I want to start off by apologizing for my disappearing act this month – My husband and I have been extra consumed by work and life lately so it has been really tough to find extra time for nail polish. So much so that I went nearly a week with completely naked nails!! I did, however, spend all day last Sunday swatching so I have a ton of polish to show you and regularly scheduled posting should resume this week barring any other major life distractions.

In this post, I have the first half of the OPI Mariah Carey Collection. Really, this collection of 8 polishes is actually two collections – 4 liquid sand polishes and 4 regular polishes. The 4 regular polishes seem thematically disjointed. One gammy-pink, one metallic glassy flecky, a pink hex & holo glitter, and one vampy plum -  these colors don’t really seem related to each other or like they belong together. Also, they don’t seem very Mariah Carey to me. Now, I say that with a grain of salt. While I don’t dislike Mariah Carey, I can’t say that I’m her fan. I mean, like everyone my age, I awkwardly slow danced to her music at middle school dance parties and I certainly have belted out “My All” in the shower once or twice. But, other than that, I don’t really know much about her as an artist nor her sense of style and aesthetic. I assume that my lack of knowledge about Mariah is also why the color names are totally over my head. What is Anti-Bleak? Like… not bleak? Sprung… As in sprung someone out of jail? Are these song titles? Am I just too old to get the pop-culture references here? In any case, the two stand out shades for me were Pink Yet Lavender and Anti-Bleak but overall this set was a little underwhelming. I have high hopes for the Liquid Sand shades though and those will be posted soon, I’m almost done with the swatches.

OPI Anti-Bleak, a gorgeous, luxurious vampy plum creme, is probably my favorite from this set. It’s very flattering to my skin-tone - I got a lot of compliments when I wore this one. The application was perfect at two coats, but this three. It’s almost a dead-on dupe for OPI Casino Royale. I went to visit my MIL recently, I was wearing Anti-Bleak and she was wearing Casino Royale. We both had to do a double take, we thought we might be wearing the same color! (My MIL & SILs love nail polish too, I swear it’s like I was meant to marry into their family. lol.) Upon closer inspection, AB is a smidge more purple toned than CR. CR has redder tones. I bought nearly the whole Skyfall collection so I do plan to post those soon!

OPI A Butterfly Moment is a dusty muted grandma pink with copper shimmer. Not exactly frosty, but it does have a slight speckled effect that reminds me a little of OPI You’re A Doll. The shimmer is slightly iridescent but not noticeably. The application was chalky and took about three coats to even it out. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I wore it as an NOTD since it was work appropriate but it never wowed me. It just wasn’t particularly flattering on its own.

OPI Pink Yet Lavender is a glitter top coat consisting of medium pink hex glitter and small silvery holographic glitter. This swatch is one coat of PYL over A Butterfly Moment and Anti-Bleak. I said before, ABM on its own was not very impressive but I LOVED it topped with PYL. I so wish I had blinged it out when I wore it. PYL and ABM were definitely meant for each other.

And, finally, OPI Sprung a fuchsia, coppery, gold glass flecky in a reddish copper base. Sprung is in the same vein as OPI Warm & Fozzie and Nicole by OPI Just Bust A Mauve (swatches of both coming soon). Application was good - this is three coats. I like the metallic glass fleck trend and I hope to see it expand into other colors like blue and green soon.

What do you think? Did you pick up any of these colors?

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Disclaimer: This collection was provided for review by OPI’s PR.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2013 at 10:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.