Comparison: Chanel Taboo & Nails Inc Regent's Palace



Today I have a new comparison to show you - Chanel Taboo vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace.  I'll start by giving away the ending - these are not dupes.  However, it's worth taking a closer look, the comparison isn't as crazy as you might first think.

Readers of this blog will know that I have never been so excited, or so disappointed by a polish than I was with Chanel Taboo (my Taboo review and swatches).  I won't repeat my review here but the main reason for my disappointment was the vast difference between the in-bottle and on-nail impact of this polish.  In the bottle it looks like instant galaxy nails - it's utterly packed with phenomenal looking colour, sparkly bits and what-not.  On the nail, it looks for the most time, like a dull dark black/purple.  The 'pop' in the bottle is only seen in flash, and direct sunlight, and even then only when you're really looking at it.  The formula is also pretty pants, quite gloopy.

So I wondered - supposing you don't want to spend £18 or can't get a hold of this limited edition.  What else could you get that would look as good or better?  Step up to the plate Nails Inc Regent's Palace....



Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace (middle, pinkie)
Natural Light

In close up here you can see some evidence of the sparkly bits in Taboo, and you can also see it's in a much darker base than RP which has a fairly indigo base to it.  Both polishes have a lovely shimmer, but the brighter toned base of RP means that this shimmer is much more evident on-nail in a variety of lighting conditions.  Pictured here is two coats each of colour atop a Nail Envy base.  There's no top coat here.

Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace (middle, pinkie)
Flash

When you look at these under flash, you can see more of the bottle-beauty of Taboo coming out and the tonal difference in the bases is more pronounced.  I don't often take swatch pics with flash on because a) it makes me look like a scary albino lady and b) 99% of the time you're not going to be looking at your polish by flashlight so it's not really a fair test of how pretty it will look (I wouldn't have had such a lemming for Taboo if I had seen it in more natural lighting pics I think).
Taboo does have more sparkle than RP for sure, although bear in mind that this sparkle is not actually visible by eye a lot of the time.  So to add some extra zing to the RP I then popped on a thin coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire (possibly the best layering polish of all time, there is nothing that this won't make more fabulous.  It's like the mani equivalent of bacon).
 


Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace with Max Factor Fantasy Fire (middle, pinkie)
Natural Light 

Wowza! Regent's Palace on its own is a fabulous metallic purple shade (see my purple metallics comparison post here) but layered with Fantasy Fire it's stunning.  Again, not a dupe for Taboo, but certainly punching far above its weight in terms of price comparison and on-nail 'pop factor'.
Finally with flash, it's the return of the albino:



Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace with Max Factor Fantasy Fire (middle, pinkie)
Flash

In terms of on-nail impact, sparkle, and purple-ness (I know that's not a word, but it should be) for me Regent's Palace plus Fantasy Fire is a clear winner.  In terms of price it's also a no-brainer: the Chanel will cost you £18 but it's Limited Edition so if you miss out in store I've seen this changing hands for £30-£50 which is just insane.  I got the Nail's Inc in a set of 3 from TK Maxx (bargain polish heaven) for £9.99 which by my maths makes this £3.33, but full price would cost you £11.  Fantasy Fire is £3.99 in Boots/Superdrug for a mini bottle.

So for my mani that's £7.32 vs £18, or full price it would be £14.99 vs £18.  At full price the argument is less compelling, but Regent's Palace is one of the few Nails Inc polishes that I would be happy to pay full price for.  Even on it's own, without the Fantasy Fire topper, I feel that Regent's Palace is a better all-rounder than the Chanel.  Blasphemy I know, but there you have it.
 

Blog lovin'

Ain't technology grand? Since the sad demise of Google reader I've moved to Bloglovin' to follow the many fantastic nail blogs that I read daily. The android app is really good too. If you would like to follow this blog on Bloglovin' you can use the link below...

 

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Finding the perfect purple...

Every nail polish addict has a favourite drug...I'm far too greedy to settle for just one, but I do have a particular weakness for metallic purple polishes.  It doesn't matter how many I've already got, it doesn't matter if I know the shiny one I've just seen in the shop/online is an almost exact dupe of something I've already got three of...I.Just.Can't.Help.Myself.  I know, it's a sickness.

I've collected here some of my favourites for comparison, just in case unlike me you don't like to own many incarnations of the same purple :) 

Right, onto the nitty gritty....



Looking for the perfect purple?

These four are some of the lushest purples that money can buy. From left to right we have: Avalon (A-England, review here), Rebel (Leighton Denny), Sexy Divide (Essie), Regent's Palace (Nails Inc).

Of these, the most similar are Sexy Divide and Regent's Palace. Both are deep dark rich shades with a red edge - Regent's palace is packing some burgundy shimmer that's hard to make out here but I'll be comparing this to Chanel Taboo in a future post and its more obvious there.  Avalon and Rebel are cooler toned purples.  For me, Avalon has the most 'pop!' and is a much more in-your-face purple whereas the darker shades have a richer texture that reminds me of plush velvet....but maybe that's just me.



brands (L:R) - A-England, Leighton Denny, Essie, Nails Inc

I love Rebel, it's such an amazing colour, but it has the weakest formula of the bunch.  It's quite thin, needs three coats to get this level of opacity, and looks streaky and awful on the first coat.  It does even out perfectly though.  In terms of brushes and other such nail geek concerns I'd say they're all about equal.  In terms of quality the A-England and Essie offerings are the best.  Wear time on all four is pretty good with perhaps the Nails Inc being marginally less hard-wearing than the others (I find that generally with NI polishes).  Apart from Rebel (which is 3), all polishes are two coats of colour with Nail Envy undies and SV on top.  I made an arse of 'Rebel', squidging it near the tip, turns out its a tricky business operating a camera with semi-wet nails.  Avalon also appears to have tip wear, but that's because I swatched after wearing Avalon for 4 days for my last review.



Purple Comparison - Artificial Light

I paid £11 (full price, John Lewis) for Rebel, £6 for Avalon (gem of the month, RRP £9, A-England website), £3.33 for Sexy Divide (TK Maxx bargain - 3 for £9.99!!! RRP £8, Boots) and finally £3.33 for Regent's Palace (again, TK Maxx marvel, RRP £11 from John Lewis).  At these prices I'd say buy them all! But if you were paying full price, and you could only get one....then I'd say Essie 'Sexy Divide' is the best purple for your money, with Avalon a close second.  There's no way I'd pay full price for the Nails Inc.

Coming soon....Regent's Palace vs. Chanel Taboo (not as crazy as you might think!)

Avalon

"Through the western isle
I hear the dead awaken
Rising slowly to the call Avalon"

"Isle of Avalon" - Iron Maiden

Avalon by A-England - Natural light

I don't think that Adina of A-England was thinking of Iron Maiden's awesome song "Isle of Avalon" when she was naming this polish, but I like to think so.  Avalon is this month's "Gem of the Month" on the A-England website.  For anyone that hasn't heard of this awesome concept it's this - every month, one polish will be chosen as the 'gem' and will be just £6 for that month.  Quite often the site isn't updated bang on the start of the month, so usually it's still available for the first week of the next month.

I can't resist a good purple...more on that later when I compare this beauty to the other metallic purples in my collection.  I can honestly say that Avalon has come in and gone straight to the top of my favourites list.

What can I say about A-England that I haven't said before? Nothing really. This is a very special brand, with excellent quality and a stunning array of shades.   It's clear that a lot of love goes into these, and for £6 that's less than 'drugstore' price for a polish that's boutique quality.

Avalon - by A-England - Artificial Light

For some reason my camera made this look blue-er than IRL.  This is a sumptuous royal purple metallic shimmer polish.  It's a definite one-coater, although here I'm wearing two coats sandwiched between my usual Nail Envy base and SV top.  It's lush, I love it!

My nails might be sad little nubbins, but don't they look fancy :)

If you missed this month's A-England Summer Sale you're out of luck because it ended today....but I did get some nail mail today so expect more A-England loveliness to come....For those that did miss the sale, bear the "Gem" in mind...it's like a mini-sale every month :)

ps. Check out Iron Maiden's "Final Frontier" for "Isle of Avalon", it's all kinds of awesome

A-England sale!

A-England are having a summer sale! From 21-26 th August only, for UK customers only, they have 18 shades reduced to £6 each with free postage. There are some amazing shades in there...I'd personally recommend Lady of the Lake and St George. Also, this month's "gem" is Avalon, and is also just £6 for the whole of August. It's utterly fab, I'm wearing it now in fact, and I'll be blogging it soon.  Hurry off to A-England's website and grab yourself a bargain ;-) I have!

Dreamer - Hits Mari Moon


My mani this week is the utterly gorgeous Hits Mari Moon "Dreamer" from the MultiGirl collection of multi-chromes.  This is a stunning multi-chrome, and like all the Hits polishes the effect is really strong (see my post on "Unconventional", another incredible polish from this collection).  This is a picture heavy post as I tried to capture all the colour variations, but its one of those shades that really has to be seen to be believed. 

I apologise for the state of my nails...they are sad little nubbins, I had to cut them all off to take up climbing!  I also apologise for the terrible state of my cuticles.  I'm going to have to find a way to mix adventure and proper hand care...



Hits Mari Moon "Dreamer" - Sunlight

And now for the science....as with all proper multi-chrome polishes, the colour that you see depends on the angle of your nail relative to the main light source.  The dominant shade in "Dreamer" is the electric blue shown in the picture at the top, this is the shade you see viewing your nails straight-on.  At slight angles either side of this a strong purple appears, that blends into magenta as the angle increases.

 

 

I started out with Nail Envy basecoat, an 'underwear' coat of Rimmel Black Cab, two coats of Hits Dreamer, and finally a coat of Seche to finish.  The formula on the Hits polish is fantastic.  I'd guess that on its own it would take at least 3 coats to be opaque, but with a coat of underwear you could easily get away with a single coat.

 

 

At the most oblique angles to the light source this polish takes on the colours of a beautiful sunset - shades of gold and red.  What I was trying to capture in the pics above and below is that at certain angles you get a mix of all colours and it looks like a beautiful oil slick of red, blue, purple and gold.  For some reason the moment that this perfect show of colour happens most is when I'm in the middle of driving and that's really not the best time to be snapping pictures so you'll have to make do with my best attempts stationary....

I picked up my Hits polishes from the fabulous Sally Magpies, which I highly recommend for finding fabulous exotic overseas brands and indie polishes here in the UK. 



A-England Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty

A-England Briar Rose - Full Sunlight

Today's review is of another stunning polish from A-England's Burne-Jones Dream collection (previous review of Rose Bower). According to the A-England website this collection is inspired by the four paintings of The Briar Rose series created by Sir Edward Burne-Jones depicting the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty.  Briar Rose is the namesake of Burne-Jones' collection and is an enchanting dusted Rose colour packed with A-England's signature scattered holo particles.

As with all A-England polishes the application and formula are flawless, with excellent opacity.  This could easily be a one-coater, although I'm a habitual two-coater and pictured here I'm wearing a single coat each of my usual Nail Envy base and beloved seche.  Briar Rose dries to a lovely glossy finish, so in this case the Seche is for maximising wear time rather than shine.

A-England Briar Rose - Indirect Sunlight

Briar Rose is an elegant and sophisticated shade.  Rose is a classic shade but this incarnation looks totally modern on the nail and the holo finish as ever gives A-England polishes that added edge of glamour that makes each of them so special.