I’m embarrassed to admit I paid $18 for NARS Zulu. It was a cult favorite, a legend among nail polishes, and I grabbed a bottle when it was re-issued. I’m….not impressed. It’s certainly not a bad color, but it is such a dark green jelly that it looks black in most lights. It is streaky and prone to getting baldy spots if not carefully applied. This was 3 coats but I should have done a fourth. Yikes.
This is looking very green since the photo is flooded with light, but it does appear almost black in most indoor situations. Kind of murky and intriguing but not $18 worth.
I played around with it and added some MAC Reflects Pearl glitter…and got something that looks an awful lot like China Glaze Emerald Sparkle (which at $3, is 1/6 the price of the NARS and still has a superior formula.)
This looked hopelessy Christmas-like, so I used one of my Fauxnads to stamp a leaf pattern on it in hopes that it would look like a jungle rather than a really early Christmas manicure.
Oh well, you can’t win them all. The Zulu wasn’t bad, but for $18 it should be something outrageously special. I got the Zulu and its blue version, Midnight Express, but I think I’m done with NARS after this.
NeverTooMuchGlitter Nail Wonderland 
I bought two bottles! You really can’t tell how dark it is till you use it. On the blogs it’s flooded with light and looks to be the perfect deep green. Jeez! I also bought a few more bottles of polish. I haven’t been back to the web site since. One things the blogs do is get you sucked in to all the hype of these type of polishes. It’s tought to resist buying everything I see. I love the stamp motif. It’s gorgeous.
I like the color as it appears on your blog. It’s sad that it doesn’t really look like this. Is there anyway you can create a concoction that mimics our hopes for the color?
Yeah, it needs it’s own direct lighting and photographer to look good! Otherwise it is a murky shade. Hmm, maybe I can mess around with it a bit. The tricky part is changing the color substantially while still maintaining the jelly look. It needs to have another jelly added to it. There’s a green jelly Nfu Oh polish which shows its true green side a bit better, All Lacquered Up has photos of it here: http://www.alllacqueredup.com/2010/08/putting-nfu-oh-test-notd-568-56.html
the trick to getting this color to look like it does in online photos is to add a bit of clear polish (not topcoat or basecoat, just clear polish).
this 1) lightens it up a bit and 2) makes the consistency more workable, so that two coats gives you an EVEN color and you don’t need a third one (which darkens the color too much). just make sure to choose a clear polish that has a consistency you like.
i did this with both zulu AND midnight express, and it’s such a simple fix that produces great results.