Selections from OPI Hello Kitty

The days when I would swatch full OPI collections are past (at least for now); these days I pick and choose which colors to get and sometimes wait until they go on clearance. When I first saw the Hello Kitty display at Sally Beauty, it was easy to eliminate most of the shades from consideration. All of the cremes got crossed off my shopping list right away. I completely understand why there were so many of them; it fits the cartoon aesthetic of Hello Kitty perfectly. I just have so very many cremes already and if I'm going to add more to my stash, I feel confident I can get the same shades at a lower price point. That left the shimmers and glitters, which I decided I would get. The wrinkle was one was sold out of the single bottle display but was available in the pedicure set, and that's how I ended up with one of the cremes after all.

My mini haul, with the Hello Kitty toe separators from the set serving as backdrop: Kitty White, Let's Be Friends, Charmmy & Sugar, Starry-Eyed for Dear Daniel.



Kitty White is a straightforward white flecked shimmer, which yes, I probably do have at least a half dozen other versions of, but it's so fresh looking and reminds me of snow and I don't regret buying it. This swatch is three coats, and you can still see some visible nail line at some angles.



I wasn't sure how opaque Starry-Eyed for Dear Daniel would be, so I left Kitty White on all but my index finger as a base. Turns out this hot pink microglitter can be worn alone. Top nail below is three coats of Dear Daniel alone; other nails have two coats of Dear Daniel over Kitty White. I didn't add topcoat; this glitter is not especially bumpy.



I didn't have the attention span to swatch Let's Be Friends, the pale pink creme, on its own, and I was curious how its mate from the pedicure set, Charmmy & Sugar would layer, so I combined them, adding in Kitty White for more fun. Charmmy & Sugar has medium hex glitter in mostly hot pink but with a smattering of other colors in a shimmer packed sheer base. Top to bottom below: Let's Be Friends (3 coats), Charmmy & Sugar (2), Let's Be Friends topped with one coat of Charmmy, Let's Be Friends topped with one coat of Kitty White.



Unlike Dear Daniel, Charmmy is not opaque on its own at two coats, and doing three seemed like it would submerge the hex glitter too much, though at certain angles the shimmer reflects so much light that it pretty much obscures the nail line so maybe I would wear it alone.



I definitely will wear Charmmy layered, so I tried it over some different base colors. Top to bottom, one coat of Charmmy & Sugar over Kitty White, Starry-Eyed for Dear Daniel, Rimmel Picasilly Line (deep pink creme), and Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme. This is definitely a fun layering polish.



I bought the previous polishes at Sally Beauty, before I knew about or saw the set with the special edition shade Say Hello Kitty. Since it was a shimmer, I bought it, even though I'm sure I have something similar to this hot pink in my stash already (when don't I, really?) and won't likely use the bow-shaped Swarovski crystals included in the box.



I fancied I could see a bit of a shift in the shimmer in the bottle, but that didn't show on the nail. It's just a nice flecked shimmer. I think this was three coats, though my notes are unclear; apparently I was too excited to try layering it to pause and record the plain swatch properly.



And layer I did. Top to bottom: Say Hello alone, then topped with, respectively, one coat of Kitty White, one coat of Charmmy & Sugar, one coat of Starry-Eyed for Dear Daniel.



beautygeeks has a great long post with all the colors from this collection and swatch stick comparisons. I'm happy with the ones I got. It's a lot more pink than I tend to go for, but it is Hello Kitty, so that makes perfect sense.

SinfulColors Comparisons

Despite my best intentions, I only managed four blog posts here last month, and this month is nearly a third gone already without any activity. I do have some decent reasons this time, though; a couple days after my last post, I flew back east to start packing up my nail polish collection, as we've accepted an offer on our house in Michigan and expect to close in a couple weeks from now. Of course, being me, my trip hasn't been all work; I've also visited with friends and spent the last six days on a previously scheduled trip to Wisconsin for a conference I go to every year. I taught a nail art session there this year, doing a quick tour through nail strips, dotting tools, and stamping. Whew. Due to a bad time slot, I didn't have a lot of students, which turned out to be good since I could give individual attention and everyone who wanted to got try all the techniques (the one guy there just wanted to watch, but did let us polish one of his nails).



I still have a lot of packing to do, and we have to figure out how/when to get it all out to Idaho, but I also have a backlog of swatches and can't spend every waking moment on the move, so today I'm easing back into blogging with a couple comparisons of some SinfulColors shades I've added to my collection in recent months. Left to right: Hush Money, Gold n' Roses, Mint2BCool, Wonder Mint.



Hush Money is one I picked up from the With Flying Colors display at Fred Meyer in January. I got Gold n' Roses from the Live in Color display at Walgreens around the same time; according to the SinfulColors website, it's a Walgreens exclusive. These are both rose gold metallics (though the official site calls Hush Money "bronze"). You can see in the bottle shot above that the colors are very similar, while Gold n' Roses (why that punctuation, Sinful? why?) has a somewhat chunkier look to it.

That difference visibile in the bottles translates to the nail. Top two fingers below have two coats of Hush Money, which is a straightforward metallic finish, with fine silver particles mixed in with the rose gold color. The bottom two fingers have three coats of Gold n' Roses, which has both fine silver particles and flakies in it, which gives it a more irregular finish than Hush Money. It also pulls slightly warmer on me than Hush Money.



Hush Money on the left below, Gold n' Roses on the right. They both have their strengths. Hush Money wins the coverage battle, needing only two coats (one thick one might work, too), while Gold n' Roses has a more interesting finish.



On to the "mints", which read as blue to me. It's not obvious in the group bottle shot, but one of these, Mint2BCool, has subtle shimmer.



On the nail, that shimmer disappears. Top two nails below have two coats of Wondermint; bottom two have three coats of Mint2BCool (two coats might have been enough but I was trying to see if a third would bring out the shimmer; it didn't). I can't tell these apart.



I couldn't get the shimmer to show on the nail for the camera even in the direct low light that usually coaxes these things out. Since the shimmer in Mint2BCool is lost on the nail, my pick here is Wondermint; I think it has a better formula. It's on the left below.



A sensible woman would destash at least Mint2BCool at this point so as not to have to pack/sort/deal with it again, but at this point, I feel like I just need to focus on getting my huge stash ready for travel and let the destash wait until I can have all my bottles in one place again (right now I have a mini stash in Idaho with the bulk here in Michigan). Wish me luck packing; I'm going to need it!