It's been a long time since I last did a post. However, just because I haven't been writing about makeup it doesn't mean I haven't been buying any. Thanks to all you lovely makeup bloggers, I have started buying nail varnish in such quantities, I could paint my house with them. Naughty bloggers! No more enabling my new addiction!
Anyway, one of the things I bought recently was the OPI. Irre-swissables mini polishes. The set was released last August and I was lucky enough to find it at my local Sally's Beauty Supplies in Kidderminster for £6. The marketing for the set sums it up quite nicely. Supposedly OPI took inspiration 'from a backdrop of snow-peaked mountains, lush glacial valleys, and glittering lakes'. Fancy! My nails are having a winter holiday.
In the set you get four 3.75ml bottles, all of which seem to be part of the permanent collection. To some it may seem better to buy the larger bottles if the shades aren't limited edition but I love mini sets to try out new shades. You get Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous (pewter), Yodel Me On My Cell (dark teal blue), So Hot It Burns (red) and the OPI RapiDry Top Coat (clear).
Please forgive the look of my nails and the neatness of the swatches. I've been chopping down conifers and my nails are a mess. (But chainsaws are fun!) All the pictures were taken in natural light and represent the shades as accurately as possible. Saying that, these polishes are a total PITA to photograph and it took me ages to get the colours looking close.
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| Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous |
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| Yodel Me On My Cell |
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| So Hot It Burns |
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| RapiDry Top Coat |
All of the shades lasted well on my fingers. So Hot It Burns and Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous take only two coats to go opaque. Yodel Me On My Cell is a bit thinner and takes 3-4 coats. I was impressed by how evenly they covered given that the brushes are very thin. So Hot is definitely my favourite. It's a creamy, bright red and reminds me a lot of the colour of a Skittles packet. Lucerne-Tainly is a mid silver, incredibly metallic and has small metallic reflects that unfortunately my camera couldn't pick up. I'm less impressed by Yodel Me. I usually love blues but this is one that looks nicer in the bottle than on the nails. It's a shimmer polish and sadly the colour mix appears... muddy. The mix of the base colour and shimmer don't work well together.
I've been hunting for a decent top coat for some time. I've got a love/hate relationship with Seche Vite (works brilliantly at first- goes gloopy within a month of opening). I can't say I'll be rushing out to get the OPI version. It doesn't dry the nails as quickly and the polish has to be half dry or the brush picks up a lot the varnish. It also doesn't make the varnish last that much longer, although the shine it gives is quite good. The hunt continues!
Despite this, I would recommend OPI Irre-swiss-ables to those who like mini nail varnishes. I'll definitely be picking up the full size of So Hot when I run out. Lucerne-Tainly isn't what I would call a unique shade, so while I like it, I won't buy the full size. Yodel Me definitely not. There are nicer blues to spend my money on.
You can still buy this set from Lookfantastic.com for £12 and from Ebay for about a tenner. Large individual bottles are available for around £9.
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