OPI Berlin There Done That with Layered Stamping

I decided to spice up a day-old mani with some stamping.  The base of this manicure is two coats of OPI Berlin There Done That, which is a taupey, slightly greyed out creme polish that I absolutely adore. Pardon the tip wear!

This is definitely one of those uh, "looks better from a distance" manicures.  A continual and absolute frustration I've had since I've been polishing is the streakiness of black polishes when doing any sort of nail art. I've waited hours before applying top coat before, I've floated the brush across - but I still get streaks. I usually will just photoshop them out but this was too busy to do that.

I used plates BM206 and BM221 for the stamping designs. I used Wet n Wild Black Creme for the black flowers and L.A. Colors Live for the silver accents. I did do the stamping super quickly because I wasn't planning on wearing it for long. It does look much nicer from a few foot distance, sort of like a tapestry.  The silver stamping was done first, then the black flowers and finally sealed with a coat of OTD.

OPI Mermaid's Tears and Pure Ice Heart Breaker

I've had the OPI for a while but Pure Ice Heart Breaker is a new polish thanks for my dear friend Brittany!  She picked out a good one (=

Shown here is two coats of Mermaid's Tears with one coat of Pure Ice Heart Breaker on top.  This is over Barielle Advanced Pro and sealed with Out the Door.

Formula wise, the OPI was great - I love a two coat creme!  The Pure Ice was very fluid and went on super smoothly.

Light and Airy Manicure

I always forget how much I love sheers and sheer jellies.  Sometimes a nice palette cleanser is what I need!

For this manicure I did three coats of OPI Care to Danse over Orly Bonder and sealed with OTD.  For the accent nail, I used OPI Crown Me Already! over two coats of Care to Danse and then sandwiched it under one more coat of Care to Danse.

 

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Anyone else think that the accent nail looks an awful like Revlon Starry Pink/Popular?  I was surprised at the resemblance! 

Liquid Sands: OPI The Impossible

Everytime a new trend comes out, I have to give at least one of them a whirl.  Crackles, magnetics.. although I never did venture into the more extreme textured nails (caviar and flocking),but this seemed interesting enough to try.  I was pleasantly, and shockingly, surprised!

I did one of those panicky UH WHICH ONE DO I GET things at Ulta. I had this one and the purple one in my hands and took forever deciding on one, but finally went for the pink one, The Impossible.  Shown is 3 coats over NailTek II base coat, no top coat.  This polish was surprisingly and unexpectedly neon, way more bright than I had anticipated.

So here is how this played out: I only needed two coats and wore that for a day.  I wanted to add an extra coat for photos, and in hopes of getting some stars which you can see I finally did.  Those were the only stars to come out, just the two - minimal fishing.  I thought wearing this would be horrible and annoying but it wasn't.

My NYE mani and sale info!

Happy new year, dear readers (= Hope everybody has a wonderful and healthy new year and fresh start if needed.  I'm hosting a sale at the Oopsie Daisies nail polish store for a few days, use code "NEWYEAR13" for 13% off your order!  Happy shopping!

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I want to share my NYE mani as well, as it's quickly become one of my favorite combinations ever.  My super thoughtful BFF Brittany showed me a blog with this combination, and I wish I could find the link!  I used the same polishes used in that post.

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Shown is three coats of OPI Samoan Sand with one coat of MASH Nail Art Polish in Silver over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door.  This MASH polish is labeled as a stamping polish, but I didn't use it as one. It's SUPER dense though and I had to have nearly no polish on the brush to get it so thin.  My hands sparkled subtly all night and I loved it!

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OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons & Stamping

I got OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons from a nail polish friend for Halloween and I wore it before but didn't blog it. I've been loving nudes lately so it made another appearance!

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I used three coats of OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door.  For the stamping, I used plate BM-323 with the Born Pretty black stamping polish. I was sooooo close to not smudging the design! Every time I do topcoat over stamping, I smudge it. I've bee able to avoid it somewhat by waiting extra long for the design to dry and by sort of "floating" the topcoat on top by waiting for a droplet to fall on the nail and smoothing it out without touching the brush to my nail; sometimes I mess it up anyways though )=

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OPI Nude Comparisons

We all have those days, going through our stashes and you realize you have possibly three of the same polish. And you keep trying to get a certain one but you grab a near-dupe instead.  That inspired me to do a comp between three OPI polishes: Samoan Sand, Don't Pretzel My Buttons & Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh?

The bottle shot sort of washes them all out and makes them look nearly identical, however, on then nail and nail wheel they're a bit different.

Shown above is enough coats of each to make them opaque. Samoan Sand was nearly 6 coats or so, while the other two were three coats. I wanted to show their color; Samoan Sand appears closer to Don't Pretzel My Buttons in the bottle than it does on the nail wheel. Don't Pretzel My Buttons reminds me of band-aids, haha.

Samoan Sand, Don't Pretzel My Buttons & Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh?

Samoan Sand, Don't Pretzel My Buttons & Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh?

Nail photos are three coats of each over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door.  There was some VNL with Samoan Sand that didn't quite pick up as obvious as it seemed in real life.  The other two are straight up cremes with standard application and coverage, Samoan Sand is what I'd call a sheer jelly.

Pink October: OPI Care to Danse? and KleanColor Metallic White + Stamping

I don't think the blog post title is long enough. I needed a palette cleasner so I went for one the OPI NYC Ballets and turned it into a jelly sandwich with some sparkle and added some for-the-cause stamping.

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I started out with two coats of Care to Danse? and then added one layer of Klean Color Metallic White which is a shimmery metallic white flecked polish.  It's very sparkly!  I then added two more thin coats of Care to Danse? and sealed with a coat of Out the Door.  I used Orly Bonder as my base coat.

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You can really see the sparkles from the Klean Color here.  These two colors play SO nicely together and make such a clean/delicate jelly sandwich.

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For the stamping I used Bundle Monster plate BM-321and Konad Special White stamping polish.  For the pink ribbons I used Zoya Lara which is the perfect pink for the occasion!

I'm still currently selling the Pink of Me polish in my Etsy store. Two dollars from each purchase goes towards Men's Breast Cancer Awareness education.  Pink of Me is available HERE. So far $32 has been raised!

Oopsie Daisies Pink of Me

A Jelly Sandwich With OPI

Ever try to capture a really fun manicure but your camera is just all, "NOPE!"? That's what happened today.  I think this needs to be photographed outdoors, but its 11:00pm right now and that wouldn't help much.  I'm busy during daylight hours )= I have no time to do my nails then, so lets just look on at the hot mess I have for you today.

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The photo above is the reason I don't touch my camera settings for swatch photos. Now, I'm pretty pale and I admit that, but I am not translucent.WHAT HAVE I DONE! D:

Seen on this post is a jelly sandwich: 2 coats OPI Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em - 1 coat of OPI I Lily Love you and the one more of OPI Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em.  That is all over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door.

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Yeah you can't really tell what's going on too much there, can ya?  It's difficult to see in real life, so I'm not surprised it doesn't translate well onto the screen. Sorry for that.

OPI Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em has a perfectly lovely formula. I thought it was going to be too sure, but it isn't.  It's a magenta jelly, so it's love, really.  And I Lily Love You is a fun one, but it left bits sticking up that didn't self-level. Anyways, fail.

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Parlez-Vous OPI and Klean Color Luscious Lilac

I thought the combination of purples for this manicure would have looked a lot better than they do.  But oops.  Luscious Lilac has far too much red in it, but it is pretty so I decided to keep the mani even though it didn't mesh as I had hoped.

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This is two coats of Parlez-Vous OPI and two coats of Luscious Lilac over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door.  You could seriously get away with one coat with Luscious Lilac. It's super pigmented and sparkly.  I want to wear it as a full mani next, maybe. Both formulas were incredible - smooth, opaque and easy to apply.  Considering the brands are pretty much at different ends of the spectrum, I was really surprised.

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Parlez-Vous OPI is a ridiculously cremey polish while Luscios Lilac has glass fleck, sparkles and who knows what else - but it's fabulous! I definitely love both of these two, I can't believe they've been in my untrieds so long!

My giveaway for my first collection of Oopsie Daisies Nail Polish ends on Friday!

Brucci Cali Cat and OPI Black Spotted

So Cali Cat is definitely a polish I bought for its name.  We call two of our cats the "Cali Cats" because my brother sent us this via an airplane when he moved. He lives in California but couldn't house them any longer, so two new additions it was!  I do also love Brucci as a brand in general so I wasn't opposed to the idea of purchasing another polish from them.

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This is 2 coats of Cali Cat over Orly Bonder, sealed with Sally Hansen Diamond Flash.  Cali Cat is a neon green shimmer. I thought maybe I hadn't tightened the lid enough when I swatched it for the OPI Black Spotted nail wheels because it seemed a little goopy.  I added a few drops of thinner and it seemed much more smooth and ready to go.

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It kills me to have to say anything bad about my beloved Brucci, but the formula, even after thinning, was difficult to work with.  I did not like how it applied; it wasn't super streaky but it was thick and difficult to smooth out without get tons of brush strokes. It's a neon shimmer but applies almost like a frost (EEEEEEEEEEK!!) so you can see the brush strokes.

Flash

Despite the formula and application issues, the color is really fun and bright, a great summer color. Makes me sad that Cali Cat won't be a new favorite. I wanted to test OPI Black Spotted on my nails so I figured this would be a great opportunity since it's coming right off anyways.

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This is one thin coat of Black Spotted over the previous manicure sealed with another coat of Sally Hansen Diamond Flash. The index finger is a bit of a thicker coat, so it didn't do its effect as much, but on my pinky it was a super thin coat, so it spotted a whole bunch!

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OPI Black Spotted Nail Wheel Swatches

I had a very nice friend from Europe help me out in obtaining this polish.  As it stands now, it's available in France and was released as part of the Spiderman Collection. I like to try new nail polish fads and this one may or not become available in the US due to patenting issues, so I'm very fortunately and happy to have obtained it. I decided to swatch it on a nail wheel so we could see all the different color combinations. Some look better than others.

All photos were taken under my "Natural" light desk lamp, either 2 or 3 coats of base color and are sealed with Sally Hansen Diamond Flash Fast Dry Top Coat. Also, since these pictures are pretty wide, I couldn't enlarge them too much on my blog, so click to enlarge for better detail!

 

Essie Smooth Sailing, Brucci Cali Cat, China Glaze Poinsettia

Zoya Arizona, Jessica Disco Diva, China Glaze For Audrey

China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy, Essie Mojito Madness, Sally Hansen Lightening

Hits Apolo, Hits Atena, OPI Metallic 4 Life

OPI DS Design, OPI Houston We Have a Purple, Sinful Colors Grecian Sun

Sally Hansen Whirlwind White, Revlon Starry Pink, Essie Pink A Boo

You need to use ridiculously thin coats, to the point where it looks like nothing is on the brush. Some swatches crackled a little. such as Whirlwind White, Starry Pink and Lightening. The affect occurs immediately after applying the polish, as well.