OPI - Not Like The Movies

 Today's polish is Not Like The Movies, part of OPI's Katy Perry collection.

 

 

It's quite an unusual duochrome polish, the colour shifts from a pale silvery lilac through to a sort of light army green, in addition the whole thing is shot through with little bits of silver glitter.

 

Very pretty and quite different in different lights, in the photo above you can see it develops a sort of pewter tone under very bright lights.

 

I really like this polish, it's not terribly in your face and out there but it's interesting enough to be a little unusual and different from a basic flat cream.

OPI Black Spotted FAIL

Last time I posted about OPI Black Spotted I wasn't 100% sold on it, and this time is no better, if anything I am less impressed.

 

 

This time I applied it over China Glaze It's a Trap-eze which I thought might be an interesting base with a good colour contrast, in reality I think it just looks messy and like chipped black. 

 

My coats were probably too thick which doesn't help but I am really not feeling the effect this time at all, it's quite a hard polish to work with - you really need to use very, very thin coats - and I think because it's been so long since I last used it I'd forgotten how thin they needed to be.

 

Another issue with it is that it seems to wear really fast at the tips, it doesn't have much staying power at all.  This manicure only lasted a day before I was not only bored of it but it had started to chip off and wear heavily at the tips.

 

Looks like I still need a good bit of practice with Black Spotted!  Have you tried it?  How do you find it, any application tips?

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?

Animal Print

I did a quite animal print stamp (QA8) over Friday's manicure to freshen it up for today:

I actually preferred this without the stamp, the silver was lovely on it's own and with the stamp on it's not as sparkly and bling as it was.  I'm also not 100% happy with how the stamp went on, not sure if that's down to my technique or the new stamper I used.

Friday Night Nails

This evening I am going to see my brother's band.  I decided I needed something a bit sparkly on my nails but I was short of time so I went back to my old favourite Crown Me Already from OPI's Miss World collection.

In these pictures I have used two coats of OPI over a coat of Barry M Foil Effect Silver.  There is no real need for the base coat as Crown Me Already is a very thick opaque glitter which easily covers by itself in two or three coats.

Although it looks quite rough on the nail two layers of top coat mean that in reality it's actually pretty smooth for a chunky glitter.  It's also super shiny which I love.

Olympic Nails

My new found Olympic fever has spread to my nails today!

They're far from perfect but I'm pleased enough with them.  I did the lines using striping tape which I clearly still need a little practice with as they're a bit sloppy.  And in my attempt not to smudge the lines I used too much top coat which has bubbled on the nail.

On the fingers without the 'rings' I used Barry M Foil Effects in Silver and Gold with Spark de Triumph (OPI) and No7 LE Gold Glitter over the top.

What I used:

OPI Catch me in your net.

I borrowed this off a friend while we were away at the weekend, although it's a pretty colour I don't think i would purchase it myself as I have several similar in my collection already.  It's a pretty shimmery blue green colour with blue flakies through it.

Here I'm wearing it over a couple of coats of a Kiko polish in a similar shade.

You can see in this picture I am starting to get tip wear but considering it was taken on Thursday and the polish was applied om Sunday night I don't think that's too bad!

Last Friday Night

I much prefer this layered than on it's own, as it's shown here. The formula in my bottle seems a bit off too, time to get the thinner out, I think!

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

I love this colour, it's a sheer pink base with loads of small silver glitter in and larger holo pieces of glitter too. It's what I imagine Barbie would wear if she wanted to look a bit understated.

The base colour of pink with the silvery glitter is really pretty and wearable and the holo glitter adds a little extra something, it's hard to get pictures of this which really do it justice, it's much prettier and more sparkly in person:








And now, a picture of my newly stumpy nails. I have a weekend of hard cleaning ahead and I didn't want to risk wrecking them or having them break too far down, so I chopped them:



One day I will work out how to trim just a little off rather than turning them all into total nubbins the minute I get within 3 feet of an emery board!

Katy Perry - Not Like The Movies

I very nearly didn't buy this nail polish, I wasn't planning on it but when I saw it on the shelf in Sally's I was rather drawn to it and since I knew it would sell out fast I thought I'd pick a bottle up and probably eBay or swap it away later.

Until I tried it on...





This polish is a true duochrome, in some lights it's a lilac grey in others a very obvious green and it's beautiful. Really flashy and changeable in colour, definitely a new favourite. The longer I wore the colour the less I wanted to take it off, it's a grower!

There is a gorgeous hidden glitter shimmer through the polish which adds an extra element of gorgeousness too, you can see it slightly in the blurry shot here:

Frostbitten Katy Perry

Despite promising myself I was going to buy NO nail polish until March (a trip to Spain to pillage Kiko & Sephora is planned) I couldn't resist the new OPI Katy Perry Collection. There are 4 colours and the black shatter top coat, I wasn't too keen on the plummy red and I already have the much cheaper but exactly the same Barry M crackle top coat so I left those two and grabbed the three I was keen on:



Today's nails are China Glaze Frostbite with the blue glitter over the top, they're even more vivid and in your face in real life and I love them! Although the macro shots of my cuticles do suggest it's about time to give myself a proper manicure!





This blurred shot shows the glitter up a little better:

OPI

Bring on the Bling: