The other day I was shopping at Ulta, as one does, and chanced upon a display of the new Ulta Summer Exclusives from OPI. I stared at them a little, having a certain sense of deja vu, and then started chortling. They’re all re-releases of colors from last year or thereabouts. Some of the details are linked here at The Daily Varnish, but it sums up as: the entirety of the Pirates of the Caribbean and Katy Perry collections (respectively six and four colors), and a couple of random colors from other recent collections I didn’t recognize, plus both black and silver shatters. I missed both collections, so I was pretty happy to see them available (albeit with different names) at 2/$12. Sweet deal.
I got Oh, Waiter, which is the Skull & Glossbones reissue (a soft putty-like gray), along with a couple of others you may see later, and today, when I wanted something really mellow, decided to wear it with a couple of pretty duochrome shimmer accent nails. This one is Lilacquer Selkie, a topcoat with a clear base like Kitsune, which is featured here, though this one has a lovely blue-aqua-green shift. It’s quite subtle, especially as compared to some of the others, but I thought it worked pretty well for my purposes. Can you guess what else was involved?
Yeah. I’m predictable. Since I got E-MAY, I’ve been obsessively slapping a matte on most of my manis in one way or another. Sometimes, just for kicks, I’ll toss a coat on one nail right before I remove my polish just to see what it looks like. Sometimes it’s awesome and I make a note to do that again. Sometimes it’s terrible and I note the reverse. I will apologize once to people who are huge lovers of shiny nails, and never again: People, I’m sorry. I love matte nails. If you don’t, this may not be the blog for you.
I really enjoyed wearing Oh, Waiter (this was two very easy coats), though I keep mentally calling it Skull and Glossbones because I prefer that name. This particular shade of gray is one I find very soothing to the eye, and it’s just neutral enough to neither clash nor totally overtake the blue shine of Selkie.
Here’s Selkie in the bottle. She mentions that the pigments used can be a little thick, but I’ve found that they’re just to my taste. They also tend to dry pretty quickly, which is pleasant. If you’ve been enjoying seeing me use these, you can check out swatches of the whole nine-color collection at Spaz & Squee. She’s also got swatches up of Lilacquer’s new Fifth Element-inspired collection.
Selkie was purchased at Lilacquer’s Etsy shop, and the OPI was from Ulta.
Both were bought by me, for my own purposes.
Vanitas Rex 