Of Life and Lacquer

Get ready for a picture heavy post! I woke up super early this lovely Saturday morning so I ended up taking advantage of it by swatching the rest of this collection. I was up at 5:00 am, but not by choice. You see, I woke up to the loud noises of my brother throwing up in the bathroom. At this point I am not sure if he was sick or if he was drunk, but I am annoyed that he was vomiting in the bathroom sink. Who does that? If that’s all clogged up, I am going to be beyond pissed at him for being such an idiot. Ok, so after I wrote this, my brother wandered out of his room at 4:30 pm looking like death. He is saying that he got food poisoning. Uhm, yeah…if by food he means a lot of cheap beer. Maybe he does have food poisoning, and I shouldn’t be such a betch.

Anyway, back to the polish! Since I had so much extra time that I would have spent in dream lala land, I was able to finish up my swatches and start working on this post. I probably wouldn’t have gotten it done until sometime next week without today’s inconvenience so yay for not sleeping. Enough blabbering–let’s move on to the swatches for the OPI Mariah Carey Holiday Collection!

If you want a staple red, OPI All I Want For Christmas (Is OPI) will fit the bill. It’s a nice and pigmented red that can be a one-coater if you’re careful with your application. There’s nothing too exciting about this color but it is a nice and shiny creme.

I keep thinking of chestnuts when I see OPI Visions Of Love–probably because I would call this a maroon color and chestnuts in French are marrons. Pretty logical, I guess but I’m just weird. I really like this polish because it has a squishy jelly quality to it. The formula was nice but it’s easy to have seer patches which you can kind of see in my swatches.

OPI Sleigh Ride For Two reminds me a lot of Essie Sable Collar–maybe with just a little more red in it. The shimmer in this one is much more apparent in real life so it’s sad that my pictures don’t show it very well. I applied 2 coats for my swatches above and a generous coat of Seche to make it extra shiny.

OPI calls this a spiced coffee hue, and I can totally see that. OPI Warm Me Up is one of those kind of ugly but kind of pretty colors. The base color is interesting and the shimmer isn’t super visible, but somehow it makes it look a little brushstroke-y. Is that weird? Anyway, this polish is super pigmented so you will only need two thin coats for full opacity.

OPI Cute Little Vixen is a nice magenta shimmer. Formula is nice. Not much else to say about it.

The color that is most typical when it comes to Christmas is this red shimmer. OPI In My Santa Suit is the perfect Santa red. 2 coats and voilà!

I absolutely love the look of OPI Underneath The Mistletoe because it has a jelly base and the red is dark and gorgeous with delicate scattered glitter. It just makes me sad that I wasn’t able to capture how pretty this is in my pictures. The first coat seems a little sheer, but it looks perfect at two coats.

Circle glitter lovers rejoice! OPI I Snow You Love Me is made up of large holographic circle glitter that magically doesn’t curl. No taco time here, thank you very much. Since the glitter is so large, you would get best results by picking the glitter from the clear base and applying them with a dotting tool or toothpick. Otherwise you will get TONS of clear base and not too many glitters. Here I applied OPI I Snow You Love Me over Underneath The Mistletoe.

I know V would go gaga over this as usual. OPI All The Sparkly And Gold is literally ALL THE SPARKLY AND GOLD. hahaha This is a very fine glitter that is super easy to control for painless application. It’s nearly opaque at one coat but it does need two coats for complete coverage.

OPI My Favorite Ornament is more of a champagne color fine glitter. It has the same formula as All The Sparkly And Gold which means that the base is super dense with glitter. The only complaint here would be that it gets EVERRYWHERE when you try to remove it.

And here we have the latest in cracked pepper chic. OPI Wonderous Star is such a strange, but kind of cool polish. I really like the black glitter in this polish but the base is kinda meh. Overall, I think they work really well together.

Last but not least, we have OPI Ski Slope Sweetie. I don’t know what to think about this polish. It’s like a weird iridescent polish that I thought would work for layering over other colors. However, I think it’s too thick for that so I prefer to wear it on its own. You will need two coats to get full coverage.

So what do I think about this collection overall? When I first saw the promo images, I thought it looked totally boring because it was RED OVERLOAD. Now that I have gotten a chance to swatch these, there really are only 3 true reds in this collection which is kind of normal considering this is a holiday collection. While not all of these polishes are very unique, there are some good staple colors and others that are just super different. I’m not like in love with this collection, but I can see its appeal for those who don’t have a million versions of these colors. If I had to pick favorites, they would have to be Visions Of Love, Underneath The Mistletoe and I Snow You Love Me. I have already reviewed the other part of this collection which has all the Liquid Sands so you can check it out here. Let me know what you think of this collection now that you have seen it in its entirety. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I hope you’re having a nice weekend!

Mariah Carey Holiday nail lacquer shades each feature OPI’s exclusive ProWide™ Brush for the ultimate in application. Liquid Sand nail lacquers should always be worn without top coat. Mariah Carey Holiday is available now at Professional Salons, including Beauty Brands, Beauty First, Chatters, Dillard’s, jcp Salons, Pure Beauty, Regis, Trade Secret, ULTA and ulta.com for $9.00 ($10.95 CAN) suggested retail for each nail lacquer. For more information, please call 800-341-9999 or visit www.opi.com. Follow OPI on Twitter @OPI_PRODUCTS and become a Facebook fan!