OPI Finds

In the run up to Christmas, I hit several Marshalls and TJ Maxx stores looking for particular makeup products for a friend. I didn't find those, unfortunately, but I did find some nail polish to add to my stash, including the OPI colors I'm going to share today.

First up, the Peanuts collection, which never showed up at my Ulta at all as far as I know; I didn't even see an empty display or stray bottles, and I'm in Ulta pretty frequently. I grabbed the mini set, with Good Grief, Where's My Blanket, Who Are You Calling Bossy, and To Be or Not to Beagle. It also has a small sheet of decals.

When the time came for swatching, I put three coats of Good Grief, a yellow creme, on my first three digits, and two of Who Are You Calling Bossy, a black creme, on my pinky for an accent nail. I topped the yellow with (top to bottom) Where's My Blanket (2 coats), Where's My Blanket and To Be or Not to Beagle (1 coat each), and To Be or Not to Beagle (2 coats), putting clear topcoat over all the glitter. Where's My Blanket has hex glitter in black, light orange, and pastel yellow in a clear base. To Be or Not to Beagle has black hex and skinny bar glitter along with hexes in blur, light blue, red, light orange, pastel yellow, and white, again in a clear base.

I didn't manage to get all the colors out of the bottle for To Be or Not to Beagle, so here's a bottle shot:

This is a happy collection, and the colors make sense as a tie-in to the comic, so I'm giving it a thumbs up. I would have liked something more interesting than the black creme, but I can see why they included it.

It's been way too long since I took the time to do any comparisons, so I pulled some yellows and went at it. Lineup number one: OPI Good Grief, OPI You're Grounded (dupe for Nicole by OPI Hit the Lights, see the excellent detective work on display at beautygeeks), Butter London Pimms, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow (new version).

On the nail in the same order as above:

You're Grounded has a very, very subtle shimmer but pretty much reads as a creme. It's the closest to Good Grief despite the finish difference. Pimms is a touch brighter, and the only one I used two coats of instead of three (a third would have smoothed my ridges on that nail, but so would have base coat, which I skipped). The new Mellow Yellow is a touch less vibrant and leans just a bit more toward orange than Good Grief.

I've missed doing comparisons, so I went ahead and did another set. This time it's Good Grief, Funky Fingers Alex's Lemonade, Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine Get Lucky, and Milani Canary. Yeah, these are more obscure, but what the heck, I have 'em so might as well use 'em.

On the nail:

All of the three contenders in this lineup were just a tad brighter than Good Grief, closer to each other than to the OPI. Alex's Lemonade is scented, so that was a fun touch. Like You're Grounded above, the Wet 'n' Wild has a hidden shimmer, so hidden I decided it qualified to be in a creme comparison. I used three coats of each of these.

If you followed the link to beautygeeks above, you saw there are many of these mysterious dupe-y OPI colors, like You're Grounded, turning up in discount stores. Like Frog in My Throat, which there are apparently two versions of. I found the one that has gold shimmer, holo glitter, and coppery flakes in black jelly base, which is said to be a dupe for Sephora by OPI 212. Here's three coats, no topcoat:

This seemed to need topcoat, so I added some; that's better:

I had trouble getting the pops of color from the glitter to show for the camera; here's a blurry shot that's the best I managed:

I also found Come Out of Your Shell, which is Nicole by OPI Heavenly Angel with a new name. This is has iridescent mylar shreds in a slightly milky base. I did two coats of it plus topcoat over Frog in My Throat, leaving my index finger alone to better show the effect of the shredded glitter.

Regarding these odd OPIs, on the one hand I'm annoyed that they tricked me into buying exact dupes of three polishes I already had, but on the other, I can now get rid of two of those goofy NOPI bottles, so that's a good thing. I really wish I knew how this works—do they put out these rebottles because they've got leftover vats of color sitting somewhere after the contracts expire for the original brands the shades were released for? Surely they didn't dump out bottles of NOPI and SOPI and put them in regular OPI bottles. I don't expect we'll ever know for sure. I've now bookmarked the beautygeeks post so I don't get fooled again.