Today I have three polishes from Color Club's Winter collection, entitled Winter Affair. A couple of them are dupish to some other well-known polishes, so there are comparison photos too. Enjoy :)
First up is Color Club- Glitter Wonderland:
Glitter Wonderland is a warm purple base filled with indigo-blue microglitter/shimmer as well as some lighter purple shimmer particles. This one is sort of a chameleon depending on the lighting.
Artificial light, three coats:
Window-filtered daylight:
Outside, shade:
Sun:
It is a pretty polish if you're a fan of purples, and the cool-toned glitter in the warm-toned base makes for interesting color changes.
Formula: Was surprisingly thin, requiring three coats for opacity. I really hate applying three coats for a color so saturated; a shame it didn't go opaque in two, disappointing. It was easy to work with otherwise, however.
--
Next is Color Club- Snow-Flakes, a rainbow colored flakie topcoat:
Artificial light, one coat over Glitter Wonderland:
Outside, shade:
Outside, you can start to see the green and yellow color shift as well as the red and orange.
Formula: What you would expect from a suspension base flakie. No problems.
This polish is of course dupey to famous Nubar- 2010, as well as the more recent Essie- Shine Of The Times (and probably a few others).
Left to Right: Nubar- 2010, Color Club- Snow-Flakes, Essie- Shine Of The Times
You can see how well-loved my bottle of Nubar- 2010 has been. These duochromey flakies look good over pretty much every color.
Comparison time!
You can see that Nubar- 2010 is quite a bit less dense than the other two, which is useful for some layerings. The Essie is the most dense, with Color Club- Snow-Flakes falling somewhere in between. So, the density issue makes them not quite dupes, but the color and color shift is exactly the same to my eye.
--
Lastly, is Color Club- Winter Affair, the namesake of the collection:
Winter Affair is an interesting, dark berry-maroon shimmer- a great Fall/ Winter color!
Artificial light, two coats:
Window-filtered daylight:
Outside, shade:
It's gorgeous, it is. It has a lot of depth, and I enjoyed wearing it for a couple of days.
Sun:
Formula- It was thick and viscous, on the gloopy side, requiring two coats for opacity.
Of course, it reminds me strongly of another polish: Zoya- Gem. I was sure they were going to be exact dupes when I swatched Winter Affair on a swatch stick.
They do look slightly different in the bottle; for some reason Gem has those yellow-gold particles that don't particularly come through on the nail. (Jem has far superior formula, by the way: thick but without the gloopiness.)
Comparison time!
Window-filtered daylight:
They are in fact not dupes! They are so, so close though- the closest non-dupes I have seen in a while. You definitely do not need to own both unless you are insane like me.
This is the best I could do to illustrate their differing base colors. Zoya- Gem is much more purple, and cooler, while Color Club- Winter Affair is warmer and more or a burgundy. These differences are hard to capture on camera, however, and they are only noticeable in certain lights in real life anyway. And, strangers are certainly not going to notice that they are different shades.
Window-filtered daylight:
Additionally, the particles in Color Club- Winter Affair are much chunkier than in Gem. Can you see that?
Outside, shade:
Up close!
You can really see the particle size differences here.
And here they are on swatch sticks under artificial lighting:
Zoya- Gem is indeed cooler- but minutely so.
---
So, that about wraps that up! I think these polishes are nice Winter shades, but they certainly aren't very original, and I was sort of iffy on the formulas. The formulas weren't bad, but I am used to great things from Color Club. Also, I am always happy to have another rainbow flakie around!
I'm LOVING Winter Affair. I don't have Zoya Gem, so I *need* it!
ReplyThanks for the swatches! I didn't expect Glitter Wonderland to look like that on the nail!