OPI Soft Shades inspired by Disney's Oz The Great and Powerful Spring 2013 Swatches and Review

  

OPI's Soft Shades collection for 2013 (sent for review) is a set of three sheers, three glitters and one new Liquid Sand shade, all inspired by Disney's Oz The Great And Powerful.  I don't plan on seeing the film since the original one still terrifies me, but the polishes are pretty much the opposite of traumatizing and nightmare-inducing. 

What?  Come on.  Don't try to tell me that the Wizard of Oz isn't scary.  It is.  ANYWAY.  Soft Shades.

OPI Don't Burst My Bubble.  Sheer off-white.  Has a clean look as if it has a touch of blue or violet in the base rather than a yellowed/antique look.  This was a little streakier than the other two sheers but nothing terrible.

OPI Glints of Glinda.  A sheer, mostly neutral beige creme.  It's nice and sandy looking, not too strongly brown, too yellowy, or too pink, and light but not chalky or excessively white-ish.  Very easy to wear.

OPI I Theodora You.  A light, neutral, sheer pink creme.  More pink than white, but also has enough warmth in it to seem almost peach-colored in certain lights.  Very nice glossy-thick finish to this one, almost a creamy/milky jelly finish.

OPI Liquid Sand polish in What Wizardry Is This?  This has a warm, dirty olive green shimmer base with glints of gold, bronze, brown, red and even a few flecks of blue.  It dries to a sandpaper-like finish that's semi-matte.  I let this one dry for an hour before taking the picture and it still has a bit of shine to it, but I've heard from many people that their Liquid Sand polishes turn completely matte after drying.

OPI Liquid Sand polish in What Wizardry Is This? with topcoat.  I prefer it this way as the topcoat makes the multicolor particles stand out and sparkle instead of just looking textured.  It needs at least two coats of topcoat to smooth out the sandy texture.

OPI Lights of Emerald City (over OPI Don't Burst My Bubble).  A clear base (with slight blue-ish tinge) with medium square opalescent mylar glitter and large pearlized white glitter squares. I love the idea of this glitter but not so much the execution.  The clear base is very thick and gooey and the glitter is very sparse which makes it difficult to apply.  You end up with thick, globby nails and barely any glitter.  I'm going to thin this and see if it applies any easier, but I still think it could use just a touch more glitter in the base so more ends up on the nail.

OPI When Monkeys Fly! (over OPI Glints of Glinda).  A clear base with small, roung hologram glitter, medium hexagon silver and hologram glitter and giant gold chrome hexagon glitter.  Glitters this large tend to do that taco-curl thing, but these stayed surprisingly flat on my nail.  It is a bit odd-looking because there's less of the giant glitter than the other colors, but still pretty cool for layering.  OPI recommends a gradient glitter tip look with this combination:

OPI Which is Witch (over OPI I Theodora You.)  A clear base with silver hologram microglitter, medium silver and hologram hexagon glitter and tiny hologram bar glitter.  This looks way more delicate on the nail than I thought it would from looking at it in the bottle.  That's a good thing.  It's the perfect bar-hex holo combo for layering because the pieces are so small and fine.  It won't clump up or cover your base color in weird ways like larger hex and bar glitters usually do.

The formula on the cremes was good, and the glitters were smooth but thick.  The sheer cremes have a thicker texture than last year's Ballet soft shades and were a little streakier for me, but maintain that same self-levelling super-glossy quality that I liked about the others.  I didn't have trouble with any shade except Lights of Emerald City, which was thick and goopy.  Dry time on these is very fast.

Pretty and delicate with a touch a glitter.  Good for Spring or for office wear.  I personally preferred the milky jelly look of the NYC Ballet Soft Shades (especially as a glitter sandwich), but these are still flattering and natural.  They're neutral enough to be worn by a wide range of skin tones and they didn't give me a problem with streaking. 

The Liquid Sand finish still doesn't have my heart, but I love What Wizardry Is This? with topcoat.  Also: awesome name.  I have to recite it all dramatically every time I say it. What wizardry is THIS??

This collection is available now!

(This was sent for review.)

Zoya NYFW Gloss Collection Fall 2012 Swatches and Review

Finally, to finish out Zoya's fall 2012 releases, the Gloss collection. The Gloss collection is a trio of three buildable jelly gloss shades. Each polish starts off very sheer, but builds opacity and intensity with each additional coat, allowing you to customize your color, create layered nail art effects (like syrup or gradient manicures), or they can be layered over other colors to add a sheer tint. The colors are:


Zoya Frida (four coats). Frida is a sheer blue-green jelly. It reminds me of the rare, old discontinued Essie polish Night Cap, which I always thought looked like NyQuil.


Zoya Katherine (four coats). Originally a custom color designed for a Peter Som runway show. Katherine is dark sheer eggplant jelly. Out of the three, this is the least even-looking. In my opinion, it's not wearable at one or two coats and doesn't look its best until four coats, which is what I'm wearing here.


Zoya Paloma (four coats). Paloma is sheer berry purple jelly. A little less red than it looks here, but still more berry/fuchsia than full-on purple. It's the brightest of the three and also the most even-looking. It's smooth and even enough to wear at one coat and still look good.

The formula on these was great. Thin but not runny. Very smooth and easy to apply. The only thing to watch out for with these is applying coats that are a consistent thickness. If you apply it thin in some areas and thicker in others, the end result may look a little patchy unless you go for the full four coats. I didn't find them to be streaky at all, just patchy unless the coats were an even thickness. Dry time was quick and every shade dries to a glossy finish even without topcoat.

Just to demonstrate how buildable these are, I've taken a photo of them after each coat. You can really see how the color intensifies and the jelly look starts to develop from the sheer/clear formula:

Zoya Frida, one coat.

Zoya Frida, two coats.


Zoya Frida, three coats.


Zoya Frida, four coats.

Zoya Paloma, one coat.

Zoya Paloma, two coats.

Zoya Paloma, three coats.

Zoya Paloma, four coats.

Zoya Katherine, three coats.

These are fun. There's so many possibilities for layering with them. One thing I like to do with sheer polishes like these (like the old Maybelline waters, or that set of clear tinted Essie polishes that included Night Cap, or even the CND Plexi Pop colors) is to layer them over foils. Silver foil is best, but gold foil looks cool too. Equally cool over glitters, especially if you like the look of 'jelly sandwich' manicures. Ooh, that gives me an idea. Frida jelly sandwich with black glitter. Need to try that.

Overall, really cool set. Versatile colors. Paloma has the best, most even coverage of all three shades, but Frida is the most interesting color. Katherine is nice at four coats but it's a little bit patchy unless you're really, really careful.

The Zoya Gloss Collection will be available on zoya.com starting July 15th.

(This was sent for review.)

MAC Casual Color Collection Nail Lacquers Summer 2012 Swatches and Review

MAC Casual Color Collection Nail Lacquers
Delicate, Fiestaware, Please Me, Style Tip

MAC Delicate. Pale sheer ballet pink (limited edition). This is one of those Bubble Bath/Ballet Slippers type colors. It's very sheer and is probably best worn as a one-coat milky glaze rather than trying to achieve full opacity. I'm wearing three coats here and it's still very see-through. I didn't find it to be streaky, but I did notice that if my coats weren't completely even in thickness, the coverage would look patchy in the areas where I applied it thinner.


MAC Fiestaware. Mid-tone orange coral (limited edition). Soft, faded orange coral, almost more of a melon color. Dries slightly darker than bottle color. Very vintage-looking. This one is particularly interesting to me because of the name. It reminds me of the infamous Fiesta Red Fiestaware, which was mildly radioactive because of the uranium oxide used in the glaze.



MAC Please Me. Mid-tone warm pink (limited edition). This is a dusty-looking rose, but it has an odd brightness to it. It's so strange looking to me.


MAC Style Tip. Soft pink nude (limited edition). This one comes across as more brown than pink on my skintone, but the pink undertone is still there.


The formula on these was good. I didn't have any trouble with them at all. They applied smoothly without running, pooling, bubbling or streaking and the texture was perfect. Much nicer than the old MAC lacquer formula. I did three coats of all, but only Delicate needed the third coat. Dry time is average.

Very soft, subdued and vintage-feeling colors. All of them have a faded dustiness to them that makes them look old or antique. They're all marked with the Triangle of Doom, indicating that they're limited edition, but Delicate and Fiestaware are becoming part of the permanent collection in July. I do think that the $16 price tag is rather steep for these somewhat plain colors, especially considering that they're only 0.34 oz. For comparison, Deborah Lippmann is $16 for 0.5 oz and a regular OPI is 0.5 for only $8.50.

The MAC Casual Color Collection Nail Lacquers are $16 for 0.34 oz and are limited edition.

(This was sent for review.)

OPI NYC Ballet Soft Shades Collection Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

OPI's Soft Shades collection this year is inspired by the New York City Ballet. It's an assortment of five light, sheer shades (beige, lilac, soft white, grey, peach-pink), plus a sparkly layering glitter that can be worn alone or layered over any of the soft shades. This collection surprised me. I thought they were just going to be boring/plain sheers based on the promo pictures, but when I got them on my nails, I suddenly realized they weren't. They're JELLIES.


OPI Barre My Soul. A light white-based soft beige. It has a some peach in it so it doesn't look straight beige and flat, instead it looks more like a very light fleshy color with dimension to it from the jelly finish.


OPI Care To Danse? This one is a very, very pale lilac. It also appears white-based when it's on the nail, but not stark or chalky. It looks a little more pink-colored in real life, but it seems more purple in the bottle.


OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!. This is a soft white jelly. It doesn't seem to have that subtle blue undertone in it that Essie Cloud Nine has, but it still has a similar brightening effect. This is such a dreamy white. It looks like fluffy clouds and marshmallows.


OPI My Pointe Exactly. Now there's something different. A grey jelly. This grey is blue toned, and in some lights it looks more like a slate blue than a pure grey. You would think that a sheer grey would just look murky and dirty, but it doesn't. It actually looks really good and that lovely jelly finish gives it depth that opaque cremes don't have.


OPI Pirouette My Whistle. This is a very fine light silver glitter and a small pearl white hexagon glitter in a clear base. This is a sheer glitter that's perfect for layering (not so dense that it covers the base color too much, not so sheer that you need multiple coats for it to show up), but I think it actually looks nice alone. The glitter is very delicate and twinkly, reminds me of those very old OPI holiday glitter topcoats like Yule Love This Silver and Nutcracker Sweet with that superfine sparkly type of glitter.


OPI You Callin' Me A Lyre? This one is a peachy pink. It has a little more color to it than your typical OPI Bubble Bath / Essie Ballet Slippers type of shade to keep it from looking too corpse-y. I normally don't like these nearly-white pinks because it makes it look like I've lost all the blood flow to my fingers. You Callin' Me A Lyre looks a little more lively than that.

The formula on these was also a surprise for me. With these types of colors, I usually expect them to be streaky, watery, or uneven in some way. These apply like a dream, streak-free and self leveling. At one coat they look like a sheer, streak-free color gloss and it actually looks really nice; soft and clean. The white base and jelly finish in the shades gives this blurring/softening creamy effect. Here's how they look at one coat:

OPI Barre My Soul (one coat).


OPI Care To Danse? (one coat).


OPI Don't Touch My Tutu! (one coat).


OPI My Pointe Exactly (one coat).


OPI You Callin' Me A Lyre? (one coat).

Since they're not streaky, you can wear as many coats as you'd like. They look like a subtle creamy gloss at one, slightly more opaque at two (but the jelly finish becomes more apparent), and perfectly jelly-like at three:

Don't Touch My Tutu! - one coat.

Don't Touch My Tutu! - two coats.

Don't Touch My Tutu! - three coats.

To make the already nice polishes even nicer, you can layer them with a coat of Pirouette My Whistle. Horrible name, fantastic color.

In the bottle, Pirouette My Whistle looks like it might be chunky. It has some small but substantial looking hex glitter and also some near-microglitter sized silver flecks. Luckily, this glitter is so light that it lies completely flat and smooth on the nail and it doesn't do that annoying thing where the glitter sinks into the wet polish and leaves little divots near every particle. Reminds me of Nubar White Polka Dot, but not an exact match. Here's how each shade looks layered with Pirouette My Whistle:

OPI Pirouette My Whistle (one coat) over Barre My Soul.

OPI Pirouette My Whistle (one coat) over Care To Danse?.

OPI Pirouette My Whistle (one coat) over Don't Touch My Tutu!.


OPI Pirouette My Whistle (one coat) over My Pointe Exactly.


OPI Pirouette My Whistle (one coat) over You Callin' Me A Lyre?

The formula on these was perfect. The texture was thicker than the average watery sheer and that prevented the running/pooling problem I usually have with these types of colors. They weren't streaky as long as I paid attention to how hard I was pressing the brush, and they seem to self-level really well if I did apply them unevenly in some areas. They're sheer, but at three coats (what I'm wearing in the photos) they look like a perfect creamy jelly on me. They dry very fast and every shade dries to a glossy finish (even the glitter) without added topcoat.

You know, as much as I normally hate sheers and soft shades, I have to admit that I actually like these. It's that milky jelly finish. I love jellies, and when they have that added milky look, forget it. Instant like. It looks so squishy and soft and dreamy, like clouds and marshmallows and fluffy bunnies... They're so cute that it's almost sickening. The softness and depth of the milky jelly finish makes the nails look clean and well groomed, not dead and lifeless, and the formula is perfect. Adding the delicate glitter on top just takes it to the next level of cute. I'm also impressed with how shiny/bright/twinkly the glitter is without it being chunky or gritty or hard to remove.

All in all, while I don't normally "do" sheers (especially sheer pinks, ugh), the milky jelly finish on these is really appealing to me. I just can't help myself, they're too cute not to love. I'll likely only wear the lilac and grey with any regularity, but I've been wearing Barre My Soul with Pirouette My Whistle since last night and I have no desire to take it off yet...

The OPI NYC Ballet Soft Shades collection officially launches in April, but they are already available in some stores.

(This was sent for review.)