OPI Holland Collection - Swatches and Review

I've been somewhat slack recently on posting for one reason and one reason only...the Olympics were in London! I've been glued to my TV firmly clutching my Team GB flag throughout and I’ve also been lucky enough to go to a few events, with appropriately themed nails which I will be doing a post on soon but I've been a bit of a slow coach catching up on my other posts.

Anyway making a tenuous segue to a post on archive polishes today featuring OPI's Holland collection for Spring/Summer 2012. The Holland collection is one of their traditional collections themed around destinations. If you were supporting the Netherlands in the Olympics you were royally spoilt for choice with this collection. They seemed to go with pretty classic (and possibly a smidge stereotypical?) Dutch imagery – it feels very wind and water inspired with nods to windmills, tulips, cheese, canals and errr...Amsterdam nightlife in shade and name selection.

 

OPI Holland - Edited highlights (taken with Instagram)

Overall I really liked the shade selection in this collection but I only picked up four shades ( I Have a Herring Problem, Dutch Ya' Just Love OPI, I Don't give a Rotterdam and Wooden Shoe like to know) which are swatched below the break. I've also added a little bit about what I look for when picking out which shades to get as I'm interested to see how you guys make your choices.

Chanel Les Pop-Up de Chanel - Chanel Nouvelle Vague, Chanel Mistral & Chanel Riviera

Chanel Le Vernis Mistral, Riviera and Nouvelle Vague

Les Pop-Up de Chanel was released back in Summer 2010 and was a seaside vista inspired collection that was meant to capture the free spirited nature of Coco Chanel herself. The three Chanel nail polishes released as part of this collection were Mistral, Riviera and Nouvelle Vague. This one came hot on the heels of the nail polish that launched the revitalised interest in Chanel nail polish - Chanel Jade - which was launched in Fall 2009. As far as I can remember the Chanel releases between Jade and this collection were Trapeze (Chanel Holiday 2009) a silvery neutral and Inattendu, Tendresse and Particuliere (Chanel Spring 2010 Les Impressions de Chanel) nude, pale pink and infamous mushroom polishes. As such I always think that Nouvelle Vague was the first chance for those who missed out on Jade to get their hands on a must have Chanel bright polish. It was justifiably popular and it's a definite favourite of mine. Swatches and review after the jump.

Rainbow Polkadot Nail Art

Rainbow Polkadot Nail Art

I don't know about you but I find if a magazine is giving away free nail polish I can very rarely resist buying it.    That generally means I end up with at least a couple of copies of the same magazine as I try to collect all of the shades. It's as a result of this that the majority of my Nails Inc collection are magazine freebies, given that they cost £10 retail and the magazines only really ever cost £5 max it always seems like a pretty good saving to me....


Anyway, I wanted to do some simple nail art that used some of my freebie stash so I did some quick polkadot nail art using some of my Nails Inc shades and come other brands. I always feel better using these kinds of shades for nail art as it's less likely I'll be wasting any of my more expensive polishes. What about you, do you have a weakness for freebies? Or are you happy to use your most prized polishes for your designs?





Base - Nail Inc Teal


Spots (Red to Blue) - Nails Inc Beach, Nails Inc Candy Orange, Mavala Acid Yellow, Barry M Spring Green, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream

Chanel Sky Line - Swatches, Review and Comparison with Essie Blue Rhapsody

Chanel Sky Line

This is Chanel Sky Line nail polish, it's part of a limited edition Bleu Illusion collection that also includes eyeliner, blusher, lipstick and pencil and new Illusion D'Ombres shadows. This collection came out today in the UK and it's all limited edition so get it while you can.

Chanel Spring 2012 Couture Nails - Picture from Glamour

It was first seen as part of Chanel's Spring 2012 Couture runway show which was shown in a mock space shuttle which seems in keeping with the airy blue of Sky Line. It reminds me of light summer skies which I can only vaguely remember given the weather we've had recently in the UK. Onwards to swatches...

Chanel Sky Line Swatch

Formula wise it's along the lines of another Chanel polish, Pearl Drop. This is three coats so it takes a little while to go completely opaque but the formula is very smooth and applies well. The base colour is a light periwinkle blue with a hefty amount of pearly light shimmer. It's lovely but, there's no way of getting round this, it has a very definite frost finish. Whilst frost finish polishes are normally my nemesis I think if anyone can make it look good Chanel can. You will get brush strokes with Sky Line but it does settle down as it dries and because there's so much of the pearl pigment in there you end up with buildable ribbons of shimmer rather than obnoxious streaks.

Black Opal Nails with Andrea Fulerton Gemstone Overcoat

Andrea Fulerton Gemstone Overcoat

Another post kicking off a long term challenge for me. I love opals and fire opals especially and I've always wanted to recreate the look of them on the nail. The ones I particularly love are the Black Fire Opals or Harlequin Opals - the ones that are a beautiful deep blue with intense flashes of colour running through them. I've had a bottle of Andrea Fulerton Gemstone Overcoat for ages that I picked up in Superdrug but it was only when I started looking for shades in my stash to create the look I wanted that I revisited it. It's a stunning duochrome flakie topcoat with a really strong shift from red through to green.

There seem to have been a lot of polishes released like this over the last few years including Nubar 2010, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure and Essie Shine of the Times. None of them seem to be completely unique but they are very, very pretty and Andrea Fulerton's Gemstone Overcoat is no exception. 

This swatch was done over Nars Night Flight, a very dark sparkly blue and I think Gemstone Overcoat looks best over darker colours like this. You could wear it on its own but it's pretty sheer so you need numerous coats before it would even be close to opaque. The formula is on the thicker side so one coat will give you a good scattered layer of flakes. This is two coats with one coat of Essie Matte about You over the top so you can see the colour shift more clearly. 

This isn't quite the look I want for the finished Opal nail as the blue is a bit dark. I'm thinking a jelly sandwich with a royal blue jelly might be more what I'm looking for, any suggestions?

OPI Reflecting Pool



OPI Reflecting Pool



Japan/UK Exclusive from the Reflection Glitters Collection (circa 2009 ish). Weirdly this was the first OPI I ever owned, found in a random chemist in a dusty corner all on its own. 

It’s one of my favourite OPIs, perfect smooth formula with icy teal-blue teeny micro glitter and larger gold micro glitter.This was two coats, it's not opaque at one but builds nicely.

It’s a great winter colour rather than the classic vampy dark shades, feels like the kind of thing the White Witch from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would wear. It was a limited edition but has a famous dupe in Zoya Crystal so you can get that if you can’t find this one.

OPI Alice in Wonderland Collection

These were released way back in Spring 2010 but I'm slogging through all of my swatches trying to get them loaded up here rather than dotted around different blog platforms. These are the first of a series of archive posts trying to clear my backlog.

OPI's Alice in Wonderland Collection was released in conjunction with Tim Burton's film of the same name. There were four polishes but the ones I'm going to show you here are the glitters from the collection. There were two others - "Thanks so muchness!" a red shimmer and "Off with her red!" a tomato red creme - but I already had very similar ones in my stash so I passed on those.



OPI Mad as a Hatter



First up is Mad as a Hatter which is a silver based multicolour glitter. This was the first glitter polish I had that gave full coverage without needing a base colour. It has a medium silver glitter base with extra silver micro glitter and pretty much every other colour of medium sized glitter you could want. The best count I've been able to do has found pink, purple, green, turquoise, gold and orange, the close up swatch below gives you a better idea of just how many colours are in there.



OPI Absolutely Alice Close Up



It's still one of the best glitters I have in my collection, these pictures really can't capture just how sparkly it is. There are still a few bottles floating round out there so if you do manage to find one grab it while you can.



OPI Absolutely Alice



Absolutely Alice is another full coverage glitter, this time turquoise medium sized glitter with a scattering of gold. I've always assumed they used the traditional Disney interpretation of Alice as the inspiration for this shade with the bright blue of her dress and the yellow gold to represent her hair? Either way it's great, very sparkly and good coverage.

Some notes about the formula on these, they are pretty thick so you need to be careful during application so they don't clump and drag. They also chip pretty quickly if you don't use a heavy duty top coat so make sure you double up. Removing them is also a bit of a nightmare, as is often the case with glitters so you can either go the cotton wool soaked with acetone and covered with tinfoil route or just be prepared to go through a LOT of standard remover and have impressively sparkly cuticles. They do also lift off in one complete piece if you happen to be someone who picks at nail varnish but obviously none of you do that...right?....

Disclosure: This polish was bought with my own money

Rainbow Nails



Rainbow Nails with Essie Mesmerize



In celebration of the fact that I have a camera again some quick rainbow nails. Base colour is Essie Mesmerize which is a deep cobalt royal blue. Great coverage on this one, you really only need one coat. Totally worth having the postman wake me up before 8:00am on a Saturday!

Essie Blue Rhapsody




Essie Blue Rhapsody

 

Essie Blue Rhapsody

This one is from the Mirror Metallics Collection which is available now. It’s a strong silver-blue chrome, one of the best I’ve tried. You really only need one coat but this is two. Application is great but like all chrome style polishes this will chip if you don’t use a top coat, although the quick wear test I did on this seemed to come off better than most.
When I saw the promo images for this collection I wasn’t that bothered but picked Blue Rhapsody up as part of a Boots haul as I liked the look of it. Having tried this one I definitely going to go back to get more from the collection. They are some of the best chromes I’ve seen with a true solid metallic finish. The others in the collection are Good as gold (gold chrome), Penny talk (copper metallic), Nothing else metals (lavender metallic) and No place like chrome (silver chrome)

In other news I finally have a new point and shoot on order so I won’t have to use am Iphone to take dodgy nail pictures any more, yay!

First posted on my tumblr - theboxesunderthebed.tumblr.com