OPI DS Mystery and DS Glow, Where I Have Been and My Nails

SO! Where have I been? Well, I did say I'd be gone most of December. The Winter Holidays are a time of much celebration and stuff to do in my life. Then on December 31, I had some surgery. I recovered just in time to start school, then get sick. Eyeroll and sigh. I am all better now, for the most part. But since I started clinicals in Nursing, I will be much busier. I have also run out of stuff to do daily polish posts about. I'll be posting stuff I buy, and most new collections, but I probably won't be posting daily any more. To top it all off, I have to keep my nails 1/8th inch from now on, so pretty much everything you are going to see from now on is fake nails. Eh, no biggie. I have one more collection to post, possibly tomorrow, then get ready for the POLISH MAYHEM 2009 POLISH COLLECTION AWARDS. My Top 5 Favorite and Least favorite Polish Collections of 2009!!!

So anyway on to OPI DS Mystery and DS Glow. I've been waiting for these a while, and I am sure most other blogs swatched these ahead of me. I like these. Same great DS formula, so very easy to use and so pigment rich. The shimmer in these is intense, pinpoint, and packs a nice punch. Your typical OPI DS. Great quality.

DS Mystery is a nearly black deep royal purple jelly with a bronze/old gold shimmer. Really nice. I expected a lighter shade, but this is lovely.


DS Glow is the same bronze/old gold shimmer as in DS Mystery, but that is all there is to this. I really love this. So many golds are frosts, or cremes with a lot of shimmer in them. This is slightly sheer, and is gonna look INCREDIBLE in the summer, next to a good tan. Wearing this is going to make you look like a summer goddess, trust me. Believe me you will be seeing it on my hands!


Nice. OPI DS polishes seem to disappoint me very seldom.

Color Club Japan Only?? Glitters!

I dunno anything about these glitters. I think they are a Japanese exclusive. They aren't even on Color Club's site, and frankly I am too lazy to email and ask them. Imagine that, being too lazy to email.

They have varying amounts of that beautiful, soft opalescent glitter I really love, and are pretty shades. The major drawback I found was these are MAJORLY gloppy. They're like spreading jelly with a nail polish brush. One of these took about THIRTY drops of polish thinner before I could even apply it. Maybe I got bad bottles. But these were a nightmare. A pretty, shiny, glittery nightmare. They're all sheer bases, with the darkest being the least sheer. All of these are three to FOUR coats, no topcoat. They dried pretty fast, though.

From lightest to darkest:

Color Club Limited Edition Pink Glitter. This is basically just glitter in a base so lightly tinted it makes no difference. The thing it's here for is the glitter. Tons of opalescent glitter. This was the thickest of the polishes.


Color Club Sakura Glow has the least amount of glitter, and only a small wash of pink. Would be nice as a layering glitter.


Color Club Strawberry Sharbet. Yes I know it's sherbEt, it's not my error. Slightly more glitter than Sakura Glow, and a bit more color to the jelly.


Color Club Strawberry Candle is the darkest of the pinks and it's a keeper, in my opinion.


Color Club Too Violet. It has the most opacity, and I think it's very pretty!


Not sure this collection is a must have. I really like the two darkest ones, though. I found these at Victoria Nail Supply.

Color Club Wild At Heart Fall 2009 Collection

FINALLY I have these. I am in love with this set. It's got great vibrant colors, a healthy helping of holographic glitter, and only one boring color. Even the boring color has glitter! The formula is good, Color Club formula is nice and manageable for the most part, though frosts are almost always streaky and the ones in this set are pretty much no exception.

Onto the colors!

Color Club With Abandon is a strangely named black jelly with large grain brown shimmer. It manages to be dark but STILL be brown!! Would OPI please take notice?? Easy to apply since it's a jelly, needs two or more coats. I woulda named this one Do It In the Dirt.


Color Club On the Wild Side... ah here's that aforementioned streaky frost. What a waste of a gorgeous shade. Pure frosts like this look so old-fashioned and messy. But what a color!


Color Club Wild at Heart, well, I don't think I have ever taken a better picture. It applies like a dream, and looks like it was sprayed on by a professional. Trust me, this one will look just as good on you. It's not a holographic, but it has enough holo glitter to pack a very nice punch and to look sleek and shiny. And what a great, deep purple.


Color Club Love 'em Leave 'em, huh? I woulda named this Renegade Attorney, or Slightly Naughty Secretary. It's BEIGE. This needed to be canned and replaced by a rich ruby red with holographic glitter. they could have filled a large need in the polish world but gave us something you could probably get away with at work, but frankly is too boring for anywhere else, despite the nice holo glitter.


Rule Breaker is a gorgeous teal frost but it has so much shimmer added as well that it applies a bit better than On the Wild Side. Beautiful color, just I think it'd be best worn without color coordinating your clothes with it.


Color Club Wild and Willing is not done justice by my picture. It's a slightly sheer golden brown jelly with very vibrant shimmer. It reflects tons of light. it also has a small shot of gorgeous rose/green duochrome. Just fabulous.


So why am I so interested in the names? Who knows. I know no one cares about the names. They just made me go WTF this time. Heh.

O! A Daily OPI! - OPI Girls Love Pink

This is a sheer, VERY shimmery girly pink. It makes me feel very feminine, and I love the intense shimmer.

OPI Girls Love Pink:

O! A Daily OPI! - OPI This Little Piggy

This Little Piggy is a sweet sheer pink with tons of shimmer. Good for layering or a bit of natural looking shimmer.

OPI This Little Piggy:

September is O! A Daily OPI!! - OPI Rent

September starts us off on another month of daily polish swatches from one particular brand, this month it is the wonderful, always popular and highly visible OPI. Not the most daring, not the most conservative, but always out there with tons of great colors and more than their share of fashion forward and hot polishes. The Designer Series alone should make OPI one of your fave polish brands!

Let's start with OPI Rent!! A very sheer polish, this would be better used with french manicure or as a complementary topcoat. It would be stunning with OPI Significant Other Color, which I am sure I will feature on another day. This isn't my favorite picture, but it's fitting, cause it's time to pay the rent, and also I like my nice long nails in it. Hee!

OPI Rent:

China Glaze for Days! - China Glaze Celtic Sun

It's still summer, even if some of us are back to school! There's still plenty of time for neons!

Celtic Sun is kinda like "what if I took the ink out of a neon yellow highlighter and painted my fingernails with it?". Maybe you are like me and think that sounds like a lot of fun.

China Glaze Celtic Sun:

China Glaze for Days! - China Glaze Golden Enchantment

Golden Enchantment is a gold "rainbow" microfine glitter which you could wear alone but I would probably wear as a layered topcoat. I don't think this is what you could call holographic glitter. I like to personally define holographic glitter as having a curved rainbow on the nail that is cohesive, shared among the grains of glitter. Rainbow glitter, to me, flashes all colors of the spectrum, but no matter how much of it you have it does not have that shared whole nail rainbow effect.

Anyway now that I have been pedantic, enjoy Golden Enchantment.

China Glaze Golden Enchantment:

Sula Paint and Peel Nail Color

Ulta is now carrying Sula "Paint & Peel" Nail Color. The premise is you can just peel it off when you want to change colors/are bored/it looks bad, but the thing I am thinking is "someone actually thought polish doesn't usually chip or peel off on its own?!" Seriously though, I imagine the intention is that Sula will prevent use of removers and cottons balls, though in use, this is not true. Decrease how much you need, absolutely.

The Sula Colors I brought home (there are a couple others):

Left to right, Blush, Ruby, Berry, Crush, Royal, Sky, Azure, Moss and Metallic and Clear TopCoats.

One thing about Sula though, is to get this peel-off action, you put it on nude nails. No ridge filler, no strengthener, no nothing. If you have thin, ridgy nails that snap at the blink of an eye, you'll get no backup from Sula products. I really dislike that. Of course Sula has decided if you don't want a pull off nail polish, you can have a clear topcoat/basecoat. It's a strange formula just like the polish, and is not a strengthener nor a ridge filler.

Sula's polish is milky in the bottle and as you apply it. It dries to a translucent jelly. While the bottle states use 2 coats, I had to use four. The polish is very streaky and sheer. Four gives pretty good coverage on the polishes intended to be opaque. It's not runny, goes where you put it, and has a nice wide brush, almost as wide as OPI's. So it is easy to apply. One AMAZING benefit to this polish - mistakes that go onto your cuticle and skin rub off instantly, no muss no fuss. WOW. If only all polishes did this!! Oh, and the polish STINKS, like housepaint. It even looks like housepaint.

Here are the three I swatched (sorry I got bored with this stuff quickly).

Sula Ruby:


Sula Blush:


Sula Moss:


The Colors I Did Not Swatch:


Sula has several colors, kind of jewel tone jellies (look creme in the bottle but dry to jelly). The colors are fairly nice. But that's pretty much it. No cremes, no shimmers, no glitters, just these mostly opaque jellies. Sula has decided if you want to use their "permanent" non-peel option, they will provide you with a "Metallic TopCoat" which is sort of a silver shimmer. It also applies milky and dries clear. And is a HOT MESS. Thick, clumpy, all over the place and streaky, and barely any shimmer to it. Worst. Product. Ever.

Sula Metallic TopCoat:


So what happens when you decide to peel this off? Mostly it works pretty well. It comes off in mostly large chunks. It does leave some residue on the nail and at the sides, so you DO need polish remover with this, just not a lot. Of course, with acetone who has much of a problem removing jellies anyway? These polishes would take two seconds to remove normally, and frankly you are going to need remover with these, even if only a little. So you're still gonna use a cotton ball. So this is really more of a gimmick than anything really hugely "green". And seriously, do you really think people are struggling to find polish that peels off at a moment's notice? I hear endless complaints regular polish often does that on its own, to people's chagrin.

Peeling!:




Sula Paint & Peel Nail Color costs a pretty $9.00 per bottle. Frankly, IMO, forget it. Unless you really like a color. Then, buy it and treat it just like any other color. I don't think Sula even believes people want a nail color that just pops off your finger, or they wouldn't have the "permanent" options. Maybe Sula will evolve. Maybe it won't. We shall see!

Month of Zoyas! - Zoya Gabrielle

Zoya Gabrielle is a flaky shimmer jelly in bright citrus orange. It's very similar to Sienna, but is a lighter, calmer shade of orange. It's easy to apply, very jelly, and full of glistening shimmer. Wear for a happy romp outdoors or to perk up your spirits when it's gloomy!

Zoya Gabrielle:



Tyler Durden's opinion of Zoya Gabrielle:
Man, you've got some f***ed up friends, I'm tellin' ya.

Nail of the Day - Sinful Hottie 4/24/09

Today's polish is Sinful Hottie!

Sinful is a drugstore brand, here at Walgreen's it sells for $2 a 0.5 ounce bottle. They have some pretty nice colors I will blog about later.

Sinful Hottie is a sheer denim blue jelly with a ton of glitter in it. The glitter is very much like the sparks you see in the depths of an opal, kinda candy colored without being pastel at all. It also has a jellylike texture from all the glitter. It spreads well and evenly, and dries very quickly, allowing many coats. I used four today, the picture is three. When you run your finger across the polish surface and it feels bumpy, Hottie is dry and ready for another coat. It's beautiful and simultaneously somehow blingy yet understated.

Pick Hottie up and enjoy!!




Tyler Durden's opinion of Sinful Hottie:
Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.

Sally Hansen Opal Nail Glazes

I saw these mentioned on Scrangie's blog. Just a mention, but I was intrigued and sought them out. I could only find a scant few pictures of them on FlickR, on Lextard's photostream. Hence this post, because I know people are looking for pictures of them and I want to help.

I took a chance and bought some, because I wanted to experience the "lustrous glow of real crushed opals". WHOOO REAL CRUSHED OPALLLLLSSSSSSS!! Anyway they are nice, but it's not like strapping a fire opal to your nail or anything. They tend to be sheer, slightly opalescent (of course), and in soft pinks, subtle reds, and very light purples. The formula is very nice, not runny, not thick, and easy to apply. Super easy. They dry quickly, but not so quickly you get clumps or remove dried polish with a second stroke. They have a nice wide brush (not as wide as OPI DS brushes) and a wide flattish stick. This makes it even easier to apply.

These also are discontinued. Eyeroll. You can find them on eBay and suchlike. Eventually I will get some more, but until now enjoy a few!

Sally Hansen Royal Opal:


Sally Hansen Amber Opal:


Sally Hansen Rose Gold Opal:


Sally Hansen Wildfire Opal:


Sally Hansen Red Opal:


Tyler Durden's opinion of Sally Hansen Opal Nail Glazes: I am Jack's raging bile duct.