Buried Treasure - OPI Bling Dynasty and CG Cleopatra

I am sure many of you have seen the swatches of the OPI Hong Kong Collection on other blogs by now.  Yesterday I snagged a few of the colors using gift cards from my mom (go mom) and rushed home to test out something I had been musing about... 

All Laquered Up described Bling Dynasty as a "burnished gold" that an "ancient queen" would wear, which by the way I totally agree with.  Its beautiful.  It looks a bit green on me, but I think with a bit of color this summer it will be fabulous.  This is a nice gold metallic shimmer that applies great and stamps for all you Konad fanatics. Also since this is the first OPI I have reviewed let me just say this....I LOVE the pro wide brush.

OPI Bling Dynasty (3 coats) and topcoat.  There hasn't been sunshine here in a week so excuse the crappy photos.  I am getting a light box.

Anyway, All Lacquered Up's description got me thinking about my other favorite ancient queen polish, CG Cleopatra. Cleopatra is gold glitter polish in a clear base, but this is no ordinary gold glitter.  Its an almost coppery gold...don't get me wrong its gold but in certain light it just looks deliciously tarnished, and it has holo glitter!  As soon as I saw Bling Dynasty for the first time I knew I wanted to layer Cleopatra over it.

 

One coat of CG Cleopatra and topcoat over Bling Dynasty.  This was taken the day after I did the mani, once the sun FINALLY came out so there is a bit of tip wear.

Close up of sparkly goodness

My nails are crazy sparkly!  The Cleopatra blends almost perfectly with the Bling Dynasty, its like they were made for each other.

Sinful Colors Fall '09 Haul - Part 2

Day 6 of swatching Sinful Colors...

All I have left are pearl/frosts and glitters in clear bases.  I bought the frosts thinking I might be able to Konad with them before I realized how thin and sheer most of these polishes are.  I wasn't particularly excited about testing these out but I figured they would be a good base to Konad over.


Social Ladder is a sheer pale pink with a slight iridescent shimmer.  It takes 3 coats to achieve bottle color and I still had visible nail lines.  If I was looking for a sheer nude color or for something to use like a CND effect this would be a decent choice.  It is a however streaky and doesn't apply evenly. 

Social Ladder 3 coats with top coat

Tokyo Pearl is a creamy white pearl that is extremely streaky.  I mean streaks galore.  Even after three coats I still had obvious brush strokes and had already developed bubbles.

Tokyo Pearl 3 coats with top coat

Next is Out of This World which on the first coat had potential to be out of this world, it is a sheer silver base with tiny micro glitter that is very sparse.  The microglitter is silver iridescent and in certain lights looks like a holo.  Unfortunately once you put a 2nd or 3rd coat on it just looks like blah silver polish with some lumpy bits.  As a sheer over a regular base I think this would be great.

Three coats Out of This World and top coat

All About You is a brassy gold glitter in a clear base.  The bottle is densely packed with glitter but this is not a polish that is going to give you full coverage alone.  I used three coats here and it is still completely sheer though from a distance my nails did look gold.

All About You 3 coats, excuse the smudge these
were fairly thick coats in an attempt to get full coverage
and I smudged one picking up the camera.

Nail Junkie is AMAZING in the bottle, truly amazing.  A mix of chunky turquoise glitter and iridescent hexagonal glitter this polish has glints of gold, pink silver and green when it reflects light.  It gives full coverage in three coats though there is a visible nail line in bright light and the occasional bald spot, with four coats this could be covered up.   Sounds great right?  It should be but on me it is just....off.  I don't know if its the color or the texture or what but this polish looks awful on me.  I look at it in the bottle and LOVE it, I put it on and bleech.  I think I will try one coat off it over a really dark purple like OPI Siberian Nights and see if that makes it usable.  Right now its in my Franken supply drawer.

Nail Junkie 3 coats.  I know my cuticles have polish
on them...its hard to get motivated to clean them
when the polish looks so bad I know I am taking it off.

So 10 bottles of Sinful Colors late and I have learned to be a bit more selective with my drug store purchases.  Some of these I love and some were a complete disaster.  I did see two bottles on the display last week that look like duochomes so I will probably be stopping back as Walgreens for a new haul sometime soon.