OPI Do You Think I'm Texy?

From the Texas collection 2011.

This was 3 coats with no topcoat.

Awww, don't my nails look like strawberry gummies you just want to sink your teeth in? I'm beginning to appreciate this jelly finish (no nonsense about the sorbets, now). This is my very first proper jelly-finish polish! Unfortunately I accidentally ordered another one which means I've to sell one off to raise funds to buy the OPI Houston, We Have A Purple. Heh.

OPI Do You Think I'm Texy? is a berry-hot pink polish that is saved from being a little too striking with its jelly finish. You would notice that the close-up seems to be a bit peach/orange. And I've no idea why it appears as such. As I've ranted earlier, this was one of the polishes that turned up a completely-off shade of red in the photographs, so I had to tweak the settings a little on Photoshop to make it a bit more closer to life. The colour is closer to original now than it was previously, though not completely accurate either. In life, there is more of a red tone to it but you can definitely tell that it isn't a full-red from any distance, I imagine.

Also - annoying name. XD I keep typing 'Sexy' instead of 'Texy' when talking to my friends, which may lead to some awkwardness depending on who you're talking to.

China Glaze Ruby Pumps

Disclaimer: I'm almost ashamed to look at these photographs because it reflects almost nothing of the awesomeness that is Ruby Pumps.





From the Wizard of Ooh Ahhs collection 2009, and also released under the Loves You Snow Much holiday collection 2009.

This was 2 coats.

Do you notice something? Do you notice there is no close-up circle in my first photograph? I decided not to put it in because WHY BOTHER ZOOMING IN ON SOMETHING THAT ISN'T ACCURATE?

Attempting to photograph this polish (along with almost every other pink/red-pink/hot pink polish out there is a problem I doubt even Einstein could solve. Come on, has there not been a camera invented to deal with the flashiness of hot pinks and reds? It's not just this polish either, it's also OPI Do You Think I'm Texy, OPI Diva of Geneva, China Glaze Ahoy! amongst many others. All these come out way too red than they really are, although in this case, though it's more or less the correct shade, the levels that my camera downplayed the glitter effect of Ruby Pumps is nothing short of a blasphemy.

Rants aside, Ruby Pumps is a deep, rich red polish that has a semi-jelly base and has the best glass flecks I've ever seen (sorry, OPI The One That Got Away, you just got served). As if the colour of the polish isn't already sexy enough, China Glaze added in some winning glass flecks that makes the polish look as if it has RED CHRISTMAS FAIRY LIGHTS INSIDE!

I'm not very much of a red-polish kinda person. I shun vampy, vixen colours because I just can't pull it off. This is probably the 2nd full-red polish I own, and the first one isn't even really mine, I stole it from my mom (for unknown reasons). But the polish in the bottle captivated my heart in the store. Believe me, I warred with myself for a loooong time (until the store was about to close, actually) because I had no idea if I was going to ever wear it in my life since I don't like to wear red polishes, but omg, it was a great buy. I'd recommend it to anyone. It is really a whole lot more captivating in real life.

And yes, I am going to wear it, in defiance of my usual avoidance of red.

China Glaze Senorita Bonita

I've always wanted Blue Iguana from the Island Escape collection, but for some reason when I entered the nail polish shop, the one that caught my eye was this one.





From the China Glaze Island Escape collection 2011. This was 2 coats.

All the swatches in the world could not have prepared me for the brightness of this beautiful red-toned purple. It adds a splash of really bright, almost glowing colour to your nails, without transcending the thin line into the realm of neon. I wouldn't really quite call it neon because it doesn't have that eye-popping brightness, but the shimmer really does make it seem like it's glowing from within! It's complete with a sparse pink glitter that's not very noticeable but gives it a bit of texture! This polish was made to be eye-catching.

I used to be all over the blues and blue-greens but lately I seem to be transiting into a pink/red/purple phase where my pink/purple catalogue nail wheel has been filling up at an exponential rate.

Of scotchtaping, take 1!

As my weekend manicure this week, I painted the OPI DS Sapphire. Today being Sunday and having to take it off eventually, I decided to play around with it. I attempted scotchtaping before but I finally got it to work!



Base: OPI DS Sapphire
Pattern: OPI Ink

It's a jumble of pattern because I was testing them out, but it came out pretty well! The lines were neatly defined, contrary to my previous attempts.

I tried it first with frosty tape like the 3M sort, but I found that for some reason, the frosty tape would sort of be corroded or weakened by the nail polish (when you paint the nail polish over the tape), so when you attempt to remove it, it tears off into shreds and leaves bits and pieces of itself on the nail. It was a mess! I tried it again with clear tape and found that it worked a lot better. The only downside to clear tape is that you can't really see the line you're pasting so you'd have to be quite careful. Frosty tape had better visualization! But I've heard from others that frosty tape was better for them, so I'm not really sure if it's just the quality of mine!

OPI DS Sapphire

From the OPI DS range. 3 coats.

This marks the second DS polish that I own. While mega-fans of linear holos may not really like this range as I have heard that they are all scattered holos except for DS Original, for a holo noob like myself, it does perfectly well at keeping my goo-ga-eyed and mystified by its magic rainbow shine!

DS Sapphire is a blue-tinged silver base with a lavender flash, and of course, the holo that is sort of like a scattered linear. It's not quite a true scattered holo because there is some visible linearity, but yet it is not as clearly defined as the classic China Glaze OMG collection. From afar, or under dim lighting, this polish may seem to be a concrete silver, or maybe even lavender. Application was all right. You can do with 2 coats if you don't mind a little VNL but I decided to do away with my laziness and paint a third coat.

I painted this under dim lighting at the beginning, so I was rather disappointed because the holo was amazing in the bottle and didn't seem to come up too well on the nail. However, after painting it under my flourescent lamp today, I realise that it's actually - not a bad holo at all! I particularly like the lavender flash! It's like, when you direct your nails at a light source, the halo around the light source on your nails would be a lavender gradient-ing out to a more periwinkle purple. Trippy, right? You can only somewhat see it in the photograph, which I admit dims down the lavender flash quite a bit, though it shows up the holo satisfactorily. You can see the discrepancy between the very linear holo in the bottle and the more scattered holo on the nail as well. While you probably can't layer it on top of anything else as one coat is still thick enough to obscure or confuddle anything but the richer colours, it makes a great base layer for Konad-ing (you know what's coming up!) and possibly shatter (I'll try Black Mesh over it when I get it - I suspect under Black Mesh, it'll look like OPI Last Friday Night).

Considering that the poor shopkeeper charged me a whole lot cheaper for this, I'm extremely happy with this buy. It's pretty, it's not a bad holo (though not as linear as I would like) and it's definitely eye-catching. How cheap did I get this? Well, I paid almost the price of a China Glaze for this one. HO HUM! (:

Edit: Just realised that when it's viewed in dim or yellow lighthing, when the holo's all muted out and invisible, it resembles a darker, glittery, more opaque version of Orly Sky Blue Pink!

China Glaze Millenium vs OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It

China Glaze Millenium from the Khrome collection 2009. 1 coat.
OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It from the Texas collection 2011. 4 coats.

As you can tell already, CG Millenium is tons more opaque than the watery-thin formula of OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It. The chrome-shine of Millenium is also way more outstanding than the mere shimmer in OPI. Of course, the OPI has the pink glitter add-on but really? Compared to the blingness of Millenium, it pales a long way. Although OPI on its own looks shimmery already (like in this swatch) but when compared with the shamelessly shiny Millenium, it also begins to look dull and lifeless. The silver in it is evidently a lot more gray than Millenium, which leans towards white.

I'll say this for OPI though, at least it evens out. Even in this photo, you can pick out all the brushstroke mistakes I made with Millenium. What can I say? Beauty is unforgiving. In the close-up, you can see that OPI has a much neater, even finish, whereas Millenium has a more foil-like appearance, and dries too fast to ever even out your mistakes. Millenium reminds me of white gold, though!

And just for kicks, I thought I'd layer some China Glaze Broken Hearted (from the Crackle Glaze collection 2011) over it...



I'm not gonna lie! I'd definitely wear Millenium under Broken Hearted any day. Precisely because it's so shiny, it enhances the effect of the crackle! OPI looks fine under it, and the pink crackle brings out the pink glitter even more, but ngeh, like I said - beside Millenium, it just looks a lot more muted.

China Glaze Millenium

From the Khrome collection 2009.

It's... it's blinding. I think this is possibly one of the must-have silver polishes of all time, unless you can find its dupe (which I'm sure there are out there). This is just 1 coat of Millenium, and opacity is already built up there, making it a thoroughly awesome polish to experiment with Konad! I'll be doing that soon, believe me.

Millenium is a white-silver, high-shine metallic polish that has excellent formula. The only thing I can begrudge this polish is its propensity to highlight every brushstroke mistake you made, as metallic polishes are wont to do. Also, because it's so madly reflective, be careful that any, and I mean any dent or mistake you make in the finish, will be extremely apparent. In that sense, this polish allows little room for mistakes. I would highly recommend using a ridge-filling basecoat so you get a smoother finish!

The dry time of this polish is actually pretty amazing. I didn't know what to expect but aside from mattes, this is probably the fastest-drying nail polish that I own. Also, even though I'm such a topcoat fanatic, this polish is one of the few I'd wear without. Not because the topcoat ruins it, but it doesn't really do much for the polish either. I had expected it to appear something like Silver Shatter, where the topcoat brings out the bling-ness, but nope. I'd forego the topcoat and just live with the metallic finish!


However, this polish is really beautiful and eye-catching. I love the soft whiteness of the silver and of course, the amazingly shiny finish. I feel like Lady Deathstrike whenever I wear this. I have no doubt that if they had run out of those mirror-quality acrylics they stuck on Kelly Hu's nails, Millenium would've made a good replacement (if it had been released at the time).