Dupes?

I was putting in an order with this nail polish shop and was trying to fill up my cart with more than one item to justify the shipping. I got the NYC Ballet collection from OPI and decided to get Fairy Dust from China Glaze since I like sparkly top coats. I was about to check out when I saw a polish called Holographic Glitter by Nubar. I'd never heard of it before and went on google to see if I could find swatches. It's not very popular and I only found one shot of the polish on someone's nails. It was an opaque holographic glitter and I was super excited! I ordered it as well, and checked out thinking I'd finally got myself a nice holo polish.

They arrived this past week and....I was surprised, to put it very lightly. In the bottle, Fairy Dust and Holographic Glitter look like dupes! Argh!!! If I'd bought them on purpose to compare I wouldn't be so upset, but I thought I was getting a glitter top coat and a holographic polish. Instead I got what looked like two holo top coats. Damn!

It wasn't until two days ago that I took a closer look at the two bottles and made a discovery. Holographic Glitter has a denser concentration of glitter and it also appears to be almost linear. Fairy Dust, on the other hand, has much less glitter and they appear to be random. Maybe I didn't make a mistake?

Here's a picture of the two bottles side by side.

I looked carefully at the bottles and you can see the glitter is more random and sparse in the China Glaze than in the Nubar. Here are some closer bottle shots.

You can see that while Fairy Dust has a lot of sparkle, the glitter is random and there's not that much in the clear base colour.

You can see in Holographic glitter than it's almost linear, the way the rainbow lines up in the bottle.

Now, how do they compare on the nail? Time to test! (You can click on the photos to enlarge them!)

Here they are at one coat. Holographic Glitter is on my thumb and Fairy Dust on my index. Please excuse the stains on my nails. A horrible red seeped through my base coat and ruined them. At one coat I would say they are about the same. Holographic Glitter may have a bit more glitter and sparkle, but at one shade it's not a big difference.

At two coats you start to see a difference. Holographic Glitter is much more dense and really covering up a lot of the nail. Fairy Dust doesn't look much different at two coats than it did at one.

Here we have it at three coats. Holographic Glitter is quite dense and is beginning to cover up the nail line. Fairy Dust is still very sheer and looks more like Holographic Glitter at one to two coats.

Here they are at four coats. My nail line is no longer really visible with Holographic Glitter, but still very easily seen with Fairy Dust. Below I have a closer look at each nail.

Holographic Glitter at 4 coats. It's not a true linear holo, but it is quite nice and rainbows flash across your nails. I might try wearing this with a silver base coat or maybe one with a pearly or dark finish. I'm sure that would make the glitter show even more fire.

Fairy Dust is just a top coat. I think it would take more than 10 coats to bring it anywhere close to the opacity of Holographic Glitter. I don't mind though, since I originally bought this just to add some extra sparkle to my manicures.

In the end, I'm fairly happy with both of them. I'm not sure how often I'll use Holographic Glitter, but it's an interesting addition to my collection! I got both of them online through Rakuten, for those in Japan who are interested.

Final Verdict: Not Dupes