Red Lights Ahead... Where? - OPI

I have officially finished this semester with my last exam this morning! WOO! But along with that awesome feeling, comes a complete feeling of being entirely lacking in any functional brain cells! Basically I'm not making much sense this afternoon so this is just going to be short and sweet :)

This is another polish from OPI's Holland collection. This is 'Red Lights Ahead... Where?' and it is a magnificent coral leaning red. LOVE!

I love wearing any type of red polish! 'Red Lights Ahead... Where?' is a bit more summery due to the coral undertones. Mmmmhhmmmmm...

The coral comes out a little more in this lower ambient light.


Basically this polish is awesome. One coat gave pretty full opacity, but I popped on another one to make it all smooth and pretty.

Anyway, now that I'm on holiday for a bit, I'm going to have a go at some different polish techniques and hopefully, if the sun ever comes out, get some swatching done because I have just about nothing left to post :s

Coral Comparison

It's that time again, comparison time. This time I will show you a little coral comparison. I love corals. I think a good coral can look good on anyone, but I have to say I have a few that seemed to look a little similar... and I was kind of right about that. I'll let you see for yourself...

These photos are with base coat but without any top coat.

From left to right: Pinky - OPI 'Big Hair... Big Nails', ring - OPI 'Red Lights Ahead... Where?', middle - OPI 'My Chihuahua Bites' and index - Essie 'Peach Daiquiri'.
As you can see there aren't any dupes here but they are all fairly similar. The main difference of course being that 'Big Hair... Big Nails' is a jelly so will naturally look a bit different.

'Red Lights Ahead... Where?', on my ring finger, seems to lean a little more red than the others and 'Peach Daiquiri' on my index finger, a little more pink/salmon. I think 'Red Lights Ahead... Where?' is such a perfect colour. Really should wear that as a full mani sooner rather than later, I'm thinking.

I just had to show you this one last photo as this is one coat of each of the crème polishes. The two OPI's here are completely opaque in one coat and Essie 'Peach Daiquiri' is not far behind. I love these kinds of polishes because it means my second coat can just be there to shine everything up and fix any funny cuticle goings on :)



To the formula... The top two photos are showing two coats each of 'Peach Daiquiri', 'Red Lights Ahead... Where?', and 'My Chihuahua Bites', with three coats of 'Big Hair... Big Nails' (not bad for a jelly)! These polishes were all so easy to work with (see the one coat photo!). The only one that nearly caused me a tiny bit of grief, was 'My Chihuahua Bites'. It's one of my older polishes and has thickened up and tends to separate. Nothing that's not fixable with a few drops of thinner though, I'm sure. Anyway, I hope this helped someone and if not I hope you liked looking at these pretty polishes all lined up :)

These polishes are all currently available. For the kiwis, the three OPI's are available on Candy Girl for $18.95 (or of course at Farmers etc for around $26.90) and I got the Essie polish from Smith and Caughey (I got it in their sale for super cheap ($12 or something) so I'm not sure how much they are normally.

I Eat Mainely Lobster - OPI

I have for you today some photos of the nail polish I actually wore on Valentine's Day. This is 'I Eat Mainely Lobster' from OPI's 'Touring America' collection released in the second half of 2011 for "fall" in America. By the way, I loved quite a lot of this collection, especially the dark polishes (I'm such a sucker for dark vampy colours), so you're sure to see some more from this collection as the weather gets a little chillier and the darker polishes come out from their summer hibernation.

'I Eat Mainely Lobster' is a super bright coral shimmer. Yes I said shimmer, though the micro-shimmer in this polish seems to be particularly elusive (especially with a camera pointed at it). Watch, I'll prove there's shimmer in there somewhere.

See it in the bottle there... So pretty. 'I Eat Mainely Lobster' actually has incredibly fine gold shimmer in it.

In full bright sunlight it starts to show itself a little just giving the polish a slight luminescent quality. The shimmer doesn't appear as shimmer unless you look close, but rather it just reflects the light beautifully off all parts of the nail.

In this close-up, you can see just how sparse the shimmer is in this polish. I actually really like that it's so subtle. There are plenty of polishes out there that have a ton of shimmer in them but I don't always feel like wearing something like that. 'I Eat Mainely Lobster' is like the tastefully bejeweled cousin of 'My Chihuahua Bites' :)

'I Eat Mainely Lobster' doesn't seem to shift colour too much in different lighting. It generally ranges from a slightly more salmon-y colour, to a fairly orange leaning colour (as seen in the full sun photo and in the close-up one). To be honest it looks more salmon-y in full sunlight in real life than orange but that colour did not want to be photographed! This last photo is the closest I got to the correct colour of that particular side of this colour.


Formula wise... 'I Eat Mainely Lobster' applied just the way I have come to expect all OPI polishes to apply... well. I did use three coats because I am having slight issues with my base coat at present and I wanted three coats to forgive my imperfections in my rush to apply this polish and let it dry in the hour I had to get ready for work. I'm sure with a little more care, two coats would have been sufficient! Just while I'm thinking it, whenever I go back to polishing with an OPI polish after not using one for a while, I just realise what a dream the brush is to use! Perfect size for three stroke per nail coats. As for what I was saying about my base coat, I am having trouble with polishes sticking to it and dragging, even when I give it plenty of time to dry. I am currently using Essie 'Millionails' and I want to persevere with it a little longer as it is slowly strengthening my VERY weak and peely nails. I will be going back to something a little more user-friendly as far as the colour coats on top are concerned in a couple of weeks so until then, please bare with my often using more coats than may always be necessary. I used Essie 'Good To Go' as the top coat over 'I Eat Mainely Lobster'.