OPI Muppets – Rainbow Connection

Last winter, as I was cruising my favorite nail blogs, I remember coming across a very rough preview of the newest OPI Muppets collection. We’re talking rough. The pictures of the polishes were thumbnail size and only pixelized when I tried to zoom in. Even with all the polishes crammed into a 1″ photo…I knew that I was going to go gaga over this line. As more and more sneak-peeks and previews of the line started to surface, I started to drool over the amazing glitters, metallics, and Miss Piggy pinks that taunted me through my computer screen. The collection was released in stores a few weeks ago, but I resisted heading to my local BeautyFirst store because I wanted to wait until I hit my I-lost-30 lbs. mark and my I-cleaned-my-disgusting-apartment mark to treat myself to some new lacquers.

Lucky for me (and you), I hit those marks. Wahoo!!

After about 6 hours of cleaning on Saturday, my boyfriend and I headed to our nearby shopping plaza for a trip to Target…and BeautyFirst. He even came in the store with me (what a guy, right?). After months and months of anticipation, I could finally hold the bottles, shake them, and check them out in person. It. was. EXCITING! (unless. you. were. my. boyfriend!….then it was ridiculous.) As I waffled between what colors to buy, he was standing over my shoulder saying “Just buy it. Just buy it.” …because he really wanted me to treat myself…or…because he reaalllly wanted to leave the store. Either way, I left with two amazing colors.

The moment I saw pictures of the muppet glitters, I knew I’d have to get my hands on Rainbow Connection, an amazing rainbow glitter. As soon as I saw the bottle in person, it was a done deal. EASY-PEASY. Out of all of the glitters this collection has to offer, Rainbow Connection is certainly the most…5 year-old’s birthday party meets a 20-something’s New Year’s Eve. But don’t you dare get me wrong- I mean that in the BEST WAY POSSIBLE. I love glitter, so this polish is basically my dream come true. This polish indulges my inner 13-year-old Hot Topic shopper, but it also satiates this 23 year old who loves a sophisticated yet funky manicure. While Rainbow Connection is a Glitter polish (with a capital G), when worn over other colors or as an accent nail, it can certainly be made to look fun yet grown-up.

First, let’s look at this polish up close and personal. Let’s get all up in its grill. (yeah…I said it.)

Stop. Breathe. (I know it’s amazing, but you have to breathe!)

Seriously, though, it’s incredible.

Let’s talk about how dense this glitter is and how much you get in one bottle. Silver, gold, pink, blue, orange, yellow, green – round, hexagonal – small, medium, and large. It’s a party in a bottle.

The other thing I love about this glitter is that its base is absolutely clear. No gelly pink or blue or gray. Just clear. PURE GLITTER. (Heaven.) The clarity of the base makes it an easy layering polish (it will look the same over black as it will over white.)

My first reaction when I picked up the bottle was how closely I think it resembles Deborah Lippman’s Happy Birthday.  I say think because I don’t actually know how close it is. I’ve never seen DL’s rainbow glitter in person, and for $18 a pop, I never will. I may be a polish addict, but I’m not rich enough to be spending anything close to $18 on ONE bottle of polish. I find that price tag absurd. (Although one day, when this blog makes me millions of dollars, I might splurge on Deborah Lippmans. And $18 will still feel like a splurge – even though I’m a millionaire.)

When I was looking at the painted swatches at the store, I noticed that the polish was totally opaque. I’m not an idiot, though, so I asked the lady how many coats that took. She replied, “I think, like, six?”. It looked awesome, but six coats of glitter is a recipe for bad drying time and early chipping. And so, when I got home, I got to picking the color I would use for my base color. I originally wanted to go with silver, but since Rainbow Connection is so silver-heavy, I didn’t want to lose the glitter against a silver base. I went between a few other colors but eventually settled with my favorite navy blue, Roadhouse Blues from OPI’s Touring America collection. I wanted a dark color for the glitter to pop against, and I knew it would do the trick.

OPI - Rainbow Connection

Since I knew I’d use two coats of Rainbow Connection, I chose to paint just a single coat of Roadhouse Blues. It is, after all, just a base color. After the navy dried, I applied one coat of Rainbow Connection. I purposely chose not to slather it on but to apply a coat of average thickness so that I could get a sense of the density of the glitter. You guys, it was GLITTERY. My giddy self started to hold it up to the light to watch it sparkle right away. After a second coat, I was thrilled. The navy blue obviously shows through, and I’m interested to see how Rainbow Connection will look over a lighter color or even a metallic. However, the glitter is definitely the star in this mani. It is super dense and extremely metallic. This polish shines in any light, and it shines bright. The silver glitter is particularly sparkly, but the larger chunks of color definitely pop. I love that from a distance, my nails look like a solid color but close up, you can see all the individual colors and sizes of glitter.

I topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite and it was dry and ready to go in about seven minutes (not shabby for a glitter manicure!). About an hour later, I headed out to meet a good friend from college who I hadn’t seen in years. I met her on High Street, and even in the dark, she almost immediately noticed my nails. Ladies and gentlemen (probably not gentlemen), THAT is the effect of this polish. Even on a dark street, this manicure shines and sparkles. I love it. I LURV IT! (Lurv = when you love something so much that you distort the word whilst saying it. Think Kristin Wig as the Target Lady. She would definitely say LURV.)

I think that this polish will end up being an awesome accent nail and a great mani for any holiday party. It’s eye-catching, fun, and a definite shining star within the Muppets collection.

What’s your favorite glitter? Do you have a favorite from the new OPI Muppets collection?

Coming up next: another AMAZING Muppets color. I won’t tell you which one, but I will tell you that it’s freaking GORGEOUS! Get ready!

OPI – I Eat Mainely Lobster

*Before I begin this post, I would like to share this with you all: One of my friends pointed out to me that when I type ‘polish’ or ‘polish person’ or ‘polish addict,’ it looks like Polish (as in sausage and perogies) to him. I thought that was hilarious, and I thought you might, too. I encourage you to read this post pronouncing ‘polish’ as ‘Polish’ in your head. It’s ridiculous.

Today was awesome for a few reasons. Here they are:

1. I had a really amazing work out with my trainer, and I am mere pounds away from my summer goal! (woo!)

2. I helped move my younger brother into his new college dorm. (SO. WIERD.)

3. After we ate at the family picnic (and indulged in some delicious raspberry-chip ice cream from Graeters), we took a trip to Target to pick up a few extra items my brother needed…and Target is right next door to my favorite beauty store. So, naturally, I picked up a few shades I’ve been lusting after from the new OPI Touring America collection.

If I had an unlimited income, I would have bought every shade in the display. They are all so beautiful. However, I don’t have an unlimited income AND I got slapped with a bogus speeding ticket yesterday for going 33 in a 25 ($126! Thanks Columbus!). So, I had to limit my splurge to just two polishes. I decided to go with one of the brightest shades and one of the darkest shades in the group in order to get an idea of the true range of this collection. (Also, they were my two favorites…so that also helped my decision.)

I’m going to start by reviewing what I think is the only true “bright” in the bunch: I Eat Mainely Lobster. I think the title is misleading because this polish is nowhere near lobster red…or red at all, for that matter. It is actually closer to a Barbie pink with a splash of orange. We’ll call it Barbie Coral. It has just a hint of pink shimmer, which is different from the other creme shades in the collection. (The shimmer is basically impossible to see in the photo, but it’s there. I promise.)  I Eat Mainely Lobster is bright, fun, and it’s surprisingly summery for a fall collection! I think this was OPI’s attempt to give us the perfect transition shade between summer and fall, and they succeeded. The application on this polish was awesome (as usual), and it really only needed 2 coats for complete opacity. I had one or two nails that looked a little streaky, so I gave all of them a third coat (to be fair, obviously).

When I approach a polish display, I naturally gravitate towards blues, greens, or purples. I have never been much of ‘pink person,’ and I think I probably have less than five pinks in my whole polish collection. I’m very excited to add a pink that I really love and actually enjoy wearing to my stash, so thank you OPI!

*See?! I told you if you read ‘Polish’ instead of polish it’s ridiculous!!!

Essie – Smooth Sailing and OPI – Last Friday Night

After my last post on Essie and it’s effect on my ability to leave the drugstore without some serious splurging, I feel like I need to prove why I love it so much. (SO MUCH.)

This Essie shade is called Smooth Sailing, and it’s from Essie’s most recent Brazilliant collection. The collection consists of two orangey shades, two red/pink shades, one neutral, and THIS. I love this.

Essie- Smooth Sailing

This shade is like slate blue and periwinkle’s lovechild. Throw in the fact that this polish has a beautiful silver/aqua/purple shimmer to it (look at the bottle), and you’ve got yourselves a perfect polish. This is a color that was great for the summer, but I know I’ll be wearing this color all winter long. Smooth Sailing screams bikinis and ocean breeze just as much as it screams icicles and snowflakes. (Wow…typing out the word icicle really makes you think about what a strangely spelled word it is. Icicle. Icicle. …weird.) The consistency of this polish is a little thick for my liking, but the first coat goes on with little streaking and the second coat seals the deal.

Just for fun, I decided to throw a coat of OPI’s Last Friday Night from the Katy Perry collection on top of this Essie gem to see what the duo might look like. I originally bought Last Friday Night hoping that I’d be able to wear it alone, but the harsh reality set in that in order to make this glitter polish suitable for a solo-ride on my nails, I had to paint 3 or 4 coats of it. Any mani-maniac knows that 3 or more coats of glitter polish = premature chipping. Bummer. So, I accepted the fact that Last Friday Night will just have to do as a top coat. It occurred to me tonight that painting one coat over Smooth Sailing might be interesting, and here it is!

Essie - Smooth Sailing & OPI - Last Friday Night

The base of Last Friday Night is a translucent blue, so it’s not easily layered over shades that aren’t blue-ish. I think this combination works well because the blue base doesn’t interfere too much with Smooth Sailing‘s original shade. Last Friday Night‘s glitter style is typical of OPI – larger hexagonal glitter with micro shimmer in the background. This polish sparkles with pink, aqua, and blue, and I love it. The consistency is thick, but…duh. It’s glitter. This glitter reminds me of something you would see an olympic ice skater (man or woman, I suppose) wearing…but not on their nails. On their WHOLE costume. And they’d probably be skating to The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. (close your eyes and picture it…you’ll see what I mean.) I love this combination, and I’ll definitely be pairing these power-polishes again!

What are your favorite glitter polishes?

OPI – On Stranger Tides and Silver Shatter

I know that summer is the time to dig all of my brights out of the bottom of my nail polish drawer (*GASP* that’s right, I don’t have my polishes organized by color in nice, neat rows…they’re just crammed in a drawer) and display them proudly on my fingers and toes. Corals, neons, oranges, and even yellows are always summer favorites. However, this summer, as I approach the polish displays at my favorite stores, I’m finding that my eyes have been drawn to the more muted, dusty colors. Maybe I’m just getting ready for the fall lines that are starting to come out (like OPI’s Touring America Collection or Zoya’s Smoke and Mirrors Collection) which seem to be full of muted, dusty, subtle yet striking shades.

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I spent the evening moseying (what a great word) around Polaris Mall and lo and behold(!) the first store we passed was having a sale on all of their OPI shades! I guess they were going out of business (womp womp), but hey…how often do you get 30% off of brand new OPI colors? I obviously took advantage of this opportunity and snapped up two shades that I’ve been pining for since the Pirates of the Caribbean Collection debuted in the spring: On Stranger Tides and Silver Shatter. I have mixed feelings about the shatter craze, but we’ll save that rant for another day.

On Stranger Tides appeals to my recent love for muted colors and my equally serious love for greens. In the bottle, this shade looks more grey than green, but on my nails, it is definitely more green than grey. (Funny how that works, right?) This is a creme, so I expected a streaky application with some pulling. What I got, however, was a very smooth application with almost no pulling! The first coat was predictably streaky, but coat #2 took care of that. I topped it off with a third coat for good measure, and I was very excited about the result! I’d describe On Stranger Tides as a creamy pastel sage with a slight hint of grey. It reminds me of a color that you might find in the tablecloths or on antique furniture in a beautiful B&B in the countryside. My mother would call this color “shabby chic.”

OPI - On Stranger Tides

After On Stranger Tides dried, I couldn’t resist trying out my new Silver Shatter. I applied a medium-thick coat of silver shatter over each nail and watched as the polish separated. The application is easy, but you can’t forget to return the brush to the bottle as soon as you’re done with it. This polish dries FAST.  My past experience with OPI Black Shatter made me a little nervous about what the final outcome would look like. However, the silver shatter actually created a really beautiful, subtle effect. Unless I hold my nails inches from my eyeballs, I can hardly see the actual shatter lines. I only know they are there because I can see the sage coming through. From a reasonable distance, the end result of this pairing is a beautiful, frosty, pastel sage green. I love it. LOVE IT.

OPI - On Stranger Tides & Silver Shatter

What are your experiences with Silver Shatter? Any favorite pairings?