OPI | Vegan Claws

A vegan nail polish blog. A celebration of colour and light, as well as of justice for nonhuman animals.

Archive for the ‘OPI’ Category

Zoya Natalie and comparisons

Someone on Makeup Alley’s nail board was asking about dupes for Zoya Natalie so I did some comparisons. First, here’s Natalie.

Sun:

Ott lite:

Natural shade:

Here are the bottles I compared:

OPI Ginger Bells, Zoya Natalie, Kleancolor Brown, SpaRitual Clay.

SpaRitual Quartz, Zoya Natalie, Joe Fresh Terracotta, OPI Schnapps Out of It.

First set under Ott lite:

First set with flash:

Second set under Ott lite:

Second set with flash:

No exact dupes but some similarities here!

Category:

Joe Fresh, Kleancolor, OPI, SpaRitual, Zoya

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OPI Glacier Bay Blues and BB Couture Pipe Bender

This mani features an old, hard-to-find black label OPI called Glacier Bay Blues, which has a navy blue base with purple-to-green duochrome shift. The ring finger accent is BB Couture Pipe Bender, which has a muted dark green base with some subtle purple duochrome shimmer. I used three thin coats for each (although the BB Couture could easily be a two coater) plus top coat.

This first one is a phone pic in sunlight, where the duochrome effect is less apparent:

Camera pics in partial sunlight:

In shade:

Under Ott lite:

With flash:

I added some stamping to the accent nail that didn’t really turn out, since it’s not very visible, but here it is anyway. I used my bottle of Kleancolor Metallic Sapphire, which is strangely no longer its original royal blue colour, but is now a dusty dark purple. I’ve seen fading blue pigments before, but this was kind of strange in that it turned really quite purple! It almost looks like OPI Ink Suede now, except more muted and even more purple. Anyway, it wasn’t enough of a contrast to Pipe Bender to show up well, unfortunately, and I liked the mani better without the stamping. The image is from plate Hehe-024.

Category:

BB Couture, Hehe stamping plates, Kleancolor, OPI

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Pretty Serious Kashmir and Orly Fowl Play comparison

Kashmir by Pretty Serious was created in collaboration with blogger Christine of Serenity Nails.

It’s a warm dark purple with lots of shimmer and red-gold-green flakies. I used two coats plus top coat and the formula was excellent.

It looks slightly redder in real life compared to my photos, I found. In the shade:

I did a comparison to Orly Fowl Play which ended up not being as similar as I expected.

In the bottles you can already tell they definitely aren’t dupes.

Left to right: Orly Fowl Play, Pretty Serious Kashmir, Orly Fowl Play, Pretty Serious Kashmir.

I used three coats (plus top coat) for Fowl Play as it has a more sheer jelly base. Fowl Play also has much more dense flakies including blue microflakies in addition to the larger red ones. Kashmir’s flakies hardly show up at all in comparison. Kashmir is also warmer/redder than Fowl Play.

I used to also own OPI Merry Midnight, which is very very close to Fowl Play, so I’m holding a swatch stick of Merry Midnight for the last two photos (the stick has one, two and three coats of Merry Midnight going progressively up the stick). Flash:

Merry Midnight is almost the same as Fowl Play but its base is not quite as dark and so is a bit closer to the base colour of Kashmir. Shade:

Category:

OPI, Orly, Pretty Serious

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A few odds and ends

A few random things, some of them pretty old photos! In reverse chronological order…

China Glaze Metro-pollen-tin, three coats plus top coat, taken with flash. Love this yellow-orange!

IndiePolish Spring Lilac, two coats, plus two coats topcoat (the formula was a little thick so the glitters got a bit lumpy).

China Glaze Ray-diant layered over black.

OPI Do You Think I’m Tex-y with a jelly sandwich accent nail. I *think* the iridescent glitter in the jelly sandwich was Butter London Tart With a Heart but I’m not 100% positive!

And of course, I can’t post a polish with Tex in the name without posting a picture of handsome Big Tex!

Category:

Butter London, China Glaze, IndiePolish, OPI

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China Glaze Spring in My Step and Valentine’s Day Stamping

Happy Valentine’s Day! This mani started out with a polish I like a lot, Spring in My Step from China Glaze.

Four coats plus top coat. The four coats are needed, but the formula is thin so it doesn’t seem too thick on the nail, and it dries super quickly. Like, quick enough that this polish and the others I have from this collection (last spring’s City Flourish) are among those I would choose when rushing to cover up naked nails before leaving for work in the morning! I know a lot of people hated the formula of the pastels in that collection, but I loved it!

I then added some stamping using Bundle Monster plates BM-H16 and BM-H17. I received both of these plates as gifts from the people at Nail Polish Canada, H16 last year and H17 this year. I think they send them out to regular customers or something. Thanks NPC! 🙂

The polishes I used for stamping were Kleancolor Iridescent Fuchsia (which is a ridiculous name as it’s not in any way iridescent, it’s a straight creme polish!) and Red Alert. Someday I hope I’ll get the hang of stamping so that the whole images will transfer without gaps and smudges 😉

I coloured in a few of the stamps using OPI Guy Meets Gal-veston, a coral pink jelly polish.

Here’s a close up of the thumb stamp, since it didn’t show up very well in the other photos.

And here’s the right hand – here, I coloured in some of the stamps using OPI Houston We Have a Purple, another jelly from the Texas collection.

Disclosure: the stamping plates used in this manicure were provided free of charge by Nail Polish Canada.

Category:

Bundle Monster (stamping), China Glaze, Kleancolor, OPI

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OPI La Boheme

OPI La Boheme is a hard-to-find polish from the 2003 Holiday on Broadway collection by OPI, and is also pretty much my favourite polish ever. Most of the photos are with Ott Lite; a couple where noted are with flash.

It’s a deep burgundy-red with sparkly colour-shifting pigment that goes from red to gold to green.

I wore this polish when I got married. 🙂

I’m not sure whether this was two or three coats. These photos were taken a while ago and I don’t seem to have written it down, at least not in my usual notebook…

It can look very different in different lighting. With flash the purple-ish side comes out:

The rest of the photos show one coat layered over black for maximum multichrome colour-shifting goodness.

With flash, again bringing out more purple:

How much do I love this polish? Well, I even have a backup bottle, and purchased both of them at crazy ebay prices. I still think it was worth it. No regrets for this one!! 😀

Category:

OPI

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Zoya Autumn and Comparison

Zoya Autumn is from last fall’s Ignite collection. It’s a great metallic orange-copper base with sparkly gold shimmer flecks. Two coats plus top coat.

Little Wu kept photobombing me. ❤

Indirect light:

I compared Autumn to four other shades: OPI Bronzed to Perfection (2 coats), which has more of a creme base with added shimmer, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising (3 coats), which has small bronze, pink, and greenish-gold glass flecks in a (I think) clear base, Sparitual Rusted Lux (3 coats), a rusty red jelly base with heavy gold glass fleck, and Sparitual Conduit (3 coats), a brownish jelly base with the same gold glass flecks. The differences show best in the shade and artificial light photos.

Thumb to pinkie: OPI Bronzed to Perfection, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising, Zoya Autumn, Sparitual Rusted Lux, Sparitual Conduit

Shade/indirect light:

Thumb to pinkie: OPI Bronzed to Perfection, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising, Zoya Autumn, Sparitual Rusted Lux, Sparitual Conduit

Ott Lite:

Thumb to pinkie: OPI Bronzed to Perfection, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising, Zoya Autumn, Sparitual Rusted Lux, Sparitual Conduit

I love all of these!

Category:

Deborah Lippmann, OPI, SpaRitual, Zoya

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OPI Zom-body to Love and LA Girl Synergy

Haven’t had much time to edit photos and posts lately… How about another green?

This is a manicure I did a couple weeks ago using the glow-in-the-dark OPI Zom-body to Love, which was released for Halloween 2011, and LA Girl Glitter Addict in Synergy sandwiched on the accent nail.

Three coats of the OPI (which dries super fast due to all the glow-in-the-dark pigment, by the way), and the LA Girl glitter is sandwiched between coats two and three on my ring finger. Plus top coat, as the glow-in-the-dark also dries quite matte and slightly gritty.

Category:

LA Girl, OPI

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Some Random Pics

A few random manis from various points over the past year or so!

Pretty and Polished Phoenix over Joe Fresh Mustard:

China Glaze Trendsetter with foily gradient accent – the green is Nicole by OPI My Favourite Gold over Brilliant Idea, and the gold is either Orly Glitz & Glamour or OPI Goldeneye, I don’t remember…