OPI with Crushed Candy

OPI ~ You Only Live Twice

Bright magenta packed with pink shimmer

and

Julie G ~ Crushed Candy

Lavender textured with shimmer and glitter

You Only Live Twice is from OPI’s Skyfall collection from holidays 2012. I got this polish in a swap, and I am very pleased about that. I love a good magenta, and especially if it’s shimmery too.

The formula was really good, surprisingly enough, and the drying time too. I say that because I have a lot of OPI polishes that I don’t wear because OPI and I apparently aren’t a good match, normally. But once in a while magic happens, and wow! It took two coats to achieve desired opacity and wow, this baby can really shine.

Take a look; there’s no top coat on yet, just two coats of polish:

The depth is no less than amazing, and I love, love, love the shimmer! 

On this picture you can see in the bottle that the polish actually also contains golden shimmer. That’s normally not something I’m into, but fortunately that didn’t show up on the nails at all!

The sun was about to go down, so here’s a shot in the evening light:

I wanted to do something creative, so I tape my nails diagonally across and painted the lower half with Julie G’s “Crushed Candy”, which is from the Gumdrop collection of textured polishes. The formula is good and the pigmentation is great, so I could remove the tape after the first coat. When it was dry I drew a stripe where the two polishes met, and then another one just below the first line. I sealed it up with a layer of Poshé topcoat, and here is the final result:

I used a new striper from Models Own called “nail art pen” (brilliant name, ha!), but I’m not going to buy that again. It may show that I didn’t find it particularly easy to work with, but never mind :)

Here are the three polishes I used:

I have to pat myself on the shoulder now, because I really like this mani. This was exactly what I had in mind when I started striping. I love it when that happens! Yay!

Did you buy any of the Julie G Gumdrops? If yes, do you like them?