OPI Oz The Great And Powerful Collection, Part 2

Yesterday I shared the cremes from OPI Oz The Great and Powerful, and today as promised I have the texture and glitters from the set of polishes OPI sent to try out and review.

It wasn't clear to me from the press release whether the Liquid Sand shade in this group is limited edition like the other six or if it will be around for a while, the way Black Shatter stuck around long after the rest of the Katy Perry collection was gone. Given that it's called What Wizardry is This, it does seem to be part of the collection so if you like it, grab it now to be safe. I personally don't like it so much. What Wizardry is This is a warm brown color. Two coats gave full coverage. Unlike the Mariah Carey Liquid Sand polishes, this one doesn't have any larger glitters in it. It doesn't really seem to have much glitter in it at all; there is some golden shimmer that shows up in some lighting conditions. The combination of the color and texture in this one just makes me think of something I might scrape out of my frying pan (I am not a great cook, admittedly), and that's not a look I'm going for on my nails.





Going with my "glitter makes everything better" approach, I topped What Wizardry is This with When Monkeys Fly, a glitter mix of large gold hexes with medium amd small silver and holo hexes. Look at all the pretty colors and bling:



Putting When Monkeys Fly over the Liquid Sand did not solve my problems. The clear base of the glitter wasn't nearly robust enough to smooth out the sand's texture, though that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was how very difficult the large gold hexes were to work with. I had to do some fishing to get them out of the bottle, and when I did, I found that the vast majority of them were curled, some a little, some a lot. It wasn't "reflective curling", where a glitter piece looks like it's not flat even though it is due to how the light hits it. This was actual curling, where the edges aren't level with the middle. In some cases, I got the hexes on with the curve downward; when the curve of the hex matched the curve of my nail, that was okay. When the hexes landed curve up, I had tacos. Again, not a look I'm going for. It's a shame, because the silver/holo pieces did add quite a nice sparkle to liven up the brown and even though I'm not a gold person, I could appreciate it in this mix. (OPI is aware of the curling glitter in When Monkeys Fly; see this post on their Facebook page.)





Okay, so maybe that particular glitter didn't make What Wizardry is This better for me. Perhaps the answer was adding even more glitter. I grabbed Which is Witch, a silver/holo glitter mix with hexes and tiny bar glitter, and added two coats of that plus topcoat. (I got the idea to layer Oz glitters from someone, but I can't recall who it was and had no luck finding the post that inspired me again when I looked just now. If it was your post I saw about the Oz layering, remind me in the comments, please. EDIT: It was Polish and Charms.) With all those layers on top of the problem hexes and all the distraction provided by the extra glitter, I didn't notice the curling anymore.





Looking at this combination in low light made me think that if I'd just added enough topcoat over What Wizardry is This, I could have liked it without all the glitter.



It's hard to see what part of the glitter is Which is Witch in that business up there, so here it is on its own in the bottle:



Here's two coats of Which is Witch over I Theodora You. I didn't use topcoat, so you can see how well behaved this glitter is.



I have an uneasy relationship with bar glitter, but the bars in Which is Witch are so small and delicate that they barely even register as bars. The overall effect is quite lovely.



I decided to give When Monkeys Fly another chance, this time two coats of it over Glints of Glinda, plus double topcoat (first a thin formula to stick things together and then a thick formula to smooth things out). It turned out okay, though I didn't enjoy wrestling with the hexes (and ended up with a fugly clump of them on my middle finger).





The last glitter and last polish I have to share from this collection is Lights of Emerald City, a mix of iridescent and white squares. It's very indie-esque.



Here's one coat of Lights of Emerald City over Don't Burst My Bubble. No topcoat, no problem.







I give OPI a lot of credit for doing glitters that are different from ones we've seen from them before. Lights of Emerald City is my favorite (I bought my own bottle after I sent these samples off to their permanent home), and I like Which is Witch as well. When Monkeys Fly just needed a better behaved gold glitter.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.

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P.S. I haven't forgotten about picking winners for my birthday giveaway, and indeed have made some progress on getting all the virtual raffle tickets in the right hats for each of the prizes, but I got busy at work and now am heading out to see my mom for the long Easter weekend, so it'll be next week sometime before I get the contest wrapped up. Sorry for the delay!