Grapes and Planet Pluto, which is an indigo-toned blue, again with glass flecks that mostly appear blue in this polish. Here is Planet Pluto with a ring finger accent of Jupiter Grapes, in sunlight:

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In shade:

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And finally a sunlight phone pic showing all three polishes:

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Category:

Eat Sleep Polish

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Pretty Serious Kashmir and Orly Fowl Play comparison

Kashmir by Pretty Serious was created in collaboration with blogger Christine of Serenity Nails. 

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It’s a warm dark purple with lots of shimmer and red-gold-green flakies. I used two coats plus top coat and the formula was excellent. 

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It looks slightly redder in real life compared to my photos, I found. In the shade:

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I did a comparison to Orly Fowl Play which ended up not being as similar as I expected. 

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In the bottles you can already tell they definitely aren’t dupes. 

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Left to right: Orly Fowl Play, Pretty Serious Kashmir, Orly Fowl Play, Pretty Serious Kashmir. 

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I used three coats (plus top coat) for Fowl Play as it has a more sheer jelly base. Fowl Play also has much more dense flakies including blue microflakies in addition to the larger red ones. Kashmir’s flakies hardly show up at all in comparison. Kashmir is also warmer/redder than Fowl Play. 

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I used to also own OPI Merry Midnight, which is very very close to Fowl Play, so I’m holding a swatch stick of Merry Midnight for the last two photos (the stick has one, two and three coats of Merry Midnight going progressively up the stick). Flash:

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Merry Midnight is almost the same as Fowl Play but its base is not quite as dark and so is a bit closer to the base colour of Kashmir. Shade:

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Category:

OPI, Orly, Pretty Serious

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A couple of China Glaze and Ellagee comparisons

Here’s a subtle single-dotted mani I did with China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin and Be More Pacific, using a dotting tool to add one dot of the other colour on each nail near the cuticle. 

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I used three coats plus top coat for both of these. The formula wasn’t my favourite; I found them a bit runny and not very self-leveling, and got some small bubbles in a few nails. But the colours are pretty. 

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Here’s Thor hanging out in the background!

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With flash:

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I wanted to compare these pastels to a couple of similar Ellagee pastels from their Beach Bum collection – She Sells Seashells (yellow) and Seaside Cottage (green).

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Unfortunately I didn’t write down how many coats I used of the Ellagee polishes, but I’m pretty sure it was also three coats plus top coat for them. They did have a significantly nicer formula than these China Glazes in my opinion!

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Left to right/top to bottom: Ellagee She Sells Seashells, China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin, Ellagee Seaside Cottage, China Glaze Be More Pacific. As you can see the Ellagee yellow is lighter and brighter, and while the greens are more similar to each other than the yellows, again the Ellagee is a little bit lighter and brighter.  

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I then added a matte neon circle glitter topper, Ellagee Gumballs, over my comparison to try it out. 

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While I love the colour and shape of the glitters, overall I was disappointed by this polish. I had only had it a few weeks before trying it, but the base had already developed a bit of a pink tint from bleeding glitters. As you can see in the photos it’s muddied the colours of the base polishes. 

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I also found it pretty thick and ended up with some bubbles trying to get a good amount of glitter onto the nail and distributed. Ah well. I do really like the circle shape and the neon pastel colours. Placing the glitters individually with a dotting tool or orange stick would probably work out better!

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Category:

China Glaze, Ellagee

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LA Girl Allure, Orly Ablaze, Black Dahlia Lacquer Fuchsia Flower, and stamping

Here’s a kind of skittley mani, due to a comparison I wanted to do. It started out as LA Girl Allure with an accent nail of Black Dahlia Lacquer Fuchsia Flower, but then I switched my index nail to Orly Ablaze since I wanted to see how it compared to Allure. 

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Ablaze is more orange, while Allure is more coral, and of course they have different shimmer as well; Orly’s gold shimmer is larger flecks while the LA Girl’s is very fine. 

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Fuchsia Flower has blue glass flecks in it, which aren’t showing up very well on the nail in these pics but you can see clearly in the bottle below. 

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I stamped on the mani using Fingerpaints Minimalistic Mauve (over the coral/orange nails) and Picturesque Purple (over Fuchsia Flower), and plate Hehe-040. 

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Shade:

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With flash:

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Category:

Black Dahlia Lacquer, FingerPaints, Hehe stamping plates, LA Girl, Orly

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