Tag: OPI

Of Life and Lacquer > OPI

Ho-hum

Posted on by Cynthia

I’ve been feeling kinda blah lately. Nothing is really wrong, I’ve just been dealing with the vivid dreams side-effect of my meds. It’s really hard to get a good night’s sleep because I wake up so many dang times during the night freaking out about my stupid dreams.The last time I talked to my doctors about this, they suggested that I try to “take control of my dreams.” WTF. If I could do that, of course I would do it. Anyway…I hope this goes away soon because my dreams are centered around all my insecurities which really sucks.

Today I went to my nail supply place and picked up a couple of China Glaze glitters which I am loving because one is super bright orange and the other is super bright green. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE! I also bought some fake eyelashes because I want to try wearing them. My lashes are so yucky and I hate wearing mascara. Let’s see how long this fake lash thing lasts. I also found out that my nail place carries Konad stuff. Great…more crap to waste money on. I ended up getting two new plates for $5.00 each. I usually buy my plates on amazon.com, but I noticed that the prices have gone up about $1-$1.50 per plate!!!! I used to be able to get them for $2.50-$3 (plus s&h) so now they are a better deal at $5. I’ve done my nails a couple of times since my last post but I wasn’t feeling like posting much.

Today I did my nails with OPI’s Romeo and Joliet. I like it but it’s not one of my favorites.

I used one of my new plates for this cute star pattern. Overall, I like the contrast.

Suzi Says Whaaaaaaat?

Posted on by Cynthia

I know I’m not the only one who thinks the whole Suzi thing in OPI polish names is kinda lame. Maybe if I was Artistic Director of a nail polish company, I’d name polishes after myself too! But in all honesty, how awesome does her job sound?

Today I was messing around with a bunch of colors. I have all of my polishes on an excel spreadsheet and wanted to start marking those that I have already swatched. I should have done this from the beginning, but I didn’t think I was going to really keep blogging about nails for long. I am the queen of starting stuff and then just giving up. That is one of the things I really hate about myself so I am glad that I’m still totally excited about doing it. I’d have to say that I am really loving the interactions with other bloggers so thanks to all the wonderful ladies who constantly visit my blog and most importantly, comment! Sometimes I look at my stats and see that a couple hundred people have visited my blog but not many comment. I wonder if I’m not engaging enough or if maybe they just didn’t like my swatches. Now I am just coming to the realization that a very small minority comment and that’s fine with me. I’m not doing this because I want validation; I just think it’s fun and as long as it continues to be fun, I will keep doing it.

I ended up painting my nails with Suzi Says Feng Shui from the Spring 2010 Hong Kong Collection. Why?! Why?????!!!!!!!!!! Why are there so many gorgeous colors out there? It’s blue, smokey and a creme. What else could I ask for?

 

Here is the color with a houndstooth pattern stamp from Konad plate M63. I hate it when my stamping looks sloppy, but I was in a rush because I was cooking dinner! Who said doing your nails and cooking at the same time would be a good idea?

 

I kinda really love the way this looks. Now I’m starting to plan my manicure for Saturday. I have to go to a baby shower on Saturday, but I will also be going to see The Hunger Games afterwards with my best friend. FUDGE! I can’t go to a baby shower with crazy dark nails and I can’t go to see The Hunger Games with pastel baby shower nails. What to do…what to do!? Any ideas will be happily welcomed.

OPI NYC Ballet Polishes SUCK

Posted on by Cynthia

I should say that I only bought two of the polishes and I have two too many at this point. I knew that these polishes are not meant to be opaque so I steered clear of all the pinks and picked up My Pointe Exactly. It kind of looked like a sheer version of French Quarter For Your Thoughts so I figured it would be ok. Well, it isn’t. This color is disgusting. It basically looks like clear polish on your nails after one coat. I added a second and it looked streaky. I added a third and it started to look a little gray. Fourth coat, fifth coat and it still looked streaky and was not opaque. I took off the gross layers and went for a three coat look and this was the result:

Yuck! What’s the point of wearing nail polish if it’s going to look like this?!?!?!?! I took the glitter of this collection, Pirouette My Whistle, and layered one coat of it.

I still think this is gross. One of my lovely readers from Two Lacquered Girls asked me if Pirouette My Whistle was the same as Servin’ Up Sparkle so I used them side by side. I used Servin’ Up Sparkle on the middle finger and Pirouette My Whistle on the two outer fingers. As you can see, it’s the same exact glitter shape except that Servin’ Up Sparkle is holographic and Pirouette My Whistle is just white and silver. The base colors also differ. Servin’ Up Sparkle has a clear base and Pirouette My Whistle is in a milky gray base. Here are some bottle shots:

There is no way that I am going to buy anymore colors from this collection. I should have stuck with my initial impression when I saw the press release and passed on this collection altogether.  What about you? Do you want any colors from this collection?

P.S. After my previous post about gross nails and stuff, I want to apologize about my super dry skin. I totally forgot to moisturize so I know my skin looks dry like the Sahara. 🙁

Saint Patrick’s Day Nail Looks

Posted on by Cynthia

I wasn’t really planning to do any Saint Patrick’s Day nails on myself, but after I did my sister-in-law’s nails I felt inspired. She went to a SPD party so she wanted something fun. This is how her nails turned out:

Cute, right?

I obviously also went the green route. I started off with China Glaze Gaga For Green as my base color.

Then I used Color Club Holiday Splendor for the chevron design on my tips.

I should have left it at that, but then I decided to add a shamrock sticker and rhinestones.

Then I thought to myself that the rhinestones looked pretty tacky so I pried them off. Unfortunately, this left a ding on my nails.

And because it bothered me that I could still see where the rhinestones used to be, I then tried to cover it up with glitter.

So by this point, I thought that my nails looked pretty gross and just took everything off and started all over.

This was my final look. I used OPI Mermaid Tears as the base color and Color Club Holiday Splendor for the chevron tips. I used only one design on my accent nail and I was pleased with the way they turned out.

I had a nice SPD after all! I went to dinner with two friends whom I have known since we were kids. After we stuffed ourselves as Lucille’s BBQ, we went to a karaoke lounge and sang all the embarrassing songs that we could think of. Ahhh…it was a lot of fun.

How did you spend SPD? Did you sport any fun and festive nail designs?

 

Look Carefully Before You Purchase

Posted on by Cynthia

I learned a lesson today: don’t get so excited when you see nail polish you want that you neglect to look at the bottles closely. I was excited to check out the new OPI New York Ballet Collection in person but when I saw the Jessica display next to it, I squealed. I grabbed the three Jessica polishes that are the dupes of Chanel’s Fall 2011 line and picked up two OPI bottles. Well, when I got home I realized that I took two bottles of the same polish from the Jessica display so I’m missing one of the trio. Thankfully, my nail polish place told me I could exchange it so I’m heading over there tomorrow. So yeah, I’m retarded.

 

So this is what I got today:

OPI: Pirouette My Whistle and My Pointe Exactly

Jessica: Smoky Feather and Iridescent Eye

 

I’ll swatch these sometime soon. Aren’t they pretty?!

Color Club Back To Boho Part 2

Posted on by Cynthia

I spaced out and realized I didn’t get around to posting the other half of this collection. I actually much prefer this other half because I find the colors more interesting. This is an older collection from Fall 2011 but it’s still really nice in my opinion. Some of these colors don’t scream Fall to me so I’d still use them any time. Enjoy the swatches!

Nomadic In Nude is just such a weird color. It’s like a putty color that just reminds me of a corpse. Yeah, how’s that for morbid? This color was such a pain in the ass that I don’t know if I am really excited about wearing it again. I mean, it’s not really a color that I would normally gravitate towards and when you add the problematic formula, forget it! I had to apply 4 coats to make it look somewhat smooth and even then it still looked a little bumpy. A coat of Seche Vite helped to even it out a bit.

Earthy Angel is the perfect café au lait color. This is not a color that I would have picked up in my earlier days of nail polish obsession, but I’m definitely starting to like nude colors more and more. It has a decent formula and I thought it was going to be fine with two coats. However, once I looked at my nails more closely, I noticed some bald spots where the polish dragged. It looked pretty good with the third coat. I knew this color would be the perfect matte mannequin manicure polish so I applied a coat of Essie Matte About You.

Not satisfied, I applied a coat of glitter to see what it would look like. Here it is with OPI Servin’ Up Sparkle from the Serena Williams Collection.

And finally I mattified it–glitter and all.

I really like this look!

New Bohemian was unexpected for a Fall collection. It’s definitely a spring color for me. It was a lot more sheer than I expected so it took 3 coats for full opacity. I really love this color but it’s such a common color now that it’s not that exciting. I immediately wondered how close this would be to China Glaze’s For Audrey so I swatched them side by side.

It may be a little difficult to tell from these pictures, but these are not exact dupes. They are definitely close but you can tell that For Audrey is brighter with more blue while New Bohemian has more green in it. Do you need both? Probably not. But you know me…there’s never enough polish.

Shabby Drab kind of reminded me of China Glaze’s Secret Peri-wink-le but it photographs so purple. It was pretty sheer but the color was buildable without any issues. It’s a dusty lavander periwinkle color that I really liked in this collection.

This color is right up my alley. Rad Monad is one of those purple, taupe, gray, beige mixes that are ever present now. Remember when Metro Chic started a frenzy? This was super pigmented and only required two coats.

Lastly here is Red-ical Gypsy. I don’t have much to say about this color. It’s nice. It’s dark with some magenta/berry in it. Very saturated and only needed two coats.

These colors should be readily available in case you’re interested in getting any of them. Ross continues to carry these collection sets for $7.99 so keep an eye out for them if you’re looking for a good deal.

Rainy Day Konadicure

Posted on by Cynthia

I noticed today that I haven’t been giving my Konad plates much love lately so I picked a design from one of the plates I ordered recently. Then I had to decide what colors to use. What a dilemma. Well, I ended up using OPI’s Yoga-ta Get This Blue! with Konad’s special white polish.

First of all, I’ve got to show you how gorgeous Yoga-ta Get This Blue! is. It’s dark blue and shimmery and one of those perfect formula polishes. This is definitely the star of OPI’s India Collection from Spring 2008.

 

And here it is with a designe from the M79 Konad plate:

 

I’m really diggin’ this combination and strangely it suits my mood with all this rain outside. Weird.

OPI Holland Collection Part 2

Posted on by Cynthia

Yesterday I found out that I was able to score some polishes from the Holland Collection a month early because my beauty supply place had put them out by mistake. Ooopsies. I previously picked up 6 colors and now I went back to look at the others that didn’t catch my attention right away. I purchased three of the cremes and passed on Thanks A WindMillion, Pedal Faster Suzi! and Did You ‘ear About Van Gogh? for now.

Kiss Me On My Tulips is such a pretty hot pink. Yeah, I probably have a million dupes of this, but the formula was ah-mazing! I mean, it was like butter and was perfect with two coats. Plus, is there anything more gorgeous than a beautiful creme with a shiny topcoat? It’s like patent leather if Hello Kitty ruled the world. Maybe it’s just me, but this is not the color I think of when I imagine Tulips. Even though I know it’s a pun on lips and Holland being known for tulips (of all colors), all I can think of is fields of red tulips.

A Roll In The Hague is a color that I probably wouldn’t have gravitated towards in the past, but I am totally diggin’ these orange colors. It’s almost neon. Again, the formula on this one was gorgeous and smooth. The only problem I have with it is that it stains like a mofo. You can see some of the residue on the swatches for the next polish even though I used pure acetone for removal. I haven’t done a side-by-side comparison, but this looks like a pretty darn close dupe for Essie’s Orange, It’s Obvious!

Red Lights Ahead…Where? is also a dream to apply but the color is just…meh. I mean, it’s not really exciting but it’s pretty enough.

So what do you think of these colors? Are you going to get any colors from OPI’s Holland Collection?

OPI – Do You Lilac It?

Posted on by Cynthia

I love purple. I love every shade and variation of purple. Sometimes, I look like a deranged Barney with my purple make-up, purple glasses, purple clothes, purple shoes, etc..

Anyway, this is an old nail polish color that I had admired but never picked up…probably because I am on purple polish overload. I saw it on my last trip to my nail polish supply place so I just grabbed it on impulse. It’s actually a really beautiful color, but I am sure that I have similar colors. I’m still glad I got it.  (Nail polish addict denial)

Bisous mes chéris et à bientôt!

New Polish

Posted on by Cynthia

Sorry for this crappy iphone picture but I wanted to share the new polishes I acquired recently. The 4 at the front are from new collections for Spring 2012: Nubar Jellybeans and Essie Navigate Her. My usual nail polish place had the whole Jellybeans collection but I only got three of them because I wanted to try the formula first. If I like it, there are a few other colors that I will probably pick up.

The other polishes in the back are older colors from China Glaze and OPI’s Do You Lilac It? How could I not have this color yet?????

Nubar: Blue Rasberry, Kiwi, Toasted Marshmallow; Essie: Orange, It’s Obvious!

OPI: Do You Lilac It?; China Glaze: Fuchsia Fanatic, Papaya Punch, Italian Red, Paper Chasing, The Ten Man

Is it weird that I had a dream about nail polish? I swear I was having dreams about swimming in bottles of nail polish à la Uncle Scrooge:

(Go to the :18 mark)

Unfortunately, this is probably what would happen to me instead:

 

C’mon! I wasn’t the only one who watched Duck Tales religiously…and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers…and Tale Spin. Ok, I’m a geek. So back to nail polish.

I also wanted to share this video that I recently came across on youtube. Her youtube name is PlasmaSpeedo and she does really cool nail designs.

If you are a nail polish afficionado, you know that you have uttered many or all of these phrases…repeatedly.

Thanks for stopping by and reading all my incoherent ramblings.

Bisous mes chéris et à bientôt!