OPI Black Spotted

There's been quite a lot of talk of late about this polish online recently.  It was released as part of OPI's The Amazing Spider-Man collection but only in certain European countries (possibly just in France) and due to it's hard to find, limited edition nature bottles have been selling on eBay for up to £50.

When I saw swatches on The Swatchaholic I decided I had to have it, although a polish looking amazing on her blog means nothing, she manages to make all polish look incredible!  I wasn't willing to pay quite as much as £50 so, along with a few friends to split the postage costs, we ordered from Sephora's French site.  In total it cost just under £16 to have the polish delivered to my door.

Applied well this polish is pretty lovely, unfortunately it's hard to apply it well!

The key is VERY thin coats, the thinner the coat the more obvious the spotted effect is.  I found that the best way to get a thin enough coat was to completely scrape the brush against the side of the bottle until it appeared like there was no polish left on it at all and then apply.

The formula is thin and very watery, as you apply it to the nail it has an almost oily consisteny which immediately pools to create the spotted effect.  Reports suggest that it seems to work best over very dry polish so I covered the manicure I had on from yesterday in it to create this petrol on water sort of effect.

Clean up is difficult to say the least, Black Spotted doesn't seem to like nail varnish remover or acetone at all so it's best to be as neat as you can when applying it rather than relying on being able  to clean up mistakes afterwards.  I didn't realise this until after I'd applied it hence the rather sloppy edges show in these photos.

Another slight issue with Black Spotted is tip wear, as you can see in some of these photos my manicure is already sporting tip wear.  It was only done last night, with the photos being taken first thing this morning, so it appears that as well as being a little awkward to apply Black Spotted also doesn't wear that well.

All that said, I do like the way this polish looks and I have some ideas for other colours to try under it which I am hoping will look even better than today's effort.  So, in conclusion, was paying £16 to import a bottle of polish a bit silly; yes, but am I glad I did; definitely! :)


Have you tried Black Spotted?  What do you think of it?