Category Archives: Nail Polish Swatches & Reviews

Nicole by OPI Selena Gomez Collection Press Release, Actual Bottle Photos & Quick Swatches

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Nicole-by-OPI-Selena-Gomez-Collection-Press-Release-Actual-Bottle-Pictures-Quick-SwatchesI’m really excited to be able to bring you an early look at the upcoming Nicole by OPI Selena Gomez Collection!

It’s due out in stores January 2013, but, after I met and had dinner with Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, the Executive VP and Artistic Director of OPI and Nicole by OPI, the awesome PR ladies included the entire collection in my ‘swag bag’!

Haha, it’s good that Selena Gomez got her own line of polishes. After all, Justin Bieber has his own Nicole by OPI nail polishes!

So, instead of showing you the usual promo pictures, I actually can show you photos I took of the actual bottles. (I’ll also include the official press release.)

You may or may not know, but I don’t actually ‘swatch’ polishes. I wear the colours as full manicures for at least a day and often longer. I only use the term ‘swatch’ because it’s the familiar lingo.

And I prefer to showcase each shade in its own blog post so that I can go into a lot of detail. If you’re looking for a single blog post with all the shades at a glance, other bloggers do an incredible job of that! It’s just not my style.

However, because PR was thoughtful enough to include some nail ‘wheels’ that were painted with the polish already, I took photos of them (with my camera’s flash) to give you a better idea of what it looks like on a nail. (Stay tuned for my future review posts where I’ll be wearing each colour and showing you photos of my manicures in various lighting.) 🙂

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Nail Art Tutorial: Pirate Nails

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Pirate-Nails-Nail-Art-TutorialArr, swashbucklers and ye landlubbers alike may get a kick out of these Pirate Nails! (No bottle o’ rum is necessary, which makes them suitable for all ages.) 😉

Last year I created many different Hallowe’en nail-art tutorials (soon I’ll do a ’round-up’ type of post in case you find it helpful to see all the ideas in one place).

This year, my schedule has been so packed, I wasn’t able to do Hallowe’en nail art, which seriously bums me out!

But I wasn’t going to let October 31st roll by without at least one new festive design!

Hehe, it’s been a little while since I had ‘eyeballs’ on my nails…and y’know what? I sorely missed them. (I like looking at nails and having them look back. We can…see eye to eye! *Groans*)

Hope that you’ll try out this design. I purposely tried to do a design that didn’t use too many colours so that it’s a look that more people will be able to attempt, regardless if you have a huge lacquer collection or not.

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OPI Don’t Mess with OPI Swatches & Review

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OPI-Don't-Mess-with-OPI-Swatches-ReviewLately I’ve been showing you a lot of new nail polishes, but I’ve been itching to wear an older shade. It’s fun to just ‘shop your stash’ and rediscover cool colours you already own. Saves you money!

Today I have for you a review on a recent manicure I wore – OPI Don’t Mess with OPI!

Hehe, this one has attitude, doesn’t it? Okay, I won’t mess with it…but only because it’s a green (and we all know that I have a soft spot for greens, even if they think they’re all that). 😉

Don’t Mess with OPI is from the Texas Collection, which I believe came out in 2011. So it’s not terribly old – you may be able to still find this in sale or clearance bins. But, if you want to order it online, I found a source that carries it still.

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Illamasqua Cameo Swatches & Review

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Illamasqua-Cameo-Swatches-ReviewIllamasqua Cameo is another shade that’s new to Sephora.

It’s a gorgeous periwinkle that I think would create a lovely base for wintry nail art.

But that’s not to say this polish isn’t fabulous when worn solo! While it may not have any glitter, it takes to the nail stage like a diva singing that high note.

I very much enjoyed wearing this nail polish, and oddly I don’t have many periwinkle nail polishes in my collection, so I was really happy to have this one!

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Illamasqua Noble Swatches & Review

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Illamasqua-Noble-Swatches-ReviewThe amazing Illamasqua team did it again – I came home to find a surprise package that instantly lifted my spirits!

Inside was Illamasqua Noble, which the handwritten note said was the latest addition to Sephora counters!

It came at a good time because, that night, I was already planning on changing my polish. No need to rummage through my bottles and decide. Illamasqua gave me the perfect polish to wear. No “I don’t have anything to wear” moment. 😉

Unfortunately, the weather was gloomy when I had my camera handy, so I couldn’t get any sunlight photos. And for some strange reason, I wasn’t able to accurately capture the colour despite fiddling around with many settings. (It is not a wintry blue like it appears in my photos! It’s a robin’s egg blue!)

I was so desperate to capture the true colour that I even took some shots in artificial lighting in my bathroom in hopes that it might help. (Yeah! That’s usually the worst lighting, but desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say…)

What a travesty, though, because I wish I could’ve shown you the true colour. To make up for it, I tried to describe the shade as best as I could in this post. And, although my photos don’t do this polish any justice, I hope that they’re helpful if only to see the finish and how smoothly and evenly the polish applies.

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OPI The World Is Not Enough Swatches & Review

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OPI-The-World-Is-Not-Enough-Swatches-ReviewOPI The World Is Not Enough from the Skyfall Collection brings to mind the song by the musical group, Garbage.

Remember Garbage? #1 Crush was my favourite from them. It’s such a sexy, dark song. And even to this day, I think that Shirley Manson is incredibly gorgeous. (Hehe, you know how I feel about redheads!) 😉

Alas, I digress (as usual!)…Back to the polish!

This is a neutral that’s more than meets the eye. Upon closer inspection, I was really intrigued by what I saw.

So what did I see? The light at the end of the tunnel? A man doing the Macarena underwater? A frog playing the kazoo with its left nostril?

Okay, maybe not, but I did see something interesting!

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OPI Live and Let Die Swatches & Review

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OPI-Live-and-Let-Die-Swatches-ReviewOPI Live and Let Die is the 3rd mini nail polish I have to show you from the OPI Skyfall Collection.

It was marketed as being an ‘almost black’ shade, haha, and if you’ve been reading my reviews for a little while, you’ll know that I’m not the biggest fan of near blacks. Usually if I want something very dark, I’ll just reach for a straight-up black.

However, in the bottle, Live and Let Die looked really interesting, and I gave this one a shot.

So did I end up eating my words (Mmm…chewy!), or did I stand by my stubborn approach to near-black lacquers?

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