Here’s my review on Nubar Nail Polish, as I just received an order from them today. Here are the colors that I ordered, plus the free top coat they sent.

From left to right: Top Coat, Gold Leaf, Copper to Flamingo Pink, Blue Violet to Sky Blue.

Product Selling Points – Free of some chemicals.
Formaldehyde FREE
Toluene FREE
Phthalate Free (DBP)
Now, I don’t think their Moodies line is 3 free, but the rest of their nail polish quit clearly states that they are free of those chemicals. This is a good thing.

Pricing – Ok
Nubar’s pricing is similar to what you’d pay for China Glaze or Finger Paints if you didn’t get a discount. I have a Sally’s Card and frequently China Glaze and Finger Paints are on sale, so I end up paying way less. Nubar is about $6.99 a bottle.

Shipping – Expensive
For 1 bottle of nail polish it is $7.42 (UPS Ground)
For 1 bottle of nail polish it is $80.75 (UPS Next Day Air)
Incidentally, they only offer 2 options for shipping.

For the 3 bottles I ordered, I paid $7.50 for my shipping. If I had ordered just 1 bottle it would have been $7.42.

That’s more expensive than any other site I order from online.

Packaging – Odd
The package I received from Nubar came in a box. The box was definitely worse for the wear and coated in tape. I wasn’t sure if they’d used the box previously or what, but I’ve not usually received a box coated in packing tape from another company before.

My nail polish was safe amidst the packing peanuts, inside another box. To my surprise, they had included a free bottle of their Diamont Seal and Shine Top Coat. This made the cost of the shipping not so bad to me, however I don’t know if they do this with every order or not.

Website – Lacking
I’ll admit it. I’m spoiled. Aromaleigh and Meow cosmetics, and even MAC, give amazingly accurate color descriptions of products on their website. I find this to be indispensible when ordering online. If I read a color description on Aromaleigh’s website but I’m unsure if I’ll like the product based on the swatch, if I like the description, I order it regardless.

Nubar’s website lacks descriptions of the colors. While is does have good pictures of the products, since not all monitors are true to color, this makes it difficult to discern if you will like a color or not.

It’s funny, if you click on an individual product it does have a description section, but that section doesn’t normally give you the product color description, or finish. I.e. it doesn’t tell you if it’s a cream, shimmer, glitter, etc.

In fact, most of the product descriptions are lacking. I looked at the HJBI HolidayJewel Basket, but it doesn’t even tell you which 3 colors come with the basket and I couldn’t figure out what color the Non-Red or Non-Gold color was. Nor could I figure out which polish the Gold one was so that if I liked it, I could order it separately. It basically kept me from ordering that basket at all!

Customer Service – Lacking
I placed an order on their site on Nov. 21. I didn’t receive it until Dec. 1. My order status on their site never changed. I sent them an email on Nov. 25, I never got a response back. On Nov. 26 I called them at 8 am California time (11 am my time). I got what sounded like an answering machine and I left a message. By 2 pm my time I still hadn’t received a call back, so I called again. I got a lady on the phone that said that she’d check on the status of my order for me. She said I wouldn’t receive it until December 1st, which surprised me, but I did realize there was a holiday weekend and all. She said that she was getting ready to send me an email, put me on hold, and that the email had been sent. I checked my sent mail and my spam folder (as I use Gmail, usually only spam gets sent to the junk folder), no email there. I never received a reply back to the email I sent. The woman on the phone was borderline rude, and sounded irritated that I was calling at all.

I was disappointed at the company for their crappy customer service. Not returning an email or a phone call is really bad in my eyes. Now granted, I’m the Executive of Customer Service at the company I work for. I make sure that my employees return phone calls and email customers back. So I know I’m very picky in the sort of customer service that I receive. I also know that by not calling a customer back or by emailing them back, you’re likely to lose business.

Colors – Blue Violet to Sky Blue, Copper to Flamingo Pink, Gold Leaf
I really wanted to try Gold Leaf, because it looked just gorgeous. Here are my descriptions for the colors, since the website itself doesn’t have any.
Gold Leaf – a complex, shimmery color with copper, bronze and gold. It’s a beautiful color.
Blue Violet to Sky Blue – a shimmer color with blue violet and sky blue. On me it stays a uniform color with sky blue highlights and violet lowlights.
Copper to Flamingo Pink – this appears to be a copper color in the bottle with gold highlights. On me it stays a uniform copper shade with a hint of pink.

The colors seem to be very true to what’s in the bottle being what you see on your nails, at least to me. However, the colors of the bottle on the website are NOT true to to what I see in the bottle, at least for me. Please excuse my nails as I rushed to paint them for this review.

Here is Gold Leaf from the Website:

Here is Gold Leaf from me:

Here is Blue Violet to Sky Blue from the Website:

Here is Blue Violet to Sky Blue from Me:

The website is WAY darker on this one!

Here is Copper to Flamingo Pink from the Website:

Here is Copper to Flamingo Pink from Me:

The Flamingo pink is more prominent on the website and all but missing from the version I have.

Here are my nails inside:
(from Left to Right: Gold Leaf, Copper to Flamingo Pink, Blue Violet to Sky Blue)

Here are my nails outside:
(from Left to Right: Gold Leaf, Copper to Flamingo Pink, Blue Violet to Sky Blue)

Quality – So Far, Very Good
Now, I’ve only had these colors to play with for a day. I put on the 3 colors on 3 different nails. I used my Orly Bonder Base coat as usual, and then added 2 coats of color, followed by Nubar’s Diamont Seal and Shine Top coat. I let the colors dry. Then I took my nails from my other hand and pressed into the polished nails, to see if I could dent or scratch the color. It didn’t budge.

I’m disappointed with the Moodies. I forgot that color changing products don’t work well on me.
Here’s what their ad promises:

So I sort of expected that the color on my nail bed would be different than the color on my nail tips. Instead, I have a uniform color, though my nails are not very long. The girl in the ad’s nails are very distinct with their change. I’m also really disappointed that the copper color isn’t a bit more pink.

I’m not disappointed with Gold Leaf at all. It is perfect and exactly what I wanted. I think it’s a gorgeous color.

Repurchase? Recommend?
Would I buy from Nubar again? This is a tough call. You can only purchase Nubar through their website. They’re slow to ship and they only offer two shipping options, one of which I think is outrageous for the price. They lack color descriptions for their product and item descriptions, so you can’t tell if their products are cream, shimmer, etc. Their customer service is lacking. However, I think their product seems to be pretty good.

I will likely only order again if I can be 95% certain I will love the color, the way I was certain I would love Gold Leaf, and if I didn’t mind the slow shipping.

I would only recommend Nubar to someone if they were certain that they would love the color they were interested in. I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise. I would probably recommend China Glaze or Finger Paints as they’re less expensive, still good quality, and easier to find to purchase.