OPI – Warm & Fozzie

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope y’all have exciting plans for the weekend :) Ending off the week with a polish from OPI’s Muppet collection…

OPI’s Warm & Fozzie is a intense bronze foil polish packed with copper, gold, bronze, and maybe…taupe shimmer? It’s a very complex polish. The shimmers are suspended in gray base – this becomes especially apparent when you remove this polish (the cotton pad shows remnants of the bronze-y shimmer particles, as well as a flat gray smudge).

As with most foils, the polish looks like it would be gritty to the touch, but it’s perfectly smooth. Truly nothing beats the finish of a foil if you’re looking for something snazzy and eye-catching – glitters are beautiful, but a nightmare to remove. Foils may not be the easiest polish to remove either, but they fare much better than glitters, and have a similar glitzy effect. Love!

OPI – Mermaid’s Tears

OPI’s Mermaid’s Tears is another little gem from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. Again, another colour that I don’t really see fitting in with the movie franchise, but whatever. It’s a dusty, muted light turquoise creme. I love this colour! Great for those who want to wear brighter polishes that aren’t too in your face.

It’s in the same vein as the Nicole by OPI’s My Lifesaver and Orly’s Gumdrop, but Mermaid’s Tears is like their less saturated cousin. Applied really well in two coats. No complaints!

Dior – Rock Coat

I cannot tell you how many bottles of nail polish I got for my birthday. I guess that’s just what happens when you have a lot of girlfriends who know you write a nail polish blog :p Thanks everyone!

Consequently, I have a lot of new material to blog about that I really should get around to. This is one of my more recent gifts (thanks Chu!).

Rock Coat over The One That Got Away

OPI The One That Got Away by itself

Dior Rock Coat (shown in the first image over OPI’s The One That Got Away, ) is a super sheer jelly gray-black that’s designed to be used over other colours as a top coat. It turns the existing colour into a smokey, vampier version of itself.

In theory, a really cool idea. I’m all for changing up my nail colour, especially if I’ve had the colour on for a few days and want to jazz it up without applying a new shade. However, you have be quite careful and strategic with Rock Coat. Getting the exact right amount of polish on the brush is important in order to achieve a streak-free finish. Even so, it’s sort of a hit-or-miss product – I HATE brushstrokes of any kind, so this kind of variability in application really irks me.

A lot of this has to do with the type of polish you choose to use underneath, though! I’ve had great luck with it over high-shimmer foil polishes such as OPI’s The One That Got Away (pictured). It turns the bright glittery polish into a more glowy, “dark on the edges, light in the centre” finish that I love so much. It’s pretty difficult to use over light pastel creme colours though – the streaks show up like crazy.

Nails Inc. – Warwick Way

So let me tell you a little story about how I came to buy this lovely shade of nail polish.

It was two summers ago, and I was in Hong Kong shopping with my mom. We came across a tiny  shop that sold inexpensive bottles of OPI minis. I bought three, and quickly fell in love with the super bright, teal creme.

I had my suspicions, though, that the minis were fake (the polish smelled especially terrible, and a quick Google of OPI colours didn’t bring up any old OPI bright teal cremes). At that point, I didn’t even care…the little fake OPI mini became one of my favourite colours. Alas, being a (supposedly) fake polish in miniature form, it quickly became unusable.

Ever since, I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect bright teal creme to replace it. I hoped that this might be the one.

Is Nails Inc. Warwick Way the perfect replacement? It’s close enough to satisfy me. Warwick Way is significantly greener but it’s certainly just as clean-looking and mood-boosting in the same way as my fake OPI. This is bright, people. It does weird things to my camera and my top coat (Seche Vite) doesn’t even look right over it. It also stains my fingernails into something awful. I haven’t used a polish that stained my nails that badly, ever! Took me half an hour alone just to remove as much of the stain as I could, then buff the surface of my nails into oblivion. I can’t say that amount of effort is worth it for this polish.

The colour is lovely, the application was easy and smooth; no complaints in those regards. However, I think this is going back to Sephora as the staining just isn’t worth it. It’s also quite pricey (~$11CAD). Though I am very excited that Nails Inc. is now available at Sephora here in Vancouver! Maybe I’ll exchange this for another, more subdued shade from the line.

Essie – Power Clutch

Don’t feel like writing a preamble today, so…I won’t :)

Essie Power Clutch is from their Fall 2011 collection “Brand New Bag”. I bought this thinking I needed a true slate gray creme polish to add to my collection. I was…wrong?

The official shade description calls this a “striking, deep gray-green”. I didn’t believe the description when I bought the colour. In the store, it was clearly gray. But upon closer inspection, this is certainly a gray that leans a bit to the green side. Can’t see it? It’s hard to tell in the photo, but this is definitely not a blue gray or even a true gray. Quite a unique colour, I’d say! The green doesn’t come out to say hello all the time, but when it does, it’s a pleasant surprise.

As for application, I don’t know if I bought an old bottle or what, but it was the tiniest bit too thick. The brush wasn’t able to spread itself easily and I had just had an all-round nightmare trying to apply this the first time around. A few drops of polish thinner did the trick, though, and it applied smoothly and beautifully.

Models Own Pro – Green Envy

So, a few months ago I did a five-week exchange term in Europe. The program was based in Manchester, UK, but we traveled to several places as well. After seeing a glimpse of Europe, I have to say that the UK blows every other place out of the water when it comes to shopping for clothes or cosmetic products. There’s just so much variety in the brands and they’re usually quite affordable. I, for one, was just excited to see with my own eyes the UK products and brands I’ve been reading and listening about for years now!

One of these products was Models Own nail polish. There were so many colours I wanted to pick up, but considering my excessively restrictive baggage limit, I had to resist the temptation to buy like 10 new polishes. I believe these was the only one I bought with my own money while abroad (will go into that later in another post :p).

Of course, Models Own Pro Green Envy is not part of the regular Models Own line, but the “Pro” line. Bought this at Boots at The Trafford Centre in Manchester (HUGE mall; if you’re ever in Manchester you must go, maybe after seeing the stadium. Also, shout out to Amy and Arianna, who went with me! :D). Around 8 pounds I think, which is 3 pounds more expensive than the regular line. Why the price discrepancy? Honestly, I’m not sure. Are the bottles bigger? I don’t have a regular Models Own bottle to compare it to. Could it be that the colours are more on-trend or edgy? Who knows.

Either way, I love Green Envy! A super dark green polish with tons of tiny shimmers. Or is it just a black polish with tons of tiny green and blue shimmers? Not quite sure, but either way this polish is beautiful. It applied beautiful in two effortless coats and dried quickly as well. No complaints here…8 pounds well spent!

Quo by Orly – Celestial Star

If I wasn’t sure before, I am now…I’m definitely obsessed with nail polish. I saw this in the corner of my eye in this dinky little display hidden behind some other displays at Shoppers Drug Mart. I had never even heard or seen this brand or collaboration before, and yet I was somehow mysteriously drawn to it. Is this unhealthy? Only time will tell.

Quo by Orly? Has anyone really heard of this yet? There seriously needs to be more Canadian beauty blogs…I’m missing out on all sorts of great stuff! I was immediately drawn to this fantastic colour:

Quo by Orly Celestial Star. Wow. Wow. A gorgeous electric mid-tone royal blue/purple duochrome foil with a crapload of foil shimmer. It shifts from this crazy bright blue to a gorgeous purple/pink when I move my fingers. The shimmer looks insane under all kinds of light, but looks particularly near-fluorescent when under low-light outdoors. Holy crap. I love this colour. The shimmer makes the polish look like it might be gritty, but it’s actually perfectly smooth to the touch. The above photo under incandescent light doesn’t nearly reflect the awesomeness of this polish. Check out some of the other shots taken outdoors with my iPhone:

Freaking insane. In my thumb in the third photo you can see the colour shift the best – see how the top portion of the colour looks purple, then shifts to blindingly bright blue near the bottom? It’s way more exaggerated in real life.

Actually, this polish reminds me of Lunar Eclipse from Orly’s Cosmic FX collection (which I don’t have, but have seen countless swatches of). Could this be the same polish? I wouldn’t be surprised; this is Quo by Orly, after all. There are two other shades from this Quo by Orly collection that appear to be dupes of Orly Cosmic FX polishes as well. Maybe this is Orly’s way of making these great colours available to Canadian customers?

These polishes retail for something like $10 for 14ml of product, and you can find them at Shoppers Drug Mart. That seems a bit steep to me. Regular Orlys retail for around the same price, but you’ll get 18ml of product…so if you really love this colour, try to find Orly Lunar Eclipse. Can’t really think of a Canadian retailer that has a large stock of Orly though. :(

But if you don’t really care, just go to Shoppers and give this a try. The last time I was there though, they were completely out of this colour (to be fair, they only had 3 of them on display) but I’m sure they’ve restocked since then. GET IT. These foils are phenomenal!