More Valentine's Day Manicures

I did this super fast manicure a few weeks ago. I was putting Wet n Wild's Buffy The Violet Slayer on for the third consecutive time when I noticed my bottle of Nicole Step To The Beat of my ♥ sitting on the table. Perfect combination. Purple hearts with purple polish!


Of course, this isn't a color accurate representation of Buffy... But it still looks pretty, right? You can see little circles of topcoat around the hearts, haha! The polish is still wet in these pictures. I put extra topcoat on top of the hearts to make them a little more smooth, otherwise I keep playing with them and sometimes peel them off.


But even better than my mediocre manicure are these super cute designs submitted by my reader Nicole. She and her mom both did adorable designs for February, check it out:


This is Nicole's manicure, which is done with Zoya Jolene and Nicole by OPI Love Your Life. Fitting, right? Nicole wearing Nicole! She did a way better job with her hearts than I did with mine. This looks so pretty. I love the hot pink with the light pink hearts!


And her mom goes one step further and literally turns her nails into hearts! The color is Sinful Dream On, a neon purple. I love this so much. Heart shaped nails. I totally want to try this!


This time of year makes me all silly. I find myself wanting to be surrounded by red flowers and heart shaped lace doilies and pink sugar sprinkles... The actual Valentine's Day is rarely special for me, but I love the season and everything that goes along with it. All the pretty and almost sickeningly cute decorations and candies are a welcome break from the dreary, seemingly endless snow and cold during the last stretch of winter. You know what I'm talking about. That depressing period between the end of the Christmas season, after all the lights and decorations are gone and there's nothing but frigid cold, bare trees and absurd heating bills and that first warm day of spring when you can actually go outside without your hair freezing. As much as I do love winter, after a while, the oppressive cold and lack of color starts to get to me. I need that little bit of color and cuteness in February.

First Valentine's Day Mani

This weekend I did my first Valentine's Day-inspired manicure. It's not quite the typical Valentine's theme, but I had the urge to use these colors together, and this is what happened!

I think I'll try to do a couple more. Maybe I'll re-do that Illamasqua Heart mani that looks like saddle shoes, but this time do a better job. I think for my actual Valentine's Day manicure I'm going to use the Art Club Glam decals with the gold hearts, maybe over light pink or white.

I tried a different technique for applying Black Shatter this time, thanks so much everyone for the tips! You guys rock.



This was: Two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Night Lights over one coat of NYC Black (not a very good black polish, sadly) with OPI Black Shatter over two coats of Nicole OMB! on ring fingers and thumb. Night Lights is a nice chunky holo, sadly, this type of lighting is not good for capturing holo.

On this hand I tried a zig-zag diagonal pattern for applying the crackle polish and I think it turned out great!

I forgot to take a picture of the other hand until I'd already been wearing this for a couple days:

On this hand I did the random-blobs-of-crackle technique, but I don't think I did it right, it didn't crackle enough cause I made the blobs too thick. Very different look from the other two methods, though! I got bad shrinkage on my thumb because I did two coats of Seche Vite instead of regular topcoat and then Seche. Lesson learned!

Last night while I was out grocery shopping, I picked up some really cool Kiss decals that I think would make a good gothy Valentine's day design... Now I just have to think of a creative way to use them. I'll try to post a picture of them later.

Nicole by OPI Liquid Metals for Spring 2011

Here's Nicole by OPI's latest: A set of four super-sparkly foils. Technically these came out late last year, but they're part of 2011's spring colors. These feature the new Nicole Perfect Stroke brush, which is similar to OPI's ProWide brush, just rounder and flatter.



It Starts With Me. This is a silver-based peach toned foil. It's not quite pure gold, not quite taupe.


Miss Independent. A pink toned foil. Again, it has a silver base with a pale pink-purple overtone. This one is pretty unique, I can't think of another foil quite like this.



Rich In Spirit. An aqua-blue foil. In certain lights it seems like it has a greenish tinge to it, in other lights it looks pure sky blue.



The Next CEO. A good neutral gold foil with a little bit of a beige tone.

The formula on these is good. Very smooth, not thick, not runny. Good coverage, I only needed two coats on all of these. Drying time is very fast. The new Perfect Stroke brush was much nicer in these than it was in the One Less Lonely Girl collection; none of the brushes in this set were crooked or defective in any way. Smooth, easy application and a nice glossy finish even without topcoat.

These foils are extremely shiny and sparkly. While the colors themselves aren't terribly bold or exciting, the finish is amazing. They're like a cross between a true foil like Zoya Trixie, a chrome like China Glaze Millennium and a glass fleck sparkle. They are both reflective and sparkly/shimmery/borderline glittery and that's what makes these stand out. They aren't as dense of a foil as, say, Orly's Foil FX collection, but they're twice as sparkly.

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Black Shatter over Nicole My Lifesaver

The full manicure picture of this didn't turn out, but I wanted to post this cause I liked the combination so much:

OPI Black Shatter over Nicole My Lifesaver. Washed out (and my skin looks weirdly red) because of the flash, but this is really more about the Shatter than the base color. Look how perfectly it crackled! I love this stuff so much. It's so much better than the old crackle polishes. It crackles so quickly and doesn't take an hour to remove.

I also think it's quite funny that I'm wearing a Katy Perry nail polish over a Justin Bieber nail polish. Two musicians that I know next to nothing about and would rather eat my mother-in-law's turkey lasagna than listen to even one their songs.... Yet here they are on my nails, their colors joined together in perfect harmony and greatly admired by me.

But, yeah, I really love this combination. Nice contrast between light base color and black crackle effect.

Nicole by OPI Shades To Crave Collection Holiday 2010

Nicole's Holiday / Winter collection this year is really, really good. I never used to pay much attention to Nicole but lately they're making such amazing polishes that I can't ignore them! Now only if they would do something about that horrible bottle...




Call Me Classy. Only two colors in this collection that don't wow me and this is one of them. Not that it's bad, it's just very common. It's a very cool toned red or perhaps a very dark pink with some violet shimmer.




Fell From The Tree. Dude. Are you seeing this? Rich awesome amazing leafy green metallic! Not a foil, not really a frost, but a really nice metallic green shimmer. Very happy about this one!



Glitz and Glisten. Sheer fuchsia-purple glitter in a clear base. Very small delicate particles, not big chunky ones. This is three coats and there's a little visible nail line still. This is actually really similar to Nubar Petunia Sparkle, which was also gorgeous.





Grant My Wish. ...And stop making these wretched frosty granny mauves! This is a very frosty, silvery, shiny mauve pink. Moving on...




Midnight Snowfall. This is a confusing color. When I first wore it, it was night time and I saw it under artificial light and it was clearly purple. It was the most amazing vibrant blue-toned purple! But then when I saw it in the daylight it was totally blue. I'm not sure what color this actually is. Blue? Purple? Who knows. It's hot either way.



Mis-Magenta Me? I don't get this name. Is it 'Miss Me'? Where does the 'magenta' part come from? Mis-magenta? Anyway. This is a really pretty pink foil. I suppose I could call it magenta. Deep pink on a silver foil base.




Pitch-Black Glimmer. Amazing. I'm in awe of this one. You don't see many black glitters these days... I can't think of more than one or two current shades with black glitter. And for a color that is known for looking dull as glitter, this sure sparkles. It's great layered but I like it best alone. It's not pure black, though. It's larger black particles with some smaller, finer silver and holographic particles. Though I'm not sure if they're fully holo or just opal-iridescent, they're so small and subtle it's hard to tell.



Sensational Scarlet. Sensational is right. It's über-glitter. Red-pink tinted base, reddish glitter, iridescent glitter, all different sizes. This is a lot like Massini (now known as Studio M) Slamming Red but not as sparkly and iridescent. Same texture, too, like oatmeal.



Such A Go-Glitter. Medium sized round vibrant blue glitter and tiny silver and holo glitter in a clear base. This is a sheer glitter, great for layering, but can also be worn alone. This is three coats and you can see that it's still pretty sheer. Four coats would have been better, I think.



The Grape Debate. Very nice soft plum purple creme. Less blue toned in real life, as always. Actually looks purple on the nail, unlike the Ulta one I bought that looks like this but turns near-black on the nail.



Tip Of The Iceberg. Sheer silver glitter in a clear base. Nothing particularly noteworthy about this one. It's nice, but it's not unique. Good for layering. Nice and sparkly and shiny.



Twist Of Fate. Super dense gold plate glitter. Wow, I was not expecting it to look like this! I thought it would be another sheer layering glitter, but it isn't! It's really bold. Gives the most amazing gold-plated look on your nails. Really rich shade of gold too, it looks a lot better in real life.


This collection is a little glitter-rich, and glitters are nice for layering over other colors, so I want to show how they look layered:

One coat each over one coat of Illamsqua Boosh, with topcoat.
Left to right
Pitch Black Glimmer
Such A Go-Glitter
Twist Of Fate
Glitz and Glisten

One coat over one coat of Rescue Beauty Lounge Underwear, with topcoat.
Left to right
Glitz and Glisten
Twist of Fate
Such A Go-Glitter
Pitch Black Glimmer

And here's how a couple of them look over shades from the collection:

Glitz and Glisten over Mis-Magenta Me?


Twist Of Fate over Fell From The Tree.

The formula on these was varied but good. The non-glitters were smooth and pigmented. The glitters were good except for Sensational Scarlet which is super thick and if you're not into that sort of thing you may need to thin it before use. I did three coats of all just for my own sanity, some didn't need all three, some did. Drying time was nice and fast.


Overall, awesome collection. I flipped out when I saw it. It has black glitter!!!! What more could I ask for from a holiday collection? Seriously, who does black for holiday? That scores major points with me. Great glitters, great 'other' shades, only one real dud (the gross frosty mauve).

I've been seeing Nicole at more and more places lately- Meijer, Target, Ulta, Wal-Mart... So it's becoming easier to find. I think this collection may be Target exclusive since that's the only place I've seen it. I could be wrong! But so far, only Target seems to have this in stock.

(These were sent to me for review.)

It's not a joke-The Nicole by OPI One Less Lonely Girl Collection inspired by Justin Bieber

This just in from OPI- do not adjust your screens- you are really seeing this :O I'm keeping an open mind and I have to admit- the colors look REALLY good.

Multi-Platinum Selling Singing Sensation

Justin Bieber Hearts Nicole by OPI!

Nicole by OPI Hits a High Note with

The One Less Lonely Girl Collection

Inspired by Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber fans, rejoice! Nicole by OPI has joined forces with the 16 year-old multi-platinum selling singing sensation to introduce The One Less Lonely Girl Collection. Inspired by the superstar’s hit songs and larger-than-life persona, the collection will launch with six new Nicole by OPI Nail Lacquer shades available exclusively at Walmart for Holiday 2010. Subsequently, Nicole by OPI will unveil eight more Nail Lacquer shades for The One Less Lonely Girl Collection, available beginning in January 2011 at Walmart and in February 2011 at select Target, Sears, Ulta and other retail locations.

“We are thrilled to team up with such a widely beloved singer who has made major waves in pop culture,” says Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, Nicole by OPI’s Vice President & Artistic Director. “The colors in the collection are modeled after the upbeat and emotive nature of Justin’s songs, as well as his own unrivaled energy.”

The first six new Nicole by OPI Nail Lacquers in The One Less Lonely Girl Collection include:

One Less Lonely Glitter

This pale purple is a total keeper.

Prized Possession Purple

This vibrant grape demands a shelf of its own.

Give Me the First Dance

Take a number! Everyone wants this sexy silver.

Me + Blue
A metallic deep blue that’s just perfect for you.

OMB!

You have to see this metallic red to be-lieb it!

Step 2 the Beat of My Heart

Take the lead with this heart-filled hue.

Nicole by OPI Nail Lacquers and Nail Treatments contain no DBP, Toluene, or Formaldehyde. The first six Nicole by OPI Nail Lacquers in The One Less Lonely Girl Collection will be available beginning in December 2010 at WalMart, with a subsequent launch in January 2011 at Walmart and in February 2011 at select Target, Sears, Ulta and other retail locations.

For more information, visit nicolebyopi.com.