There have been a number of movie tie-in collections from OPI in recent years, and this summer brings another one, The Amazing Spider-man. (One thing I'm amazed by is that in all these years, from watching the tv cartoon as a child through the earlier movies until now, I never noticed that there's a hyphen in the character's name. I always thought it was Spiderman, no hyphen. Plenty of people share that view; someone even drew a comic panel to explain
why he needs that hyphen.) There are seven polishes in this collection, including one new shade of Shatter. Left to right below: Call Me Gwen-ever, Your Web Or Mine, My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Shatter the Scales, Just Spotted The Lizard, Number One Nemesis, Into the Night.
Call Me Gwen-ever is a somewhat muted orange creme. This strikes me as much more wearable than the brighter, louder oranges that seem to be popping up everywhere in summer collections. These swatches are two coats, no topcoat.
Your Web or Mine is a warm pink frosty shimmer and rather brushstrokey. Here's two coats of it:
I've been meaning to try the sponging technique to combat brushstrokes, which I think I first read about on
Polish Art Addiction, so I tried it out on Your Web or Mine. I used a wedge makeup sponge and dabbed on a third coat of color. (The black on the sponge is left over from my
grey gradient; since it didn't soak through, I saved the sponge to use the other side.)
After the dabbing, I put on topcoat to help smooth things out, and it looked much better. I can see some spots that indicate my dabbing technique needs a little work, but for a first try, I'm happy with it.
To further distract from my lumpy sponging and have some fun at the same time, I added drips of Call Me Gwen-ever, followed by more top coat.
My Boyfriend Scales Walls is a white creme. It was thick enough that I only used two coats, which was surprising for a white. It's got a very, very slight cool tone to it that keeps it from being too stark. This isn't like painting your nails with Wite Out.
I topped My Boyfriend Scales Walls with the Shatter in this collection, Shatter the Scales. It's a dark green with silver shimmer. When I applied it, I didn't go past the edge of the white at the base of my nails, and as the crackle dried, it pulled in from the edge quite noticeably. I didn't like that white border, so I touched up with more crackle at the base, which is why I've got cracks running in several directions. I added topcoat over the crackle.
Just Spotted the Lizard is a bright olive green shimmer with duochrome tendencies. Two coats of this would have been fine, but I ended up doing three because I was trying to get the brushstrokes lined up neatly.
I had trouble getting the duochrome to come out to play for my camera, but perhaps you can see hints of it in these quirkily angled shots below.
Number One Nemesis is an olive green shimmer with pops of gold, grey, lime, and maybe a few other colors. This is a flecked shimmer, not in any way brushstrokey. I used three coats.
Into the Night is a blue shimmer, nicely balanced between bright blue and deep blue.
I gave Into the Night the Shatter treatment, adding Shatter the Scales in a sort of sideways swirl pattern and then finishing with topcoat.
Two of these colors call to mind fairly recent Chanel offerings. Just Spotted the Lizard inspired me to pull Chanel Peridot out of my untrieds. I used two coats of each on alternating nails. Left to right below: OPI (with topcoat), Chanel (with topcoat), OPI (no topcoat), Chanel (no topcoat).
The Chanel looks a bit more sparkly to me than the OPI, though the difference is very slight. The color shift looked the same to me in both polishes; I tried to capture that in the two photos below. Seems to me that Just Spotted the Lizard is a great, more affordable alternative to Peridot.
Number One Nemesis wouldn't be the first Chanel Graphite-esque polish in my stash; that spot is taken by Revlon Carbonite (I did a
comparison with that last year). I was curious to see how close this new contender came. Left to right below: OPI, Chanel, OPI, Chanel.
The base color in both of these looks to be the same. The shimmer is a bit different, with the Chanel seeming to have more silver, which makes it look lighter. Below it's Chanel on top, OPI below. Don't tell Chanel, but I think the OPI is prettier, since more of the colors pop through from the shimmer.
Overall the colors in this collection were more interesting to me than Minnie Mouse, though I'm guessing it's the opposite for the general nail polish buying public. It wasn't so very long ago that I thought green nail polish was a seriously odd choice, so I get that. If I were given the opportunity to tweak this collection, I'd get rid of Your Web or Mine and replace it with something dark, like a black or navy creme with silver and blue glitter to represent the night sky that Spider-Man swings through. I'd also make Call Me Gwen-ever a red creme, because his suit is not orange and blue, it's red and blue. It seems srange to me that OPI didn't put a red in here; maybe they figured they've already done every red possible. Or maybe the orange will make more sense to me after I've seen the movie.
The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.
