Honest Babes

Number One Nemesis and Shatter the Scales are the first of OPI's Amazing Spider-man collection that I've tried. Number One Nemesis (NL M38) is a gunmetal gray mixed with a tinge of golden olive, plus heavy shimmer. I have a pretty significant horizontal dent in my thumb from being overly aggressive when pushing back my cuticles. But with one coat of ridgefiller and three coats of N1N over it, you'd never be able to tell there's any damage to my nail. That shimmer works like a charm to hide imperfections!

I needed three coats of N1N for opacity, which is fine because the thinner the formula, the more the shimmer can shine through. I would suggest laying each coat of polish down and then leaving it alone or else you'll wipe some polish off your nails. The color itself is a bit warm for cool-toned me, but I don't necessarily hate it. I would compare this to Chanel Graphite, but I opted to not purchase that and only have one tiny swatch of it to jog my memory. I probably wouldn't have bought this color had it not been for the name- I am nothing if not predictable- but it's growing on me. Great OPI formula and brush, as usual, so it's not a purchase I regret.

You can still see some areas of sheerness below, but that's just because of the light. In regular room light, you can't see that. I'd suggest maybe a thicker third coat if you do three coats, with the first two coats being thin. Hopefully you can see a little bit of the gold green tone of this polish.

Shatter the Scales (NL E66) is a GORGEOUS jewel-toned shimmery hunter green that I'd literally buy several bottles of, were it in a non-Shatter formula. The color is just amazing. Thin coats gave me a decent width of cracking to show the base underneath. Love it, love it, love it.

Without top coat, the Shatter wasn't too shiny:

With top coat:

I probably prefer Shatter the Scales layered over Number One Nemesis as a manicure, since the former is cool-toned and covers up some of the warmth of the latter. These two polishes set the bar pretty high, so hopefully the minis from the Spider-man set will not disappoint.

The Spiderman collection is now at Ulta. I saw it featured in their Sunday paper insert, so I headed to the store today in hopes of picking a few things up before the vultures descended. OPIs sometimes sell out pretty quickly around here. I knew I needed the green Shatter and Number One Nemesis for the name only.

There's a "buy two, get a free base or top coat" offer on OPI polish at Ulta, so I couldn't turn that down. All they had left was top coat, which is fine with me because it's decent. Into the Night looks like a fairly subdued, darker blue shimmer or frost. Your Web or Mine reminds me of another frosty pink- Nice Color, Eh? from the Canadian collection. At first I was thinking A-Rose at Dawn... Broke by Noon, but I can't find my bottle. (I'm not going to cry over that, let me tell you!) With the other more unusual colors in this collection, I'm sure OPI felt compelled to put out a super safe color that appeals to most of the buying public. Case in point- their 2009 Colorcopia collection of repromotes. I thought about buying Just Spotted the Lizard! in the normal-sized bottle. But even after all this time, I'm just not sure if I care for the color whether it's in a Chanel bottle or not.

Number One Nemesis is actually prettier in person. It's slightly greener/more olive than it looks below with lots of twinkling shimmer.

The green Shatter, Shatter the Scales, is for Spiderman's nemesis in this film- the Green Goblin. This is flipping gorgeous and I really wish it wasn't a crackle.

I'm not sure why OPI does these tie-ins. Do they think it'll influence us polish buyers to go see the movie? After seeing the Spiderman trailer, my husband said he'd be interested in seeing it. I think it's just to see Emma Stone in IMAX, but I suppose it's possible that he enjoys the Spiderman story.  After looking at the cast, I'm interested in seeing Lucy Lawless, Randy Savage and Bruce Campbell! And Joe Manganiello, with his shirt on... or not. I'm not really picky, to be honest.

Holland Park (012) is one of Nails Inc.'s "neon shades." Sephora describes it as "neon purple." I don't have an issue with the purple part of that description. It is purple, but with quite a bit more red than blue. But neon? Not hardly. There's been a bit of news floating around about how real neons can't be manufactured in the US, but Holland Park is made in the UK. So really, there's no excuse for this polish to not be neon.

I had trouble capturing the exact color of Holland Park, so I had to do a little color adjustment on these next few pictures.

This is pretty similar to what I'm seeing on my nails right now. So totally not neon.

My nails are darker than the color that's visible in the bottle, but that makes sense. This polish is so thin, sheer and watery that I ended up with four or possibly five coats. That's not a typo. I like sheer polish, but not if it's going to go on unevenly like Holland Park did. You can see how sheer it is in both the top of the bottle and especially around the edges of my nails. This is even more obvious in person. I could be a better painter when doing my nails, but when I do four coats and can't even get a color opaque in the middle of my nails... Houston, we have a polish problem.

Had I swatched Holland Park before buying it, there's no way it would be in my collection today. I actually like the color, but the unevenness and sheerness bothers me. I feel like there must be a similar color in my collection that would take way less fiddling and finessing when used. This is not worth the US$9.50 I paid, and I'd urge you to swatch this (if at all possible) if you're thinking of buying it. If you want a neon nail polish, both Essie and Orly have neon collections out and China Glaze has one coming out soon. I haven't tried any of them, but they're bound to be better than Holland Park.

April is typically a busy and important month for me, but really, a month without posting? For shame! I keep forgetting that I have blog posts almost ready to go, so I need to finish them so I can just hit "post." But enough of being Captain Obvious here!

I know what you're not wondering. "Dia, what nail polish did you recently wear to a concert by a band that you haven't seen live in 24 years?" And the answer to that question had to be something special with meaning to me. Of course I picked out one of my oldest polishes... that is pretty but never wants to dry and is kind of a pain to work with. That's not particularly what I wanted, but that's what I ended up with in Chanel Devious.

I did three thin coats, but there were still some spots that needed a little more lacquer. While I'm not overly fond of brushstrokes and frosts, the twinkling green microshimmer in this really works for me.

To dry Devious, I used Seche Vite on one hand and Poshe on the other. Neither dried my nails in a decent amount of time and I had nail tip pullback within a day. Feel free to ask me how I ended up with Devious on the back of my teeth. Ugh. Next time, I should try Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry to see if that works. The weird thing is that I don't remember the formula being that much of a pain back when I bought it (which had to be somewhere between 1997 and 2001.)

I saw Devious go for about US$150 on eBay one time. Yikes. This old formula contains some puzzlers- cholesterol? Lipids? Algae extract? I'm not surprised to see dibutyl phthalate as one of the ingredients, though. I wonder if adding some toluene via Seche Restore would help. If anyone has some better thinner suggestions, I'm all ears. I hate to change the composition of this oldie, but it might need some help.

Is it worth the $15.50 I paid? Yes. Yeah, I'm crazy.  This is my favorite color, after all. Despite my slight nail issues, I looked really good for the night out, the concert was great, and my husband and I had an amazing time. 

I stress bought Essie's No More Film at Target when I was having a crummy day a few weeks ago. Oddly enough, the number of the polish is 911 and the purchase certainly did make me feel better. NMF unfortunately dries darker than the purple blue color you see in the bottle. Indoors in low light situations, it just looks like an almost black crème. Dark, but not too dark. But in the sun, the purple tones come out and NMF looks indigo. It's pretty sweet to behold. If only it were like that all the time! One coat was almost enough for opacity. I did notice some ever so slight bald spots on some nails, so I went with two coats. Wear was actually pretty good, though having Luxe and Lush on top probably helped. I did have trouble getting an even line around my cuticles (apologies for not cleaning up), but that is more a reflection of me than the thick formula.

Some of my friends have had trouble with China Glaze's Luxe and Lush (1132) from the Hunger Games collection. It does need lots of top coat, but I didn't have a problem getting it on the nail. But this is how I did it: I waited a day after I put No More Film on so my nails were definitely dry. I put one coat of CND's Stickey base coat (something slightly tacky like Orly Bonder will probably do the trick, too) on each nail, then a coat or two of Luxe and Lush. A generous helping of top coat and voila, the manicure was done. I really like using Stickey in situations where I'm layering different polishes because I really feel like it helps top layers adhere to the previous layers.

On the nail, Luxe and Lush seemed like chunks of mainly orange and green flakes. I dig it. And since I didn't have trouble putting it on, I wouldn't have a problem telling you to get it if you were interested in it. I found it at Sally Beauty Supply, but I've heard it's also at Hot Topic. Since No More Film isn't a totally unusual color, I'd tell you to get it only if you like really dark blues or are in an area with a lot of sunshine. It's been rather rainy here, so I may have to save it for a sunnier time.

I was lucky enough to get a small order in the last time NerdLacquer's etsy shop was open. I opted for a backup of Warrior Ethos from the Where No Lacquer Has Gone Before trio, plus Gorramit from the Serenity trio and All of Time and Space from the Mad Man with a Box trio.

Here's a side view that shows more of the glitter:

This bottle of Warrior Ethos isn't like my first one. There's always a chance of not receiving the exact same polish when you're reordering from an independent company. They don't do thousands of bottles of the exact same color like OPI does. What you do get is something unique that few people have. The glitter is predominatly black and copper like what you see in the first picture, but the other glitter colors were picked up well in this next picture:

You can sign up on the shop's page to be notified when NerdLacquer's back to selling polish. You really have to act fast once the store's open, so start researching what you think you might want well in advance!

These two RGBs may represent the best and the worst from RGB out of my collection of four. One is amazeballs, while one is merely OK.

You've sadly already seen the best picture. Click if you want to see more...

For absolutely no apparent reason, I decided to layer China Glaze's Crackle Glaze in Oxidized Aqua (1047) on top of NerdLacquer's Cold & Calculating. I had heard of problems with Oxidized Aqua not crackling well, but I didn't have that problem.

I did a thick coat on my middle and pinkie fingers and a thin coat on my index and ring fingers. The thin coats did crackle more, while the thick coats had marginally larger cracks.

While I really like the purple base of Cold & Calculating under the icy, shimmery dark light blue of Oxidized Aqua, C&C looks best by itself. Big duh, right? Sometimes you should just leave well enough alone. The China Glaze came from Ulta and Cold & Calculating is available at NerdLacquer's store if you're quick enough to snag it when her store's open.

When I wear Cold & Calculating, the regular silver glitter is what I notice first, then the silver hex glitter. Since C&C is a two-coater, you can cover up the hex glitter with your second coat. Sometimes I cover that glitter pretty well, and sometimes it looks like it's just under the surface of the polish. Like purple sand slowly blowing off a silver spaceship long crashed and buried on some remote planet.  These lightbox pictures show the glitter pretty well, though on the nail, I find that the overall tone is darker and slightly more blue.

These pictures are from the second time I had C&C on. It looked even better the first time- super awesome glitter placement- but I finally had to take it off after over a week of wear because it had just chipped too much. (Someone was picking at it. *whistles innocently*) But seriously- that was some crazy good wear.Four pictures...

I noticed that RGB Buff was featured in the new issue of Real Simple magazine. Even better, with the code REALSIMPLE35, you could bring the price down from US$16 to $10.40. I don't know if that code works on the other colors. In case it does, I figured I'd try and show the rest of mine. I have a few pictures of Punch up here on the blog already, plus some bottle shots of what I have, so peep that if you're interested.

RGB describes Dove as "pale blue/grey," which is accurate. I look at the bottle and think, "Grey," but it looks ever so slightly like a super pale blue on the nail. I am swatching it for the second time and I'm still not sure it's the best color for my skintone. I love Dr. Zoidberg, but do I really want to emulate him? (This is my answer, I suppose.) I did three coats of polish both times I swatched, though I might've gotten away with two if I was careful. Dove does dry quickly and glossy, always a plus. I am wearing top coat in these shots:

I don't think these pics turned out too bad!