Nicole by OPI Carrie Underwood Collection, Part One

I mentioned in my display post last week that the first seven colors in the Nicole by OPI / Carrie Underwood collaboration are now showing up in the stores. I was fortunate to receive them for review so today I've got swatches. There are seven more Carrie Underwood colors that I haven't seen in stores yet; I'll have swatches of those in a separate post later this week.

I got frustrated trying to arrange the bottles neatly for their group photo, as my little lightbox is not quite wide enough for seven of these bulbous bottles to sit side by side, so I gave up and went with a much more casual arrangement. You can see there's a variety of finishes here. The hues are mostly warm tones.

Southern Charm is a peachy skintone nude creme (for certain values of "nude", of course). This blended pretty well with my skintone; I can see myself using it as netural base color under sheers. If Zoya ChantalI used three coats for my swatch.

Sweet Daisy is a light but not pastel reddish orange creme. I used three coats of this one as well. I wasn't crazy about how it looked with my skintone but it's a nice soft spring color in and of itself.

Carnival Cotton Candy is a vibrant blue-based pink creme and yes, another three coater for me. If you don't already have a bright and happy pink creme in your stash, this would fit the bill.

Goodbye Shoes is the final creme in the group and the coolest-toned shade of them all. It's a dusty blue-leaning green. Two coats of color was plenty for full coverage from a visible nail line perspective, but not quite enough to camoflage all the imperfections in my nail bed, so I added topcoat to this swatch.

Backstage Pass is a very deep brown-leaning wine with subtle shimmer. This is sort of shade I expect to see in fall collections; it's somewhat unexepected here in a group released in the pre-spring period. I used two coats plus topcoat for this swatch as well.

The shimmer in Backstage Pass showed up a bit better in more direct light.

Carrie'd Away is a gold flecked shimmer in a slightly sheer base. I used three coats and still saw a hint of visible nail line. It is definitely not my color, though I think it would look great some of my friends.

Finally we come to the only glitter in this group, Lips Are Dripping Honey. This has golden holo glitter in two sizes in a clear base.

I put one coat of Lips Are Dripping Honey over Carnival Cotton Candy and quite liked the combination.

Then I tried two coats of Lips Are Dripping Honey over Goodbye Shoes and liked that combination even more. Such glitter. So rainbows. Wow.

Next it was Backstage Pass's turn to get the Lips Are Dripping Honey treatment; this time I put Carrie'd Away on an accent nail before I laid down the glitter.

I wanted to try Carrie'd Away layered over something lighter, too, so I laid down a base of Sweet Daisy and then added 1 coat of Carrie'd Away to all but an accent nail.

A gradient with Carrie'd Away and Lips Are Dripping Honey on a base of Southern Charm is the last look I have to share today.

The Nicole bottles are never going to be my favorite, but the polishes inside are perfectly fine. This particular group has a nice range of colors and finishes, and as you can see, I had fun playing with them.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.