OPI Not Like The Movies

Essie Winter 2012 Collection Swatches and Review

Huzzah! My first full collection review! Swatching is hard! Anywho, here's Essie Winter 2012 (or, the Leading Lady Collection. Not sure which is official. The display says Winter 2012):

Beyond Cozy is an antiqued silver micro glitter in a clear base. Super dense, it only took two coats to be completely opaque. Since it's so opaque, it's not the best layering polish. It totally overtakes the base color you layer it over. Super pretty.

Butler Please is medium blue creme. This one was hard to capture. It's got a bit of purple in it, but it's not blurple. It's also slightly dusty. It dried to a satin finish, so perhaps there's some neon pigment in there, too. I used top coat to make it shiny. Three coats.

Leading Lady is a red glitter in a red base. It looks a little pink to me, so it's a raspberry red. Two coats. You can see my comparison between this and Ruby Slippers here. If you have Ruby Slippers, you probably don't need this.

She's Pampered is a pink-leaning red jelly-creme hybrid. I love this. It's totally appropriate for winter. Two coats.

Snap Happy is a tomato red-orange jelly-creme hybrid. Hot damn, this is awesome. It's so bright and squishy. Three coats.

Where's My Chauffeur is an aqua creme. Leans blue. Way gorgeous. It changes in different light, hence millions of pictures. Three coats.

The formula on these were amazing. The cremes flowed wonderfully, spread evenly, and were not streaky. The jelly-cremes applied like butter. The glitters were opaque and not lumpy. They are thick though, so you may have to thin them after each use.

I really love this collection. It doesn't feel totally "winter" to me, but I think it works. The vampy and jewel-toned colors that usually saturate winter collection start to get repetitive after a while. If I was forced to pick only two, I'd go with Beyond Cozy and Snap Happy, with She's Pampered as the runner-up.

I found these at the brand-new City Target (seriously, that's what it's called) in the Chicago Loop, so I don't know what the availability of the collection is at this time. I haven't seen it anywhere else yet, nor have I heard of anyone finding it yet.

I'm planning a comparison post within the next couple days, so feel free to make requests on anything you'd like to see! Thanks for reading!

OPI Save Me

One coat over...a pink. Sorry, I don't remember at all. Anyway, Save Me is a bar glitter and it's totally awesome.

The name "Save Me" is quite appropriate because I've been totally bummed lately. You guys, the NHL is locked out right now. Only preseason games have been cancelled at the moment, but things are not looking good. I don't know HOW I'm going to get through the winter. (Sidebar: I hate snow, cold, and weather in general.) I hope we will at least get a shortened season, which would be better than nothing at all.

Nicole by OPI Make A Comet-ment

2 coats of holo glitter blingy goodness.

Essie Glass Slipper

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that this was 3 coats. Yeahhhh. It's a frosty white with silver glitter. I'm not too thrilled about it but it's an older Essie, so when you think about it, this was unique and edgy. These pictures bore me but I'm not sure if I can part with it yet.

Random thought: Do you ever get really sad when you finish eating your bagel?

Not so random thought: Today is my last day of school EVER, yay! This means more posts! I don't have a job right now so there might be A LOT of posts :] I'm really excite to be able to focus on the blog more.

China Glaze Haunting

2 coats. Formula was good. It went on slightly sheerer than expected with the first coat, but then I realized it was a black polish and everything was opaque after coat 2. You can feel some texture (it is glitter after all), but it's not top coat hungry, so one coat of a thicker top coat should suffice.

Haunting was released this past Halloween. It's similar to Orly Goth in that it's black with silver glitter, but the glitter is more dense in Haunting.

Honestly, I don't really care for this. It doesn't wow me. I've been noticing that I'm not really digging blackened colors in general. I have Nicole by OPI I'm a Pool for Love on my toes and I don't like that one either. I'm sure there are probably some exceptions in my collection somewhere, but I usually like my polish to be bright and in your face - not to say I don't like darker colors, but I don't want to have to explain to someone "Oh this is red, it's just so dark that it looks black all the time..." because if I want to wear black polish, I will. If I want red, I want RED... Ok, this turned into kind of a crazy rant. Simply put, I'm going to purge Haunting.

I did a funky french a few days later to cover tipwear...yeah. Doesn't look so hot. I used China Glaze Millennium for the tips. And I freehanded them. Good in theory, but I think I painted the tips on a little too thick.

Sally Hansen CSM Pedal to the Metal

2 coats.

China Glaze Party Hearty

 1 coat over Essie Funky Limelight

Check out the awesome reflection!

Zoya Trixie & China Glaze Fairy Dust

2 coats Trixie
1 coat Fairy Dust

So shiny!

OPI Crown Me Already

1 coat over Orly Retro Red

Nfu Oh 61

Hope nobody in Chicago melted over the past two days. The thunderstorm last night was way cool, though. Some of that lighting was so bright, it lit up our entire room! On Tuesday, some friends and I went to the beach (I know, are we nuts or what? It was about 100 degrees) and I figured it was a perfect time to pull out a holo.

This is Nfu Oh 61, a silver linear holo. I used one coat of Nfu Oh Aqua Base underneath this to make application smoother. I then applied two coats of 61 and China Glaze Fast Forward top coat. The TC seemed to have killed the holo a bit, so I added another coat of 61. I had minimal patchiness and the polish dries very quickly. The manicure is pretty wrecked now because of the sand and water, but I also didn't use a normal base coat, so it's partially my fault.

You can buy these at fabuloustreet.com. Nfu Oh's are $12.50 a bottle, but there's free US shipping, so it evens out. The holos are a hot commodity, though, so they're usually not in stock, and when they are, they sell out fast. Nfu Oh makes lots of other great polishes though, including flakies and jellies. Those will have to wait for another post.
Edit! Awesome bottle pic: