OPI Sheer Tints

I love jellies and sheer colored polishes for layering. Remember the Sorbet part of the Texas collection? The colors weren't all that daring, but they became staples for many fans of so called sandwiches, layered manicures with glitter somewhere in the middle.

Now OPI has given us Sheer Tints, and yes, they're sheer. They are colored topcoats, resembling the finish that some of us refer to as water, but thicker in consistency, and they only hint the pigmentation in one coat.  They build up though, and below you can see how they develop from coats one to four.

The shades are a bit more diverse than those of the Sorbet collection, with the teal I Can Teal You Like Me, and the yellow toned I'm Never Amberrassed as the slightly less conventional addition to the purple Don't Violet Me Down, and the pink Be Magentale With Me.

The latter got tried out in the manicure below.

This is If You Moust, You Moust fom the Minnie Mouse collection of 2012, and Crown Me Already! from Miss Universe 2011, with Be Magentale With Me over the pink, in a center-linear gradient. I initially tried the same design over the glitter, but couldn't get it even enough to look good. It worked better for me applied over the creme, but it could just have been my own lack of patience.

Here's a closeup of one of my thumbs, that shows the gradient more.

The downside to these, in my opinion, is that the consistency is too thick, even for a topcoat. In the formula I received, bubbles easily occur (which is fairly obvious judging from my sticks a couple of photos up from here). However, this can of course be fixed with some thinner, once there's space enough in the bottle.

I have some playing left to do here, but overall I like polishes like these.

OPI Muppets Most Wanted quickie

Time for another new collection, and it's the annual soft shades collection from OPI, called Muppets Most Wanted. The last couple of years, the soft shades collection haven't been as soft as they used to be, and this year is no exception.

Eight shades, of which three are classic soft shades, two are more or less duochrome definite not-softs, and three topping glitters:

Clockwise from top left: Miss Piggy's Big number (blue metallic with the tiniest shift), I Love Applause (pastel pink creme), Int'l Crime Caper (sheer white with pink flash and light blue flecks), Chillin' Like A Villain (peach pastel creme), Gaining Mole-mentum (pink and gold glitter shards), Let's Do Anything We Want! (white and pink glitters with small and large white square glitter), Muppets World Tour (white and gold glitter, silver micro glitter, with larger magenta, blue and champagne pink hex glitters), Kermit Me To Speak (purple to golden green duochrome shimmer).

Believe it or not, the first one to get tried out was Int'l Crime Caper, because it's interesting enough for a sheer. Below is three coats:

It's a shitty photo, but imagine the pink flash stronger, and the blue flecks a little more vivid and reflective. There's still visible nail line enough to scare those of you who dread it, for which I'd suggest some undies. I'd say this is the nicest conservative sheer I have, so don't miss out on it if you're into that kind of thing.

Quick note on the duochrome Kermit Me To Speak: personally I own more than a handful of polishes with this pigment, from OPI's very own catalogue Amethyst Abyss comes to mind, so if you have that (chances getting smaller for each day since it's ooold), or perhaps Nubar Purple Beach, maybe your need for this one isn't as huge as you'd first think. Though, perhaps Kermit Me To Speak is a tad less green and run more between purple and gold, predominantly. If you'd like a comparison, let me know and I could probably manage.

New collection quickie: Depend Rough Sweet

For those of you who aren't yet tired of texture polishes, or pastel polishes for that matter, Depend releases a twelve piece collection of such shades, called Rough Sweet.

Though disputable whether all of these colors are really pastels, they are kind of soft in tone. At least the ones I tried quick stick swatches of. Here are my picks from the collection, clockwise from top:

2100 Sweet Candy (lilac with very subtle pearlescent shimmer), 2098 Sweet Mint (pale minty green), 2097 Sweet Jelly (spring green with small iridescent glitters), 2094 Sweet Sour (pale yellow with small iridescent glitters), 2095 Sweet Bubble (pale, cool pink), and 2093 Sweet Sugar (white with very subtle pearlescent shimmer).

Three from this collection have the little iridescent glitters to keep them interesting, and apart from the above two, it's also present in a caramel colored shade that I would probably never wear even at gunpoint. Except for these, all have some sort of shimmer that isn't really apparent because of the texture. They're soft and sweet, but not necessarily interesting in themselves.

As usual when Depend releases specialty collections, these come with a bigger price tag than the standard spring and fall collections. At SEK 39:-, these 5 ml per bottle have a high unit price. But if you're really into this sorta thing...

Still Intoxicated?

If not, let's have some L.A. Girl Intoxicate, from the Color Addict line.

Yummy... and I also brought in the nearly identical but quality wise worse instagram photo:

...just because I could. I had no sun that day, but this is totally hot without it too - in the sun the next day it looked warmer, plum towards the brownish color family.

Either way it's a fantastic fall shade, with its glorious gold shimmer and fabulous formula and great coverage (two easy coats)! I really really like L.A. Girl polishes, and I really really like the Color Addict line - I wish I had all of them.

Re-insta OPI

Let's have yet another bulk of manicures that only ended up on instagram... This time all OPI.

OPI All I Want For Christmas (is OPI), with black and OPI All Sparkly and Gold leopard spots (there were some on the thumbs as well). Both OPI shades from the Mariah Carey holiday collection.

More leopard spots: OPI In the Cable Car-Pool Lane with OPI Goldeneye, black, and own mix of coral pink spots.

OPI Oy - Another Polish Joke! with OPI Black Spotted.

OPI Oy - Another Polish Joke! on its own.

Strawberry meringue water marble as requested by the boyfriend. ("Can you please pick my nail color?" -"Do those meringues with pink strokes in 'em." -*...*) The marbling was hell and I'll never do it again. Colors used  were OPI My Vampire is Buff, I Theodora You and Don't Touch My Tutu!.

Sorta skittles with dotted details, with OPI colors Goldeneye, Suzi's Hungary Again! and OPI... Eurso Euro.

And the well known sh*it disaster OPI It's All San Andreas's Fault. But actually it's way better looking when it's completely dry and not on photo. I think I wore it for three days!


Stay tuned for more of my terrible insta photos!

How Seriously Serious?

Quite a lot, I'd say. This is one hell of a serious blingtastic glitter polish. Seriously Serious color combination as well, and crafted by one of the best: Darling Diva Polish.

Seriously Serious bokeh also. Sadly though, my memory is seriously compromised, and I don't remember what color I layered it over - Seriously Serious comes in a seriously clear base. But if I'm not mistaken, it's the close to black dark green Essie Stylenomics.

And seriously, it's still available in the Darling Diva Etsy shop.

My very secret eden

I'm sure you wish you knew what it is, but I won't tell - except this actual polish sorta was one, back when I wore it several months ago (!). Huge lemming for a long time, finally made available for overseas purchase, this is Our Secret Eden from Le Chat Dare to Wear.

Very difficult to photograph, but this is a blue jelly with pink shimmer. Actually, it's perfect. And that is all.

Purple pond

Have you seen these pond manicures? All one needs is a good jelly polish, a contrasting polish in for example white, and dotting tools. Below is my attempt.

I used New York Summer Hot Purple, and a random white creme that could definitely have used some thinner beforehand. The idea is that one should add flowers between each coat of colored jelly, to create the effect of some flowers being more below the surface than others. It's actually a very neat idea, but my sloppy dotting leaves at least some to desire. However, this was fun enough to try again and again, whenever there's time for such detailed work.

Here's an instagram picture, just because I can.

As if jellies weren't already difficult enough to get accurate on photo, adding the color purple to that makes it pretty much impossible. But as this manicure was in total four coats of the purple, the color depth was definitely more grave than in the top photo. The instagram pic is just a tad too dark.

Have you tried this technique yet?

All products were purchased with own funds.

Swedish word of the day:
damm -noun I pond II dust
The latter being something completely different.

Depend's better half

This is not a post on the marital status of a Swedish nail care company, but simply one showing off about half of their summer collection in the form of skittles. Yes, I felt like skittles, for almost several minutes after this manicure was finished.

Did you miss my trademark sideshots? Only my compact camera can manage them.

This instagram picture is actually the fiercest one.

Did you miss the entire nail community's claw pose of the later part of this century's first decade?

So, to sum this up, and to make my point: like so often, Depend uses a recurring finish throughout a large bulk of the collection, and for summer, that is duochrome glassfleck shimmer, woohoo! There are five colored jelly polishes with the afore mentioned finish, as seen in the above photos, and to help all us crazy duochrome ho bitches out there, 1/12 of the collection is a clear layering polish with the same shimmer. Technically, it's multichrome, but mostly visible is the blue to pink range. One may argue, though, that the direct angle color is more aqua, and then moves all the way to golden, via blue, purple, pink and copper. But you'll have to be very forgiving, or very nerdy, to find all that. And most of all, some of the spectrum is buried in the colored bases.

Do these make me a happy alizarine? Of course they do. And unlike all of Depend's specialty collections as of late, these are all regular collection colors, so they retail for the standard price of 25 SEK.

For data purposes, the shades shown above are, from thumb to pinky: 372, 368, 361, 366, and 367. The number of the layering shimmer is 363 - surely you could just snatch that one instead of all the above ones, though I have to say I like the base colors of these also. Very summery, except perhaps for the grey 372, which would perhaps be more fitting on a rainy day (also, the formula of this particular one was a bit icky).

If you're wondering about the rest of the collection, because yes, there are six more polishes, they aren't as exciting and probably won't make it onto photos in the near future. Among others, there is a re-release of a terrible white frost with utter streakiness (no. 38), that I can not for the life of me figure why the Depend peeps would bring back. Then, there are cremes in the spectrum of berry, orange-red, coral, yellow and a sorta 60's semi-pastel green, but less appealing than it sounds. You'll probably be able to find those elsewhere.

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
sommarregn -noun summer rain
Not that bad after all.

Theoretical Blogger

I got this one also from Katarina over at the Edgy Polish webshop - from a new to me brand called Vivid Lacquer, this shade is called Theoretical Blogger.

Pale pastel purple with a mix of various smaller glitters in different purple shades and black - I think this was three coats. This has this speckled egg shell feeling to it. Application wasn't too terrible for being a pastel, and after topcoating it looks nice and even.

Apparently this shade is part of a whole collection of  pale colors mixed with matching glitters. There is a green one, a blue, a pink and a grey. The latter one is called Theoretical Rockstar, and looks really nice.

It is actually very comforting seeing independent line glitter polishes that aren't the typical bombs of ginormous particles, but rather smaller glitters that create effect more than bling. What do you think? Are you tired of glitter bombs yet?

This products was sent or review.

Swedish word of the day:
blek -adjective pale
Not necessarily unimpressive.

Vesper my name

Yeah, she really did. Or, rather, screamed it. Vesper wanted to come to mama.

I was generous with her, so I put three coats on, mostly to completely cover up my existing gel manicure, but also because I'm like that. Vesper is a really, really dark purple base, with purple and black glitters, but you will have to wait up to an hour before it looks more than just black. Close to my cuticle where the polish is thinner, you can tell the base is actually purple. And yes, I forgot to do cleanup on my pinky.

Vesper is definitely not for the shy. The color in combination with the Liquid Sand finish makes her a lot more than just a classic vampy. Possibly intimidating in all her power. Needless to say, I love her, like mad. But even the most passionate of loves comes with pain, and yes, I find the Liquid Sand polishes absolutely horrible to remove.

Have your hearts softened towards the (intendedly) gritty polishes yet?

This product was sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
kväll -noun evening
And the Latin word is vesper.

Peonie

It's been long (everything is relative) since I last posted a Darling Diva Polish, so why not explore one today? This is the subtle beauty known as Peonie.

Part of the series of "soft linear holographic" polishes, Peonie is a sorta lavender base with, except the given holographic shimmer, a green glassfleck shimmer (possible even duochrome?) that you'll really have to fight to get on camera! While strong light brings out the holographic properties, low light will give you a small hint of the more shy flecks.

I really dig polishes that have different properties in different lighting situations, that aren't just flat dead in the less ideal situation. The combination of holo and a contrasting color shimmer gives this polish a strong reason to be worn no matter the weather, or time of day.

The Darling Diva soft linear series include a bunch of colors, of which I have already covered BJ, a rather vibrant pink. All of them contain a contrasting element to make me happy. I'll try to show all of them at some point - perhaps more for my own pleasure as they constantly scream to me, begging to be worn.

What can I say, I'm still a huge fan of Darling Diva Polish.

This product was a personal gift.

Swedish word of the day:
pion -noun peony
A huge flower.

The Night Before next day

How about a lovely purple shimmer? Night Before from Rimmel is just that.

Did I do three coats? Possibly, probably, most likely. In the bottle, this shimmer is slightly multichrome, but it's unfortunately not apparent on the nail. But what the heck, it's still a superb purple shimmer, so let's just leave it at that. If there was ever a disappointment, it was only very small. While the gold to green properties are hard to see (especialy the latter), the pink is still in nice contrast with the blurple base. I'm very fond of that type of purple.

In fact, I never seem to get tired of darker, purple shimmers. They are, in most cases, mesmerizing and classy. While swatching my entire collection of polishes (more on that another day), I came to realize that purple shimmers is by far the largest color group in it. And still I am buying more.

What is your relation to purple shimmers?

This product was acquired through swapping.

Swedish expression of the day:
kvällen innan the night before
Every day has one.

OPI The Bond Girls - bottles and quick swatches

By now we're all familiar with the gritty Liquid Sand finish which supposedly is the big thing this year. From OPI, we've already got four in the Mariah Carey collection, and one in the Oz the Great and Powerful soft shades collection, and to fully exhaust the concept, we're given six new shades for summer, called The Bond Girls collection.

Clockwise from bottom left: Solitaire, Pussy Galore, and Tiffany Case.

Clockwise from top left: Jinx, Vesper, and Honey Ryder.

Pussy Galore, pink with pink glitters; Solitaire, white with silver glitters; and Tiffany Case, blue with silver glitters.

Vesper, vampy plum with black and purple glitters; Honey Ryder, gold with gold ans silver glitters; and last Jinx, coral with gold glitters.


I wasn't expecting much from an entire collection of Liquid Sand polishes, but these are actually way better than the promotional images would make one believe. Perhaps the selecion of colors isn't the most brave, which is always sort of expected from OPI, but they are fairly well executed. Pussy Galore and Tiffany Case doesn't strike me as particularily interesting, but at least Pussy Galore is a baby pink with a little more attitude than we're used to. Honey Ryder doesn't make me tingle either, but it's a gold, and will solely for that reason be welcomed by many.

Jinx is actually very nice, although I can't really see myself wearing it. My photos don't make the glitzyness of it look anywhere near reality. The shades I'm certain I will be wearing at one point or another, is Solitaire, and of course Vesper. Solitaire is crisp in several senses, and as long as it doesn't catch a lot of dirt, which will inevitably show, it will look like your nails are covered in snow. Vesper is the outstanding one in my personal opinion. She doesn't look like much in the bottle, only very dark, but once dried, all the different aspects show up. Considering that my previous favourite among the Liquid Sands were the lava-like Stay the Night, I dare say the vampy ones are OPI's forte in this genre.

The formulas vary a bit in thickness, possibly due to pigments used. Vesper was the most thin, but I'll forgive her that. All swatches above are three coats, but some only need two.

As the names are once again, just like those of the Skyfall collection, classic Bond names, I have no problem with them. I sincerely hope OPI will back off the terrible sense of humor and pick some more less inventive names in the future.

The Bond Girls will be available in Swedish stores in May, so US girls may be able to find them in April already.

Will you be picking any of these up, or are you tired of the sandy finish?

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
Bondbrud -noun Bond girl [litterally: Bond bride]
That's what we call them.

Depend Mirage

Over the last year or so, Depend have been releasing collections other than the usual spring and fall ones. Specialty collections such as magnetics, holographics, and now, ...shimmers. Let's take a quick look at Mirage.

Front to back: 2051 Shattered Silver, 2050 Shimmering Sand, 2049 Fairy White.

Front to back: 2052 Golden Black, 2053 Treasury Gold, 2054 Glistening Green.

Front to back: 2055 Bronzy Breeze, 2056 Razzle Rose, 2057 Beaming Berry.

Front to back: 2058 Sheer Violet, 2059 Starry Blue, 2060 Twinkling Silver.


First impression of this collection is that it is a rather nice one, and some shades are actually very alluring, in a weird, delicate way. However, is the 60 % increase in price really necessary here? This limited edition collection is already in stores, and here in Sweden they go for a affordable but less tempting 39 SEK (~6 USD) - remember, Depend polishes always come in 5 ml bottles.

If you'd like swatches of any in particular, just give me a holler in the comments.

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
hägring -noun mirage
Watch out for dehydration!