OPI Diva of Geneva - $5.75 at transdesign.com

From the Fall/Winter Swiss collection OPI brings us this rich and deep jeweltone magenta. It reminds me a lot of Orly Close Your Eyes and Sparitual Days of Wine and Roses, but it's still really beautiful. It's so vibrant that it has to be seen before you can get the full effect. I have two similar polishes, the above mentioned, but when I picked this up in Trade Secret I knew I had to get it anyway. It's like a purple/pink/wine mixture with a bit of a golden undertone. It applies nicely, two coats for opacity it wears well.

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It's official, I'm obsessed with leopard. It shouldn't be news to you... I am also in love with Migi Nail Art Pens. I received a sample of the black and white pen, and will review it soon, but I've been using the hell out of it. I plan to purchase a couple sets soon. Anyway, they happen to make doing leopard print really fast and easy so I did a couple more leopard designs this past week.

The first one is a base of Barielle Cowl of the Wild and then dots of OPI Who the Shrek Are You? I loved this combo so much. The neutral creamy brown really popped the citron color.

The second one is a french tip of China Glaze Classic Camel, then dots with China Glaze Goin' My Way (These are both from Vintage Vixens)

Both designs are pretty simple and standard, especially with the Migi pen. Not much copy this time guys because I'm so incredibly busy getting ready for the wedding on Sunday. I have a few posts saved and though it's only a couple random swatches and one how-to video I hope it doesn't bore you till I get back in town next week. I probably won't be available to answer comments or emails for the next few days, but I promise I'll respond to everyone as soon as I get back :D Thanks for reading, guys!

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OPI Simmer & Shimmer - about $5.50 at transdesign.com or $8.50 at Ulta, and Trade Secret

Here's my second favorite of the three glitters I bought from the Burlesque collection; Simmer & Shimmer. It's another clear-based glitter that is dominated by blue with a little gold, silver, and a tiny smidgen of pink thrown in. Overall the look is a light silvery blue from arm's length, but up close it's a glittergasm of fun. I liked this one quite a bit, but wished the blue was a bit darker. I'm excited to try this with a copper or gold konad design on top. Like Sparkle-icious, this is pretty sheer and needs about 4 coats to be near opaque. Five coats might be asking too much of some people, but it dries fast and most people like to wear glitters longer due to the mind-numbly annoying removal process, so it may be worth the extra effort to you. I like this polish pretty well, but I don't think it's the star of the collection. My picks for Burlesque are The Show Must Go On, and for the glitters you can't do better than Sparkle-icious. I'm interested in picking up Teasey Does It because I've heard a few raves, but time will tell. I'm rather picky with which OPI I buy due to the price, and the controversy over their marketing recently. You can't deny that OPI does surprise us with amazing polishes you just CAN'T pass up once in a while, so I don't have the strength to boycott or anything, lol.

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OPI The Show Must Go On - about $5.50 at transdesign.com (not affiliated)

This is the one polish that I was most looking forward to mainly because people were saying it was similar to, if not a dupe of, MAC Bad Fairy from Venomous Villains. Turns out it's not a dupe... It's lighter and pinker, but I think I like it better. It's a super metallic, almost a foil and the base color is a super vibrant magenta. It's also got an orange or amber duochrome to it that is quite subtle but gorgeous. At angles in which this polish have that amber cast the polish looks like OPI Music Hall Curtain Call to me, but then when you can only see the magenta base it's very similar to Zoya Astra in shade. Astra is a glitter, but the color is so similar. I don't know how else to explain it but when you look at it in a mirror, like the car side-view mirror it's so bright that it's almost like one of those photos where everything is black and white except one particular focal point that is in color. Even up against normal colors it stands out so much. I adore this polish!! It's a little difficult to remove, but that's no big deal. The application is interesting, it took three coats for opacity, but overall wasn't a real issue. Out of the non-glitter portion of this collection this is the only one I bought. So far...

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OPI Sparkle-icious - about $5.50 at transdesign.com (not affiliated)

From the new Burlesque collection by OPI for Holiday 2010 is one of the six glitter polishes; Sparkle-icious. Of the six I only purchased three, and my favorite is this one, so I figured I'd start off big. All the glitter polishes from this collection are multi-glitters in a clear base. This particular one is purple, blue and gold. It reminds me of Mardi Gras in a bottle. I know Mardi Gras colors are purple, gold and green, but I can't help but think of this every single time I clap eyes on the bottle. It's really funky up close, but if you look at it from arms length it's almost like and antiqued gold shade. Because of this, it might almost be work appropriate if you don't work in a field where clients are within a few inches of your hands. You have to know what you're looking for or be very close to see it's actually made up of multiple colors. It's definitely very sparkly, and it really isn't that gritty at all. It's completely smooth with a coat of China Glaze Fast Forward and then a coat of Seche Vite. It's a bit sheer, so three coats is a must, probably four honestly. I used four myself and it's not 100% opaque, though I think it would do in most cases. I love these glitters! After the success of Mad as a Hatter OPI seems to just be throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. I'm interested to see what everyone's favorite shades are from Burlesque... What's yours?

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Sorry I've been MIA for a few days... I haven't really mentioned it on the blog, but I'm getting married in two weeks! We've been so busy that I haven't had a lot of time for nail-related stuff. Besides there being a million wedding things to do, the whole family has been sick on and off for a few weeks, our kiddo has had lots of soccer stuff going on and there just seems to be tons and tons of stuff to do. I'm also a worrier. Something is wrong if I don't have something to worry about, but luckily there's plenty to be anxious about in the near future... Just for a quick FYI if you're interested, my fiancé and I have been together for almost 9 years (on and off, lol) and we have a 6-year-old little girl, and we're finally ready to tie the knot. It's going to be a lot of fun and I promise to post some photos after I get them. So think about me and wish me luck on 10-10-10!

Anyway, here's a manicure I did tonight because I just felt it was time to some fun nail art after this hellish week. I used an awesome Essence polish from the Surfer Girl collection as the base. It was sent to me in a swap from the lovely Michelle from The Lacquer Files (one of a ton of amazing polishes she sent that I'll be sharing with you over the next couple weeks). Over it I did dot's in varying colors:

From bottom to top:

Color Club Pretty in Platinum ($2.49)
Mix of Color Club Pretty in Platinum and OPI Who The Shrek Are You? ($5.24)
OPI Who the Shrek Are You?
Mix of OPI Who the Shrek Are You? and CND Urban Oasis ($10 as part of Night Factory set)
CND Urban Oasis
Wet n Wild Black ($.99)

I used a small dotting tool and applied the dots diagonally all the way up. It's far from perfect and I think it looks more graduated and pretty in person, but oh well. I love the look of it on grey and how it almost looks textured. I've been wanting to do a gradation manicure, but I figured I'd give this a try first. Honestly I'm really afraid of failure on the straight-up gradation... I'm sort of confused on how to do it to be honest. I've tried it with a sponge and didn't love it. Perhaps I need to use different polishes or try another method. Have you ever tried a gradation on your nails? What's you favorite gradation method?

Here's another straight-from-the-plate Konad design I did recently. I've a bad habit of using a few of my Konad plates and ignoring others, so I'm challenging myself to use them more, just to get some use out of them. It's so easy and requires no creativity really, but I like looking at the design/color combos other people come up with for Konad, so I figured I'd post it. This one is OPI Jade is the New Black from the Hong Kong collection with bamboo from plate m66 stamped on randomly in Black special polish. This is a really straight-forward design that takes no creativity at all, but looks super cool, and the color and design were made for each other, in my opinion. On a side note, what the hell is going on with my bottle of JITNB? It's going all yellow at the bottom. Do not like. Luckily it applies the same, I can't believe it's already doing that, it just came out a couple months ago. Weirdness.

OPI Canberra't Without You is from the Australia Collection, which I believe was from Spring/Summer 2007 has been sitting in a drawer in my house since it first came out. I bought it, swatched it, marveled at it's beautiful shards of glitter in the peachy nude base then promptly forgot about it. Three years later I sat here wanting to re-create the Lace Manicure again, (check out my first attempt here), so I kept an open mind and started rifling through my drawers for the perfect nude base. By itself it's not the most exciting color, but every girl needs a polish in her stash that matches her skintone. They just come in handy! Canberra't is my perfect nude, and I used it here as a base for two nail looks that are really sexy and appropriate for Fall.

This time around, armed with a better base color and an actual Konad Special Polish in black to make the designs more crisp, I thought I'd have a better time of things. It worked a lot better, but I have to say I'm really looking forward to when my nails grow back out from my surprise nubbin attack this week to try it again. Long, lacy nails sounds hot.

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Photos are property of OPI (See the original post here)

While hordes of fashion and beauty editors swarm the tents in NYC this week, I'm sitting in front of my computer sick as hell, but living vicariously through those lucky soldiers. I love reading the tweets and blog posts of the beauty bloggers who are there, and wait with bated breath to see what awesome nail designs and trends filter through to us on the interwebz. Here are a couple awesome nail looks created by OPI for the Zac Posen Z Spoke show. We all know that not only is nail polish huge right now, nail art is sweeping through fashion show tents and living rooms in middle America like an epidemic, and I for one love it. The photo above is leopard print on multi-colored nails. Sounds sort of like my manicure from two days ago, haha. The colors look to be from the Shrek Collection so there's a neat gradient of light blue, yellow, and Shrek green. Awesome!

There's also a cool design OPI did for this show that looks like a sort of deconstructed color-blocking or maybe like an impressionist flower painting. Either way it's awesome. Check it out:

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Here's a Konad manicure I did recently with the new OPI Ski Teal We Drop and a Nubar I got in my order a week or so ago, Unpredictable Taupe. I used two coats of OPI STWD for the base, and then with Konad plate m60 and UT I stamped on the paisley design. There's really not much else to say about this one, it's pretty simple. The Nubar is  pretty interesting. I tried it alone and it's a bit more frosty than I thought it might be, but it makes an awesome Konading polish. It's more of a frost than a metallic but the color is so neat because it's not quite silver. It's got a bit of warmth to it.

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